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From the category archives:

Creativity & Innovation

Invisible gorilla of unmet customer needs

by Michael Dalton
Are unmet needs your invisible gorilla

Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes In their new book, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, Chabris and Simons share a story where study participants were tasked with counting the number of times a basketball was passed during a one-minute film. Halfway through the film, someone in a gorilla suit walks [...]

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Is your innovation too flexible?

by Michael Dalton
New Product Development Processes - How flexible should you be?

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes A frustrated business executive recently asked me to help diagnose his company’s new product development processes. They had taken several new products most of the way through design only to have to go back and revise the design, and he felt like they were starting to go in circles. [...]

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Are you pricing for value?

by Michael Dalton
Maximize B2B profits with pricing for value

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes The subject of pricing makes most people uncomfortable – including those involved with new products. No surprise there since many organizations keep the responsibility for pricing in either finance or product management. But not including pricing strategy as a key, early element of your new product process is a [...]

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Podcast: Accelerating product development with TOC

by Michael Dalton

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes Here’s a 3 part interview with Business 901′s Joe Dagger where we discussed applying Theory of Constraints to innovation, the Customer Value Lens, and open innovation as a tool to elevate the innovation bottleneck. Joe normally focuses on applying Lean methodologies to marketing, but he’s big on the subject [...]

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Naked Innovation – three fears that mask opportunity

by Michael Dalton
Naked innovation with customer value lens

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes Patrick Lencioni’s new business fable, Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty is a short, but thoroughly enjoyable read about how being open, vulnerable, and transparent can help consultants and service companies do a better job for their clients. But it got [...]

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Avatar: A lesson in managing innovation risk?

by Michael Dalton
Avatar

Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes Who would have guessed that a movie about blue aliens could teach us anything about new product innovation? Of course, I'm not talking about the movie itself, but the story of how it was made – something that was chronicled in a recent Business Week article – King of [...]

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What customers want – and why you should never ask

by Michael Dalton
What customers want – and why you should never ask

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes Most companies have more new product ideas than they have people to pursue them, but half still struggle with new products that under perform in the market. So how can you identify the most important new product ideas – the ones that customers want and will buy? How do [...]

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One author’s journey to write a book

by Lynn Dessert

Reading time: 8 – 13 minutes I met him several years ago when he was a client of mine. When he left the corporate world to start his own business, he called me up and asked for some advice and support. Today, Mike Dalton is a successful consultant who just wrote his first book – [...]

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26 Mind Mapping Tools to Get More Productive

by Lynn Dessert

Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes Last year, I attended a mind mapping seminar. If you do not know what a mind map is, go here for a quick summary or scroll down to the bottom of the post for a video. Mind mapping is a powerful tool, which appeals to both right and left-brain [...]

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When selling your new idea is your constraint

by Michael Dalton

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes In a recent Fast Company article and video on Open Forum, Dan & Chip Heath, co-authors of Made to Stick, look at how to explain new ideas – what your innovation is and what it does. If ideas aren’t readily accepted, they can die quickly, and there’s often a lot [...]

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Want More out of Your New Product Launches: Avoid these three mistakes

by Michael Dalton

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes It’s amazing really. The average company spends 3.6% of net sales (which can exceed 40% or more of their EBIT) on R&D, but only 50% are satisfied with what they get in return. For many industrial or B2B companies, the new product bottleneck occurs at market launch. When this [...]

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Keeping Your Eye on the Future

by Lynn Dessert
InseparableMissions

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes Last Friday, I attended the third annual Eyes on the Future Summit in Rochester, NY discussing our regional economic efforts. There were over 1400 people in attendance; made up of small businesses, large businesses, educators, government and students. The keynote speaker was Richard A. Bendis, president and CEO of [...]

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When no one wants to change: 6 questions that lower the defenses to improving innovation

by Michael Dalton
Theorry of Constaints

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes Why is change so hard? Most people will tell you that it’s because people naturally resist change. I really like Eli Goldratt’s response to this argument:  If a very wealthy person that you knew and trusted offered you a huge sum of money, say $50 million, with no strings [...]

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