There seems to be a growing consensus that managing innovations as a portfolio of incremental, adjacent, and transformational/disruptive projects improves longterm innovation outcomes. Still, the odds often end up being stacked towards more incremental projects. So...

In my work with innovative small and medium size companies trying to scale -in particular as a Business Innovation Coach for the European Commission’s Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME) - many of the great teams I get to work with are looking to me to provide them with...

Trade magazines and blogs are chock full of “5 Ways to Improve Innovation…” articles. We couldn’t help but make up a list of our own. Here it is: 1. Focus on Customers Instead of Technology 2. Align Business and Innovation Strategies 3. Set up X-Functional Innovation...

I could not help but think of the (in)famous European Song Contest, when I - spurred by a recent conversation during one of my Design Thinking Workshops - plotted the worldwide interest in recent innovation methods using Google Trends. As you can tell from the graph,...

There is a common belief, that innovation is largely driven by creativity and - as an outcome - ideas. While ideas are undoubtedly important, we would contend that in most companies there is no shortage of them. The far bigger challenge seems to be to decide which...

This morning’s “Handelsblatt” - in an article commenting on the dismal market performance of electric cars - concludes: “Innovations can’t be prescribed.” Quite to the contrary: Innovations have to be desired by and provide benefits to users to become successful. As...

In my role as advisor and coach to a number of early stage companies, I see quite a few great ideas and technologies being developed. Many of them feel exciting even to a tech veteran like me. And they look like perfectly plausible solutions to a perceived or assumed...

If you don't want to use a wiki or a blog, this tool seems just what the doctor ordered to support your customer development process. If nothing else, the video provides a pretty good idea of how customer development works in about 60 seconds.

One of the most frequent answers we receive when asking workshop participants about obstacles to innovation is: “Our company’s culture!”. Indeed, innovation is at least as much a social phenomenon as a technological one. The process and efficiency focus of the past...

Sometimes I am completely dumbfounded by an issue that seems to afflict many of our prospects and clients. We are called in to help a company (back) on an innovative track. Often because the current product line is past its prime and/or competitors appear to be...

Big Data projects are often still conceived and executed like any other productivity- and efficiency-oriented IT project: Define the desired result, specify the technology, develop plans for implementation and training - execute. We find that a systematic exploratory...

Big Data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it. (Dan Ariely – on his facebook page) Working with our clients, Markus and me often find that Big...