Does a corporation need to innovate during a crisis?
Many companies are reducing their innovation costs as they see sales declines and are laying people off. The COVID crisis, like every one before, is creating significant and long-lasting changes to our everyday lives.
A Proposal for a Corporate Innovation Mission Statement:
Before any function can be created it needs a definition of its purpose, a Mission Statement. The Mission Statement Statement must clearly communicates what it is going to do, defines success, and sets limits to its scope.
Why a Learning Strategy is Needed When Launching Innovations
Everyone thinks the greatest risk of innovating are either coming up with a great idea, solving technical challenges, or overcoming the challenges of manufacturing. Not to discount them, these issues are tough to overcome the first few times. Of course, through experience companies can become expert at them because in each of these three stages […]
How a Learning Mindset is needed to grow a new market
There’s always been a stream of thought that believes consumer research should be ignored, or maybe not conducted at all. Without a doubt, the results from consumer research can be wrong, misleading, or worse, make company risk-averse and their products mediocre. I have product successes that went against consumer feedback, and others that based every […]
Why you must always listen to consumer research even if Steve Jobs didn’t
There’s always been a stream of thought that because Steve Jobs didn’t conduct consumer research the average customer can’t describe the future until it’s created. Without a doubt, the results from consumer research can be wrong, misleading, or worse, make company risk-averse and their products mediocre. But Steve Jobs and Apple used consumer research to take risks and make their products insanely great.
Why it takes data, design thinking and Agile to innovate
For as long as someone has created a breakthrough innovation there was a process proposed for replicating their success. But three innovation systems stand out to me because I’ve found that they are especially effective when used in combination. Using these tools I recently launched a breakthrough product a year sooner than expected and with a customer satisfaction rating of 94%.
Why Adopt Agile over Waterfall for Developing Consumer Products
My company transitioned from a classic waterfall to Agile for a three important reasons. 1) Prioritizaion and focus, 2) Transparency and communications and 3) Team development
Effective Agile for Hardware Development
I’ve spent the last three years adopting Agile / Scrum to hardware. Agile’s promise of twice the work in half the time can be achieved. But, the version of Agile I evolved to required thinking beyond the limited precepts of the Agile Manifesto.