Stop guessing how risky your Riskiest Assumptions are
Tape a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas on a wall, grab a large stack of post-it notes and pile of sharpies, invite all the stakeholders. That’s it! You’re ready to hold the first business modelling session for the product you’ve been assigned to help resurrect. You’ve done this before and you know that you’ll get a canvas filled […]
Innovation Teams Must Answer These Six Questions Before Launching A Product
In previous posts, I have defined innovation as the combination of creative ideas with sustainably profitable business models. While it is good that companies invest in R&D, there is also the need to find “the architecture of revenues” for all the breakthrough products we are working on. This means that innovation teams should spend time searching for […]
Tips for governing corporate innovation
It’s always fun to do community workshops — the last one I’ve done was for Lean Startup Norway in Oslo. I believe in the power of the collective knowledge, hence these workshops are a great source of learning for me as they are for the participants. Vegard and Bruno asked me to talk about governance for corporate innovation. Not just […]
How To Create A Culture Of Innovation Beyond The Sticky Note
Corporate leaders often talk about creating a “culture of innovation” within their companies. When having these conversations, they often act as if organizational culture is some mythical creature that comes down from the mountain to greet the people. Most leaders are unaware of their power to change the culture of their companies and instead find […]
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 in a company — this comes as no surprise. But people are unique based on their background, what motivates them, what fears they have and what they aspire to become. […]
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, it was devastating for the city of Rochester, New York, where the company was based. Kodak was once a household brand whose dominance in the photographic film business was unparalleled. […]
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 at an Apple event. Not many entrepreneurs want to learn how to be Steve Jobs the day-to-day innovation grind. Innovators in large companies are not any different. I have found […]
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 deteriorating (at least to say). The situation is even worst in highly regulated industries, where, product teams are already numbed from the fear of ‘persecution’ for even thinking about business […]
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 equity is captured in the company’s brand. At the same time, innovation involves experimenting with ideas and building minimal viable products. This tension between running innovation experiments and protecting the […]
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 one. There are several innovation labs being launched monthly to great media fanfare. To name a few examples from last month (August 2016); Paypal launched a fintech innovation lab in Singapore; NCR […]