How to Create a Competitive Advantage in Any Market Establishing a competitive advantage is the holy grail for every business. Differentiating your offering is the best way for most businesses to do this since very few businesses can establish a cost advantage. Innovation is an excellent way to differentiate but ONLY if you know how ...

Don’t Let Old Beliefs Stifle Your Growth Many executives believe that innovation should never be outsourced. But let’s clarify what we mean by “outsourcing” innovation. The Invention Fallacy One prevalent reason executives cling to this belief is the misconception that innovation equals invention. Because their teams are product and service experts, it’s understandable why they ...

The Stunning Power of Defining Your Market Right Most people define their market according to the product or service they sell and the people they sell to. While this may not impede day-to-day operations, it can be disastrous if you’re trying to innovate. For the purpose of innovation, it’s most effective to define your market as ...

How to Make Product Tradeoffs that Customers Love One of the most persistent challenges product teams face is making tradeoffs when deciding which features to prioritize in product development. With limited resources, time constraints, and competing stakeholder demands, the ability to make informed and effective decisions about which features to include, modify, or exclude is ...

The Navy SEAL Secret to Innovation Success “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” This mantra, that originates from military training, particularly among U.S. Navy SEALs and other special operations forces, encapsulates a key principle in tactical training: the importance of deliberate, controlled actions over hasty, careless movements. In high-stress situations, such as combat or special ...

Good Strategy Can Be Hard to Make But This Can Help Good strategy can be hard to make. Making good company strategy and good innovation strategy have a lot in common. Both are shrouded in mystery. One reason good strategy is hard to make is because there’s a lot of confusion about what “good strategy” ...

[Check out the recent written interview with me by Jim Kalbach, author of The Jobs to Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Need. Jim is also the host of the “JTBD Untangled” monthly webinar where I presented separately about Lean JTBD™.] How to Find High Conviction Ideas You have a choice. You can place ...

What If You Could Know In Advance How to Win in the Market? Most companies have an incomplete understanding about their target customers’ unmet needs. This makes creating winning new and improved offerings very challenging. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) knew all about this. Like most organizations, NFPA thought the best way to create new ...