Happy Holidays!
I hope that everyone will be taking time off to enjoy family and friends. See you in 2009.
The Wisdom of Miyagi
In the Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi once told his student Daniel, “Walk on road. Walk right side, safe. Walk left side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later [makes squish gesture] get the squish, just like grape.” This fits nicely with my perspectives on innovating in tough times. In my previous blog entries on how to […]
Gas Guzzlers Top Selling Cars
2008 saw the $4 gallon of gasoline and the start of the current recession. Although car sales are down from last year, millions of vehicles were still sold. What car do you think was most popular? A hybrid? A fuel efficient car? An ultra-inexpensive car? A reliable import? Interestingly, the two most popular cars were […]
Innovation Articles I am Reading
Today, I am catching up on some bookmarked innovation articles. I will provide commentary on these in the near future. Does Obama Need a Department of Innovation? (NYT) Innovation at Kraft (USA Today) Electric Car Innovation is Not Coming Out of Detroit (NYT) Why Movies Disappear from iTunes and Netflix (Wired) Innovation for Hard Times […]
Interesting New Year’s Resolution Statistics
This article was originally published in December 2008 Early this week, I received an email from a researcher at a major national TV talk show. They are doing a show on New Year’s Resolutions and saw my article on the topic. They wanted to know if I had more details on the statistics referenced in […]
Getting with the Times
OK, it is time to branch out from the blog world… For the past 2 days, I have been at the 800-CEO-READ event for authors. Great conversations about books, publishing, marketing, sales, design, story telling, and anything else related to the profession. One guy, Jose Castillo, talked about social media and how it relates to […]
Servicize a Product
I am sunning myself with my family in Florida right now, hence the shortage of blog entries. We have been busy every day, so today has been my first day to relax and think. And no surprise, I have been thinking about innovation. The balcony of my timeshare overlooks the water with boats (the picture […]
Making Your Products/Services Affordable and Accessible
One of my last blog entries discussed the need to create affordable and accessible solutions to stay competitive. Given globalization, cheap labor, and a damaged economy, this makes more sense than ever. Here are three starter questions to ask to help you generate new ideas: How can you productize a service? One way to make […]
L Vaughn Spencer – Very Funny
A good friend of mine, Neil Mullarkey (yes, that’s his real name), is one of the funniest people I know. He, Mike Myers, and a couple of other guys founded the Comedy Store Players (an improv comedy group) in London. I have seen Neil perform dozens of times. Always fantastic! I even spent a day […]
The Innovator’s Dilemma and the US Economy
Clayton Christensen, in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, discusses how disruptive technologies will kill incumbent technologies. Basically it is about how the crappy and cheap will eventually take over the sophisticated and expensive. The well-worn example is in the computing world. The PC (which until recently cost thousands of dollars) killed the dominance of the […]