Mentoring transforms big ideas into high-impact innovations. Having worked with dozens of the Fortune 1000 companies, coached startups, and founded three companies, I can say there’s a universal truth when it comes to innovation: big ideas are just ideas until they deliver real value to the world. That’s why just about every venture capitalist, entrepreneur, corporate innovator and university…
Our communities are getting really smart. Here’s what to expect. I’m sitting here in a large convention center in Los Angeles about to deliver the closing keynote at the Southern California Public Power Authority annual conference. It’s basically a gathering of the top municipal utilities in Southern California that serve more than 5 million people and deliver…
The latest research says “co-creation” is an untapped opportunity for innovation. Here’s how to do it. When I ran the internal strategy consulting group at HP, we constantly asked ourselves, “how can we get our $40 billion global behemoth operating more like a startup?” That’s because like most big companies, we struggled with risk-taking and moving fast. Startups…
Getting the most out of meetings is easy if you know how to effectively design them. One of the biggest black holes in workplace productivity is the poorly designed, poorly run meeting. No wonder 71 percent of senior managers view their companies’ meetings as unproductive and inefficient. When meetings aren’t effective, the natural instinct is to schedule…
‘Construction Tech’ and ‘Real Estate Tech’ are the next greenfield market spaces. Every industry, every company, and every leader must recognize one simple fact: every product, service, process, and business model will be disrupted–it’s just a matter of time. Companies that think they’re immune to the trends and technologies upending every industry on the planet risk…
Driving True Innovation Within Your Organization Means You Must Outline Your Goals and Priorities Clearly In January 1996, two Stanford PhD students started working on a research project that would change the world. They nicknamed their project BackRub, because it checked backlinks of websites to determine their importance. Today, that project has become known…
What is benchmarking, and what tools and templates can businesses use to benchmark more effectively? What you don’t know can hurt you. This is especially true in business. If you aren’t aware of what’s going on around you as a business leader, you may risk being left behind by your competitors. Even worse, your business…
Managing projects with the Critical Path Method (CPM) allows teams to streamline processes that drive success even when the odds are stacked against you In the 1940s, the United States began working on a secretive program called the Manhattan Project. The project went on to develop the first functional nuclear weapons which were subsequently…
Sometimes, lasting innovation requires being slow, quiet and even a little bit boring Every single business is unique in one way or another. Businesses vary greatly depending on the products that they provide, the business models they employ and the style of service they give to their customers. Most businesses struggle to compete against one…
What can you learn about change from Baker’s Four Strategies of Influence? Are you using the right persuasion tactics to influence the people you engage with? Whether you are trying to drive engagement within your team, make a business case to your boss, or sell a product or service to a customer, the…