Blog
How To Use A Stage Gate Funding Model To Create Your Innovation
My motto throughout my career has been “Ideas without execution are a hobby, and I’m not in the hobby business.” Execution is a risk; it requires commitment, money, and manpower; but there’s no point going through the process of ideation if you’re not going to do anything with the end result. In the
Pitch Your Best Idea
The next stage is to consider how these ideas might be implemented by your organization. Step one is to think about how to pitch your best idea. Look at the top ideas and say to yourself as the leader, “These are great ideas—how can we execute them?” The following questions will help you get to […]
Idea Ranking
Once you’ve generated your ideas the next step is idea ranking to determine the potential to become innovations. So, how do you decide which ideas to work on? The typical innovation process leaves that decision to the senior-level managers, which seems like a logical choice. They’re senior, so they
Cell phones and the value chain
Your customers will change the way they use your products in ways you don’t currently anticipate. Do you remember when you got your first cell phone? I was living in Chicago when the city was selected for the first FCC trial of a cell-phone network in 1984, and I jumped at the chance to try […]
Six Practices of Successful Innovators
Innovations surround us. Things we enjoy and rely on everyday are thanks to successful innovators. These are people who had an idea and, through hard work and creativity, turned it into an amazing innovation. In what ways did these people think differently? What practices made them successful? Ma
What Products Could I Create Out of Unused Assets
I’m an innovation guy. It may not say so on my business card, but that’s what I do. I encourage people, whether inside HP or in my meetings with customers around the world, to accept that they and their product are going to have to change. No matter
Gray wave and assisted living
So, how do you determine where you, as an individual or a business, will be in five years? You can’t say where exactly you’re going because you can’t predict what’s going to happen in the world. However, you can challenge yourself to change. In 2001 Apple’s sales figures were in decline. The company
Weak Signals
“Weak signals” are the equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. They are the unspoken needs and wants of your customers, and they are also the arrows pointing to what your customers are going to need and want in the future, even if they themselves don’t know it yet. If you pay attention to […]
My TEDx Talk: Do you have Impostor Syndrome … too?
What happens when you share the secret that has been feeding your impostor syndrome for more than 25 years? In this TEDx talk, I share a secret that I kept hidden for 25 years and the result of that secret being revealed on the front page of a national newspaper. Through this journey, I was forced [
What product or service to stay ahead
On October 4, 1957, Russia launched a beach-ball-sized satellite named Sputnik, which orbited the Earth in just over ninety-six minutes. The previous frontrunner in the space race, the United States, was now the runner up. Our only competitor had trounced us, seemingly out of nowhere. A month later the Russians