A summary of things you should know about Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent according to Stephen Key: Introduction In this episode bestselling author Stephen Key reveals hisRead More
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]]>In this episode bestselling author Stephen Key reveals his insights on his book, Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent, where he shares his secrets to making profits of product ideas.
In his book Key reveals many stories, tactics, and tips on how to effectively protect an invention idea in order to earn royalties from it in the future. The goal of the book is to teach you how to fill out a patent application for the USPTO, save large amounts of money on the legal expenses that come with patenting, find an excellent patent attorney, and win over a licensing contract.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who have innovative mindsets and want to know the inside secrets of making money off new inventions with or without patents.
A book like this has never been written anywhere, ever because it’s from the business perspective, not the legal perspective.
This book is written in such a way that if you have a simple idea you can read a few chapters and be ready to start immediately. And then I go in from a different perspective if you have a big idea and show you what exactly you need to do.
You can do this and do it with confidence!
This book is for the listeners that have ideas but not sure what to do with it in fear that someone else might take it. If you dig into this book you will learn to understand how to use the tools provided and they are very inexpensive but you’ll learn how to write this information down that has value in that perceived ownership. This book is written in such a way that it gives you ownership.
You will find throughout this book that it is a very technical book but it’s very easy to read and understand. I took a topic that was complicated and
I brought it down to a level that anybody can understand and be able to use these tools that are provided for us. So this book strips away the fear, it shows you how to take a small idea for $65 and have that perceived ownership. It talks about how to structure a licensing agreement even if you don’t have any ownership. It’s time for us to take advantage of our size, to be quick, to be small, to be smart, and take these tools that the USPTO provide anyone in the world, to play the largest game in the world. But you have to understand how to leverage those tools and that’s why this book is very different.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 09:11
“There is no such thing as ownership, it’s only perceived ownership.” – Stephen Key
I have been bringing my simple ideas to market and collecting royalties for each and every one that is sold. I am here to show you how to save money and protect those ideas when you bring them to market.
A few years ago I was in federal court suing a small toy company Legos which took three years and through that whole process I realized that we never really own anything, even if we have patents. We have this fear that we have to have patents to go forward with our ideas and that’s just not true. This book was written from a business perspective about how to take our ideas, bring them to market, and use the tools from the USPTO to our advantage.
The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday
Buy Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent by Stephen Key on Amazon today
Visit InventRight.com to learn more about Stephen, his books, and YouTube channel
Visit Entrepreneur.com and Inc.com to read more articles by Stephen Key
Follow Stephen Key on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
One Simple Idea by Stephen Key
The Dream Cafe by Geoff Crook
The Maker Movement Manifesto by Mark Hatch
Related advice:
5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Stephen Key
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Dream Cafe according to Geoff Crook: Introduction In this episode Geoff Crook reveals all his insights on his book, The DreamRead More
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]]>In this episode Geoff Crook reveals all his insights on his book, The Dream Cafe, where he provides a guide for harnessing creativity and developing a brand designed to disrupt any market.
In his book Crook and co-author Duncan Bruce developed a fresh, innovative approach that is used by major businesses and is designed to product radical innovation that leads to unpredictable outcomes. The goal of the book is to show you how to transform any big business idea into a market disruptor, develop a competitive advantage by taking risks, and effectively implement massive innovation.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who possess a very creative mindset and need a practical guide for turning fresh ideas into highly profitable business ventures that will redefine any market.
The Dream Cafe identifies a crucial president called the avant-garde. Those people who met together in cafes or other venues and people who came from all kinds of disciplines but had in common the passion for challenging convention and changing the world. It was those people that invented the future. And so basically The Dream Cafe takes the position that in the world of uncertainty it really helps if you could look back to a president of people who learned how to do it well and managed to do it systematically across 150 years.
This book is written to allow people to step in and step out of.
Trust your instinct, believe in the potential of serendipity, and recognize that chaos creates opportunity.
If you take the argument that chaos is an opportunity rather than a threat then essentially what you need to come to terms with are some of the qualities which are inherent in the way in which the avant-garde think about the world. Moving in to the notion that dreaming is important and anytime you look at any discipline that created some kind of major disruptive innovation in the world it’s a mystery that kind of fuels you. From there you can grab hold of that stuff and shape it into something that allows you to invent the future. The notion of experimentation has to be a permanent state of being for any competitive business and the book suggest that experimentation is absolute embracing the right to fail. It understands that failure should be part of the innovation process. Other important areas are the idea of habitat and the multisensory space. Multisensory space is the idea that we are only at this threshold of realizing and capitalizing on how extraordinary we are as humans. I suggest that you shouldn’t even think about trying to disrupt this world until you can disrupt yourself.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:59
“I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.” – Marcel Duchamp
I am passionate about creativity and absolutely committed to the idea that disruption allows you to create better futures. I worked at Central Saint Martin’s college as a director of imagination and application and created a master’s program called Applied Imagination which broke just about every rule in education. I’ve done a lot of freelancing in the branding/marketing area and that’s where I got to meet Duncan who I then collaborated with on creating The Dream Cafe.
Frustration was the primary inspiration. It was frustration that the majority of businesses was confronting the context of market unpredictability by investing in trained insight rather than innovation and was simply failing to notice the difference.
Experience and Nature by John Dewey
Buy The Dream Cafe by Geoff Crook on Amazon today
Visit TheDreamCafe.eu.com to learn more about the book
Follow Geoff Crook on LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Innovator’s Method by Nathan Furr
The Business Idea Factory by Andrii Sedniev
Disruption by Design by Paul Paetz
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Steps To Promote Innovation At The Workplace
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Outside Edge according to Robert Kelsey: Introduction In this episode Robert Kelsey gives an in-depth look inside his book, The OutsideRead More
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]]>In this episode Robert Kelsey gives an in-depth look inside his book, The Outside Edge, where he discusses how outsiders can succeed in a world made by insiders.
In his book Kelsey provides a practical guide that explains the ins and outs of getting your voice heard when it comes to being an original thinker and helps remediate the insecurities of unappreciated creativity. The goal of the book is to help you accept yourself for who you are, motivate yourself to harness your creativity, and acquire the skills needed to get your ideas heard.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who possess a unique ability to create new ideas and need help overcoming the feelings of awkwardness when it comes to finding work.
I think because of my personal experience of being an outsider myself I come at it in a very different way and write based on that.
I write my books to be read from beginning to end and because of that it has a very strong structure to it that will act as a good reference guide.
The one word that it all comes down to in the end is the word insight. I want an outsider to understand who they are and the reason why they think like they do. Lastly, I want the outsider to accept who they are so that it stops being disabling for them.
“Focus on the second reaction and if you do that you’ll find that everything lines up in a much more constructive way.” – Robert Kelsey
I am British and lived most of my life in London. I am someone that has always considered myself an outsider and didn’t fit my environment and ended up becoming an entrepreneur. What I’ve realized since then is that most entrepreneurs feel the same way I did and that’s often the reason they became an entrepreneur.
I realized that I had a mental disconnect from other people and it turned me into someone that felt like an outsider and I felt like it was important to write about. The real catalyst for me was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, where he spent 200 or more pages saying that outsiders and misfits had an enormous advantage. I couldn’t believe what I was reading because I always felt outsiders were disabled from their mental blockages and sometimes they don’t even see it. What Gladwell was describing to me were not outsiders that had an advantage, they were eccentric insiders and they were using their advantages that they had inbuilt in them in order to succeed. My book at first looks like its accepting Gladwell’s premise but it’s not, it’s absolutely rejecting it. Ultimately I make the point that outsiders do have some attributes that they can employ to their advantages but they’ve got to learn to employ them.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Buy The Outside Edge by Robert Kelsey on Amazon today
Visit Robert-Kelsey.co.uk to learn more about Robert, his book, and blog
Follow Robert Kelsey on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Seven Sins of Innovation by Dave Richards
The Innovative Entrepreneur by Daniel Spluber
The Freaks Shall Inherit The Earth by Chris Brogan
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Seeing What Others Don’t according to Gary Klein: Introduction In this episode Gary Klein reveals all his insights on his book, SeeingRead More
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]]>In this episode Gary Klein reveals all his insights on his book, Seeing What Others Don’t, where he reveals when, why, and how insights are formed and what blocks them.
In his book Klein shares stories involving his years of cognitive learning research that uncover the origins of creativity and how many successful innovators were able to create their marvelous ideas. The goal of the book is to help you train your brain to be more creative, effectively solve more problems, avoid disruptive idea blockers, and think faster than the average person.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who work in a stressful, fast-paced environment and want to learn how to improve their cognitive thinking skill in order to make fast, intelligent decisions.
My book is based on 120 cases of actual insight research. This is a fresh look of how people actually come up with insights.
There can be some jumping in and out but I suggest you read it straight through.
If there is only one thing the one thing would be this notion of a down and an up arrow. Too often our thinking is over balanced about reducing mistakes and being defensive and there needs to be a balance. We need to balance how much energy we are putting into reducing mistakes and how much energy we are putting into gaining insights.
The first section asks the question of where do insights come from and it not only describes how insights are achieved but it also shows how I came up with each conclusion. The outcome of this first part is a new model of where insights come from. I show that there are several different paths, one is a traditional path, another is a path people have heard of, and the third is a path no one had mentioned before.
Now that we know where insights come from we ask the question why we don’t have more of them. To my surprise I find that there are a lot of forces that work against having insights and the scariest is that organizations are afraid of them. They claim that they want to promote it and believe it but insights don’t work well with organizations because insights are disruptive.
The third part of the book is about what we can do to try to increase insights. I have some suggestions about what we can do personally and I have more suggestions about what we can do to help others gain insights. I also have some suggestions about what organization can do and I am working with organizations that want to increase the number or insights.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 03:38
“I have tried to take some of the mystery out of insights but I don’t want to diminish the aww we feel when we encounter insights whether it’s our own or someone else’s. At these times something magical has happened.” – Gary Klein
I was trained in experimental psychology and over the years I got interested in seeing how people actually work outside of laboratories and specifically how people make life and death decisions under extreme time pressure. So we’ve studied firefighters, nurses, physicians and so forth to see what they actually do.
I would make presentations on my work on decision making to audiences and there was a slide that I would use that had an up arrow and a down arrow. The down arrow was ways to improve performance by reduction and the up arrow was about what to increase in order to improve performance. What you wanted to increase was insights and so I would tell groups that and they resonated to it. They kept asking me questions about the up arrow that I didn’t have answers to. Finally I decided I need to do some research and study the up arrow which is what led me to writing this book.
What Computers Still Can’t Do by Hubert Dreyfus
Buy Seeing What Others Don’t by Gary Klein on Amazon today
Visit PsychologyToday.com to learn more about Gary’s blog
Visit ShadowboxTraining.com to learn more about Gary’s training techniques
Follow Gary Klein on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Innovative Entrepreneur by Daniel Spluber
Anticipate by Rob-Jan de Jong
The Myths of Creativity by David Burkus
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management according to Jock Busuttil: Introduction In this episode Jock Busuttil takes a deep dive into hisRead More
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]]>In this episode Jock Busuttil takes a deep dive into his book, The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management, where he provides a roadmap for mastering product management and avoiding product failure.
In his book Busuttil shares real-life stories and experiences of other companies who are successful at product management and know what it takes to meet customers’ needs. The goal of the book is to help you improve product management skills, understand what a product manager does, know the difference between good and bad products, and increase the success rate of a product.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are new to the product management and looking for a step-by-step guide to creating, promoting, and selling a product that customers will love.
The main difference is that most product management books are telling you about the process and while there are values in those kinds of books I also felt the need to explain to the reader the realities of product management as well.
Each chapter is self-contained so if you want to read the five chapters in different orders you can.
First and foremost it has to be empathy, the ability to put yourself as a product manager into the shoes of your users, the customers, the people in your organization that help you create this fantastic product. And understand what their needs are over yours because ultimately you are not going to be the target market.
The purpose of chapter one is about understanding what exactly product management is and what it all involves. It’s thinking about this concept of bouncing what I call three rings which refers to a diagram that divides up the practices of product management into three main areas. The three areas are user’s experience, technology, and the business and in the center of it all is the product manager. Really what all that means is that you are balancing very different needs of the user experiences needs and problems with the needs of the business and then also bouncing that with the technology and the people who are building and creating that particular product. Product management is one of those things that a lot of people have heard about but not necessarily know exactly what that means.And then we talk a little bit more about how product management evolved over the last 60 or 70 years to where we are now. With that is understanding that people’s individual parts in product management aren’t necessarily direct. It comes down to product management is really about the fundamentals of understanding users and their problems and being able to solve them with a viable, sustainable, profitable product.
That takes us into checking to make sure you are on the right path. We talk about the problems and the questions that you need to ask about whether there is a market for that particular product. Product management is not so much about managing product but it’s actually about managing the people involved in your product. We go through a variety of different people you’ll be most likely working with such as developers and designers. And then we talk about marketing and sales and what tough jobs they have and understand that they each have their own interesting quirks. It’s important to understand that you are working with all different specialists and without them you’d never be able to achieve the product you have.
From there we go into thinking about success and failure. So even if you do the right things there is still always that chance that your product won’t succeed. There are a number of things to increase your chances of success but it doesn’t necessarily ensure success.
The last thing we cover in the book is time management which is one of these soft skills that is so important because you are juggling all these different things and you need to be able to organize yourself.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 04:05
“Good designers can take the complex and make it profoundly simple. Great designers will also stir your soul bewitch you with the beauty of their design.” – Jock Busuttil
I have been a product manager for over a decade and working in software for a few years longer. I have worked for a variety of different companies over the years ranging from small startups to huge multinational corporates and learned a great deal along the way. More recently I decided to branch out on my own and now running my own product management consultancy called Product People.
This was the book I wanted most myself when I was starting out in product management. Most of the books that were available told you about how to go about doing it but it didn’t tell you what it was really like. This book was a way for me to tell my story to others from someone who has actually been through the process personally.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
Buy The Practitioner’s Guide to Product Management by Jock Busuttil on Amazon today
Visit iManageProducts.uk to read more articles by Jock on his blog
Follow Jock Busuttil on LinkedIn and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
The Maker Movement Manifesto by Mark Hatch
Disruption by Design by Paul Paetz
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Disruption by Design according to Paul Paetz: Introduction In this episode Paul Paetz takes a deep dive into his book, Disruption byRead More
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]]>In this episode Paul Paetz takes a deep dive into his book, Disruption by Design where he shows you how to create products that disrupt and then dominate markets.
In his book Paetz provides a handbook of lessons that describe the differences in innovation techniques as well as examples from successful innovators that have disrupted markets and ones that should have but failed. The goal of this book is to teach you how disruption happens, where to look for disruptive opportunities, what it takes to be disruptive, and how to market disruptive products.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs who have ideas big enough to change the way we live, but need help developing and launching their product into a specific market.
In Disruption by Design I have my own outline of methodology for predicting when disruption is likely and I provide a how-to guide that walks you through building a product, marketing strategy, and a business model that will enable your company to be disruptive. It’s also the only all in one book that summarizes everything from the theory, to prediction, to the practical how-to information and then gives you tips on how to stay on top after you’ve succeeded.
It has been written in a way that there is a flow from one section to the next but you can also jump in and out where needed.
The key idea is that you can design a company and a product to be disruptive and if you understand what the causal factors. If you follow these steps and design your business model correctly anybody can build a disruptive innovation from the ground up.
I hope entrepreneurs and innovators get a solid understanding of what causes disruption and how to do it on purpose.
The first section of the book is primarily about summarizing the theory and how to predict disruption.
The second section is the nuts and bolts of creating the product and marketing strategy and business model. I identify job to be done theory and how you identify products. And then I run through all the key marketing strategy points of segmentation position, pricing strategy, and so on.
And the third section is about what to do after you put the strategy in place and you’ve started to succeed at disruption.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 08:32
“The product is what you are for not what you do.” – Paul Paetz
I have been in the technology business over 30 years now and the first 2/3rd of that I was at a number of different startups and companies. I went out on my own after that and started a marketing services company and then joined a friend who was building a company providing services in disruptive innovation. From there I started Innovative Disruption which is a company that I run today providing services to disrupters and companies facing disruption.
There are a ton of books out today on disruption and most of what you see in the media is incorrect. The majority of startups aren’t in a position to afford my services and I think anybody can afford the $30 that the book cost.
The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton Christensen
Buy Disruption by Design by Paul Paetz on Amazon today
Visit InnovativeDisruption.com to learn more about Paul and his company
Follow Paul Paetz on LinkedIn and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Cause A Disturbance by Ken Tencer
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Steps To Promote Innovation At The Workplace
5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Stephen Key
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Lean Enterprise according to Jez Humble: Introduction In this episode Jez Humble takes a deep dive into his book, Lean Enterprise whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Jez Humble takes a deep dive into his book, Lean Enterprise where he uncovers how high performing organizations are able to innovate at scale.
In his book Humble sifts through case studies, principles, and patterns of very successful well-known companies providing you with an action guide to help you rethink how to run your business. The goal of the book is to teach you what it takes to implement the methodologies he presents, manage large-scale projects, create a non-traditional management style, and accelerate innovation.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who run a well-established organization that is having trouble adapting to changing market conditions and need a fast, innovative approach to scaling up.
I don’t think anyone has written a book that talk about how to transform enterprises that need to be able to win creating digital products in this environment where you have short product cycles. There are books about how to change culture, there are books about leadership, but there is no book that really ties all these things together in the context of building digital products for large enterprises.
This book is very dense and the first two chapters need to be read straight through. The rest of the book you can dip in and out where needed.
For me the real epiphany of the book is this idea of taking a scientific method and adopting it for product development and for process improvement.
We start off by talking about the fact that lean enterprise is the result of culture. Even though the book is about how to work in a domain of technology the point of technology is really to enable humans to collaborate more effectively and more rapidly. In an enterprise context it becomes really difficult because you got a large number of people with a wide variety of backgrounds who all have to work together in order to achieve a common purpose. And the question is how do we do that rapidly at scale? The answer to that comes from military doctrine. The book is primarily about how you create alignment at scale, how you enable everyone in the organization to make the best decision from the organizational point of view despite their limited knowledge.
The second chapter dives into the product cycle and the product development cycle and there are a number of well named models for the enterprise portfolio. This is increasingly important in the modern world where product development cycles are so short.
Part two of the book describes how to work in the explore domain where exploring a number of ideas knowing that most of them won’t be successful. This explores how to adopt the lean startup methodology in an enterprise context.
Part three of the book describes how to work in the domain where you have validated products and you need to actually exploit it and develop it at scale. The key part of exploiting is actually around driving down cost, improving quality, and improving value to customers and that demands a completely different approach. For that we need to pursue process improvement which means enabling the people doing the work to actually try out new ideas to experiment new ideas in terms of how to increase quality.
There is a piece on engineering practices because engineering practices are poorly understood. Most people are going into management in large companies not necessarily to really understanding how to work in the digital domain and how to build products where software is a competitive advantage. And so we spend a bunch of time discussing how to do that and how to take an experimental approach through product development.
The last part of the book is about how to create a culture of innovation. As an enterprise you can’t afford to hire the top of market people who have exactly the skills and behaviors that you want. You have to invest in developing your people so there is a whole section on growing a culture of innovation rather than taking shortcuts. We talk about financial management and how you can do budgeting, how to do IT in a way that creates a competitive advantage rather than being a cost center, and how to get started using a case study from the UK government digital service.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:19
“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at the given time is a function of power and not truth.” –Unknown
I am a Vice President at Chef, a lecturer at UC Berkeley, and before Lean Enterprise I wrote Continuous Delivery. My background is in software engineering and I’ve worked in multiple industries, in multiple companies, helping organizations get better at delivering high quality valuable software products.
Lean Enterprise is about how you create organizations that are able to work in short development cycles, build products rapidly, and get feedback. And that requires us to change the way we think about portfolio management, financial management, culture, and pretty much everything else. All these things need to be a bit different in order to compete in this world where we have these very short product cycles.
Toyota Kata by Mike Rother
Buy Lean Enterprise by Jez Humble on Amazon today
Visit ContinuousDelivery.com to learn more about Jez and his books
Follow Jez Humble on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Exponential Organization by Salim Ismail
Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Innovation in the Family Business according to Joe Schmieder: Introduction In this episode Joe Schmieder shares his book, Innovation in the FamilyRead More
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]]>In this episode Joe Schmieder shares his book, Innovation in the Family Business where he takes a thoughtful look at innovation in the family business industry.
In his book Schmieder shares a variety of insights and best practices applicable to family businesses more generally. The goal of the book is to help you dissect the relevant data and provide a working framework with which you can innovate your own family business and stay relevant to your specific market niche.
This book is perfect for family business leaders or any executive leading a family owned business who is in search looking to reinvent or implement the best practices for family businesses.
The first differentiator is that we are combining innovation and the family business into one book. The books that are available on the topic are mainly academic research manuals so I have combined the research material with about 50 family business stories to help describe the many different areas where family firms have been able to effectively use innovation to grow the value of their business. The book is a combination of research and hands-on practical examples of how family businesses have effectively used innovation in their firms.
It’s definitely a jump in, jump out kind of book. It’s not a real long book so you can also read through the whole thing.
Developing a culture of innovation is the most important thing in the family businesses. So creating the culture of innovation is the biggest takeaway from this book.
In chapter one, discussing the family business difference, I talk about the family business difference and how to capitalize on it for innovation. So I am detailing the innovation drivers and set it apart from other businesses and these refer to things like the trait of having a long-term horizon compared to public companies. And also the fact that family businesses have been phenomenally successful at incremental innovation verses breakthrough type ground breaking innovation. We also layout the differences how families use innovation in other areas of the business like in their organization structure. And how they are using succession in an innovative way as well as training the upcoming generation to be more innovative.
In chapter two I talk about creating a culture of innovation and how one family in particular created a framework called structured chaos. Structure chaos is a way to have some stability and structure in business while still being free flowing and chaotic enough where you can have an innovative spirit. In this chapter we take some of the drivers that were discussed in chapter one and show how they can be used to create an innovative culture that can infuse the organization with a mindset that embraces change whether than fighting it.
Chapter three is one of the longest chapters which is on product and service offerings, new ventures and startups. And that is what it takes to create a process for innovation. I outline in this chapter four different processes that are used out there for product and service development. But the conclusion is that you don’t have to strictly follow any of these one processes but rather create a process tailored for your company and follow the process, have it become part of the culture so that it’s not just done in a verbal context.
Chapter four is about funding and measuring innovation. It’s difficult to find examples of this because people don’t always fund innovation in a clear way. So how to capture different sources of funding in a family business are described and then the types of metrics used to measure innovation from a percent of sales coming from new product to how successful succession has gone is all described in this chapter.
In chapter five I dive into the next generation which could be siblings or cousins that are coming into the family business and what it takes to re-innovate or re-energize or reinvent the family business. As many know today the pace of change is so rapid that if people aren’t looking ahead and trying to figure out what the next offering should be then they are going to slip behind. In today’s world the younger generation is so much more attuned to digital marketing and digital means that it’s a great opportunity for them to dive into re-innovating a family business through some type of digital approach of format.
The sixth and seventh chapters deal with governance and succession. Sixth is talking about leadership succession and that means passing the business from the current leader to other leaders. I also talk quite a bit about governance and that is how to use advisory boards and family counsels to help with the relationships that support innovation in a family business.
In the eighth chapter I talk about moving innovation forward and what it takes collectively to make sure that your family business is being innovative and that means making change that is meaningful and adds value to the business.
“Developing a culture of innovation is not only necessary, it is more exciting and fun than just sticking with the status quo.” – Unknown
I am a family business advisor; I have been working with family businesses for over 35 years. I ran two family businesses as an executive for 25 years and I have been consulting with family businesses for the last 10 years.
I was very interested in helping family businesses continue their firms for more than one, two or three generations. So I worked on the book to help family members and executives who are interested in innovating in the family business. And I also try to inspire those enterprising family members to focus more energy and resources on innovation and change throughout their family business instead of just relying on the status quo. I have this passion to make sure we can keep family businesses strong because they do generate the majority of the income and the jobs throughout our economy.
Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge
Buy Innovation in the Family Business by Joe Schmieder on Amazon today
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Related books:
The Innovator’s Method by Nathan Furr
The Innovative Entrepreneur by Daniel Spulber
CoupleCEO by Heidi and Scott Shimberg
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Business Model Navigator according to Michaela Csik: Introduction In this episode Michaela Csik takes a deep dive into her book, TheRead More
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]]>In this episode Michaela Csik takes a deep dive into her book, The Business Model Navigator, where she shares 55 business models that make up 90% of the most successful businesses in the world.
In her book, Csik and her co-authors provide the blueprints you need to revolutionize your business and implement powerful change. The goal of the book is become a toolkit for you to adapt and innovate your business model and to understand what other business models are, who invented them, who uses them now, and how to apply them to your business.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are creating a brand new business or are simply looking to reinvent their current business model in order to deliver the results they need.
What’s unique about our book is that we don’t just provide a process but we also provide the recipes that entrepreneurs can use. We provide business model designs and patterns that can be used by anybody to design a breakthrough business models in their own industry or market.
There are different ways to jump into the book. We have three main part of our book and the first part covers the basics of business models and business model innovation. So if you want to start with the basics you can start at part one.
There are two concepts that are given as inspiration to entrepreneurs and can also be used in practice. The first one is the business model innovation map which can be found on the inside front cover of the book. This map gives in one picture all of the 55 different business model patterns. It’s a very simple and catchy illustration of the 55 models. The second concept is the pattern cards which are explained in the book. The pattern cards are a tool that we developed of how those 55 models can be used.
We have three main parts in the book. The first part is providing the reader with our introduction to our business model concept. We help the reader in providing a framework and we say that business model is based on four main dimensions, the what, who, why, and how. We also introduce the business model navigator which is the process that entrepreneurs and companies should follow when they want to design a breakthrough business model. In the core of The Business Model Navigator there are concepts and patterns which are explained more in depth.
The second part of the book is the heart and the core of the entire book which introduces the 55 business model patterns. For each pattern the reader will find an explanation of the origins of the pattern. We show you which company or entrepreneur was the first to ever use this pattern and we give a background of the pattern itself. We also explain and introduce examples of innovators or companies that have used these patterns in the past to generate the business model in their own industry. Also for each pattern there are different recommendation of when and how the patterns should be applied and what the entrepreneur has to take in to account.
In the third part of the book we give tips and tricks about how an entrepreneur or company can really implement our concepts of the 55 models together with The Business Model Navigator.
“90% of all new business models aren’t actually new; they are based on 55 existing patterns.” – From co-authors of The Business Model Navigator
I am working as an Innovation Manager at Holcim Technology, one of the world’s leading suppliers of cement and aggregates and there I am mainly responsible for new business models. Before that I worked at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and during that time I had the chance to work with Oliver Gassmann and Karolin Frankenberger on The Business Model Navigator book.
We see a lot of companies that are ahead of the competition. So business model has become in the last 10 to 15 years a major driver of success. It’s not enough to be just good in product innovation anymore but in a way the business model is becoming more and more important. The paradox is that most companies don’t have the right tools to be anywhere different when it comes to their business model so there is a huge gap between importance of business model innovation and the tools that are available to be innovated in this particular area.
Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim
Buy The Business Model Navigator by Michaela Csik on Amazon today
Visit BMI-Lab.ch to learn more about the book and the tools that come with it
Follow Michaela Csik on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Crazy Is a Compliment: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags by Linda Rottenberg
The Risk-Driven Business Model by Serguei Netessine
A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Myths of Creativity according to David Burkus: Introduction In this episode David Burkus shares his book, The Myths of Creativity whereRead More
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]]>In this episode David Burkus shares his book, The Myths of Creativity where he reveals the truth about how companies and people generate great ideas.
In his book, Burkus highlights the mistaken ideas that hold you back and shows you how anyone can embrace a practical approach to finding the best new ideas, processes, and programs. The goal of the book is to teach you what causes you to be creative, what makes someone more creative than others, and how you can develop a consistent flash of creativity.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who struggle with being creative or makes excuses for not coming up with ideas and needs help overcoming the obstacles of brainstorming new ideas.
Most creativity books are about how to have more great ideas. In my book I take a step further back and explain that none of that stuff matters unless we address some of the fundamental beliefs that you or people on your team have about their way to tap into their creative side. If you just read a bunch of books about technique but you don’t change your world view about the role creativity and innovation plays and building a company or leading a great team, than all those books and technique are going to be useless.
You could jump in and out of it but only if you read the first chapter first.
The number one myth that I would want the reader to takeaway would be the mousetrap myth. The second myth I would want the reader to takeaway is what I call the Eureka Myth which is exactly that it just came to me idea.
The stories that we tell ourselves are true even if they are not true. The more you tell yourself that story, the more it becomes true and in psychology this is called conformation bias. Conformation theory says that we selectively filter in and filter out information depending on how it confirms our preexisting way of looking at the world. There are some stories that we are telling ourselves that need to be rewritten and I take aim at 10 of them in the book.
As far as for entrepreneurs there are a lot of stories or myths that I think are really damaging if you believe in them. One of probably the most prevalent is what I call the lone creator myth. The lone creator myth is this idea that prolifically creative people were totally lonely people too. Psychology shows that creativity is a team sport, the more minds we have functioning well the better we are. Somewhere along the line the people who make a dent in the world we love to rewrite their history and make it look like they did it all by themselves. This is really damaging because when we are trying to make our dent in the world we feel like we are failing if we end up needing help. But in reality everybody who ever made a significant enough impact in the world to have their collaborators forgotten, have collaborators. So it’s important that we tell the story in a way that lets you know that if you have to partner with people you are not failing but rather you are doing everything everyone important ever did.
Another more damaging myth as far as entrepreneurship is concerned is the one that I close out the book with which I call the mousetrap myth. The term mousetrap comes from this phrase that if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. Great ideas get rejected all the time and we like to joke about this now but it’s a real issue. In times of uncertainty we are more likely to say we want creative ideas but when we are presented with them we reject them in favor of tried and true stuff that we know. This can create a problem because as an entrepreneur you can be launching your product or service and facing some initial resistance and instantly feel like that means your idea doesn’t have merit. In reality your idea may very well have merit but you are just facing this cognitive bias. If you have a groundbreaking idea and it really does have promise but you’re struggling to get the world to see it, take heart and keeping working.
These are just 2 or 10 stories in the book that all begin with this premise that the stories that we are telling ourselves are true even if they are not true. There are a lot of stories about how creativity works, how innovation happens in big companies, and startups that need to be rewritten if we are going to reach our innovation potential.
“Creativity is a team sport.” – David Burkus
“Creativity thrives under constraints.” – David Burkus
I am the husband to one wife and father to two kids but I’m also the father of a third kid, The Myths of Creativity. When I’m not in airport lounges on my way to talk about the book I am in the classroom where I teach at Oral Roberts University.
I did not set out to write a book about creativity and innovation. I have a Master’s degree in Organizational psychology and a Graduate degree in strategy and leadership, and my background is in leadership. I wanted to know what the leaders of those creative companies do differently than leaders of non-creative companies. The inspiration for the book was me wanting to explore where the differences and perception were around the role of creativity in organizations. I also wanted to know what the psychology research said and where those discrepancies really made a difference.
The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin
Buy The Myths of Creativity by David Burkus on Amazon today
Visit DavidBurkus.com to learn more about David, his book, and more exclusive content
Follow David Burkus on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Rhythm: How To Make Great Things Happen by Micah Yost | One Simple Idea by Stephen Key | The Seven Sins of Innovation by Dave Richards
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Steps to Promote Innovation in the Workplace
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