Building and Testing The Killer Questions
I started collecting the Killer Questions when I was in my short-lived “retirement” early in 2001. As I relaxed in the Virginian countryside, my mind started to flash back to various experiences I’d had during my working life. Over the course of the preceding twenty years I’d seen dozens of highly i
Who do I not want to use my product now, but may want to in the future
We tend to assume that any customer is a good customer. However, if you find that you’re working like crazy and have a solid and reliable customer base, but you’re still not making the profits you expected, then ask the Killer Question, Who do I not want to
Why Do Questions Matter For Your Success?
One day when my kids were still little I was sitting in the car with my daughter Tara. She was about four years old at the time, and as we drove down the street she noticed the curb along the side of the road and got curious about it. Suddenly I was fielding question after […]
Who is using my product in a way I never intended and how
Once a product has sold, it’s pretty much out of your control. You may have an idea why people will buy it, and what they’ll do with it, but the most you can ever do is guess. So why are you assuming that you know what your customer
Is The Current Innovation Refresh Rate A Good Thing?
As the retired CTO of a major technology company, I was surrounded by visual clues that clearly indicate when a tech product is headed to the gadget graveyard. Most of the time, it’s hard to ignore these clues, because they are pretty obvious. I see them in meetings with my coworkers or customers wh
Inspiring Innovation: A 5 Minute Challenge
Inspiring innovation seems more like an art than any kind of skill or science. The sudden spark that results in an exciting new idea seems random – like it came out of the blue. Studies have shown what seems random was actually inspired by something your did, read or saw in the past. Inspiring Innov
Can I recombine existing components to create new products for customers I don’t currently serve?
Magazine publishers are in the same predicament as the book-publishing and recording industries before it. How do you keep your customers believing that your content is worth paying for when there is endless free content available on the Internet? Some fashion magazines are experimenting with making their print issues feel
Are There Bad Questions And Good Questions?
The more I started to look at questions and how essential they are to fostering creativity and innovation, the more I realized that there are bad questions and there are good questions. And within those good questions, some just aren’t relevant to the process of ideation. The key is to develop the a
Can I create an on-demand version of the product?
Do you need to have a finished product in order to make a sale? Is there any way that not offering a finished product would actually give you an advantage, or even become a selling point? My children have long since outgrown toys, but my grandkids have more than once
Ideas? Don’t give up on them
Once everyone is settled into the meeting, it’s time to share what you’ve discovered. I generally give a quick recap of our area of focus, not about the ideas yet. I start off by asking the participants to share their own list of the assumptions and rules that define how the industry and organizati
