May 31, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Don Draper is (Finally) Dead
David Bruel – Marketing, as we learned it, is dead. We were Kings. I graduated from college in 2001. If you wanted to learn Marketing at that time, you had two options: join a consultancy firm or work in FMCG, ideally in the food industry. I had the privilege to be selected by one …
May 31, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Art of Physician Entrepreneurship
Most doctors would agree that medicine, contrary to popular belief, is part science, but mostly art. Most of medical practice is not evidence based. On the other hand, there seems to be some argument whether entrepreneurship is an art, a science or both. Based on my experience of teaching and practicing both, here’s my two cents: The underlying foundation …
May 30, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How Trust Can Be A Competitive Advantage
One of the most rewarding things about writing my book Mapping Innovation was talking to the innovators themselves. All of them were prominent (one recently won the Nobel Prize), but I found them to be the among the kindest and most generous people you…
May 30, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Three Tips on Organizational Change
The essence of timing, improvisation and exiting the realm of reason Leading innovation in organizations calls for changing strategies (objectives, business models), structures (processes, systems, hierarchies and ways of working) and cultures (behavio…
May 29, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
One Thing You Won’t Find in Any Book on Entrepreneurship
No entrepreneur wants to end up doing this, but most will. Here’s how to handle it and the inevitable frustration it brings. The entrepreneurial journey is filled with surprises, joys, and frustrations. Like so many things in life, you can read all you want to help you navigate it, but in the end it all …
May 29, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Unintended Consequences of IoT (Internet of Things) Deployment
Three of the most hyped technologies in recent years include Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Thing (IoT). And how do I know that they are hyped? Because in August 2018, Gartner published its latest hype cycle report for emerging technologies, putting IoT barely past the “peak of inflated expectations” (that’s when we believe …
May 29, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How to Know If You Talk Too Much
Do people sometimes stop listening when you talk to them? Do they start getting fidgety or look away? It may not be their ADD or inability to go deep with you. It may simply be — you talk too much. OK. Enough said. Here is more about the phenomeno…
May 28, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How to Foster an Appetite for Risk by Using Ambiguity as a Resource
Some time ago I had a conversation with Jim Long, former Head of Creative Office and R&D and my mentor, about how innovation could succeed within a company. We agreed that for innovation to be truly transformative, it should be set at a distance where it cannot be interrupted by existing metrics and governance models. …
May 28, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The fine art of inNOvation
Business plan. Those two words have been used a lot to kill a lot of innovative ideas. Yet, it persists in the entrepreneurial consciousness. It’s a mainstay in the manager’s tool box. Sure, it you are going to ask for money, you will in all likelihood need to write a business plan. But, so few entrepreneurs …
May 27, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
When Innovation Goes Wrong, We Shouldn’t Blame Technology, But Ourselves
When I speak at conferences, I’ve noticed that people are increasingly asking me about the unintended consequences of technological advance. As our technology becomes almost unimaginably powerful, there is growing apprehension and fear that we will be unable to control what we create. This, of course, isn’t anything new. When trains first appeared, many worried …
May 26, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Are You Ready for the Biggest Economic and Social Shift of the Past 100 Years?
The changes coming in driverless vehicles are just the tip of the iceberg. What’s yet to come is nothing short of unimaginable. The constant chatter about driverless, autonomous, and electric vehicles is nearly deafening. Yet, in all of that noise what’s most often missed is that the implications these trends will have go well beyond …
May 26, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Innovation is the Means, Not an End in Itself
Innovation is all the rage, and for good reason. The most successful innovators outperform other companies by a wide margin. For example, according to the 2018 Global Innovation 1000 study, the sales growth of top innovators was 2.6 times and the opera…
May 25, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Intuition is Essential for Innovation
In 1996 I conducted a large research program on leadership development. I had been a director in multinationals for a long time, and was frustrated by the lack of behavioural results the leadership curriculum was generating. So I set out to find out wh…
May 24, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The New ‘Golden Age’ of Medicine
There’s No Better Time to Be a Doctor Victor Fuchs and Mark Cullen published an article in JAMA questioning the impact changes in health care systems have on doctors. The authors argue that the medical education establishment should respond to such changes with curriculum reform that includes, among other things, health economics and population health. They further provide …
May 23, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Digital Transformation Is Human Transformation
A decade ago, many still questioned the relevance of digital technology. While Internet penetration was already significant, e-commerce made up less than 4% of retail sales. Mobile and cloud computing were just getting started and artificial intelligen…
May 23, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Emerging Collaborative Tribes, Networks and Collectives
It is becoming widely accepted that collaborative organisations adopt more fluid and loose structures, where individuals are given greater responsibility to take smart risks, make decisions appropriate to their role and the task concerned: Without hierarchy, status, power plays and the conventional “red tape” implicit rules, where people have a hunger to learn, are willing …
May 22, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Even if You Predict the Future Perfectly You Still Won’t Capitalize On It
In 1993 AT&T predicted the future in one of the most successful and prescient ad campaigns ever. They still missed the boat. Here’s what you can learn from their mistake. Editor’s note: Portions of this post are excerpted from my latest book Revealing The Invisible: How Our Hidden Behaviors Are Becoming The Most Valuable Commodity …
May 22, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Combining lean startup and agile with a design-led approach reduces business risk
For most corporations, leading in quality means continually pursuing organizational excellence. This means leaders have to make sure that the organization is fit for its purpose, stays that way, and keeps improving over time. Maintaining quality is much easier when the risks involved are lower. Organizations tend to reduce risk by defining things that can be measured and incentivized. …
May 21, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
It’s not the product, it’s the experience – and service is key
Why would customers choose your product over competitors? You guessed it, the total experience. Not the brand, product features, quality, or price, though these are important. Ultimately, service is what transforms a product into an experience. Service comes in many different forms. Customers shift between channels — phone, email, chat, in store, social media, etc.…
May 21, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
International Intrapreneurship Conference at Orange
2019 February 19th took place at Orange Gardens (Paris/Châtillon, France), a comprehensive conference related to intrapreneurship. 200 people gathered for this Intrapreneurship celebration, a huge success! Following opening by Luc Bretones (Orange), the programme was organized in 3 main tracks: Intrapreneurs testimonials and roundtable with Hadrien Devichi (Société Générale/Elyxir), Jean-Yves Ingea (Thales/Heropolis), Victor Jouan (Accor), Alexis …
May 21, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Are you disruptive or disruptive, doctor?
A friend and colleague physician entrepreneur was recently lamenting the fact that , in business, being disruptive is a good thing , but, in medicine, it can result in , among other bad things, losing your license to practice. Despite that, the AMA wants you to be disruptive. In business, disruptive innovation, a term of art coined …
May 20, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Top 20 Innovation Articles of April 2019
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 20, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How To Create Something Truly Original
I study innovators for a living. Every year, I interview dozens of men and women who’ve achieved remarkable things. For my own part, I publish about a hundred articles a year and my second book, Cascades, will come out this spring. While my achievements pale in comparison to many of those I interview, many believe …
May 19, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
If Hacking DNA Frightens You, This Will Terrify You
In a 9-minute internal video, Google explores the future of hacking DNA We’re all familiar with the double helix that constitutes our genetic makeup, the incredible progress in decoding it, and the potential for hacking it to eradicate disease or even create bespoke organisms. But what most of us don’t know is that there may …
May 19, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Secret Ingredient to High Energy Innovation Spaces
Innovation Spaces – which can refer to any space intentionally designed to foster and facilitate good innovation work – come in all sorts, shapes, and sizes. Perhaps the most commonly understood of these is the ubiquitous Innovation Lab. However aside from formal “labs” per se, Innovation Spaces can also be incorporated in many ways into …
May 18, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
To be agile you have to align your organisational structures vertically
I was working for an international jewellery firm. The grandson had called me in to talk about the succession planning in their family business. After a long conversation about some of the dysfunctional dynamics in the family, I asked to see the organi…
May 17, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How to Score Innovative Ideas
Suppose you are running a pitch competition and need to create a scoring rubric? Or , maybe you are the head of a technology transfer office or innovation center and need to screen lots of ideas? Or maybe you teach innovation and entrepreneurship and n…
May 16, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Brainstorm Facilitation Training for PR and Marketing Companies
Here’s what three savvy PR professionals at Purple Strategies had to say about Idea Champions’ highly engaging brainstorm facilitation training: Conducting Genius.
“Our success as a firm depends on our ability to think about tough challenges in new …
May 16, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
What if it were Illegal to Sell your Product for its Current Use?
Have you ever used a knife as a screwdriver or a shoe as a hammer? If so you repurposed a product for an application that the producer did not foresee. You put the product to another use. This idea can be a fruitful source of innovations for your product or service if you only you …