early adopters are not innovators, but are "willing to experiment... [but] they're not guinea pigs" make them feel they're getting something special, earlythey "are willing to work with your minimum viable product if it solves their problem" Give them something to test. But their reputation is on the line, so prove yo…

"To create offerings that people truly want to buy... home in on the job the customer is trying to get done... Jobs are multifaceted... never simply about function... powerful social and emotional dimensions... the circumstances in which customers try to do them are more critical than any buyer characteristics" - so identify jobs curren…

How to measure & optimise for product/market fit? Use this leading indicator: "just ask users “how would you feel if you could no longer use the product?” and measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.” " You need at least 40%.Article goes through the process step by step, and comes with an interactive tool:A) Ask people who&…

Sets out a solution to the "TiVo problem": essentially, TiVo had the innovative product but not the content to operate it on. This usually ends badly for the innovator, who gets screwed by the incumbent, who has the distribution (eg ComCast). Despite the example, Tivo "did not fail... a patent troll of sorts... collected more than $…

One of a great series of Reimagining the Internet podcasts. Guest: the Planetary.Social founder, discussing:the early days of Twitter: "Twitter's innovation ... happened all at the edges... users created everything... inline images and short links and retweets and the app, actual at and hashtags... the company... cultivated this garden w…

Why do companies so often fail to adapt? ... no shortage of ways ... But ... firms need to recognize the need for change ... organizations tend to operate ... blind momentum... why are they slow to change course? ...very difficult to study how companies adapt ... need both a large sample of firms and a reliable way of quantifying their choices....…

Running a design competition to transform a research result into a commercial platform product.

a sophisticated and intuitive balance between vision, curiosity and passion; and a continuous process of experimentation and iteration... Grow the Ecosystem, and It Will Grow You... providing an ecosystem platform to others ... would allow Amazon to grow exponentially faster than if he poured all the company’s energy and capital into simply growin…

novelty and newness of these teams has worn off... growing acceptance ... that these teams are useful tool in driving new practices ... Less clear... is whether these units can enable the deeper digital transformation... ~ two key pieces of the puzzle: ... creating common platforms to power governments services is key to digital transformation o…

Jobs to be Done is a theory of consumer action. It describes the mechanisms that cause a consumer to adopt an innovation... a process: it starts, it runs, and it ends... a JTBD describes how a customer changes or wishes to change...: the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to change her existing life-situation into a preferred one, b…

with digital technologies changing the nature of trade, Singapore’s locational and infrastructural advantages may no longer be as strong... Singapore must reinvent itself as a hub for the age of digital trade... think like a platform nation...

research aims to capture the shifts and trends that are shaping modern digital transformation.... 5 Key Takeaways: - A successful digital transformation is an enterprise-wide effort that is best served by a leader with broad organizational purview... - Market pressures are the leading drivers ... - growing acknowledgment of the importance of …

managers always have to balance the merits of teamwork... with the dangers of “groupthink”... Large groups are remarkably good, on average, at estimating such things as the number of beans in a jar or the weight of a prize calf. But that accuracy relies on the guesses being independent.... Modern communication methods mean that collaboration is m…

In his new book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam investigates who comes up with great ideas, how, and what we can do to have more of them.... They often procrastinate, and that's how they incubate ideas.... Their parents focus more on values than rules... One of the risks is, you know, you have everybody marching in a different…

... they have recently embarked on a journey to become “Agile.”... neither explicit support nor discouragement from senior executives... they are failing for the same list of reasons as every other team I have met with in the last 5 years. Here are those reasons:... 1. There is no clear vision for the product....The “idea” has been handed down …

The open-plan office continues to doggedly spread, despite study after study suggesting it makes employees more miserable, more ill, less friendly and less productive... if a company is determined to inflict this woe on its workers, it should observe some basic rules...:

SocialChallenges.eu is a new, highly interactive platform dedicated to pilot-testing a new approach to stimulating startups, making innovation ecosystems more efficient and solving social and environmental problems. 

internal mandate demanding that Amazon teams communicate with each other by exposing “their data and functionality through services interfaces.” ... Bezos had quietly refactored Amazon into a platform company.... information technology can’t be compared to the transition from steam engines to railroads or from telegraphs to telephones — technolog…

Ironically, the VC world, having fuelled the creation of computing, is one of the last areas of business to introduce computing to decision-making... Evernote, Spotify, Etsy, Zynga, Palantir, Cloudera, OPOWER... The list featured not only names widely known to the public and leaders of industries, but also high performers such as Ibibo... Twenty p…

in an attempt to overcome controversies with the Copyright Reform, some are proposing an exemption for startups... the idea is more of a curse than a blessing... 94% of startup acquisitions were completed by non-European companies, and 70% of the startups were younger than 5 years.

EUrope’s success in eliminating mobile roaming charges may be the first “data4policy” case study where the data was website traffic, and illustrates the rewards of allowing innovation to flourish at the edges of large organisations.

Innovation Dynamics is the first systematic approach to real social innovation and solving people-problems. Purchase includes a beautifully-designed, printed quick-start guide and 90-days of online access... includes brief, animated instructional videos and an interactive workbook that can be printed for collaboration in teams.

one of the most audacious experiments in entrepreneurship since World War II.They launched an incubator for the top scientists and engineers in the U.S.This week we saw the results.63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks, turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. 19 of the 21 teams are moving forward i…

it struck me how much more effective the lean startup process can be for an established firm. It’s much easier to do customer development when you already have loyal customers ... That’s what makes the ideas behind the lean startup so important. Whether you are a startup, an established company or a social enterprise, you need to identify a custom…

we talk with Tom Kelly, a partner at IDEO, about the definition of innovation, how to take back your creative confidence, and the habits that can shape not only your current design team, but the up-and-coming design leaders of the world.

Corporations are taking pages from startups, to emulate the culture of a fast-moving smaller company.

if everyone has the same information, the crowd is no smarter than a single individual... a diverse collection of opinions, especially including minority views, is crucial for creating a smart group... we have an innate desire to imitate our peers... it may also be because of a rational, profit-seeking motivation... The more complex the situation…

Venting my spleen a little over on Medium.

Everyone wants to test and learn, so long as it’s failing fast without the failure... to win the award for taking the risk, so long as it wasn’t risky... Innovation is sweaty, risky, terrifying and takes balls... Innovation is the opposite of what we are pretending the word means.

becoming a learning organization was nothing like winning a marathon ...cultivating an award-winning orchard... nurturing systems and culture to produce meaningful results... We embarked on a systematic and phased approach to cultivating the organization we all wanted.