Better Angels
Fight the common inclination to try to get it right right now. There lies the demon analysis paralysis. Instead, strap on your halo and invest like an angel. Prioritize innovation concepts according to five criteria.
Beyond Innovation: Platforms
Platforms set a foundation to spawn multiple innovations. Take these eight actions to push your innovation beyond products to platforms.
Lesson 8. Platforms place smart bets
Smart investors optimize returns by balancing risk. Spread your growth investments across a portfolio of possibilities. Consider this mix, across three horizons of risk & return.
Lesson 7. Platforms produce gravity
Growth strategy depends on the simple yet elusive principle that supply must follow demand. To add innovation as a growth platform, design within the demand curve. Pull in users, partners and participants with gravitational attraction.
Lesson 6. Platforms fail forward
Richard Branson, much like Steve Jobs, made a virtue of failure. His high-profile successes overshadow the failures that taught him where and how to mine growth: fail fast, fail often, fail learning. Fail forward.
Lesson 5. Platforms feel your pain
Stop selling. Start probing.
Find your buyer’s true pain. Fix that.
Lesson 4. Platforms host the party
To build the platform everyone wants, plan the party everyone wants to attend. Then throw the doors wide open.
Just don’t look down
Growth platforms support multiple innovations. Why just create a new solution when you can build the foundation for many?
It’s better on the bottom
Platforms lay the foundation for larger, more comprehensive solutions. Design your platforms with these six unifying characteristics.
Want growth? Propel customer-centered innovation.
Purpose sets direction. Innovation propels growth. How do you build these into the culture of the organization? First – recognize that “culture” is an output, not an input. Culture emerges as an equal and opposite reaction to every action your organization takes.
Roger Mader 