Ignoring the Future Won’t Make it Go Away: Learning How to do Business in the Era of Macrotrends and the Next Abnormal
This is a guest post by Ken Tencer, CEO at Spyder Works, as originally published here. I think we can all agree, it’s been quite a year. From a global pandemic to a rapidly changing work environment and economic uncertainty, the changes we’ve seen this year have come to affect us all. In one way or another, we were all blindsided by COVID-19. But…
Be(come)ing Ambidextrous: What Works and What Doesn't
Much has been written (and argued) about "the Ambidextrous Organization" since the early 2000's when Charles O'Reilly and Michael Tushman found that ambidextrous organizations were significantly more successful in launching breakthrough products or services. The idea makes perfect sense: ambidextrous organizations separate their new, exploratory…
How to Find Problems Worth Solving
How do you build a better product? More importantly, how is “better” defined? Problem-solving is challenging because the innovator needs to understand what improvements are required before a better product can be built. A snippet from Ash Maurya’s session during the Innov8rs Connect Unconference, June-September 2020. To watch the full session…
The Acorn Method
To learn how to create sustainable growth, it’s unnecessary to compare yourself to fast-growing unicorns. Instead, look out your window and take inspiration from the humble oak tree and its acorns. Trees have been thriving on our planet for hundreds of millions of years, so they are the perfect example of growing in uncertain times. Oak trees, in…
Seeding Startups for Self-Disruption: Stories of Ford, P&G and Audi
Since most internal innovation programs don't yield significant results, and neither do investments in corporate venture capital, there has to be a better way for corporates to successfully innovate. As such, companies serious about their future have started building new ventures. These new ventures are close enough to the core business to…
Framing the Case for Change in 1-2-3
You need to make a case for change more than ever in the midst of uncertainty and a rapidly changing market landscape. In this session Carolina Wosiack, Managing Director EMEA at CI&T, offered a framework and examples of how small experiments can make a case for change, moving people from opinions to data-driven decisions, resulting in…
How to Plan and Run a Successful Online Employee Ideation Challenge
Brainstorming new ideas and new ways to solve central business challenges is core to the innovation process. But COVID-19 has disrupted that process, taking away options like hackathons and design thinking workshops. Instead, work is shifting online, bringing with it a few changes that are crucial to continuing success. A snippet from Coby…
How to Solve Big Problems Faster With Remote Design Thinking
Remote design thinking can help you find fast, innovative solutions to big business problems. In fact, running design projects on virtual platforms can actually lead to better results than face-to-face innovation projects, as Adam Billing (Founder at Treehouse Innovation and Sprintbase) shared recently. In order to solve problems with innovation,…
Why Innovation Fails & How To Fix It
Innovation is a top priority for nearly every company. Yet, it is still a highly unpredictable business process. That is why we want to focus on the root cause of this—specifically, why does innovation fail? Innovation is the process of devising solutions that address unmet customer needs. According to Tony Ulwick, founder and CEO at Strategyn…
Financial Modeling: From Fuzzy Early Stage Project To Scaling Up
Financial modeling is a core element to major business decisions, from early stage startups to large corporations. The primary goal of financial modeling is to represent the economic performance of a business or project at present and into the future. Financial models predict business success, signal business risks, and enable educated business…
Tracking and Measuring Innovation for Better Decision Making
If your internal innovation process is maturing, you understand that you need to start making decisions based on data rather than on gut feelings or some pretty pictures. This ensures that you make innovation manageable, measurable, and visible for everyone. To make this happen, you need to understand how to evaluate your innovation process by…
Dedicated Growth Governance
The Innovator’s Dilemma taught us that resources are always allocated to projects with the clearest ROI. But, despite lofty statements about innovation, most companies invest their resources in the core business. As an innovator, the key to success is going where those resources are already invested. Launching new products with the potential to…
