Paul is a professional keynote conference speaker and expert facilitator on innovation and lateral thinking. He helps companies improve idea generation and creative leadership. His workshops transform innovation leadership skills and generate great ideas for business issues. His recent clients include Airbus, Microsoft, Unilever, Nike, Novartis and Swarovski. He has published 30 books on lateral thinking puzzles, innovation, leadership and problem solving (with over 2 million copies sold). He also acts as link presenter at conferences and facilitator at high level meetings such as a corporate advisory board. He has acted as host or MC at Awards Dinners. Previously, he was CEO of Monactive, VP International of MathSoft and UK MD of Ashton-Tate. He recently launched a series of podcast interviews entitled Insights from Successful People.
Ingvar Feodor Kamprad was born in 1926 on a small farm in the Swedish province of Småland. He had an austere upbringing and the lessons he learnt in thrift stayed with him throughout his life. At the age of six the boy started a business selling matches to neighbours.
Once you have identified a great idea for a new product or service innovation what do you do? Many firms put together a cross-functional team (XFT) and tell them to bring the product to market. It seems like a good approach. They have budget, people, and empowerment. What could possibly go wrong? Lots of things. Here are six common reasons why XFTs fail to deliver.
Imagine that I showed photos of the seafronts at Brighton, Bognor Regis and Bournemouth and asked you which was which. It would not be easy for most people to tell them apart. Now suppose I added a photo of Blackpool. Nearly everyone would recognise it. Why? Because it has an enormous iron tower which is well-known around the world. The tower is not modern, not used by most visitors to the town and not particularly attractive but it is easily recognisable. Blackpool has something unique and memorable and that is part of the reason why it gets 12 million visitors a year – more than any other seaside resort in the UK.
Business commentators and writers commonly quote Kodak as an example of a company that was destroyed by disruptive innovation.
In business we are trained to be analytical. We respect data, targets, percentages, market shares and ratios. MBA students analyse case studies with detailed spreadsheets. We frame problems in terms of metrics and numbers. For example we might ask:
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