Oct 31
I read this great article on Innovation. Diann Daniel summarizes 7 ways to kill innovation. Following is the summary. You can read the original article here.
- Believe that innovations will “Just Happen”. You need to champion innovation in your organization it will not just happen.
- Not having a process to nurture ideas in the organization. Just brain storming is of no use.
- Lay the success of innovation solely on IT’s shoulders.
- Create an obstacle course for ideas. The process of managing innovation should be transparent and inclusive.
- View different and new as bad.
- Hand over the good ideas to any one department and not have higher level management involvement.
- Be afraid of failures.
Oct 28
Found a great article on 9 companies that lost 2 Billion dollars. Please read the full article at : http://www.nationalpayday.com/education/news/Tech_Companies_Who_Lost.asp
My comments:
- Webvan: Business model just did not fit the Super market industry.
- Pets.com: Great example where the company just could not clarify its value prop.
- Kozmo.com: Raised 250 million and spend 150mil in advertising with starbucks. What were they thinking?
- Flooz.com: I just think there idea of online currency was just stupid.
- eToys.com: Good ideas are not enough. Understanding your competition is critical too. Competing with Amazon + Toys R Us.. JJ
- Go.com: I think the competition was just too good for them. Yahoo and Google are not easy to compete with.
- Boo.com: This is a great example where Technology is not used to solve business problem but business is used to showcase technology. What were they thinking? Did they sell technology or goods?
- GovWorks.com: Companies are formed by teams and when the core team is lost the company is lost too.
- MVP.com: Just big names mean nothing in business.
Cheers.
