As a former intrapreneur and current professor and entrepreneur, I’ve made a number of observations about innovation that I’d like to share.
Many years ago, I created and delivered training for resellers of LiveVault, one of the first online backup services. At the time, what we were selling was very new and counterintuitive to most of our target customers. We were basically telling them that what they were doing and had been doing for many years (often …
For the past year, I’ve been working with a Baptist minister, Rev. Jeffrey Brown to help him fund and scale his violence reduction work. Rev. Brown has spent the past 25+ years helping Boston and 21 other communities reduce violence. His TED talk tells the story about the The Boston Miracle — a 29 consecutive month period …
As my @Hultbiz class of 2016 gets ready to graduate later this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about what advice to give them about getting ahead professionally in an increasingly competitive world. I’d like to offer something beyond simple platitudes like “work hard,” “know what you want,” and “be your own advocate.”
As my graduate students @hultbiz near their graduation, I thought I’d share some practical ideas about finding a great job that I’ve be sharing piecemeal with them as they’ve asked: Build and actively manage your professional network. This is more than just going to job fairs. With apps like Meetup and incredible events and organizations, there …
The opinions other people form and adjust about us can be critical personally and professionally. People’s opinions of us give us our practical authority, our ability to influence and our ability to draw satisfaction from our work. Though we may often feel powerless to shape the opinions that others have of us, the truth is that we have much more influence than …
My MBA start-up competition @hultbiz just finished. My best teams were awesome. Every team demonstrated plenty of inspiration and perspiration, but the best teams were willing to do a few very uncomfortable things that the average teams weren’t.
We all crave simplicity and causality. We want to understand the world around us. We want to believe that we do. I recently met a woman who survived an horrific workplace shooting. She never wants to feel that vulnerable again. So, she wants to have a gun with her at all times. We can all empathize. …
Is explicit skin-in-the-game the reason that lean and agile are so novel and impactful? Would you rather fly on a plane controlled by the world’s best pilot remotely from a control center or on a plane flown by an average pilot in the cockpit of your plane? I know my answer. In the old models of building …
I’m currently coaching 16 MBA teams in an entrepreneurship competition. I’ve been teaching them to use Lean Canvas and lean principals to build their business cases and ultimately their businesses. Here are 3 principal insights that I use to help my students move from “why do we have to fill-out this stupid chart…” to “wow, this is powerful…” …
Many years ago, I created and delivered training for resellers of LiveVault, one of the first online backup services. At the time, what we were selling was very new and counterintuitive to most of our target customers. We were basically telling them that what they were doing and had been doing for many years (often …
The perfectly wrong person to put in charge of building a new product Read More »
I’ve been struck by how many times I’ve heard people say – “I hate marketing” or “I hate being marketed to.” While I’ve probably said the same thing myself, I feel myself nonetheless getting defensive. It makes me uneasy. I would argue that what they’re really saying is that they hate BAD marketing. They dislike being …
Nobody really hates marketing, but everyone hates BAD marketing (updated) Read More »
As a group, startup founders are an incredibly diverse collection of people. If you were in a room with 50 randomly selected founders, you’d find yourself with people from every demographic group. They’d have many different skills and have had a wide variety of life experiences. Some would be introverts. Some would be extraverts. Some …
What do successful startup founders have in common? Read More »
I’ve aggregated some observations I’ve made from working with a number of consultants and doing some consulting myself. These are focused on corporate management consulting, but are mostly applicable to any type of consulting.
I recently cut my cable service – something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I bought a few HD antennas and a couple Rokus. I’ll miss some football games, but I can go find a local restaurant or bar for those. The rest…I don’t think I’ll miss. This morning, I went to drop off …
I was just meeting with a realtor – a friend of a friend – to offer some ideas about marketing her real estate services. I was asking her to tell me about what words or phrases she believes would resonate with her prospective customers. In other words, would her customers want a realtor that was risk …
Do you want an innovative realtor? I don’t! But, I’m grateful some people do! Read More »
