Validate before acquiring
With little effort other than financial, the thought of acquiring another company can be extraordinarily tempting for a corporation looking to jump-start innovation. PricewaterhousCoopers predicted
Forget your innovation strategy if the HR Department is not on board
Financial resources, know-how, assets, they are all created by the human resource of the company. People are behind the success or failure of any initiative
Lessons From Kodak’s Bankruptcy, How Can Large Companies Sustain Innovation?
Five years ago Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This was not only an economic tragedy for one of the great companies of the last century,
Innovation Is Management
Every entrepreneur wants to be Steve Jobs. But the Steve Jobs they want to be is the Steve Jobs on stage presenting the new iPhone
Why Diverse Teams Are More Creative
When 2016 came to a close, it may go down in history as a political turning point. Contentious elections and referendums in Europe and America
3 reasons why having ‘legal’ on a lean startup experimentation team is a good idea
Most of the time, when you mention ‘the legal department’ to a product team doing lean startup experiments you feel the mood in the room
Eight Ways To Manage Innovation Experiments Without Hurting Your Company’s Brand
Unlike startups who are usually just starting out in business, large companies tend to have trading histories and reputations to protect. Part of this reputational
10 Things Companies Do That Make Their Most Innovative Employees Leave
In a previous post, I wrote about why corporate leaders may be right to shut down non-performing innovation labs. That article focused on what innovation managers get
Innovation Accounting Is About Asking The Right Question At The Right Time
Next month I will be speaking at the Intrapreneurship Conference in Stockholm. I will be giving a whiteboard session on innovation accounting. In preparation, I sat down
Five Reasons Your Boss Was Right To Shut Down Your Innovation Lab
Innovation labs are all the rage these days. Most companies have one, are thinking about creating one or have had employees pushing management to start
Innovation audit
Prescribing what the ecosystem needs not what it wants There are currently over 6,000 drugs approved by the FDA in the United States. You can
Why R&D Spending Is Not A Measure Of Innovation
Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg When it comes to R&D spending, corporate leaders often want to know what others are doing. How much are other companies in
Five Principles for Building Corporate Innovation Ecosystems
It is undeniable that the world around us is changing. Technology and software have transformed large parts of business; and continues to do so in
3 Reasons Why Practice Doesn’t Trump Theory
The Praxis Wheel. Art by Joshua Kahn Russell Over the last few years I have been traveling the world advising large companies on how to
The paradox of having no assets
The paradox of having no assets and it’s implication in corporate innovation strategy It is still paradoxically how, having less (or no) financial assets at
Creating Wealth by Creating Value aka Why We Do Lean Innovation
Over the last three years I have part of a great team working to bring lean innovation principles into Pearson, the world’s largest global education
Frameworks for Building Innovation Portfolios
This article is the final draft of an earlier draft that I published to test out a unified framework combining McKinsey’s three horizons and Christensen
A New Typology for Innovation That Combines The Three Horizons Framework And Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation?
I am wrote this article to invite criticism, comment and possible ridicule. My aspiration was to create a framework that combined the three horizons framework
Should innovation units be physically separate from the core business?
Most senior executives can relate. It usually starts with some startup types within the company telling them scary stories about how startups are coming to eat
A Lean Startup Definition of Innovation
In my previous post, I wrote about the false choices that innovators face. These choices seem to present teams with the option of using business plans
Business Plan or Just Do It – This Innovator’s Choice Is A False Narrative
Innovation is hard work. Creating great products that succeed on the market is a really difficult endeavor. You can ask any startup founder. But my
How To Manage Innovation Without Business Plans
The Fallacy of Planning (Part Three) This is the third and final post in a series posts about the limitations of using business planning to
Five Reasons Why Business Plans Don’t Work for Innovation
This is a follow-up on my last post on business plans which argued that most large companies have processes designed to deny investment in new product ideas,
You Have NO Business Plan? How Could We Possibly Invest?
Steve Blank likes to joke that the two groups of people that require five year plans are Venture Capitalists and the Soviet Union. I would