clair075

I've been watching the recent gun debate in the US with a lot of interest.  Clearly we have a safety and security issue, with far too many people losing their lives to gun violence, in "unsafe' neighborhoods but also in places that should be safe, like schools.  One of the side effects that is going to be very interesting to watch, and I'm not the first to comment on it, will be the new energy and passion young people who experienced the violence first hand in places like Stoneman Douglas will bring to the debate.  As I think is happening in many places and in many settings simultaneously, old, entrenched models are under attack by new ways of thinking and new dynamics in ways that we've not seen before. Whether its the entrenched power of the NRA facing off against a new and younger population who are fed up with gun violence, or new ways of moving and managing money (digital and alternative currencies) versus traditional finance and banking, a lot of existing bus...

I've been thinking a lot about why innovation fails.  Not about why supposedly innovative new products fail, because there are multiple reasons for the failure of a new product.  It could be too early or too late in the market window, or it could simply have the wrong pricing or distribution.  A new product may lack key features or components, or like some successful products take years to build an audience.  I'm actually more interested in the 90+% of ideas that never make it to product development.  Why is there so much failure in the front end of innovation? I was going to write this describing the failures in the front end, but that seemed too negative.  If we can identify why ideas and processes fail, then we can begin to add value to innovators everywhere.  So, first a brief segue into the importance and value of failure, then six ideas to implement to increase innovation success in the front end. Failure - the good, the bad and the ugly Let's fi...

I've been thinking about innovation for a while now, trying to puzzle out why some organizations seem to be able to innovate almost effortlessly while others are more sporadic or face significant innovation challenges.  At some moments in my career I've blamed this phenomenon on lack of breadth - the idea that too many companies shrink innovation activities down to idea generation and rapid evaluation.  This isn't completely wrong, there still is a lack of innovation process breadth and not enough appreciation for the thoughtful exploration and divergence in the 'front end' of innovation, followed by rapid prototyping and realization in the latter stages.  However, I'm warming to the idea that the real problem with innovation, the real reason so few organizations can perform innovation effectively, is a lack of depth.  Because even if we get the innovation process (steps, activities, tools, methods) right and follow them carefully, a lack of depth constantly slo...

For many companies, I think there is a relatively significant gap between what they actually generate as compelling new products and what they wish they generated.  We could call this the "innovation gap".  The gap is real, and it means that many companies aren't as profitable or as competitive as they'd like to be.  Many of have (in some cases for years or decades) advocated tools and methods as a way to improve the innovation funnel, to create more innovation more readily that had value as new products and services.  To date, there's been some improvement but the innovation gap still remains. Lately, with the advent of "big data", machine learning and other factors associated with data and more intelligent processes, the argument has been made that these capabilities will solve the innovation gap.  This claim seems to suggest that big data and analytics and machine learning can do a better job in the front end generating new ideas that lead more rapidl...

The Beatles (they were a pop group for those of you who cut your teeth on Eminem) wrote jangly songs about yellow submarines and walruses.  It was the 60s, so I guess you had to be there to understand.  They were all about sunny days, happy feelings, a kind of Beach Boys from England with mod outfits and mop top haircuts.  They also had that outrageous Sergeant Pepper phase, but I digress. The Beatles also had a few melancholy songs, perhaps none more famous than "Yesterday".  Yesterday is a song about looking back with some regret, after realizing that the recent past wasn't so bad, that some opportunities may have been missed. The Beatles were innovators in rock and roll, introducing a new perspectives, a really interesting competing view of the world between Paul McCartney and John Lennon, introducing eastern musical themes and instruments into rock and roll, and many other innovations.  But for innovators I think the most relevant song they sang was Yesterda...

There's an old marketing adage that you sell the sizzle, not the steak.  Sell the benefits, not the features.  I wonder, as I watch Super Bowl television ads, how many marketing people have forgotten the basic tenets of their craft. This isn't to say that the ads aren't catchy, funny, endearing and often engrossing.  But sometimes the ads are so interesting or so well developed that they neglect to tell us what they are for.  In other words, watching these ads makes me think that we've completely lost the steak in all the sizzle. A good example is Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) up against the voice of god himself (Morgan Freeman).  The rap battle was great, but the products they were featuring were barely acknowledged.  It's as if we are supposed to buy the products because of the really interesting advertising, rather than the benefits they provide. What's this diatribe got to do with innovation? Going through the elaborate motions A...