This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Four Traits Your Next CEO Must Have For Your Organization to Thrive. July 22, 2021 | Anthony Mills. Four Traits. CEOs come and CEOs go. Some – like Steve Jobs at Apple, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, and Richard Branson at Virgin – are excellent. They generally ‘get it’ Others – like Steve Balmer at Microsoft, Jeff Immelt at GE, and Dick Fuld at Lehman Brothers – not so much.
Let's Settle the Debate — Innovation Both Is & Is Not Everyone's Job. May 27, 2021 | Anthony Mills. The Debate. There's an insidious debate that's bounced around for probably the better part of twenty years now. It's the debate of whether or not ‘innovation is everyone's job’ Some think that ‘innovation is everyone's job’ because we have to bring the entire organization into the grand practice of innovation and engage them in finding new opportunities to pursue,
The Secret to High Energy Innovation Spaces. May 15, 2019 | Anthony Mills. Innovation Spaces – which can refer to any space intentionally designed to foster and facilitate good innovation work – come in all sorts, shapes, and sizes. Perhaps the most commonly understood of these is the ubiquitous Innovation Lab. However aside from formal "labs" per se, Innovation Spaces can also be incorporated in many ways into other, more comprehensive spaces, so long as they meet certain cr
The 7 Deadly Sins of Innovation. Mar 03, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Why The Right Foundation Can Make Or Break Your Ability to Breakthrough. In my years of leading and studying innovation, I have come to see that there are seven deadly sins that threaten to derail innovation inside of all businesses. If we as businesses are to therefore succeed at innovation, we must consistently navigate the perils of these sins and pursue a life of "righteous innovation" Sin #1 — Not Making Love.
The Poets, The Nerds, and The Suits. Mar 17, 2014 | Anthony Mills. In the ancient world, there were three roles of influence that tended to engage one another⃜ the Prophets, the Priests, and the Kings. These three danced a tenuous dance⃜ at times at great odds with one another, often over accountability matters, and at times in aid of one another.
When Disruptive Innovation Gets Disrupted. Apr 04, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Why The Right Foundation Can Make Or Break Your Ability to Breakthrough. Imagine the following scenario. Your organization has conceived the perfect idea for a new product innovation. In fact, it will be the most disruptive innovation in this product category in decades. The technology is there and you have line of sight to executing it⃜ or so you think.
Getting Past Creativity — The Case for Innovation Strategy. May 02, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Many people – and I will be the first to admit that this includes some in the innovation consulting community – are of the belief that innovation is all about creativity and the ability to be creative. While, admittedly, creativity is an important constituency of innovation practice, and we wouldn't get too far without it, it is most certainly not the end-all of the matter.
Ignoring the Reflection⃜ Innovation Through a 2-Way Mirror. Jun 19, 2014 | Anthony Mills. In the grand pursuit of business innovation, one of the commonly used approaches is a deconstruction / reconstruction model. In this model, we deconstruct some element of our business (for example, the value basis of a product or service offering) and then attempt to reconstruct a new incarnation of it using a mix of alternative pathways.
Trend Timing — The Innovator's Secret Weapon. Aug 14, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Many successful innovations succeed because they correctly address emerging trends. These trends can be driven by a whole host of factors – technology, evolving lifestyles (e.g. urbanization, gentrification, etc.), economic events, political events, government regulations, and so on.
What's In Your Sandbox? Sep 04, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Have you noticed that the Lean Startup concept has been getting more and more attention lately? It seems to be a favorite subject of bloggers and media professionals. Which is all a good thing really, as it creates the occasion for us to examine what is the "best" way to launch new brands, products, and companies.
The Innovation Generation Has Arrived. Oct 04, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Once upon a time, in the heyday of the Industrial Age, a young marketing, design, or engineering student would graduate from college and go to work for a large corporation, slowly melding into the steady, rhythmic din of bureaucratically-managed, organizationally-structured execution work in product development.
Strategic Planning is Dead. Embrace Responsive Growth. Nov 06, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Strategic planning is dead. Or at least what we once knew as strategic planning – that exercise of defining and setting into concrete some long–term strategy that is going to take our business to the next level in its journey. Indeed, there was once a day – some ways back in our collective industrial past – when a business leader could concoct and set into motion a long–term strategy that would
Seven Roads of Innovation–Based Growth. Nov 15, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Most businesses are in need of finding new ways to grow. It might be a matter of finding new markets, even creating new markets, or just finding new space in your current markets through new technology and products. It doesn't matter which of these it is, the pressure is always the same.
Why Resilient Companies Embrace Strategic Innovation. Dec 15, 2014 | Anthony Mills. According to the American Enterprise Institute , 89% of the companies listed on the Fortune 500 in 1955 are no longer on the list. Many no longer exist. Of those 500 companies, only 61 still remain. Those companies — names like Boeing, Kellogg, Procter and Gamble, IBM, and Whirlpool — have remained because of one thing — a willingness to do whatever it takes to remain relevant and resilient, including constant ch
Who Are the World's Most Innovative Companies? Dec 20, 2014 | Anthony Mills. Ask most folks to tick off their list of who they think are the world's most innovative companies, and you're likely to get something along these lines⃜ Apple, Google, Amazon, Nike, GE, and so on. All are high verve, well known brands. But these are subjective perceptions based purely on top–of–mind recall and lasting impressions⃜ a sort of popularity contest if you will.
Lean is Dead. Long Live Lean! Jan 12, 2015 | Anthony Mills. Twenty four years ago, James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos introduced our world to a modern understanding of the concept of Lean Production. This came as a result of a 5–year study of the automotive industry that culminated in the book The Machine That Changed the World , which celebrated the Toyota Production System.
Market Disruption vs. Business Disruption: The Inertial Disruption Factor. Jan 30, 2015 | Anthony Mills. According to Newton's Third Law of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As with physics, so with business innovation. Whenever an innovation impacts a market, it also impacts the business delivering the innovation. It is as though when the business pushes on the market, the market pushes back.
The Power of a Simple Question. Feb 20, 2015 | Anthony Mills. I like questions. More than answers. Questions have the power to move businesses because they have the power to move the imaginations of those who lead businesses. Answers are great when their time has come, but most businesses jump to answers far too soon, without first asking – and savoring – the right questions.
Bursting the Dam — The "Tipping Point" Market Opportunities. Mar 06, 2015 | Anthony Mills. In our work, we spend a lot of time conceiving, considering, and evaluating new business, brand, and product ideas — some ours, some others. This is all in the name of unearthing new market opportunities through new and innovative value propositions.
Five Reasons Companies Fail at Customer Experience Delivery. Apr 04, 2015 | Anthony Mills. In my discussions with business leaders around the world, I continue to be impressed with the growing recognition of Customer Experience as an engine of sustainable growth. Well–conceived, well–designed, and well–delivered customer experiences are the core foundation for achieving the sort of marketplace leadership that has become the hallmark of companies like Amazon, Apple, Disney, Southwest Airlines, an
On Innovation as a Spiritual Journey. Mar 09, 2015 | Anthony Mills. "The spiritual quest is the expression of the deepest longing to connect with the Whole." — Varadaraja Raman, Hindu academic scholar. Normally I stick to writing about business innovation, and strictly in the context of business. But today I take a moment to depart off course and invite us into a deeper and fundamentally more human question about innovation⃜ a question that transcends businesses and other instituti
Welcome to the Mid Zone of Innovation. Sept 27, 2015 | Anthony Mills. In 1991, Don Reinertsen and Preston Smith introduced the world to the "Fuzzy Front End" of product development. The following year, Peter Koen offered more structure and definition around this concept when he subsequently renamed it the Front End of Innovation, or FEI, a name that has since stuck.
Your Innovation Pipeline Is What You Feed It. Oct 20, 2015 | Anthony Mills. There was once a time, in the early part of the Twentieth Century, when companies could develop a technology, make a product out of it, and then go sell it. It didn't matter much what their customers thought of it, as customers just didn't have that many choices to choose from.
It's Time to Move⃜ Beyond the Culture of Innovation. Nov 15, 2015 | Anthony Mills. Many words have been penned, and many pages written, about that elusive piece of the business enterprise we call "culture" Culture is to a business what the persona and soul are to an individual. It defines who it is, how it thinks, what it does, and what are and are not the right ways for it to move into the future.
Organizational Transformation: If You Want a Different Dance⃜ Change the Music. Nov 28, 2015 | Erika Jacobi. Deep organizational transformation is a combination of changed processes, procedures and behavior. While changing procedures may be relatively easy, transforming processes often stalls at missing consequential behavioral change. A Different Dance. "If you want a different dance, change the music." This African proverb reminds us: If you want to stimulate different actions, f
The Power of an Audacious Vision. Jan 18, 2016 | Anthony Mills. In our work with business leaders around the world, we spend a lot of time talking about the organizational philosophies and cultures needed to guide and nurture innovation in their business. One of the key questions we are often asked is, "how can we drive engagement and ownership within and across our business for these new things we are trying to do?
Images and Metaphors — Finding the Right Agile Organization Design. Feb 20, 2016 | Erika Jacobi. In today's volatile business environment, companies need be able to react quickly to unforeseen circumstances and to turn challenges into innovative opportunities. Mid–sized and larger organizations often struggle immensely with finding an organization design that allows them to grow and stay agile at the same time.
The Innovation Mosaic: Building Bridges Between the Many Perspectives on Innovation. Jun 05, 2016 | Anthony Mills. I have been a student of innovation for more years now than I care to count. One of the things that has always made innovation so enjoyable to me is the fact that every business discipline seems to believe they "own" innovation, a premise from which they have devised their particular flavor of innovation – one that in each case mirrors their unique perspectives on busi
Customer Co-Creation: A Deeper Path to Empathic Understanding. Oct 03, 2016 | Anthony Mills. Each year businesses spend an aggregate of $40B on market research. This is largely in an effort to mine new insights about customers' unmet needs, or to test out new ideas to see if a large enough segment of their customers (or of the general population) will react positively to them.
Racing Toward the Singularity: Earth's Final 35 Years with Human Beings (As We Know Them). Oct 13, 2016 | Anthony Mills. It would seem that we now find ourselves and our world in the very center of one of those quickening maelstroms of time that lead to some sort of inconceivable singularity — a point where the pulse quickens so fast that the only way out is to awaken to some other consciousness of reality.
The Only Three Swim Lanes That Matter to a Business. Dec 18, 2016 | Anthony Mills. In the course of my training with business leaders, we inevitably come to the existential business question⃜ "What is the purpose of a business?" This is a great question, and one with a very simple answer. The purpose of a business is to create value. That's it.
How Companies Innovate Themselves Straight Into Oblivion! Mar 12, 2017 | Anthony Mills. There are a lot of businesses in the world — some estimate 500 million or more. They all provide some manner of product or service that makes our world work the way it does today. Nearly every one of these – based on our encounters with all shapes, sizes, and flavors of them – have some effort in place to innovate.
The Secret Formula for Achieving Market Leadership. Sep 08, 2017 | Anthony Mills. Unless your business strategy is to be a fast-follower (an increasingly risky and dangerous strategy), you invariably have markets or market segments in which your objective is to be the Market Leader. As Jack Welch so skillfully demonstrated while he led GE, Market Leadership is the one real strategy that has long-term staying power⃜ anything less tends toward decline (and often diverts resources from being
The Undeniable Power of the "Garage Experience" Jan 17, 2018 | Anthony Mills. If you're like me and a lot of other entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs around the world, then you've likely romanticized – at least at some point in time – about what it must have been like in great companies like Apple, HP, Google, and Cisco when they were just getting their start – in their founders' garages of all places (or in some cases in their parents' garages).
Meaning Making — How the Innovation-Driven Organization Imparts Purpose & Meaning. Jun 28, 2018 | Anthony Mills. As I visit and observe what I call the "existential festivals" – events like Burning Man, SXSW, TED, Sundance, Bonnaroo, and ArtPrize, for example – I ask myself, "What are people really trying to accomplish here – besides just having fun?
Design Thinking Grows Up — Welcome to Experience Thinking. Jul 03, 2018 | Anthony Mills. Prologue. Design Thinking is an incredibly powerful way to approach the design of just about anything that involves an interaction with people (or other intelligent creatures). Its underlying philosophy of Human Centered Design requires that we develop a comprehensive empathic understanding of the customer and their situation in a particular context.
Wisdom From Above The Clouds. Jan 17, 2019 | Anthony Mills. Have you ever been on a plane flight where as you take off all you can see out the window is hazy and overcast weather, only to at some time later have your flight break through and emerge above the clouds, where all of sudden the sun is shining bright and clear? If so, you'll know how this gives one a sense of achieving clarity after having a long period of uncertainty and doubt.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 29,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content