May 31, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Selling Established Brands on Amazon – The 3 Most Important Success Factors
What is one of the fastest ways to reach more customers, tap new markets, and test new product concepts? If you guessed Amazon, you’re right. As e-commerce is becoming integral to companies’ go-to-market strategies, having an Amazon strategy is key. For many of our clients, the shift to selling on Amazon is a priority – and […]
May 31, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Getting Out Of The Box Isn’t an Innovation Cure
Contrary to the cliche, just getting out of the box is the worst way to innovate. If there’s a poster-child cliche for innovation it has to be “get out of the box.” I’ve got some breaking news for you, the hardest part of innovation isn’t getting out of the box. In fact, getting out of …
May 30, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Innovation or Not? – Domino’s Hotspots
Innovation can come from a number of different potential sources of inspiration and insight. The most typical source of course is understanding customer needs. This is the source for the whole design thinking movement, but there are still a number of o…
May 30, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Innovation Insights from Teddy Roosevelt
Sometimes one stumbles across insights from unexpected places. Most of the books I have read recently have fallen into the category of histories of other countries (Laos, China, Singapore, Myanmar, Colombia) or studies of how things work (buildings, bridges, rivers, archaeology). I gravitate towards these subject areas because they are of great interest to me …
May 29, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
10 Reasons Why Digital Health Startups Fail
Startups, in general, fail for many reasons. One observer mentioned his top 5 reasons as 1) lack of capital, 2) expanding too soon, 3) heavy reliance on debt, 4) poor strategy, and 5) poor business model and plan. Ultimately, there are two basic reasons: 1)They make stuff no one wants to buy, and 2)they have a business …
May 28, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
NEW PODCAST: The Stories We Tell and Their Impact
Click here for Mitch Ditkoff’s 5/25 appearance on VoiceAmerica — Wanda Wallace’s Out of the Comfort Zone interview. All about the power of storytelling.
Storytelling at Work
Storytelling for the Revolution
MitchDitkoff.com
May 28, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Don’t Break Down Silos, Connect Them
Nobody likes a silo. Or a stovepipe for that matter. These insular structures restrict the flow of information, which makes it hard to coordinate action and adapt to change. In some cases, it can even lead to disastrous consequences like the General Mo…
May 27, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Break The Loop Of Underperforming Innovations
The tangible sales results of new product or service innovations are directly tied to the corporate mindset and systems that created them. Mindset precedes and dictates the systems which develop & launch innovations. If these systems are geared towards optimizing efficiency and minimizing risk, then by nature innovations will remain “close in” and likely underperform. …
May 27, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Biggest Risk You’ll Ever Take
Hint: It’s not what you think it is. Are you a gambler? The answer might surprise you. Risk is part of being an entrepreneur. You are accustomed to taking risks, otherwise you wouldn’t be contemplating or running your own business, right? Well, perhaps, but it has to do with how you define risk and where …
May 26, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How to Create a Culture to Capitalize on Innovation
Creating a Commercialization Culture A presentation by Jay Morgan, VP Global Innovation Bayer Consumer Care given at the back end of Innovation Conference, October, 2015. Jay Morgan shared his story of how Merck Consumer Care (now Bayer Consumer Care) …
May 25, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Real Value of Confusion
Are you confused about how to proceed with your hottest project? Baffled? Bamboozled? If so, take heart! Confusion is not always a bad thing. In fact, it’s often a necessary part of the creative process.
The weirdness enters when you start judging …
May 25, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Why Startups Are The Best Way To Manage Innovation
Innovation has become an imperative for corporations. The importance of having an innovative culture is something leaders no longer debate. In most surveys of corporate leaders, innovation is ranked among the top organizational priorities. For example,…
May 24, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How the U.S. government can boost startups, innovation, and jobs!
The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was signed into law by President Obama in May 2012. The idea was to relax regulations that prevented or slowed early stage investments by non-institutional investors. One of the main achievements of the new law was to allow crowdfunding. Until that point, private investment was limited by the SEC to accredited investors, and only …
May 23, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Innovation is a Cruel Game
So get your patent filed! Sometimes the idea is tremendous but it fails because of the current state of technology or infrastructure. Consider the common remote control for your TV set. The Zenith Radio Corporation launched the first wireless remote control for TVs in 1955. The ‘Flashmatic’ shone a beam of light onto a photoelectric …
May 23, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Why It’s Almost Impossible to Juggle 15 Balls
VIDEO: It All Began with Balls
ARTICLE: It All Began with Balls
MitchDitkoff.com
Idea Champions
May 22, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
WHAT IS YOUR WOW PROJECT?
Here’s the only creative thinking technique you will ever need. Three minutes worth. Ready? Answer this question: “What is one thing you want to manifest in this world before you die — something that will stretch you to the limits and be of service …
May 22, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Leaning into Change Management
Change management used to refer to the practice of controlling changes to a system, but increasingly the term has come to be used more often to describe the profession and the practice of managing organizational change. And within the practice of chang…
May 22, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
5 Simple Questions for Making Tough Life Decisions
I was terrified, but I was comfortable. That was the way it felt almost 30 years ago when I started my first company. I was gainfully employed, making an extraordinary salary, had all the perks and privileges of an executive position in a thriving comp…
May 21, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Day of Innovation 2018 – Presenters invited to apply
Centric is excited to soon announce our 6th annual Day of Innovation Conference conference. Keynote speakers this year will include leaders from LPK, Pitch.co, HeroX, Omnicom Media Group and Second City Works. Additional presenters are encouraged to apply.
May 21, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
What Makes Innovation Districts Successful?
Open innovation, a rarity in sick care, depends on the free flow of information from inside to outside and vice versa. For that to happen, it takes a permeable membrane to drive osmotic flow of information and possible solutions across the separator. L…
May 20, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
4 Innovation Mistakes That You Really Need To Avoid
One of the things that startup guru Steve Blank likes to say is that no business plan survives first contact with a customer. What he means that every idea is wrong. Sometimes it’s off by a little and sometimes it’s off by a lot, but it’s always wrong and the sooner we find its flaws …
May 20, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Allow Innovation Exercises to Expand Business Model
As your innovation efforts begin to move from the ideation to the testing phase, or the co-creation with consumers or customers, outlandish and disruptive concepts present themselves. As messy as children arriving, they show up, saying “feed me, let me scream at the top of my lungs, I’m uncivilized” all without speaking. Don’t be put …
May 19, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Innovative Internet of Everything and Everywhere
No Place Left to Hide Everywhere you look around you, there’s a hidden world layered on top of the one you see. This world is made up of information and data, silently being measured, transmitted, and analyzed. Invisible connections between devices, routers, cellphone towers, satellites, and servers comprise this gigantic network and make everything possible …
May 18, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How Do You Make It Difficult For The Competition To Copy?
Businesses can get so wrapped up in all the excitement of an innovation idea they tend to give very little time to what the competition might do once the innovation has launched. Instead it gets waved aside with justifications like: “The trade and consumers will stay loyal to the first to market.” “It will take …
May 17, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Top 20 Innovation Articles of April 2018
Drum roll please… At the beginning of each month we will profile the twenty posts from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Innovation Excellence. We also publish a weekly Top 8 as part of our FREE email newsletter. Did your favorite make the cut? But enough delay, here are April’s twenty most …
May 16, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Unsafe Thinking – Be Nimble, Be Bold
Risk and failure are inherently uncomfortable for most people, but often risk is required in entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and innovation. And far too frequently, people and companies take the conservative path in both their thinking and their act…
May 15, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Inside Alibaba – Jack Ma’s Digital Innovation Factory
Artificial intelligence. Augmented reality. Facial recognition. Connected “internet” vehicles. Global virtual marketplaces. App-based digital payment systems. Pharmaceutical e-commerce. Humanoid robots. Giant vending machines for cars. This is not just the magical stuff of today’s digital-driven, transformation economy. It’s a snapshot of the cutting-edge innovation work currently underway at one of the world’s most exciting and …
May 14, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
VIDEO: Nine Steps to Creating a Culture of Innovation
Big thanks to Jon Peters, of Athena Online (the Micro-Learning Gods) for getting the word out about my culture of innovation work. Click here to watch the video. And here’s Idea Champions’ Micro-Learning offering to help you raise the bar for innovat…
May 14, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Kindness-At-Work Manifesto
It has recently come to my attention that some of the most loving, passionate, well-intentioned people in the world have a tendency to treat their co-workers unkindly — especially during times of stress or on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, …
May 14, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Why Mindsets Matter in Innovation, Transformation and Digitization
This is the second of three articles on embracing digitization, transformation and innovation. In our last blog “Taking the Path to Digital Transformation” we described how leading innovators, R&D and new-product development have become digital endeavors. How eleven of the fifty companies named in BCG’s 2018 ranking of the most innovative companies – including seven …