Learning to write good business English works on the same principles as leadership. Leadership is not measured through the leader – how tall, dark and handsome he/she is? Or, how erudite, how experienced, how successful, how full of guts etc. The only measure is – how well it got the followers to deliver better. The …
I have spent days, nay months, fighting with people on what innovation is and what it is not. Only then did I realize that the discussions and dilemma was unnecessary. This is because it did not matter one bit to the guys I was trying to convince and/or impress i.e. my clients At the conceptual …
It’s not about idea generation, stupid! It’s about solution recognition. In most cases, you already have the solution. Only, you are not looking at the right places. At some time, P&G wanted a solution of providing teeth whitening ability to people, in the comfort of their homes. They had the right bleaching gel …
In this post, we move ahead of the Part 1 , which argued that seeking ‘solutions’ is not the best way of capturing customer requirements. Even if the requirement is initially captured in terms of a solution, it can be improved upon in order to provide an innovative solution. If the solution for a …
If you are blocked at one level, look for other ways. They exist, and sometimes offer an even better solution. While trying to invent a new type of air-conditioner, we find ourselves blocked to use the ‘heat exchange effect’ for some reason (patent restriction, cost etc). Does that mean that I cannot proceed with …
Any situation which can be expressed in a ‘If—, then —–, but—–‘ format, can be solved. It is more of a design contradiction than a problem If I do something, then some good can occur, but some bad occurs too. Some typical examples are given below. 1. While designing a car, I have the technical capability to increase …
For a company to innovate, it must get to know what the customer wants. But haven’t we opened up a can of worms by using the term ‘what the customer wants’, so loosely? Which stage of product development do we have in mind while we use this term? It seems that while we are …
Trends have now become a prime tool for innovation through exploiting chaos. Here are two extremely powerful tools that anyone can use to make business sense from trends – Trend-bulletins and trenDNA cards. Both these tools are based on the trend-watching activity. Trendwatch is a systematic activity by trained spotter to scan the globe …
In how many ways can you improve a nut-cracker? Of course, you can change its shape, make it more efficient, make it multi-functional and more. But how about tinkering with it using the FBS approach? That’s the way to create a new nut cracker which no one else can. FBS is the Function, behaviour, …
A high-ranking student in a military academy was assigned the thesis: “The influence of the evolution of military strategies on artillery development.” Six months later he asked for permission to change the thesis to: “The influence of artillery development on the evolution of military strategies.” His research had shown that the evolution of artillery had influenced military strategies, rather …