21st century corporate innovation tools

Familiar with the fear of failure or lack of speed in corporations? Although hard to accept, as a corporate innovator you can learn tremendously from startups. Here is why. Corporation vs. startup A corporation is a permanent organization designed to execute a repeatable and scalable business model that they have built over time. In a corporation ‘fear of failure’ inhibits …

Team, product, or market? The X factor of growth

There is this continuous debate on what matters the most. The right team, the product, or the market. Until recently, I would have argued the team before the product. If you ask entrepreneurs or VCs which is most important, the most likely answer would be the team, partly because in the beginning of a startup, you know a lot more about the team than you do the …

Want valuable investors? Talk to them

To get beyond a passive equity investor and capitalize on his know-how, network and other resources, early stage companies should formalize a scalable process for communicating with people close to your company. Here’s a few sources:

Innovation? Forget corporate metrics

If you make your innovation a hedging process – like we discussed here – then how do you lead and manage innovation? What are the particular ways of reversing the process to foster valuable innovation? Leading innovation and what is considered good leadership are not the same. The default conception of the leader’s role – setting out a vision and inspiring people to follow – works when …