innovators
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
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
What will future customers’ buying criteria be
A big part of any business is being aware of, and responding to, the life cycles of the industry and its customers. Some of these are easy to see; you only need a cursory understanding of the effect of OPEC on gas prices in the early ’70s to understand why
Who will not buy my product because they feel something is objectionable about it
Have you ever purchased a product that others hated? Or what about the opposite .. .have you ever seen others using a product or service that you absolutely despised? The flipside to any positive emotional connection is a negative one. If you are producing a product or service that is inspiring
What Industries Are Analogous To Ours
No matter what business we are in, we are all fighting essentially the same fight—designing a product that a customer will prefer over that of our competitor. To do this, we need to constantly be aware of how our business environment is evolving, how our customers are changing, and
What Customer Segments Will Emerge In 5 Years
With any radical idea you will see the corporate antibodies come out of the woodwork, giving all the standard reasons why the idea will “never happen.” Remember, the fundamental assumption of the corporate antibody is that the future will be the same as today. Your customers are going to change.
Post-It Notes: 4 Lessons for Innovators
I love the behind-the-scenes story of Post-it notes. How many of these little, yellow sorta-stickies are flagged around your house or your office? Did you know they were originally a mistake? A very fortunate mistake. As the story goes, Spencer Silver was a skilled chemist and a very smart man. In 1
Stupid Wins In The Game Of Innovation
We are a race of innovators – born to use our imagination to create not only solutions to our most pressing problems (polio vaccine) but to also create the fun in our lives (pet rocks). We only have to look as far as our kids so rediscover that fundamental draw to use our imagination to create somet
