Competitiveness and Innovation
“I love you, you’re perfect…now CHANGE.” That’s what the market in effect continually tells high-achieving companies—because the world always changes around them. Companies tend to do best today what they did best yesterday…not what they’ll need to do best tomorrow. In working with companies of various sizes, in various industries, I’ve noticed that the most […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
I recently had a conversation with the publisher of a start-up niche business-to-business magazine. We had pointed out several things that we felt were opportunities for him. For one, our view—confirmed with some informal research—that the “look and feel” of his product was not what it could be, and that with a small investment, he […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
I speak often with Eric Garland, a leading futurist, thinker, and blogger. We typically have a free-ranging and—to us, at least—entertaining and enlightening conversation. This time he recorded it. Here are some of the notes we hit: Businesses have always wanted and needed to know about each other’s activities. Until the 20th century, this was […]
I recently managed to get the Knowledge Value Chain® boiled down to an eight-minute introductory video—then had a couple of people comment that it should ideally be half that length! So here, for you the time-challenged, the short-attention-spanned, and the just plain busy, are the key things that—if I had two minutes with you in […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
In a recent post Surfing the value waves I mentioned having purchased an iPad. Here’s the value calculation that drove me to buy it. Of course it’s cool and fun—but does it make economic sense? It first occurred to me in discussions with my wife—who wants a big, flat, thin TV like all our friends […]
One recent Tuesday (June 29th) first thing I got a very excited e-mail from my marketing colleague and friend Professor Plum. “Did you see the thing in the [NY] Times about the Russian spies who were arrested?” (Indeed, I had read it earlier with great interest.) “I know one of those guys, Don Heathfield…he works […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
Picture in your mind your organization’s typical customer or client. Now picture the moment that customer purchases your product (or service). Each transaction with that customer is preceded by some calculation—whether rigorous or informal— that your product is “worth it” compared to alternative solutions. This worth-it-ness is called your product’s value proposition. The sum of […]
Competitiveness and Innovation
We’re obviously proud of our KVC model. We think it helps explain a lot of the mystery surrounding “how to compete in the knowledge economy.” But the KVC is more than just a theoretical framework. At TKA, we use it every week as a tool to solve live client problems. In our offices, we have […]
Recently I met with a team of senior research scientists from a major US corporation. Known for its innovativeness, its products are used by most of us. I thanked them for their creativity, perseverance, and hard work. Then I told them the bad news (which was actually why I’d been invited)…that other people had figured […]
We’re living amidst a paradox in our relationship to information. A recent University of California study finds that the average American consumes information for nearly 12 hours a day, sucking down about 34 gigabytes during that time. Yet, we are continually surprised by stock market crashes, assets bubbles…and who knows what next? We suffer from […]
Happy New Year! Loyal readers will notice the new look, feel, and features of this site. I want to acknowledge the talents and hard work of our developer, Tyler Gore, in making this all happen. We’re also re-positioned the site. It started life as a commercial site for the Knowledge Value Chain® and related activities. […]
Why doesn’t early warning work? While it’s a good idea in theory, in practice it seldom seems to have its intended effect. In every major intelligence failure I’ve looked at, there were clear, credible early signals — and even explicit warnings—that tragically remained unheeded. Why is this, and what can we do about it? For […]