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The First Step in Adapting to a Changed Market Given the forced shutdowns that most businesses are experiencing now due to the Coronavirus, it is essential that leaders adapt to make the most of the situation. That means understanding what parts of your business are essential and what parts can be changed or let go. To …
Why Most Innovators are Just “Flailing Faster” and What to Do About It Over 25 million copies of the late Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, have been sold. It remains a best-seller three decades after it was first published (1989). The second habit of highly effective people is to “begin …
What 3 Clients Have in Common What do an online university, an off-road vehicle manufacturer, and a yearbook publisher have in common? For one, all of them were clients of ours in 2019. We are grateful for their trust and the “word of mouth” referrals that brought them to us. We have enjoyed the collaboration …
Could This Change the Game for You? Are you tired of implementing growth initiatives that don’t work? Did you know that the number one cause for new product and new business failure is misunderstanding customers’ needs? This has been the case for decades, but it is totally unnecessary today. You don’t have to play a “game of …
How to Validate a New Offering People Don’t Know They Need Contrary to popular opinion, it is not good science to run experiments by testing minimally viable products to discover customer needs and validate the solution. Why? Because this conflates two experiments and can invalidate both. In good science, the customer need is validated first, …
Why Your Business Needs a “Customer Analysis” to Beat the Competition 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, however, is that in capitalism we are fighting to earn the business of customers. In …
Innovation and Creativity are Different Innovation and creativity are different. Innovation brings the target customers’ unmet needs and the company’s solution capabilities into the same room. Creativity then makes connections and generates winning ideas. Unless your innovation process discovers and ranks target customers’ unmet needs and then brings good solution capabilities to bear upon them, your …
Thoughts on Last Week’s JTBD Workshop Many thanks to GBQ Partners for hosting and Darci Congrove, Managing Director, for participating in our jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) workshop. After I laid out the basics of the JTBD approach, people doubled up to do an application exercise and report back to the large group. The session was then capped …
How to Differentiate, Innovate and Grow with Jobs-to-Be-Done Why is growth so difficult? I have found that many leaders struggle with how to differentiate, innovate and grow because they don’t know which of their target customers’ needs remain unmet by their own offerings and their competitor’s offerings. If you don’t know where those unmet needs …
Fulfilling the Promise of Smart Columbus I am proud to report that my adopted hometown of Columbus, Ohio, is on a roll. About a year ago, Columbus beat 77 cities to win $40 million in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge. Other finalists included Austin, Dallas, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Portland and San Francisco. …
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