clair075

I read today a rather rambling and confusing piece in the New York Times about Dollar Shave Club.  The article, entitled $1 Billion for Dollar Shave Club: Why every company should worry , can't seem to hit its stride or find a point it wants to make.  At first I thought the piece was going to congratulate a disrupter, Dollar Shave Club, who, despite the odds, grew a startup business to the point where Unilever acquired it for $1 billion dollars.  Dollar Shave Club did this in the face of overwhelming odds, taking on a deep pocketed corporate behemoth (and noted innovator) in Gillette and P&G.  I was sure this was going to be a story about the new innovations unfolding in customer experience and business model. Instead the author seems concerned that new innovators are capitalizing on technologies and (horrors) merging those capabilities and technologies into new offerings and solutions.  While acknowledging the idea of creative destruction, doesn't he recogn...

There's a poem I love, that we post-modern types aren't supposed to love, because it was written by a colonialist Victorian, which by itself is almost enough to discredit any literature.  I'm talking today about the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling.  If is a poem about keeping your wits about you when others are losing theirs, and keeping your course and beliefs when others doubt you. I think If should be mounted on the cubicle wall or meeting space or prototyping lab of every person who claims to be an innovator.  There are a couple of passages that especially ring true for me.  The first one is: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster   And treat those two impostors just the same;  Innovators must be able to dream - to think about new products and services, to imagine new business models.  Simultaneously they must make those dreams realit...

Sometimes, when you are in the middle of an opportunity or problem, you are left dumbfounded by how hard it seems to get a new perspective, or how difficult it is for others to understand the scope and complexity of the problem.  This struck me the other day about innovation.  Even after over twelve years of innovation consulting, I'm still constantly learning.  It struck me how difficult innovation is for large, especially successful, corporations.  They struggle to understand innovation, to comprehend it, to do it successfully.  In many cases that's because innovation is like nothing they've ever done or seen before.  And, until you are ready to see something new, and not just see it but embrace it, then your old way of seeing and thinking and operating is going to prevail. Part of this monologue that will follow was initiated by discussions with clients, and I'll get to those points in a second.  But part of it is sparked by the current Republican p...

Over the last few weeks we've taken calls from several potential clients, all of whom seem to have an unusual problem.  An executive or even the CEO has asked their teams for innovative new ideas and solutions, offered support and promised rewards, but after several weeks of communicating this new approach, no new ideas are forthcoming.  After puzzling over the issue for a week or two, we get a call. The conversations go something like this:  "We've told our folks we need more innovation.  We've promised to reward them for their ideas.  We communicated this through email or other means.  Yet here we are, four or five weeks into an innovation program, and we aren't getting any ideas.  What's going on?"  And we talk to them about past innovation efforts, to discover that this often isn't the first time that executives have asked for ideas.  In doing the autopsy of past innovation efforts it's often clear that while executives asked for ideas, t...

Phil McKinney wrote a nice post yesterday about the failures of Kodak and Nokia .  I did some consulting work (systems, not innovation) years ago as Kodak was beginning its long slide toward obsolescence, and it was evident to everyone there that film was king.  Even as the first digital cameras were coming out, Kodak was far more focused on film. They were in a desperate fight with Fuji to retain market share in film, as the digital camera sales were ramping up.  McKinney's piece made me think about the typical "arc" of a company's existence.  Without a continuing focus on innovation, the arc follows a relatively straightforward and predictable path:  create an idea, create products, create profits, get complacent, fight for survival.  This conjecture is backed by evidence - a recent data point indicates that the lifespan of S&P 500 companies is rapidly shrinking.  In 1920 the average life expectancy of a firm on the S&P 500 was 67 years....

In the spirit of July 4th, and more importantly focused on the real need for innovation and the significant resistance to innovation in larger companies, it occurs to me that innovators need to create their own Declaration of Innovation.  In 1776 a group of small colonies banded together to throw off what they saw as burdensome government in which they had little to no say.  They felt taxed with representation, they were forced to quarter the soldiers they saw as occupiers.  They resisted a large but distant governance and were surrounded by Royal sympathizers.  Often, in the Revolutionary War, neighbor fought neighbor, some spurred on by the desire to change the status quo, some driven to retain it.  Sounds a bit familiar to innovators I'm sure. You, too, need a declaration.  You need to establish the rationale for innovation, identify the consequences of inaction, and publish the document to your entire organization.  Luther didn't stop at 95 Theses....