Production Crisis Ideation
Situation A client’s medical material was clinically successful but had not yet received FDA approval due to mounting production concerns regarding product quality. The FDA had informed the client that without a successful next trial, they would not entertain...
New Platform Concept Ideation
Situation A materials and chemicals client sought to take advantage of major natural resource and energy shortages that they could preferentially exploit commercially over the next five years and beyond. The client specifically sought to either identify and develop...
Innovation Accelerant
The Challenge A major building materials manufacturer was looking to add new products and ideas to their development pipeline. A majority of the client’s innovation resources had become a casualty of the housing recession. Once it was clear the downturn had abated...
Existing Platform Ideation
Situation A client's key market had been declining by over 10% each year for the past six years. Although dominant in their field, technological changes, as well as new customer practices of doing business were slowly decreasing the need for the client’s core...
Deep Context Delivers Insight, Deep Connections Deliver Impact
We’ve all been there. The future. Our lives. What’s next? How do we achieve our dreams? What even are our dreams? Our hopes? Our real desires? Then how do we get there? All too often we ask these deep questions of ourselves, but not often do we see...
Dream or Reality? Awesome Innovation Consulting
Frustration. Irritation. Twenty-five grand. Blowing a hundred grand. Two hundred. A million or three. Have you, your firm tossed this kind of cash at innovation? Classes. Training. Workshops. Books. Articles. It just never ends. The worst part?...
A Meaningful Life
As we open the New Year, 2017, I find myself both thankful yet yearning for more, especially more for my family, friends and colleagues. I’m blessed to have a three-time, three different cancer survivor for a wife – blessed that Robin is here, but also...
Adaptive Innovation : The Keys to Persistent, Revolutionary Breakthroughs
Thanks to a lifetime of friends, teachers, collaborators, suppliers and customers Breakthroughs. Transformations. Revolutions. From the light bulb to flight, from space travel to the iPhone, finding the key to delivering big breakthroughs practically,...
Adaptive Learning : The Upside of Outside…
The world today is more dynamic than ever. This tumultuous change not only can frighten, shock and force changes on dozens of levels, it also amazes, delights and enables as well. What strikes me is our all too common propensity to acknowledge as such but...
Bio-Based One Test : Does Green Make Green
I was recently asked to render some thoughts here....and I still find it amazing how despite all the good intention, the concept of fundamental economics seems still utterly lost on too many. Couple this with often awful climate politics where power and...
Corporate Innovation Fantasy
Has anyone ever read Arie de Gues' 1997 book The Living Company? That seminal work coupled with Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma says it all. Big companies for the most part still don't get innovation but claim to. After a zillion articles, Ted Talks,...
Cultivating Champions Cultivates Success
I've always loved the Caterpillar story. Last year's set of posts highlighting Ken Gray and Nathan Furr’s article on cultivating innovation from the inside highlighted Ken and his team’s efforts developing the 336E H hydraulic hybrid excavator. The focus...
Do Ideas Just Pop Up? It’s the Exact Opposite : It’s a Lifetime
The last few years I've come to really enjoy the writings and talks of Stephen Johnson. His concepts on "Where Ideas Come From" are a refreshing new take on what I suspect is an old idea - ideas don't just pop up, they are, indeed for me at least, the...
EA White Paper : Adaptive Innovation
Adaptive Innovation An Introduction By Adam Malofsky, Ph.D. & Steven Levin Those who excel at anything in their lives have a way of making that effort, that interest, that passion become all pervasive and yet not all consuming in their lives. It's...
Edison, Jobs and The Innovation Lifestyle
Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison are rarely talked about in the same conversation or even the same sentence. Yet while over 125 years apart in general, the two men share a profound approach to innovation that we all can learn from today. Both followed the...
Embracing Innovation Uncertainty
A few days at NASA hanging with some of the world’s brightest reinvigorated my innovation passion. The collaborative discussions and debate affirmed a few powerful beliefs, principally those centered upon great ideas emerge and how one can institutionalize...
Innovation is a Lifestyle, not a Bunch of Metrics
A 2014 Forbes article on innovation metrics strongly implies that measuring activities is critical to success. Maybe. Maybe not so much. At least for the big stuff. Innovation activities simply for the sake of doing something without context and insight...
Lean Startup : How About Lean Learning
Eric Ries has done some seminal work with innovation and product development – a simplification and clarity sorely needed today. His work is powerful for a simplified process and approach that while the steps are minimal they are meant to be highly...