Build an innovation strategy that actually works. From portfolio management to organizational alignment, these insights help innovation leaders make better decisions.
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Most enterprise AI programs are failing — not because AI doesn't work, but because companies are treating a technology as a strategy. An AI innovation strategy means applying AI to accelerate your innovation methodology and measuring cost per experiment, not short-term ROI.
AI can improve ideation, validation, and support decision-making in the future. However, current implementations of AI within innovation teams can cause laziness and mediocrity. We are at risk of outsourcing our key differentiators as humans: creativity and empathy. If we let our mental muscles atrophy, our team and our AI models will overlook unconventional strategies that drive disruptive innovation. We will efficiently reinforce the status quo and stifle bold, forward-thinking decisions. Innovators should look to the future and integrate AI into innovation processes as a partner, but not at the expense of building our own skills. We should try out synthetic personas, but only in conjunction with our own validation interviews. We must learn how to spot and compensate for AI biases just as we should our own. We are spending billions of dollars to train the latest AI models. How much are you spending on training your team? For now, innovators still have an edge - but only if they invest in themselves as equal partners.
Constraints have a funny way of focusing the mind. Artificial constraints can drive innovation in your organization. Today’s challenges are recruiting tomorrow’s innovators.
Innovation isn't a singular leap; it's a series of calculated, compartmentalized steps that culminate in transformative change. Over-segmenting tasks can dilute the primary objective, while under-segmenting can lead to overwhelming challenges. Continuous feedback and agility within compartmentalized tasks ensure alignment with the broader innovation vision.
Innovation management has evolved significantly. It's no longer a rigid, one-way path but a dynamic, feedback-driven funnel. Projects can now revisit stages for further development, or take an off-ramp if they cease to align with strategic goals. This approach enables organizations to foster a more resilient, adaptable, and successful innovation process. But most of all, it increases both impact and ROI. In the rapidly changing business landscape, there's no room for static, one-size-fits-all processes. Your innovation process should foster creativity, leverage data, and maintain strategic alignment. By incorporating metered funding, data-driven decisions, bounce gates, and an offramp into your innovation process, you can enhance your new product development process and fuel your organization's future growth. Metered Funding stops funding to failing projects. Data-Driven decisions based on innovation accounting improves ROI. Bounce Gates allow pivots, which preserves lessons learned. Off Ramps for projects that don’t fit the strategy preserves option value.
Be helpful, but don’t derail your team’s work. Stay informed without causing interference. Show your team members they are trusted and valued.
The Net Present Value formula is a way of collapsing future cash inflows and outflows into today’s value for easy comparison. The Net Present Value formula is not a replacement for Innovation Accounting. The Net Present Value formula can be used within Innovation Accounting for making Pivot-or-Persevere decisions.
Learn the importance of making strategic decisions based on evidence rather than experience, and the benefits of keeping decisions close to the information to drive better outcomes in innovation projects.
Discover the impact of prioritizing speed over perfection in product experimentation and the advantages of continuous iteration for better outcomes.
In tough economic times, innovation teams need to be disruptive while still contributing to the bottom line.
Innovation board members should show up at meetings prepared and ready to support their innovation teams.
Innovation board members must be careful not to let their past experience prevent them from supporting new ideas and products.
A video discussion on what governance and portfolio management will look like in the coming year, and what that means for the innovation game.
A Monte Carlo simulation runs multiple simulations to predict a range of outcomes for your business or mission-impact model.
If you want to continue innovation in 2023, you need to weather the recession with quantifiable contributions to the bottom line
How to make an accurate "guesstimation" when there is little data available.
Innovation accounting shows you how to decide between four options for your project: pivot, persevere, kill, or scale.
Even the best-laid plans need to adapt and evolve to developing circumstances, by building agility into how we conceive and implement adaptive strategy in the first place.
Innovation boards work best when they make frequent, quick decisions and give their teams the freedom to interpret data for themselves.
To avoid errors in your business forecasting, you have to know how to average your best-case and worst-case scenarios.
The decision to continue, pivot, or kill a project should be made by the innovation team running the project, not the board that funds it.
If you already control everything, know everything, and can do everything, then you don’t need an innovation strategy. Otherwise, yes, you do.
Every company wants to grow, but focusing on the wrong corporate growth metric can kill your business.
To succeed at business model innovation, we need outside perspectives to bounce ideas off of and to challenge us.
Attracting talent to your innovation project means thinking of potential teammates as customers and writing a value proposition that targets them.
Taking your company through a digital transformation isn’t going to turn it into the next Google. What you want is exponential transformation.
Fixed plans are static. It's better to strategize. A good innovation program is built on a flexible strategy and strong tactical knowledge.
Disagreeing on a project is a sign of a healthy Innovation Board. So is agreeing to move forward with a plan that not everyone supports.
If your corporate strategy and innovation strategy are not aligned, you are at risk of disruption.
Innovation strategy is about more than tackling what’s in front of you. You have to know how to find -- and manipulate -- the advantages of hidden markets.
Startups are a lot like poker in that much of the information you need is hidden from you. In this version of Startup Poker, learn how to calibrate your business model to the market you’re chasing.
The decisions made by Innovation boards hold the keys to a company’s future. Those decisions should be measured as rigorously as the projects themselves.
When calculating the costs of your innovation program, don’t forget to include opportunity costs -- the money you’re not making by doing something else.
Successful innovation accounting requires applying the right metrics to the right categories: individuals, teams, projects, portfolios, and ecosystems.
Your innovation program should be the right one for your company, but it doesn’t have to be wholly original. There's a time to create, and a time to borrow.
To make sure your company’s innovation ecosystem functions at the department level, focus on your innovation KPIs.
Grow your innovation ecosystem by applying Liebig’s Law of the Minimum to help you identify your limits and boundary constraints.
A healthy innovation ecosystem nurtures the relationships between its elements. By manipulating those relationships, we can maximize the value of the ecosystem.
How DHL’s Startup Lab manages to inspire innovation while living within corporate restraints.
A successful leader makes sure their teammates are capable in their position and clear on their mission.
If you want your innovation program to be successful, you have to articulate clear objectives in advance, and then align them with your metrics.
Don’t get buried in the tools and platforms -- know how your resources, time frames, risks, and options work together to create a viable innovation portfolio map.
Fear of failure is perfectly natural, but if we let it define our business decisions, we can't truly call ourselves innovators. What we need is a safe place to fail.
If we want our company to achieve greatness, we have to empower our team members to be leaders in their own areas. That means focusing on the clarity of our mission and the capabilities of our teammates.
Five actionable tips on running better workshops.
The ultimate one-size-fits-all guide to corporate innovation.
We can be entrepreneurial and still get a paycheck...or that’s what they claim. “I’m an intrapreneur!” is the new rallying cry inside corporations.
Guest Blogger Valerie Vacante writes, "Avoid these three common pitfalls when pursuing corporate innovation."
Diversity is a hot topic, but what is not often discussed is the fact that diverse teams are more innovative. Read more about why diversity is an innovation metric.
The anti-diversity manifesto written by a mystery Googler has put a spotlight on diversity efforts in the tech industry. Anti-diversity proponents say that meritocracy justifies the lack of diversity in tech. But the real question is: Does meritocracy work?
Asking the ROI of innovation is like asking the ROI of health insurance. We buy health insurance & innovation because the downside is potentially catastrophic.
The faster we Build-Measure-Learn the faster we validate our business model. So how fast is fast enough? One lean startup experiment per week.
Hi.P.P.O is the Highest Paid Person's Opinion. A time honored way of making decisions which goes back centuries. 3 reasons to listen to the Hi.P.P.O.
The complete team is able to complete the Build-Measure-Learn loop including all Four Parts of the Minimum Viable Product. Including Channel & Relationship!
Lean Healthcare is not yet here. Far too many health systems have a limited view of Lean as just an improvement methodology. Lean is a culture.
How do you run lean in corporate startups? What about a large vs. mid-sized company? There is a difference, but it’s not night and day.
“Lean Enterprises” are a myth. The best way for an enterprise company to emulate a startup is by nurturing an innovation ecosystem.
In a lean startup, team velocity proceeds measurable product progress. Before there is velocity, no measurable progress can be seen on any metrics dashboard.
More enterprise scale companies are drinking the lean Kool Aid and starting to implement Lean Startup. In doing so, they are failing at the most basic level.
A comprehensive breakdown of Minimum Viable Product and the tools you need to create one for your startup.
If something is wrong with your spark plug, you don't shoot it. And threatening it with violence isn't going to prevent it from getting dirty.
A lot of the lean startup and customer development folks talk about creating the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), what about Minimum Viable Strategy (MVS)?
