Green – just hype or source of real innovation?

I just read a humorous WSJ article from Penn Jillette (Yes – of Penn & Teller fame) on the death of Hummer. No surprise, but he said something quite provocative: “American auto manufacturers are thinking in terms of electric vehicles so the disgusting smoke will come out of coal smokestacks many, many miles away, and [...]

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Naked Innovation – three fears that mask opportunity

Patrick Lencioni’s new business fable,  Getting Naked is a short, but thoroughly enjoyable read about how being open, vulnerable, and transparent can help consultants and service companies do a better job for their clients. But it got me thinking beyond that:
“Doesn’t getting naked benefit product companies too? Can’t new product innovators uncover more [...]

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Doubling speed to market: the TOC approach – Part 3

Here’s Part 3 of my interview with Business 901’s Joe Dagger where we discussed open innovation as a tool to elevate the innovation bottleneck. If you’re not familiar with Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, Elevate is step 4 of his 5 focusing steps. While the first 3 steps are focused on better utilizing your existing capacity, [...]

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Doubling speed to market: the TOC approach – Part 2

If you haven’t had the chance to check it out yet, Joe Dagger’s Business 901 blog focuses on applications of Lean principles to marketing. But I had the chance to appear on his Business 901 podcast to talk about applying TOC’s continuous improvement approach to innovation.
Yesterday I shared Part 1. Today in Part 2 we [...]

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Doubling speed to market: the TOC approach – Part 1

I recently had the pleasure of doing an interview on increasing new product throughput by applying Theory of Constraints to the innovation process. It was for Joe Dagger’s Business 901 podcast.  Joe normally focuses on applying Lean methodologies to marketing, but he’s big on the subject of innovation and has recently been expanding his [...]

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Maximize new product profits by pricing for value – a B2B perspective

The subject of pricing makes most people uncomfortable – including those involved with new products. No surprise there since many organizations keep the responsibility for pricing in either finance or product management. But not including pricing strategy as a key, early element of your new product process is a serious mistake that leaves money [...]

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Six questions when no one wants to change

Why is change  so hard – in innovation or otherwise? Most people will tell you that it’s because people naturally resist change. But I really like Eli Goldratt’s response to this argument: If a very wealthy person that you knew and trusted offered you a huge sum of money, say $100 million, with no [...]

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Innovate like a three year old:
Why you should always ask why

In a previous post about Innovation Lessons from Childhood, I wrote about some of the new product innovation lessons we learned while we were in kindergarten. That included focusing on one task at a time and eliminating multi-tasking. But there’s more childhood can teach us about innovation.
One little question, a favorite of children the world [...]

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Avatar: A lesson in managing innovation risk

Who would have guessed that a movie about blue aliens could teach us anything about new product innovation? Of course, I’m not talking about the movie itself, but the story of how it was made – something that was chronicled in a recent Business Week article – King of the World (Again)
James Cameron, the creator [...]

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5 rules for growth – Is a disruptive innovation strategy right for your business?

Disruptive Innovation is one of the most over-used terms in business today—and it’s rarely used correctly. But how the term is used is not what’s important. Instead, we’ll focus on whether disruption is the right innovation strategy for your company or whether a sustaining approach is more appropriate.
Disruptive Innovation, a term coined by Clayton Christensen [...]

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