Perceptual Patterns — Try this exercise!

I just saw a great talk by truely amazing John Kotter , who among other things talked about the power of perception to shape our reality.
Try this exercise (really, try it!). Take out a piece of paper and draw the face of a watch — basically a circle.

PIPELINE 2011 – The Online Conference for Product Development

Join us at PIPELINE 2011 – The Online Conference for Product Development
Innovation is the spark of the product-driven organization. If you want to gain smart strategies for speeding time to market, strengthening brand position and growing market share, then please join us at PIPELINE 2011 on June

Overwhelmed by Innovation?

One of the great paradoxes in the business world is that forward-thinking companies can actually find themselves at a disadvantage because they don’t have an effective way to prioritize their investments in R&D and product development. As a result, organizations with diverse portfolios often find themselves overwhelmed by their own

Focusing on shareholder value reduces shareholder value

This factoid just in, from Roger Martin’s book “Fixing the Game”:  Return to shareholders was better before the shareholder value movement took root in the 1980s.  CEOs have now become managers of expectation rather than managers of the business.
I am sure this is an arguable point, but have certainly experienced

Interesting factoid about Social Media

I was just talking to Malcolm DeLeo, innovation executive and blogger at innovationmuse.blogspot.com. He said that each year, we produce 450 Peta Bytes of information from Social Media, as much as all books ever written in every languages throughout history, times 3,600!
I wonder if

Get on with it!

If innovation doesn’t create profitable growth it would seem to be wasted time and money. I am continually surprised by the ongoing theoretical and academic discussions about “the meaning of innovation.” It’s sort of like the statement by jazz legend Louis Armstrong “if you have to ask what jazz is,

Spring Forward to Success – May 2011 ValuePoint

Thank you to everyone who responded to our survey (March and April ValuePoint). And, now (drum roll) I’m pleased to announce that the winner is …  click here for the full copy.

All I need is the killer application to change the world!

I was giving a webinar on disruptive innovation with Rich Duncombe of HP. He was making the point that while innovative technologies really do change the world (we couldn’t have done a webinar a few years ago!), pitching them is tricky. Before the technology can be proven out as a

Fail often, fail well!

“Fail often, fail well” says Schumpeter in The Economist (16 April 2011). The Economist nails it. “Failure can indeed be a better teacher than success. It can also be a sign of creativity. The best way to avoid short-term failure is to keep churning out the same old products, though

Making accurate predictions: are you a hedgehog or a fox?

An interesting article about prediction in Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=financial-flimflam), which basically says people are lousy at predicting when there is uncertainty, and among other things accusing investment managers who claim they can beat the market as engaging in “financial pseudoscience”.  A study of 284 experts making 82,361 predictions