Innovation Tyrant: Denver Management Consulting Firms

Showing posts with label Denver Management Consulting Firms. Show all posts

Monday, April 23, 2012

Educational Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship - Fernando Reimers

I have spent the last 25 years studying and working with governments and private groups to improve the education available to marginalized youth, in the United States and around the world. Most of that work was based in the belief that change at scale could result from the decisions made by governments, and that research could enlighten those choices. When I joined the Harvard faculty 13 years ago I set out to educate a next generation of leaders who would go on to advise policy makers or to become policy makers themselves, and designed a masters program largely responsive to that vision. During those years I continued to write for those audiences.

Over time, however, I have become aware that traditional approaches can't improve education at a scale and depth sufficient to ready the next generation of students for the challenges they will face. I have also become more skeptical of the assumed linear relationship between conventional research and educational change. I now believe the needed educational revitalization requires design and invention, as much as linear extrapolation from the study of the status quo — that is, of the past. It also requires systemic interventions — changes in multiple conditions and at multiple levels, inside the school and out. And it requires a departure from the conventional study into how much we can expect a given intervention or additional resource to change one educational outcome measure — typically a skill as measured on a test or access to an education level, or transition to the next.

It is this interest in change that has led me to study the work of education entrepreneurs — of innovators who are creating new education designs, in ways that exceed the resources they command. I am especially interested in the entrepreneurs whose goal is to produce significant educational innovation — rather than simply providing access and delivering services to new groups, or rather than improving the efficiency of the educational enterprise as we know them — to teach our old schools a few new tricks, so to speak. I am also particularly interested in entrepreneurs who can achieve sufficient scale and develop the strategy to significantly change the ecosystem, to shift the conversation about education, to eventually transform the sector in the way in which Wilhelm Humboldt transformed the sector of higher education with the creation of the University of Berlin, or in the way in which Joseph Lancaster propelled the universalization of basic education with the development of a method to teach a basic curriculum at low cost.

The conversations in these blogs on Educational Innovation and Technology are an exciting opportunity to explore a promising mix — the synergies that can result from combining innovation, the utilization of technology in education and the role of education entrepreneurs in creating new designs that can transform the ecosystem. It is in the interplay of these three factors that I see the greatest potential. Not all education entrepreneurs using technology generate innovation, and most of their designs have failed to transform the sector and not all innovators using technology have produced designs that can be scaled or with the ambition and potential to change the conversation or the sector. As a result, educational enterprise is a fragmented territory, of modest scale, yet to transform the education ecosystem.

In order for these three elements — innovation, technology and entrepreneurship — to produce the synergies necessary to substantially transform education, we will need to build a collaborative architecture that allows for the fruitful integration of careful study, design and invention, and action at scale. Such collaboration of industry, academy and the public schools is exceptional, not the conventional way of business for universities, governments or businesses.

Universities are uniquely positioned to lead in forging these partnerships. The trust we receive from society in the form of financial resources, financial and legal advantages and institutional autonomy enable us to anticipate new organizational forms to support educational renewal, rather than reproduce the established forms of the past. While we haven't done this consistently in the history of higher education in the US or abroad, there are good historical precedents of universities taking seriously the task of substantially improving the work of elementary and secondary schools, of serving those who are not direct members of the university community.

This is the time for universities to lead the task of fundamentally reinventing public education. But to do it well, we need to seriously commit to design and innovation, and to work with others — with entrepreneurs, industry and governments — so that their ambitions and impatience for results, and the accountability they have with the constituencies they serve, can help align our efforts with the creation of public value in the form of education institutions that prepare the next generation to lead and manage the challenges we have passed on to them. via blogs.hbr.org

Want to bring new products and services to market faster? Want to be more agile? Contact Innovation and Growth Speaker Jim Woods. Jim works confidentially with start ups, governments as well as profit and for profit enterprises.

Visit our website:www.innothinkgroup.com Executive and Business Coaching: http://ow.ly/anBpK

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective growth strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability.james@innothinkgroup.com

Fan us on Facebook: http://ow.ly/anyQ7

Saturday, April 21, 2012

The Secret to Team Collaboration Is Individuality

LEAD WITH PURPOSE | John Baldoni

Let those on your team do their own thing. A new book supports this claim, as does a quote from Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer.

shutterstock images

"We expect everyone here to be team players."

Most of us have had a boss who preached teamwork. Some bosses even like to put up posters with slogans like there is no "I" in team.

Teamwork is essential to organizational success but too much teamwork can be deadly. This is the point that Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, argues in an essay for the The New York Times. She points out the drawbacks of too much teaming. "Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption," she writes.

Further, Cain explains that creative types are by nature introverts but "extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas [and] see themselves as independent and individualistic." Cain also quotes from the memoir of Steve "Woz" Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer and inventor of the very first Apple computer, who advises fellow engineers and inventors to "work alone… not on a committee. Not on a team."

The challenge for leaders is to balance individual needs with team directives. To do so they must avoid collectivism and facilitate collaboration. Collectivism leads to "group think," which, as Susan Cain argues, is the bête noir of teamwork; collaboration leads to innovation. Collectivists unite around a single purpose, which is fine, but ignore alternate paths to achieve that purpose. Collaborators are similarly focused on purpose but they arrive at their goals by incorporating variable points of view. In short, collectivists, like the Bolsheviks of Leninist Russia, value ideology over results. Collaborators are pragmatists who build upon the ideas of many in order to get things done.

The secret to effective collaboration is individuality. You want everyone on the team to feel free to contribute ideas to a project as a means of instilling ownership and therefore increase engagement. That does not mean that every idea that anyone says goes but it does mean people can contribute their brains as well as their brawn.

Here are four steps to foster true collaboration through each contributor:

1. Affirm the purpose. The central organizing principle of a project is the why. It is up to managers to let people know how what the team is doing contributes to organizational success.

2. Encourage individualism. A secret to effective collaboration is individual contributions. When people think alike they shut out alternate viewpoints. True collaboration weighs the individual ideas and balances them with what the project needs. In short, teammates build upon the contributions of others to achieve their team goals.

3. Focus on team. Few things will get done without individuals pulling together. The managers can reinforce collaboration by making it known that individuals must coordinate with each other as well as cooperate. Sometimes this means that people will pitch in to help a teammate finish a task when their own work is finished.

4. Reflect, together. There is one other valuable ingredient to effective collaboration: reflection. The perception may be that reflection is a solo endeavor, but many teams have found it valuable to employ in group settings. Managers can stimulate the thinking process by posing a key question for the group to reflect upon in silence and then discuss openly. Open-ended questions that focus on the how and the why of process rather than purpose are effective. The purpose—where the team is headed—has been established; the process—how we do things—can very often be improved.

Teamwork is essential to getting things done and to do it effectively managers need to draw upon the talents of individuals who have a stake in the outcome. There may be no "I" in team, but as Michael Jordan, whose singular play powered the Chicago Bulls to six NBA titles, used to say, "But there is in win!"

John Baldoni is the president of Baldoni Consulting, an executive coaching firm. John speaks widely on leadership and has written 10 leadership books; his newest is Lead With Purpose: Giving Your Organization a Reason to Believe in Itself. @johnbaldoni

via inc.com

Want to increase growth and avoid more losses? Want to out compete your competitors? Want to bring new products and services to market faster? Want to be more agile? Contact Innovation and Growth Speaker Jim Woods. Jim works confidentially with start ups, governments as well as profit and for profit enterprises.

Visit our website:www.innothinkgroup.com Executive and Business Coaching: http://ow.ly/anBpK

Fan us on Facebook: http://ow.ly/anyQ7

Friday, April 20, 2012

Russell Blackmore: Top ten mistakes online entrepreneurs should avoid

Are you new to the e-tail game? Just started selling products and services over the web? Well, avoid the mistakes made by countless entrepreneurs before you. Heed this advice from Russell Blackmore, co-founder of photography e-tailer Sonic Editions.

1. Don't try to fit in

Good companies disrupt the current market. Made.com and Dollar Shave Club are both magnificent examples of this. Don’t try to fit in with what else is out there – create a new experience and you’ll carve yourself a niche in a crowded market.

2. Don't do it all yourself

Utilise the power of others. Partnerships help to build traffic and brand equity. If credible brands are working with you, chances are others will too.

3. Keep an eye on stock management

Our prints are made to order, which means we don’t get caught with a lot of excess stock that we need to store and pay for its upkeep. If you have to pay to keep stock that you’re not using, it’s a waste of money.

4. Be mindful of over-selling

Connect with your audience regularly but do not over sell. Use social media to reach out to your audience, rather than pushing a hard sell. You need just enough exposure but not to the point of overkill.

5. You are your product or service

Brands should be reflective of their products. If you’re selling something with a premium price point, your customer experience must reflect that. The service is just as important as the product. Do your research and know what experience you want to create – then live and breathe it in everything that you do.

6. Always answer consumer enquiries

Ignore a consumer enquiry at your peril. Some of the best leads come through social media, so make sure you check who is getting in touch and what they’re saying. Responsive customer service will mean repeat business.

7. Start small, think big

Offer your product in a variety of key currencies. Only when you’ve built up the sales base in a different country should you consider translating into a different language. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Not at the start, at least.

8. Poor delivery is a no-no

Find a trusted and reliable delivery partner. Poor service will come back and reflect badly on you. Remember the video of the USP deliveryman throwing the monitor over the wall? There’s no point in your company being let down at the end of the line.

9. Hone your IT skills

Update your website every day. You will have to understand basic simple rules. For example, lots of traffic will crash your site. This is something that you’ll need in all aspects for your role. You cannot simply depend on smart interns to keep your tech side running.

10. Banks are not your friend

Don’t over rely on the bank. Make sure you know where your finances are coming from!

via managementtoday.co.uk

Visit our website:www.innothinkgroup.com Executive and Business Coaching: http://ow.ly/anBpK

Fan us on Facebook: http://ow.ly/anyQ7

Friday, April 13, 2012

How To Keep Up with the Speed of Change

Successful small companies are adept at responding to opportunities and challenges at the drop of a hat. Employees in these companies will step outside of their day-to-day responsibilities to respond to such events. But to be effective, these go-getters need fast access to information they might not normally have at their fingertips. Companies that rely on e-mail as their primary means of knowledge sharing slow down the process of decision-making because e-mail is limited to people on a list and can get buried in in-boxes.

In contrast, by having employees engage and collaborate on a social network platform specifically designed to meet business needs (think Facebook for companies), decisions are made faster, expertise is easy to find, and colleagues stay connected. By using a social network, employees can ask questions and quickly get answers and stay on top of events, updates, and news. Here are some of the benefits of using these tools to collaborate.

1. Boost morale. Social networks help new employees ramp up more quickly, and get the information they need to be successful at their job. Employees are more engaged because they are contributing to a community of knowledge, with real-time feedback and recognition. In an open setting where participation and contributions are encouraged, employees at different levels or across various departments can work together like never before.

2. Open the lines of communication. With social networks it’s possible for any employee regardless of job description to share a business lead with the sales team, report a bug to product development, discuss a potential competitive threat, or debate a strategic decision. The information is there for people who are interested and/or can contribute value. This also eliminates the need to think about who to include on e-mail threads, allowing people to focus on success, not administrative overhead.

3. Asking questions saves time. When asking questions on a social network, employees can see that a similar question has already been asked and find the answer immediately without having to disrupt co-workers. If the question has not been asked, it can be answered by anyone who may know. This eliminates having to know who might know the answer just to be referred to someone else.

By unlocking information exchange from the grip of e-mail and enabling communication through a platform that is open and familiar, employees are better connected and can execute more efficiently to address the daily challenges of a small company. via businessweek.com

Want to increase the sustainability of your nnovation initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

How To Stand Out from the Crowd

The most important thing is to get your positioning as “right” as possible. You want to be perceived by your target market as better than the competition on some attributes that leverage your firm’s distinctive competence, so as to have some durable competitive advantage. Every marketing activity then has to strengthen this perception.

Tactically, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t measure the impact of your advertising and promotion. Especially for small businesses, it’s relatively easy and inexpensive to keep track of the data you need to make these evaluations. They won’t be as precise as other accounting entities, but they will be precise enough to make very productive decisions on which campaigns to do more of and which to stop.

Last hint — don’t be afraid to be different and innovative. Those are the concepts that are typically most successful. (Advertising on the backs of the Chinese fortune cookies, which serial entrepreneur Josh Kopelman introduced, is just one example.) via businessweek.com

Want to increase the sustainability of your nnovation initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Get Out of the Office to Get Creative

Are you planning a vacation, weekend getaway, or staycation this summer? As you think about what you might want to do or try, consider adding a visit to a business that you have always wanted to learn more about. Many businesses offer tours, but you might want to go a step further and see if you can create your own personal excursion that includes a conversation with the founders and a chance to learn about how they do things (nothing proprietary, of course). Call ahead and make arrangements, or consider contacting your local college or university to see if there are existing trips to destinations that you can join. I took a group of students and alumni to Italy, and one of our stops was a tile factory that inspired its staff by devoting space to design resources for many distinct products and services beyond tile. We left the factory with many ideas to bring into our own businesses—and not one of us is in the tile manufacturing industry.

Your destination need not be exotic, or even involve a passport. Check out local businesses—and invite them back to your business in return. This idea exchange is a great opportunity to think beyond the parameters of your own business, and it’s likely to lead to a new set of "what if?" questions and possibilities for the company.

Lisa Gundry
Professor of Management
Director, Center for Creativity & Innovation
DePaul University
Chicago

via businessweek.com

Hire us to work with your team.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Who Cares Wins: Why caring is now the key to your brand’s success

Thanks and welcome to our blog. I look forward to sharing ideas with you. Paula

No book could be more important or timely than Who Cares Wins by David Jones of Havas. There is a growing awareness that the business revolution brought about by social media is bringing with it an equally transformation in the way brands deal with their customers. And while the currency that marketers trade is still emotion, the relationship dynamics between brands and their customers has dramatically changed.

Who Cares Wins explains in detail the drivers and best practices of this new dynamic. Jones does a masterful job of explaining in very clear terms, why business success in the future will be driven by the authenticity, transparency, and accountability of brands and their ability to react quickly and consistently with these three qualities. In fact, he makes a compelling case for why the successful brands of the future will be those that are most meaningful in the lives of their media-savvy and socially connected customers.

On the flipside, Jones explains why those brands that ignore the impact of social media and these new customer expectations do so at their peril. In only the last few months we’ve seen the consumer push-back against Netflix and Qwikster, against the Bank of America Debit Card Fee, on Bank Transfer Day, against the Verizon Online 2$ payment charge, and most recently the backdown of Congress over SOPA in the face of online activism.

So what Jones is talking about in this book is not conjuncture, wishful thinking, or projection, but rather a business reality that is already here. As such, he rightly positions social responsibility as an invaluable opportunity for brands to build their bottom lines while also becoming a force for good in the world. In order for this shift to gain traction and pace, large brands and entrepreneurs need case studies and proof points to justify their shift in priorities and practices. Who Cares Wins provides this in spades, and rightly positions this shift in the marketplace as one of great opportunity, rather than cause for concern. No doubt this is an educated risk that every business leader must take, and that spirit is captured in the title “Who Cares (rather than ‘Dares’) Wins.” But the risk of not engaging with this shift in business practices is far greater. Who Cares Wins is your guidebook on how to negotiate the social business marketplace in a way that builds your business and a better world for all.

To order your copy of Who Cares Wins click here, and you can follow David Jones on Twitter at @davidjoneshavas.

via simonmainwaring.com

We are a leading innovation and hypercompetition consultancy with a passion for profit. Want to increase the sustainability of your growth initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. For availability email or call us at 719-649-4118. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.

At London bus stop, interactive ad shows different content to men and women

At London bus stop, interactive ad shows different content to men and women

Plan UK’s recent ad used facial recognition software in conjunction with an HD camera to determine whether a man or woman was standing in front of the screen, and then showed different content accordingly.

Regular readers of Springwise may remember The Girl Store which we covered last year — an initiative set up to address the disadvantages and lack of opportunities many girls and women face outside of the developed world. Now we’ve come across a new, interactive bus-stop ad that recently drew attention to the issue of gender inequality in a unique way. Trialled for two weeks last month in an Oxford Street bus stop, Plan UK’sad used facial recognition software in conjunction with an HD camera to determine whether a man or woman was standing in front of the screen, and then showed different content accordingly.

Some 75 million girls around the world now have limited access to education, and 10 million girls in developing countries each year are coerced or forced into marriage while under the age of 18, according to Plan UK. As part of the group’s “Because I am a Girl” campaign to highlight such problems, the new “40-second Choices for Girls” advert showcases three 13-year-old girls: Jasmine from the UK, Bintou from Mali and Sur from Thailand. Even more compelling than the content of the ad, however, was that men and women at the Oxford Street bus stop saw different versions of the advert, once they opted in. After the technology scanned the viewer’s face, women were shown the full advert, complete with details about the three profiled girls’ lives; men, however, were denied access to the complete ad and shown a series of statistics about girls around the globe instead. The video below explains the campaign’s premise in more detail:

Combining facial recognition, touch capabilities and sound, Plan UK’s ad is a good example of how technology can be used to enforce an advert’s message, rather than simply delivering it. Marketers around the globe, take note!

Website: www.plan-uk.org/choices-for-girls

We are a leading innovation and hypercompetition consultancy with a passion for profit. Want to increase the sustainability of your growth initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

via springwise.com

Thursday, April 5, 2012

When Failure Isn’t Free: Ramifications for Innovation

Companies often develop crisp stories about how they have nurtured a “culture of innovation.” They say that all their employees can be innovators, and even take some initiative to move their ideas forward. Not only that, they claim, but failures are tolerated, if not celebrated. Failure is, after all, an integral part of the innovation game.
That may be, but as Financial Times economics columnist Tim Harford points out in his new book, there is one small problem: Contrary to the gospel of open innovation and dorm-room programmers, failure is rarely free. In fact, it’s becoming more and more expensive.
When real dollars are at stake, there is a big difference between a bad failure and a good one. A bad failure is expensive and emotional; it results from a willingness to experiment without the discipline to learn. A good failure, by contrast, comes as quickly and as inexpensively as possible; it is managed through a rigorous process of testing clearly stated hypotheses.
It is not easy to run disciplined experiments. But a company without such discipline — and without a way to reward innovators for only good failures — is a company without a true culture of innovation. It is a company that spends money aimlessly in hopes of stumbling upon success, instead of one that smartly and swiftly adapts.

— Chris Trimble

An excerpt from Chapter 3 of Adapt: Why Success Always
Starts with Failure

Look at the world’s leading companies and consider how many of them — Google, Intel, Pfizer — make products that would either fit into a matchbox, or have no physical form at all. Each of these large islands of innovation is surrounded by an archipelago of smaller high-tech start-ups, all with credible hopes of overturning the established order — just as a tiny start-up called Microsoft humbled the mighty IBM, and a generation later Google and Facebook repeated the trick by outflanking Microsoft itself.
This optimistic view is true as far as it goes. Where it’s easy for the market to experiment with a wide range of possibilities, as in computing, we do indeed see change at an incredible pace. The sheer power and interconnectedness of modern technology means that anyone can get hold of enough computing power to produce great new software. Thanks to outsourcing, even the hardware business is becoming easy to enter. Three-dimensional printers, cheap robots and ubiquitous design software mean that other areas of innovation are opening up, too. Yesterday it was customised T-shirts. Today, even the design of niche cars is being ‘crowd-sourced’ by companies such as Local Motors, which also outsource production. Tomorrow, who knows? In such fields, an open game with lots of new players keeps the innovation scoreboard ticking over. Most ideas fail, but there are so many ideas that it doesn’t matter: the internet and social media expert Clay Shirky celebrates ‘failure for free.’
Here’s the problem, though: failure for free is still all too rare. These innovative fields are still the exception, not the rule. Because open-source software and iPad apps are a highly visible source of innovation, and because they can be whipped up in student dorms, we tend to assume that anything that needs innovating can be whipped up in a student dorm. It can’t. Cures for cancer, dementia and heart disease remain elusive. In 1984, HIV was identified, and the US health secretary Margaret Heckler announced that a vaccine preventing AIDS would be available within a couple of years. It’s a quarter of a century late. And what about a really effective source of clean energy — nuclear fusion, or solar panels so cheap you could use them as wallpaper? We suggest readng the remainder of this research via strategy-business.com

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. Jim is board president of a charter school located in Colorado Springs whose sole purpose is to prepare otherwise disadvantaged students more competitively for college. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.