BLOG ON INNOVATION AND TRANSFORMATION
Tools and strategies to innovate, solve complex issues, and transform businesses
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My 2020 writing year in review
I tried to maintain good writing habits in 2020, despite my consulting workload and the impact of the pandemic.
In this post you can find the links to:
12 posts for the Strategyzer blog (that I update regularly on my personal blog),
A white paper: “Chasing European Unicorns” by AmCham, that I contributed to,
The Invincible Company webpage, the book I co-authored and that was released in April 2020.
Innovation Inception: three ideas that unlock innovation in the minds of leaders
In this post I highlight the three fundamental ideas that leaders need to make their own to unleash the transformative innovation potential of their organisations:
1. Exploration is fundamentally different from exploitation,
2. There are different types of innovation: efficiency, sustaining and transformative,
3. To achieve more transformative innovation, you need to bring more volume into your innovation portfolio.
How to unlock better innovation outcomes with the 3 types of innovation framework
In a previous post I explained that, to bring clarity to any conversation on innovation, you need to distinguish between three different types of innovation, heavily borrowed from Harvard professor Clayton Christensen: efficiency, sustaining, and transformative innovation.
In this post I highlight 3 more use cases where the 3 types of innovation framework unlocks radically better innovation outcomes in large organisations by helping to:
Provide better innovation guidance
Assess the balance of an innovation portfolio
Check alignment of a portfolio with expectations
What type of innovation are you talking about?
People often misunderstand each other when they talk about innovation.
In this post I explain how Corporate Innovation Leaders can use the 3 types of innovation framework to bring clarity to their communication on innovation.
How does it feel to become a published author?
In this post I share the anecdote of when Alex Osterwalder went off script when we were recording videos for The Invincible Company and asked me how it felt to become a published author. That question almost choked me… to his great amusement!
How to take The Guesswork Out of Innovation
In innovation and exploration, it is crucial to measure whether you are reducing the risk and uncertainty of new business ideas before you invest big and scale. In this blogpost I introduce the 4 innovation metrics you need to track on very innovation project to take the guesswork out of innovation. RISK, POTENTIAL, TIME and COST.
Three New Tools You Need to Master to Build an Invincible Company
In this article, I introduce three innovation tools that executives and corporate innovation leaders can use to better manage innovation in a large organization: the Strategic Guidance framework, the Portfolio Map and the Culture Map.
Lessons from Hilti on What it Takes to Shift from a Product to a Service Business Model
In this blogpost I illustrate one of the business model patterns, the shift from product to service, with Hilti. And I go behind-the-scenes with Dr. Christoph Loos, CEO of Hilti, to understand what it takes to lead such a business transformation.
How to Use Patterns to Shift an Outdated Business Model to a More Competitive One
No business model can live forever. In this post I show how business model patterns can help executives and innovation teams think through how to substantially improve their current business model by shifting it from a less competitive to a more competitive one.
How to use Business Model patterns to build more resilient businesses
The most successful business models build on patterns, i.e. repeatable configurations of different business model building blocks to strengthen an organization’s overall business model. This is the secret formula behind their success. In this post I introduce the library of business model patterns that we developed in The Invincible Company. And I explain how understanding those patterns helps entrepreneurs and business leaders create better, more resilient businesses.
Books that most influenced my work in 2019
In this blogpost I reflect on the most useful books on innovation and business transformation I read in 2019.
Below are the four books I referred the most to fellow practitioners, clients and friends.
How to keep momentum after a Hack day?
"How to keep momentum after a Hack day?" she asked me. This post summarises my answer to the CIO of an ASX 100 manufacturing company.
To keep momentum after a hack day you need to:
1. Be clear on your purpose.
2. Assess your innovation readiness.
3. Identify the two improvement areas with highest leverage.
4. Act on them!
How to help Agile teams create products customers want?
There is a lot of hype around Agile that often creates unrealistic expectations. In this blogpost I explain why implementing an Agile framework is not the panacea for the challenges innovation teams face.
But if innovation teams apply Agile principles as they go through the Strategyzer business design and testing process, then they will maximise their chances to actually build products customers want.
How to manage an innovation funnel? (part 2)
The CDO of an ASX100 consumer goods company asked me how to manage an innovation portfolio.
In this second post I highlight key principles for managing an innovation portfolio that leaders should be aware of:
Use metered funding.
Make portfolio decisions based on strategic fit, opportunity and evidence.
Empower intrapreneurs to go through discovery, validation and acceleration of new business ideas.
How to manage an innovation funnel? (part 1)
The Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of an ASX100 consumer goods company asked me how to manage an innovation portfolio.
In this post I highlight the key specificities of managing an innovation portfolio that leaders should be aware of:
Manage ideas with high uncertainty with a portfolio approach.
Play the volume game: make lots of small investments at the beginning!
Be ready to kill the vast majority of ideas, initiatives, projects on your portfolio.
What can we learn from Owlet on testing new business ideas?
In this post, I highlight some key principles related to testing new business ideas that are superbly illustrated by the Owlet video from the International Business Model Competition in 2013:
1. Trust the testing process, not your vision
2. Test desirability before feasibility
3. Evidence trumps opinion
4. You don’t need more time and money to test your business idea
5. Tell your story with the Business Model Canvas
Do you always start with the customer?
In this post I explain why you don’t always have to start with the customer when you design new value propositions for customers.
But you always have to end with the customer to validate the fit between the customer and your designed product/service.
Are customer gains the opposite of pains?
One question we get all the time, especially from new users of the value proposition canvas is: Are customers’ gains just the opposite of pains?
In this post we explore three simple hacks you can use with your team to sharpen your thinking on customers’ pains and gains.
Books that most influenced my work in 2018
In this blogpost I reflect on the most useful books on innovation and business transformation I read in 2018. Below are the three books I referred the most to fellow practitioners, clients and friends.
What would metrics for innovation truly enable?
In 2018, I led the co-creation of Strategyzer innovation metrics with Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, three multinational companies and one Australian SME. Our client experience and research had confirmed the huge blind spot on measuring progress of innovation projects, and the many problems it creates in corporate innovation.
In this blogpost I explain why innovation needs its own metrics, and how we came up with a working prototype of innovation metrics that could be the breakthrough to make corporate innovation manageable.