innovation

Let Your Brain Take the Road Less Traveled

   Do you often find yourself doing the same things over and over and wondering why you get the same results every time? Contrary to the popular adage “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results,” it doesn’t mean you’ve lost your marbles. In fact, you’re probably doing exactly…

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Achieving Disruptive Innovation

    “Disruptive innovation” seems to be one of the more popular buzzwords in today’s business lexicon. Many companies pursue it. Few actually achieve it. Most end up settling for incremental innovation. What’s the difference between the two? Apple offers a perfect example. When the iPad and iPhone first came out, they revolutionized the mobile…

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Three Common Innovation Mistakes

    Company leaders love to talk about innovation.  When was the last time your company came out with something really new? How long has it been since you totally reinvented a critical business process that resulted in significant cost savings or productivity increases?  If you can’t remember (or you can remember but it’s been…

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Ready for 3D Printed Rocketry?

If think you’re doing a pretty good job adjusting to today’s light-speed rate of change, take a deep breath, because in the words of Bachman Turner Overdrive, b-b-b-baby you ain’t seen nothing yet! Ever heard of a company called Planetary Resources? Its long-term vision involves landing robots on asteroids and planets to mine them for…

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Five More Ways to Sustain Your Innovation Efforts

  Innovation often requires us to think and act differently from the way the human brain likes to operate.  For example, some of the most important innovation leadership skills require conscious effort to override the brain’s innate tendency to see what it wants to see. These include: Challenging your assumptions Changing your perspective Asking the…

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Innovate Your Business Model… or Die

Kids say the darnedest things! Recently, researchers asked a group of 12-year olds if they typically listen to music on YouTube, an iPod, or a CD? Not surprisingly, the majority answered “YouTube.” However, the second most common response was, “What’s a CD?” Researchers also asked a group of high school students how they most often…

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Seven Internet Trends that May Surprise You

Are you wondering where the Internet is headed these days? Consider the following trends (stats courtesy of www.staff.com): • China has more than twice the number of Internet users as the U.S. – 564 million vs. 244 million. • The Chinese website alibaba.com does more sales than amazon.com and eBay combined. • Facebook has more…

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A Tale of Gut-Wrenching (Literally!) Innovation

Logan Ebert was born without most of his esophagus, the tube through which food travels from the mouth to the stomach. From day one, this healthy, happy teenager who just graduated from high school had to be fed through an artificial tube just to stay alive. When his parents began researching “esophageal atresia,” as the…

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Are Dumb Rules Killing Innovation in Your Company?

Innovation is the process of coming up with new ideas and/or putting together existing ideas, products or services in new and different ways to achieve value. In order to do that, we sometimes have to first get rid of the obstacles that are getting in the way. One quick and simple method for eliminating barriers…

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Three Innovation Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

When was the last time your company came out with something really new? How long has it been since you totally reinvented a critical business process that resulted in significant cost savings or productivity increases? If you can’t remember (or you can remember but it’s been so long you don’t want to admit it) you…

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Open Up and Say AHHHHHH: Time for a Midyear Check Up

Summer’s here and we’re almost at the midpoint of the calendar year. Which means the #1 question on every business leader’s mind should be: how are we doing on our journey to winning? To find out, it’s time – once again – to check in with the strategic plan to see where things stand. I…

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Big-Time Change Ahead for College Campuses

Last week I wrote about how disruptive innovation from mobile technologies is turning the banking industry upside down. Now it’s higher education’s turn. As a parent footing the bill for a college student, I say it’s about time! An article in the Wall Street Journal reports that since 1990, the cost of attending college has…

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