3 inputs on your way to product market fit

Startup is no land for long lasting leaders. You either get traction or run out of resources. But what happens once you actually get to product market fit? Before product market fit Product-market-fit (PMF) marks such a critical turning point in the company lifecycle. Life changes significantly. But don’t try to get there too early … Product: Trade the fine-tuned …

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 …

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 …

Image as a burden: Changing how we change

This Christmas I visited Amsterdam and Malene Dumas’ exhibition at Stedelijk Museum named ‘Image as a burden’. What a title. In our world of imaging, picturing, documenting and producing manifests of what we believe, the opinion of an image as a burden would find less support. Because images say more than a thousand words. But. Imagine there were no images of Muslim / Jewish or Indian …

Make your innovation a hedging process

They are the largest, probably the among the best in class at what they do. They are highly branded and recognized for what they have achieved. They have more resources than most other players to play with. The smartest people. The most money. They desperately want to stay on top. And yet, they fail. How can Nokia go from one …

Next ‘big thing’: A product of time and hunger

Entrepreneurs, investors, advisors … We are all in the search of the next big thing – trends, ideas, companies, investments. I admit I can relate to this, but we are much better of slightly changing the focus and spending the energy on searching for those who are hungry for success – be it partners, entrepreneurs, ecosystems… We like to work …

Engineering and product are still key to the very best companies

Do you find the following questions and issues interesting? If they were commented by Marc Andreessen? Could Zuckerberg have created Facebook if he weren’t younger than 30?About the philosophy that software is eating the worldCan Spotify and Netflix be successful?What areas are particularly promising in the very near term?Is the perspective different as a VC than as an entrepreneur?On Apple’s …

Want something you never had? Do things you never did!

The Advanced Technology Group is a network consisting of nine independent Danish research and technology organisations – the GTS institutes – who have developed the 110 proposals currently filed at ‘Better Innovation’ (www.bedreinnovation.dk). Here is the sad news: The vast majority (if not all) of the proposals relate to products and services. I am sorry, but this is wrong. Too …

There is no entrepreneurship gene

Rock stars of the business world, freewheelers, opportunists, innovative mavericks, free birds, insiders, outsiders, risk takers, system thinkers, obsessive compulsives, control freaks… Dear child, many names. Fact is, there is still little agreement over the precise definition and understanding of a (successful) entrepreneur, the single most distinct factor apparently distinguishing successful, high-growth entrepreneurs from moderate or low growth entrepreneurs is the higher proportion working …