Scott D. Anthony
Any leader has two jobs to do. To do what they are currently doing better and more efficiently (call this strengthening the core), and to do what they are not currently doing but will need to do in the future (call this creating the new).Collection: Jobs
Every leader needs to watch what teenagers or startup companies - or startup companies headed by teenagers - are doing today, because many of those behaviors will be mainstream behaviors tomorrow.Collection: Teenager
In the early stages of innovation, your goal is to learn as much as you can as quickly as you can.Collection: Goal
All disruptive innovators make it easier and more affordable for people to do what matters to them, and follow a strategy that doesn't at first glance make sense to the market leader.Collection: What Matters
The most important thing here is to largely ignore what customers say, and instead watch what they do or track where they spend money.Collection: Track
One of the biggest mistakes large companies make is creating innovation teams that mirror all the functions of the core business. Those teams make no progress because they spent forever updating each other on what they are doing versus really crushing the most critical problems they need to address.Collection: Crush
Good innovators like to solve business crossword puzzles.Collection: Solve
Almost every disruption starts at the perceived fringes of today's market.Collection: Today
Hollywood Joohn Tatum? He does at least 6,000 sit ups and 10,000 pushups a day!Collection: Wrestling
In my mind, so-called "cultures of innovation" really boil down to one word: curiosity.Collection: Innovation
Anything that has low certainty or has a lot of impact should be tested early.Collection: Impact
Small teams move faster than big teams.Collection: Team
A next-generation innovation writer and thought leader worth watching.Collection: Leader
Mucken Singh works VERY hard on his brawler's physique!Collection: Wrestling
Companies get into grooves and they keep sharpening what they are doing, when in fact what they really need to do sometimes is to stop and do something completely differently.Collection: Needs
If you invest the time to understand the customer better than they know themselves, if you know the things they want or need even if they can't articulate it, you can begin to develop a good sense as to where there really are unmet needs in the market.Collection: Needs
History teaches us that many breakthroughs were happy accidents. Whether that's penicillin coming from Fleming neglecting to clean his laboratory before going on vacation or the team at Odeon trying a little side project that allowed people to communicate in real time as long as their message was 140 characters or less (which ultimately of course became Twitter), the unintended is often the transformational.Collection: Real
It's one of the underappreciated skills required by an innovator - they have to be able to convince lots of people to do things that might not be fully rational (invest in the company, join something that is likely to fail, try a product they've never seen before), and if you can't tell a good story it is just very hard to make that happen.Collection: Skills
You still want to be thoughtful about what you do, no doubt, but you have to learn through trial-and-error experimentation as well.Collection: Thoughtful
I've always found that working through ideas in written form really changes the thinking.Collection: Thinking
Aside from the equivalent of blowing up the lab or letting a pathogen escape, the only failure is spending too long or too much money to learn.Collection: Long
So many people tell me that they aren't creative or they aren't innovative, and it's just not true.Collection: People
I've come to the conclusion that the core characteristic that separates companies that get innovation from those that don't is a simple word: curiosity.Collection: Simple
Everyone knows innovation involves developing unique understanding of a market, thinking expansively to develop a solution, and then finding a way to test rigorously and adapt quickly.Collection: Unique
Every great idea emerges out of a process of trial-and-error experimentation.Collection: Errors
When you are motivating people to do amazing things, you have to win over both their rational side and their emotive side.Collection: Winning
The CEO should ask what he or she can do to raise the organization's curiosity quotient. One way to do this is to seek to learn more about current or prospective customers, not to figure out which segmentation model to slot them into, but to really understand them as human beings. Another is to live at the intersections where innovation magic occurs.Collection: Organization
Anytime you see a constrained market, where consumption is limited to those who have special skills or are wealthy, that signals an opportunity for innovation.Collection: Opportunity
Teams working on disruptive ideas need to be small enough that they can be fed by no more than two pizzas.Collection: Team
The sad truth is as difficult as the first mile can be for entrepreneurs, it is doubly tough inside most large companies as innovators can face some significant headwinds.Collection: Entrepreneur
The need to be thoughtful about experiment design is particularly acute within large companies, since some of the behaviors, such as having small teams and tapping into low-cost resources to maximize flexibility, won't come naturally to many people inside huge companies.Collection: Team
We've got some great big problems in our world. We have to figure out how to feed 10 billion people. Too many people can't access clean water, quality healthcare, and reasonable education. We have to figure out what to do about climate change, income inequality, and more. Innovators need to rise to the challenge!Collection: Our World
If you are a large company and you want to do something unique, you almost by definition have to tap onto the core business in some way. Otherwise you are going into a naked fight against startups, and that's just a tough place to be.Collection: Fighting
People will try to copy what they can see, which is the final product or service, but it's much harder to see (and copy) all the intricacies of the business model that allows you to create, capture, and deliver value. And that's what you need to get right to really jam something down people's throats!Collection: People
I feel for today's leaders. I really do. They got to where they are by doing a series of jobs exceptionally well. And that doesn't help them at all with the challenges they now face.Collection: Jobs
Not only do innovators have to deal with all of the fundamental challenges of innovation, they have to do so in an environment that often is implicitly hostile towards innovation.Collection: Often Is
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is to embrace the idea of spurring creativity by letting hundreds of flowers bloom. I've never seen that lead to anything other than cynicism and hundreds of dead flowers.Collection: Mistake
Think about how much it costs to learn more. Sometimes you want to build confidence by knocking off the easy things.Collection: Thinking
Most startup companies have two people, and they figure out creative ways to swarm problems. They move faster and have more impact.Collection: Moving
You can always figure out how to deliver things in somewhat controlled situations, but when you start to get into the reality of the market you start to figure out what isn't going to work.Collection: Reality
I use the term "fool's gold white space" to highlight a common problem for innovation. People see a market that doesn't exist, and assume that one should exist.Collection: White
You can increase the odds of spotting the weak points in your approach if you really think about the end-to-end business model you plan to follow - how you plan to create, capture, and deliver value.Collection: Thinking
Make sure that you take the time to think about how other companies might respond to your idea, both those companies already in the market you plan to target as well as others that might imagine targeting that market.Collection: Thinking
Have a core concept, but wrap it in a full business model.Collection: Models
A spreadsheet for an innovative idea reports the mathematical relationship between made up numbers. You can't cash a spreadsheet.Collection: Ideas
Of course, it is worth it to take the time to think carefully through your assumptions, and ensure you at least have hypotheses around how you will create value. But use the analysis as a way to focus attention on the most critical assumptions, rather than spend a ton of time massaging the numbers.Collection: Thinking
Of course if you are launching a new business you can thinking about revenues, profits, and so on, but metrics such as customer satisfaction or employee retention might be meaningful if you are focusing more internally.Collection: Meaningful
When we are looking at ideas, we really are thinking of three things. Are you doing something that seems consistent with the patterns of success? Are there reasons to believe you have or can access the right people to make it happen? Can we play a unique role in enabling success? We all have our rules of thumb, I suppose.Collection: Believe
I think people make innovation much more complicated than it needs to be.Collection: Thinking
I've never seen impeccable logic be sufficient to win both the heart and the mind.Collection: Heart