722 Posts Found

Your challenge is to create product experiences for two different mindsets, one for your potential customers and one for your engaged customers. Initially, if you want your prospective customers to engage, think of them as lazy, vain, and selfish. Then for the customers who survive the first 30 seconds and actually come through the door, build a meaningful experience and relationship that lasts a lifetime. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Scott Belsky | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation, Market Research

Whether you’re building a product, creating art, or writing a book, you need to remember that your customers or patrons make sweeping judgments in their first experience interacting with your creation – especially in the first thirty seconds. I call this the “first mile,” and it is the most critical yet underserved part of a product. […] In a world of moving fast and pushing … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Scott Belsky | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation, Marketing / Sales

Life is just time and how you use it. Every product or service in your life either helps you spend time or save time. […] The only exceptions are rare products … that add a time-consuming action to your plate while also making that experience faster than it normally would be.

Content: Quotation | Author: Scott Belsky | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Innovation, Marketing / Sales

Simple is sticky. It is very hard to make a product—or any customer experience—simple. It is even harder to keep it simple. The more obvious and intuitive a product is, the harder it is to optimize it without adding complication.

Content: Quotation | Author: Scott Belsky | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Innovation

Large companies can be easy targets for disruption, but Gary Pisano says there are steps that can keep them ahead of the innovation curve. Rule 1: Don’t emulate startup cultures.

Content: Article | Author: Gary Pisano | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Innovation

Stopping doing certain things is a different route to innovation.

Content: Quotation | Author: Freek Vermeulen | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

Scott Belsky’s new book, The Messy Middle, covers an expansive range of topics, from constructing teams (“If you avoid folks who are polarizing, you avoid bold outcomes”) to culture and tools (“Be frugal with everything except your bed, your chair, your space, and your team”) to anchoring to your customers (“empathy and humility before passion”). We’re pleased to present Belsky’s introduction to his “Optimizing Product” … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Scott Belsky | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Innovation, Management

Is the way you measure product-development performance harming your company’s health? New research suggests that it might be.

Content: Article | Authors: Marek Kowski, Mike Gordon, Sander Smits | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Products & Services

To most leaders, the speed and flexibility that drive innovation lie at the opposite end of the spectrum from standardization and centralization, which promote efficiency and control risk. Not so. Rita Gunther McGrath’s research sheds light on agile organizations. Large companies that raise their income disproportionately, she found, have two main characteristics: they are innovative and experimental and can move quickly but also have consistent … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Mary Meaney, Scott Keller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Change Management, Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

No really creative transformation can possibly be effected by human beings unless they are in the creative state of mind that is generally sensitive to the differences that always exist between the observed fact and any preconceived ideas, however noble, beautiful, and magnificent they may seem to be.

Content: Quotation | Author: David Bohm | Source: Brain Pickings | Subjects: Innovation, Management

To speed innovation and fend off disruption, R&D organizations at incumbent companies can borrow the tools and techniques that digital natives use to get ahead.

Content: Article | Authors: Dominik Hepp, Hannes Erntell, Mickael Brossard | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Innovation

Don’t overlook the insight that two simple metrics can yield about the effectiveness of your R&D spending.

Content: Article | Authors: Erik Roth, Guttorm Aase, Sri Swaminathan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Innovation

Organizations are more likely to innovate and thrive when they unleash the potential of individuals and the power of self-organizing teams, says the online retailer’s CEO.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Tony Hsieh | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Zappos.com

Fifty percent of launches don’t hit their targets. Launch champions follow these four rules.

Content: Article | Authors: Alessandro Buffoni, Alex Krieg, Alice de Angelis, Volker Grüntges | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Management

The pursuit of innovation doesn’t depend on genius. Instead, it demands ingenuity — the ability to come up with solutions that are original and clever given the constraints that you and everyone else face.

[…]‌

The penicillin story makes clear that the need to come up with a new and brilliant idea is often overrated. The ideas are out there, and people can see them. They just … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew Hargadon | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

Innovation, like marketing and sales, is a pipeline. In one end go raw concepts and notions. Out the other end come actionable ideas that can move the business forward. With the right technology, could you manage this pipeline the way you manage a sales pipeline?

Our research shows that you can.

One of us, Dylan, has analyzed five years of data from 154 public companies covering over … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Dylan Minor | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Innovation

Companies and government agencies often make the mistake of viewing innovation as a set of unconstrained activities with no discipline. In reality, for innovation to contribute to a company or government agency, it needs to be designed as a process from start to deployment.

When organizations lack a formal innovation pipeline process, project approvals tend to be based on who has the best demo or slides, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Steve Blank | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Innovation

Digital innovation is giving rise to new business models. Uber and Airbnb are household names today, when not so long ago we were all learning about the sharing economy. The regulations don’t always evolve as quickly as technological change — at least that’s the perception. So what should policy makers and regulators do? Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach recently shared his … [ Read more ]

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Kevin Werbach | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Innovation, Legal

New products and services can enter your market from other directions, each distinct in terms of how, where, and when it affects your business. These are market dislocations — radical breakaways from the existing market that occur when a company introduces a business model or a product that sits apart from those of competitors.

Clearly, not all upstart threats are alike — and misdiagnosing your new … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Alexander Kandybin | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Strategy

We need to start treating innovation like other business disciplines — as a set of tools that are designed to accomplish specific objectives. Just as we wouldn’t rely on a single marketing tactic or a single source of financing for the entire life of an organization, we need to build up a portfolio of innovation strategies designed for specific tasks.

It was with this in mind … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Greg Satell | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Innovation