Eureka Moments
Amazon Go: The Experience of No
In Seattle in January 2018 Amazon opened their Amazon Go store to the public with the very enticing proposition: No lines. No checkout. Photo credit: Amazon Removing friction from the shopping process is a strategy that has driven much of Amazon’s online...
The Importance of F*ucking Up: How Mistakes Lead to Better Innovation
I nearly laughed myself sick when I saw this invitation. According to the organizers, FuckUp Nights is the fastest growing global movement of entrepreneurial people who come together to publicly share failure stories. Thousands of people attend FuckUp Nights each...
A Framework for Finding the Right Startup Target
University of Washington Entrepreneur in Residence, Derek Streat, had a daughter who suffered from a rare medical condition. After spending thousands of hours researching her condition and finding it frustrating to have to sift through all the databases for the exact...
Should We Care About This? 10 Questions to Help Assess Macro Trends
In an earlier post, Tornado Sightings, I wrote about the importance of keeping an eye on macro trends. Macro trends are big social and economic shifts – technology, consumer demographics, culture, or historical turnings – that can reshape markets and create big new...
Amazon’s Whole Food Acquisition: 4 Amazon Strategies, 3 Resources, 3 Strategies for the Rest of Us
Food for thought in the grocery business Amazon has been in the news a lot lately, and rightly so. It’s fascinating to be sitting in their back yard where I get to see some of these innovations for myself. In early 2017 they announced an experiment with Amazon Go, a...
To Innovate Better, Try These 3 DIY Ideas to Immerse Yourself in Your Customers’ Lives
Conventional qualitative and quantitative research provides an excellent foundation for understanding consumer needs, but it’s also important to more viscerally understand what’s going on in consumers’ lives, how your products or services could work to help them live...
Tornado Sighting: 3 Ways to Use Macro Trends to Innovate More Successfully
In my last post, I talked about three “Periscopes” to help marketers rise above the day to day work to innovate more successfully. This time I thought it would be useful to talk about a best practice you can use when you do have a chance to step away from your daily...
Periscopes: rise above the day-to-day with these 3 innovation best practices
Anyone leading a well established business faces the challenge of needing to innovate within a large organization while still getting the day to day business done. It’s not easy. Innovation is risky. It involves change. And in the heat of battle it’s tempting to put...
4 Lethal Pitfalls Startup CEOs and New Board Members Must Avoid
The other day I was listening to a colleague describing the difficulties one of his portfolio company CEOs was having with their board. The CEO wanted to go one way. The board wanted to go another way. If they didn’t resolve their differences the CEO would have to go....
Not hearing about any good innovations for your organization? Ask 7 “dumb” questions.
The other day I happened to be in a meeting with a very innovative high tech startup that I will not mention by name for reasons that will soon become clear. Let’s call them Startup X. I know a fair amount about Startup X’s technology and am convinced their company is...
Could your company be missing the most important self-service trend since 1916?
If so, your customers are probably frustrated. In 1916, enterprising businessman Clarence Saunders founded the first self-service grocery store in Memphis, Tennessee. Called Piggly Wiggly (for reasons Saunders would never explain), the grocery store featured open...
From Paraguay, 3 Inspiring Innovation Lessons
From Paraguay, 3 Inspiring Innovation Lessons How artificial hands became a source of pride and 3D technology became a source for social change I had the opportunity to meet Eric Dijkhuis when he was visiting Seattle as part of the Young Leaders of the Americas...