clair075

You simply must tip your hat to Geoffrey Moore and others who created the concept of the "whole product".  I've written about this concept several times, and I raise it again because the underlying ideas are about to become really important in innovation circles.  If you haven't read Crossing the Chasm or aren't quite familiar with what a " whole product " is, then it may make sense to go and read up.  When you are done, come back and let's continue the conversation about why whole products are about to become a lot more interesting. Whole product (1.0) When Moore and others conceived of the original "whole product", they were making a point about the differences between technology (which many inventors, entrepreneurs and early adopters find interesting) and "whole products" - adding features, capabilities, instruction manuals, user hot-lines and other features and services around a core technology to make the eventual solution m...

I return once again to one of my favorite sayings, by Stephen Covey, who said (I'm paraphrasing): sharpen the saw before you start cutting the wood .  It's a really simple thought - do the right things to prepare before you start a big task, but we lose sight of what adequate preparation looks like in so many activities.  There are several reasons for this. First, many corporate activities are second nature.  We know how to do them by heart, so preparation feels like wasted time.  Second, we are used to last minute requests for information that don't seem to allow time to think or prepare.  This way of working has become second nature.  Third, in a very time bound and time restricted world, preparation doesn't always feel like value added time.  It can easily feel like time that was lost.  Fourth, time spent in preparation calls into question the knowledge and capabilities of the individual or team.  Shouldn't they already know this stuff?...

It's a sign of maturity and experience to be able to determine just where you are in a journey, and I think the time has come to put some stakes in the ground about just exactly where we all are in regards to our innovation journeys.  While some companies have made tremendous strides, becoming much more innovative than their peers, the real truth is that most corporations are still at the very beginning of their innovation work, and as I've written in other places the emerging new management fads around digital transformation combined with the fact that innovation often hasn't lived up to its promises means that our innovation journeys may end before they really got started. Because while it seems many companies have been on an innovation journey for quite some time, the honest reality is that they haven't moved very far.  There's been a significant amount of sound and fury, signifying not so much, to paraphrase a much more ancient bard.  The reality is that right ...

As far as one-hit wonders go, there are few bands that I listened to more than a band called the Godfathers back in the 80s and early 90s.  They had a song that was meant to encapsulate our lived experience.  The title?  Birth, school, work, death .  This is the pattern that we all live.  More importantly, each of us has a fairly regular pattern for our work lives:  get up, go to work, go to meetings, work on some deliverables, drive home, eat dinner.  Rinse and repeat.  These patterns are comfortable and familiar.  More importantly, these patterns - how we work, what we do, decisions we make, risks we take - become ingrained and begin to govern how we think, how we work and even the types of ideas that we contemplate. The more comfortable we become with our patterns of life - breakfast, commute, work, lunch, work, commute, dinner, TV, bed - the more we cling to familiarity and stability.  I think that these patterns and familiarity also...