Watch The Video Series
Mapping Innovation Minute
Insights from my bestselling book and ongoing research
Episode 13: The Hair On Fire Use Case
If you’re doing something truly new and different, don’t immediately seek out the largest addressable market. Look for a “hair on fire” use case, customers who need your product so badly that they almost literally have their hair on fire.
Those are the ones who will be willing working to work with you, help you test your product and iron out inevitable bugs and glitches. From there, you can scale up to more profitably opportunities.
To learn more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto: The Hair On Fire Use Case
Episode 12: Don’t Worry About People Stealing Your Ideas
“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas,” said the computing pioneer Howard Aiken. “If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
The truth is that innovation needs combination and few ideas can make much of an impact alone. So if you want your ideas to amount to anything, you’re usually better off sharing them.
To learn more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto: Don’t Worry About People Stealing Your Ideas
Episode 11: The Power Of Asking Why
We’re often faced with complex, seemingly insurmountable problems. One surprising effective technique to get at root causes and start actually solving them is called the “5 Whys.” Watch this video to learn how it works.
For more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto: The Power of Asking Why
Episode 10: #MonkeyFirst Innovation
At Google’s X division, the company’s “moonshot factory,” the mantra is “#MonkeyFirst.” The idea is that if you want to get a monkey to recite Shakespeare on a pedestal, you’d better start by training the monkey, not building the pedestal, because training the monkey is the hard part. Anyone can build a pedestal.
To learn more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto: #MonkeyFirst Innovation
Episode 9: Innovation Is Never A Single Event
All too often, we only pay attention to innovations when they hit the market and forget about everything it took to get them there. Innovation is never a single event. It’s a process of discovery, engineering and transformation.
To learn more, check out my blog post: Innovation Is Never A Single Event
Episode 8: Why Success Often Breeds Failure
We like to think that success always breeds more success, but often it breeds failure. When we hit on a model that works, we hone and optimize it leverage market conditions. When those market conditions change, we find ourselves vulnerable.
The only way out of this trap is to always explore and experiment. Every business model fails eventually. Those that survive in the long term are always looking to build new ones to replace it.
To learn more, check out my blog post, Why Success Often Breeds Failure
Episode 7: A New Era Of Innovation
We’re entering a new era of innovation! In the years to come the pendulum will to swing from iterating and adapting to new applications to developing fundamentally new technologies. The next few decades are likely to look much more like 1950s and 1960s than the 1990s of 2000s.
To learn more, check out my blog post: A New Era Of Innovation
Episode 6: Start With The “Why Not?”
Simon Sinek says that we should “Start with the why,” but often we can go further by starting with the question, “Why not?” It is by traveling down unlikely paths, we end up in unexpected places that take us in new directions.
To learn more, check out my blog post, Start With The “Why Not?”
Episode 5: Great Companies Don’t Adapt, They Prepare
One of the mantas of the digital age has been, “You need to adapt to survive.” But the truth is that once you find the need to adapt, you are already losing. Notice how nobody talks about how Apple adapted to the smartphone or how Google adapted to the search engine.
Great companies don’t adapt as much as they prepare. That’s how you create and dominate new businesses. If you want to win the future, you need to prepare to shape it.
To learn more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto: Great Companies Don’t Adapt, They Prepare
Episode 4: Generosity Can Be A Competitive Advantage
Many believe you have to be a jerk to be a great innovator, but in my research I found just the opposite. Sharing ideas and insights helps you build a strong network of others that are willing to share with you. That gives you a much larger knowledge base that you can use to solve tough problems.
To learn more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto: Generosity Can Be A Competitive Advantage
Episode 3: Dare To Be Crap
The toughest part of any job is to start, but the sooner you get your work out in the open, the faster the flaws can be exposed and fixed. That’s why the best way to produce anything you is to dare to be crap.
To learn more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto: Dare To Be Crap
Episode 2: What’s Your Grand Challenge
To overcome disruption for the long term, simply moving faster is NOT enough. You need to solve fundamental problems and that takes a long, sustained effort.
To learn more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto: Everybody Should Be Pursuing A Grand Challenge — Here’s Why:
Episode 1: Don’t Look For A Great Idea, Find A Good Problem
If you’d like to learn more, check out my blog post on Digital Tonto, Don’t Look For a Great Idea, Find A Good Problem
