Failing by Design
Whether you're launching a new business, creating a new product, or developing a new technology, one of the best tools for learning is failure. This isn't to suggest that failure is a good thing. Failure can waste money, destroy morale, infuriate customers, damage reputations, harm careers, and sometimes lead to tragedy. Failure is inevitable in uncertain environments, and, if managed well, it...
Read MoreInnovating on the Cheap
Everyone knows that innovation is essential to a company's long-term success. But even in the best of times, innovation investments can be painful. Typically, success rates are low, and returns on investment are far from assured. That makes spending money on innovation hard to justify in a down economy. Even when cash is tight, businesses don't have to stop innovating. Fortunately, it is possible...
Read MoreThe CEO’s Role in Business Model Reinvention
Consider a few of the great innovation stories of the past decade: Google, Netflix, and Skype. Now ask yourself: Why wasn’t Google created by Microsoft, or Netflix by Blockbuster, or Skype by AT&T? In fact, why do almost all established corporations fail to find the next big thing before new competitors do? The simple explanation is that many companies become too focused on...
Read MoreThe 5 Myths of Innovation
Today, most managers assume that innovation is supposed to be done constantly, by everyone in the company, on every area of the company, while using new Web-based tools to help it happen. Does this conventional wisdom really make sense? Or do the experiences of companies reveal something different? To find the answers, a team of researchers spent three years studying the process of innovation in...
Read MoreAre you using the best business model to wow your customers and win big profits?
Discover the 10 business model patterns that serve as blueprints for blockbuster 21st century businesses. Instead of designing a new, customized Value Proposition by making decisions on several elements of a business model, you can also begin with a business model pattern in which all of the decisions have already been made for you. To use this approach, you simply consider the various types of...
Read MoreBusiness "Invention" and "Re-Invention": The Overarching Imperative of the Coming Decade
Imagine a group of runners lined up, waiting to start a one-mile race. Just before the starting gun goes off, another racer pulls up to the line on a motorcycle. The gun goes off and he squeals out, beating the rest of the field by a very wide margin. The losing runners complain, but the “winner” observes that no one specified he had to run the race on foot. He was simply “introducing a...
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