June 11, 2013
"A properly integrated business model forms the essence of a company's competitive advantage," my colleague Mark Johnson advises. That quote ran through my head as I watched a young man in a track suit prance around my table twirling a 10-foot noodle.
I was in one of the Shanghai locations of a chain of hot pot restaurants called Hai Di Lao. If anything deserves to be commoditized, it would be a hot pot restaurant. The essence of the meal is cooking food yourself in close-to-boiling...
May 24, 2013
You've been working at a small start-up for a while now when a large, deep-pocketed corporation comes knocking, asking you to join its innovation team. Should you take the job? Will this be the chance to exercise your entrepreneurial imagination in a more secure environment with ample assets? Or will you end up drowning in bureaucracy, pining for the white-knuckled start-up pace you're used to?
We have similar concerns whenever we consider accepting an innovation engagement. Since...
April 25, 2013
I love Lean. In my eyes, the work Steve Blank, Eric Ries, and others have done to provide a cogent, accessible frame around the academic concepts of emergent strategy is one of the most important contributions to the innovation movement over the past few years.
I have repeatedly stated that the next wave of innovation will come from companies that harness the transformational power that too...
March 20, 2013
Who is the world's most innovative company? The editors of Fast Company say Nike. Last year, number crunchers at Forbes found that Salesforce.com is the company with the highest "Innovation Premium" baked into its stock price. MIT Technology Review didn't pick a winner, but on its recent list of top 50 "disruptors," the magazine...
