How was the d.school formed? How did it grow from being in a trailer to reaching world fame? And what role does cross-fertilization play in coming up with innovations? These are some of the questions that came to my mind when I met with Justin Ferrel, a Fellowship Director at Standford’s d.school.
Theodore Levitt, a professor at Harvard Business School, once said in 1962: “people don’t want a quarter inch drill, they want a quarter inch hole”. In other words, if you’re trying to innovate you could do one of 2 things : you could study the quarter inch drill and wonder: “how can I make a better quarter inch drill?” This leads product-centric innovation you could…
Tony thinks about innovation in a very simple way: « it’s a process of coming up with solutions that satisfy customer needs. » There are two ways to address the innovation process 1/ come up with solutions and see if they address needs 2/ come up with needs and then create a solution that addresses needs
How to perform customer-centric innovation? This is a question I recently addressed in a conversation I had with Alain Hui Bon Hoa.
Why are pivoting and failing fast a failed innovation strategy ? This is a question I touched upon during my last discussion with Tony Ulwick.
Pushing technologies onto the market is often derided by innovators. They are countless technologies that have never found a market and that turned out to be failed innovations. But, the fact is that there’s : The wrong way of pushing technologies on the market The right way of pushing technologies on the market This is the subject I want to address in this post.
This is a topic I addressed when I sat down with Alain several days ago. Why isn’t listening to the Voice of the Customer the best to innovate?
How many companies are able to secure a 5% growth rates for 10 consecutive years? This is a question that Tony and I discussed when I met with him in my last trip in the Silicon Valley.
We’ve crammed our apartment and offices with TVs and computer screens. And, yet, most of the time, they sit there, idle. Yes, that’s right, they’re idle when we’re not there watching and when you’re not using them. This is also true of all many different and entangled cables, which are used to charge and connect our devices together.
Several months ago, I sat down with a friend innovator, and we discussed how to succeed at innovation.