Greetings! Many consumer companies list product innovation as a high strategic priority. If so, where is evidence of this in the marketplace?

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Innovation: Less Talk, More Action Needed

Greetings! Large companies are realizing that external inputs are essential to help fuel the innovation they need in order to be competitive. Many are looking to partnerships with startups to inject novel capabilities, fresh thinking and nimbleness into their innovation operations. I assert that they could also get a lot more return from their external submission initiatives than they currently do.

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Is Your Company Truly Open To External Inputs?

Greetings! When one thinks of legendary innovators, the names Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison regularly come to mind. Know what they had in common, besides brilliance, tenacity and ambition? According to those who knew them, both could be enormous assholes.

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Innovators Can Be Jerks. We Don't Have To Be.

Greetings! In product concept development, marketers tend to invest most of their time in getting the features and benefits customer language right. They spend much less time focusing on how to describe the technology used to deliver the benefits. I feel they should reconsider this prioritization approach.

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In New Product Concept Testing, The "How" Matters

Proximity matters

Greetings! I had a phone chat with a longtime friend and business colleague of mine to discuss engaging with startups as a means of helping my client to accelerate his company's innovation efforts. I wanted to learn how to connect with the most suitable startups in my client's market space. She began her remarks by advising me: "If you want to be in the game, you need to be at the table."

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Greetings!

Which is worth more: ice or water?

While the two are chemically identical, their respective value will be different to a hockey player and or a swimmer. Corporate technology can be thought of similarly: the same technology may have different value to different customers, depending upon how it is to be used and by whom.   

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What's an introduction worth?

Greetings! Business professionals can attach high value to having someone selectively connect them with another professional to explore collective benefit. What's this networking service worth?

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The Economics of Networking

When the going gets tough...

Greetings! It is tough to be an entrepreneur. Both the risks and the rewards can be great. Some make it, many others don't.

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Entrepreneurial Life and Death

I've repeatedly learned that people often don't share the same expectations when undertaking an endeavor together...at least not initially. These mismatches can create a foundation for frustration and potentially, failure. 

Have any of you parents out there ever asked your teenager to clean his or her bedroom? Sure you have. Is your definition of clean the same as theirs? Probably not.

In speaking with clients and colleagues about the importance we place on individuals keeping their commitments, we uniformly agree that this is key to maintaining good relationships. Many cite "I've been really busy" (IBRB) as being a common excuse given by those who haven't met a time-bounded obligation. What is it about IBRB that makes it the apparent go-to excuse to explain a failure to keep one's word? And why do most of us loathe it so much when it is used with us?