clair075

I'm a fan of Robert Browning, and really any one who can create a really pithy but meaningful quote.  Today's quote is from Browning, who said: "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a Heaven for?".  Of course any quote taken out of context can be used in any way I choose, but I like to think that Browning was writing about innovation.  In my way of thinking, Browning was exhorting all of us to innovate in ways that stretched us beyond our capabilities and comfort zones.  That part about reaching exceeding his grasp has that in spades.  If all of our reaching is within our grasp, if everything remains close and easy, within our knowledge and comfort zones, we will never make change.  And, to use another of my favorite quotes, from Shaw, all change is due to the "unreasonable" man, because reasonable men adapt themselves to their conditions, while "the unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself."  From these two quo...

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges innovators face is the lack of shared conventions or definitions.  This starts with the definition of innovation, which we all agree is important but no two people agree on the definition.  Moving on from there, we have different types of innovation, different tools and outcomes, differences in focus and intent.  I honestly believe that innovation teams in corporations attempting to conduct innovation suffer, because of the host of different and often proprietary innovation methods, processes and tools. There's little I'd like more than to create shared platforms and models, and to create holistic solutions rather than increment our way to good frameworks.  One of the challenges I'll address and attempt to solve today is the emerging dichotomy currently represented as explore and exploit.  This is, in itself, an evolution, because the vast majority of work in corporations recently could be represented by a single activity:...

Like many of you I look forward to the annual reports about innovation that a number of larger corporations and consulting firms publish.   It's interesting to get a large, multinational examination of the state of innovation, and to see how the data is interpreted.  Each year BCG and other consulting firms release an innovation report.  From the business perspective,  GE does a nice job every year of interviewing a large number of executives around the globe, and analyzing the data for insights .  Before I drill into what I believe the data tells us, remember a couple of factors.  First, how a question is asked matters, as well as which questions were asked and which were not asked.  There may be as much to learn from what wasn't asked as their is in what was asked.  Second, analyze the analysis.  Look at the data itself and how it is presented.  There are connections in the data that seem interesting to me that GE does not call ou...

Not long ago our innovation team was asked by a client to lead an innovation project to create a new product.  As always when we are asked in by a new client, we did a quick survey.  It's important to understand what the client knows about innovation, what they have learned or attempted previously.  Innovation can be strange and new, and if other tools or methodologies are familiar or in use, it's often valuable to incorporate them into our processes if possible, rather than ignore them. In this case we were told that Yes, the client had adopted another consulting firm's innovation methodology.  In fact when we met with the client team, they provided a binder of information on a step by step innovation process, that from the looks of things was relatively straightforward and complete.  Of course every consulting firm has its own ways of doing things, and there are factors and characteristics that will differentiate one consulting firm from another, but at the he...

I don't know if you've seen the movie The Big Short, and if you haven't I won't spoil it for you.  It's a good movie, and gets to the heart of the financial meltdown attributable to CDOs and sub-prime mortgages.  If you lived through the stock market issues of the last decade, and are living through what the stock market is doing right now (feels somewhat similar, no?) then you can recognize that there was a shift in perceptions or reality.  At that time, the "given" that was suddenly no longer so certain was the idea that housing prices were firm, and would always go up. The Big Short is interesting as a movie about the financial crisis, but what I enjoyed (as an innovator) is the fact that one small hedge fund group recognized something wasn't quite right.  And rather than stand around in their offices in New York assuring themselves that the facts all lined up, they did their own research.  In this case they decided to go see for themselves whether ...

Lately I've been reading a lot of white papers, blogs and tweets about the importance of ambidexterity in corporations.  Innovators and analysts have apparently decided that trying to convince organizations to simply become more innovative is too difficult.  Innovation distracts from highly efficient day to day operations.  Therefore we innovators, and other management thinkers, create a new way to think about introducing innovation, acknowledging the importance of efficient operating models while emphasizing the importance of innovation.  Thus is born the ambidextrous organization:  one that can operate in a highly efficient manner, cranking out products and services, while at the same time operating in a highly innovative manner.  The Hands This idea isn't really new, but it does have some importance.  The importance isn't about a duality between efficient operations and innovation capabilities, it's about doing more innovation, more regularly and mo...

I'm reading a lot about "disruptive" innovation from firms that I think have a lot to protect and preserve.  When I read that, I become fairly suspicious, because I'm not sure it's possible to simultaneously protect what is "important" and disrupt at the same time, unless the disruption is taking place in a market or business adjacent to or distant from whatever the corporation is trying to protect.  Can you simultaneously protect and disrupt the same product, segment or market?  I think the answer is "no".  So what are all of these corporations disrupting? Larger corporations are really, really good at preserving products, customers and industries. It is in their best interest to preserve as much of the status quo as possible, since their revenues and stock valuations rely on doing so.  For this reason, talk of disruption is uncomfortable, unless it refers to disrupting someone else's product, customers or industry.  But the further one ge...

There's news today that GM, that historic dinosaur of a car company, has seen the future and decided to hedge its bets .  Watching Google try to create a self-driving car, and observing the potential power of the sharing economy that Uber and Lyft have defined, and recognizing that millennials and others seem less interested in car ownership, GM has decided to place a substantial bet on Lyft.  The sound you heard in Detroit is the sound of a business model shifting, and thousands of businesses gasping in response.  Yes, it's possible a major tsunami has started, and no one is sure what things will look like when it is over. The reigning champion For close to 100 years, GM has had one prevailing business model:  they create cars and the American consumer acquires them.  After all it was Billy Durant who developed the idea of a model family, so that consumers could own progressively more elaborate automobiles all from the same manufacturer.  He is also respon...