Killer Questions
Customizing Beyond The Obvious
I don’t know what your needs are. I don’t know what drove you to pick up Beyond The Obvious, read it, and (hopefully) work through the exercises. It’s possible you weren’t completely sure of your needs at the beginning of the book either. However, you should now have a sense of how you can use […]
Finding Bubbles and Predicting the Burst
Many innovators and entrepreneurs have dozens of ideas every day for the perfect new business. They’re sure that this is the next big thing, that this idea will outlast the competition. Unfortunately, some of those ideas may fall prey to the “bubble” problem: they begin quickly, expand rapidly, and
A Bizarre New Perspective on Brainstorm
We’ve all been in a meeting where we were asked to brainstorm. The concept is familiar. Everyone involved writes out everything they can think of on the given topic, even if it seems strange, silly, or not quite practical, because sometimes, as we let our brains really run, we come across a solutio
5 Great Reasons to Ask Questions
In a world where customers have access to an almost unlimited number of products when they ask a question on Google, most of which they may not even use, it becomes even more important to differentiate yourself in order to draw attention to what you might offer. How can you make a customer’s life ea
Can The Right Questions Unlock Your Creative Process?
All of us could use a little creativity in our life. Regardless of what you do for a living, at some point in your work you will have to develop a creative process to move your business forward. Of course, unless you specifically identify as a creative person, you may feel intimidated by the whole
Beyond The Obvious Is Now Available In Simplified Chinese [创客学:苹果公司也在偷师的创新课]
During my recent trip to China I discovered that the simplified Chinese translation of my book, Beyond The Obvious (创客学:苹果公司也在偷师的创新课), has been released and on-sale. I reached out to the publisher while I was in China and there was a mad scramble to setup a handful of press interviews while I was t
Great Innovations From Asking the Right Questions
Innovation is not about solving just any problem, but about knowing which problems to solve. We discover the right problem by asking the right questions. There are a number of inflection points in history in which a brilliant person took a popularly held assumption — even one that is totally counte
Can you teach yourself to avoid doing the obvious?
The problem that many business people, entrepreneurs, and would-be innovators suffer from is our inability to escape from our past. Simply put, we are all shaped by our past experiences, whether good or bad. We look at the end results of these experiences—“this idea worked”; “this idea failed”— and
On NBC Discussing How Companies Can Be More Innovative (video)
Yesterday, I recorded two segments for NBC’s Press:Here that will appear on Sunday, April 8th @ 9:00 AM in SFO and then later on cable in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, and Washington DC. In segment one, the questions focused on the stodginess of HP, the Palm a
Ignore The Obvious speech on Innovation at Argyle Executive Forum (slides)
This morning I gave a keynote at the Argyle Executive Forum event in NYC. The title of the talk was “Ignore The Obvious” covering a wide range of areas to help the audience better understand and use innovation as a competitive advantage: Doing the obvious is what everyone expects Doing the obvious
