How to Make the Competition Irrelevant Most leaders agree that obtaining competitive information is essential for developing an effective strategy. Gaining competitive intelligence is often viewed as similar to gaining military intelligence. The big difference is that in capitalism we are fighting to earn the business of customers. In war, there are no customers, and ...

Why Most Organizations are Failing at Innovation Study after study has shown that the #1 reason for startup and new product failure is “no market need,” i.e., misunderstanding customer needs. The primary challenge of innovation is not to come up with ideas, develop and commercialize them; it’s to gain clarity about the opportunities in your ...

Selling More Isn’t Always About Selling Here’s a classic 5-minute video of the late great Harvard Business School Professor, Clayton Christensen, explaining how the jobs-to-de-done (JTBD) innovation approach can help any business sell more. The breakthrough jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) approach he is describing has nothing to do with “selling.” 3 Takeaways: First, being “customer-focused” is not ...

Why It Is Essential to Get the Front End of Innovation Right The late great coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, began the first day of practice every year telling his players, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Some people might find this silly but that would be a mistake. Coach Lombardi knew that ...

3 Ways the Job-to-be-Done Approach Can Help a Business Grow More and more, I have noticed that the organizations that are most successful at innovation are attaching the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) approach to the front end of their process before Design Thinking, Lean, and Stage Gate processes. This is because JTBD identifies and ranks the biggest ...

Do You Have an Innovation or New Product Development Process? What’s the difference between an innovation and a new product development process? A good innovation process brings clarity and precision to the “fuzzy front end” so your team can consistently generate winning new product and service ideas ready for development. It will reliably fill your ...

Making it Possible at Franklin University Founded in 1902, with over 5,000 students today, Franklin University has had a single-minded mission: to make a college education possible for everyone. Then make a graduate school education possible. Now, in the past few years, Franklin is giving hope and making it possible for working adults to earn ...

What Walter Isaacson Could Not Tell You About Steve Jobs When Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Steve Jobs, was asked what lessons he learned from Jobs about innovation, he said, “You’ll have to talk with Professor Clayton Christensen about that. I’m just a biographer; I’m not an innovation expert.” Unfortunately, Professor Christensen passed away before ...

How “Can-Am Off-Road Vehicles” Innovates Relentlessly Along with passion, drive, and trust, one of BRP’s values is “ingenuity to defy convention: we’re not afraid to see things differently. Constant curiosity makes us the first to uncover new solutions. We question. We innovate. We progress. Relentlessly.” Most companies would find it challenging to live up to ...

Better Questions Will Improve the Information You Receive from Customers Leaders often execute strategy and innovation in the wrong sequence. Here’s what the former CEO of P&G, A.G. Lafley, and business consultant, Ram Charan, say about this: “All too often, managers decide on a business strategy – what markets to pursue and what products to ...