Top 2011 trends
January 15th, 2011
Happy New Year from Vision & Execution! We hope 2010 exceeded your expectations and that 2011 looks even better.
What do the prognosticators say about 2011? Will it be better or worse than 2010? What industries and, for that matter countries, are expected to prevail? It was quite interesting to take a survey of 2011 predictions…the topics of the predictions were generally more insightful than the predictions themselves. Some recurring themes…
Here are some interesting sites to check out for more detailed predictions:
On the economy:
On innovation
On social media
On technology
- CNN Tech
- Trend Hunter
- Infoworld
- McKinsey (from August 2010 but still relevant)
On cleantech
On mobile
On business analytics
Perhaps the most interesting report about 2011 predictions were those made 70 years ago by seven 1931 Visionaries.
What trends or predictions will impact your business? And, how can we help?
How do you innovate your process for sourcing innovation?
October 21st, 2010
McKinsey & Company released their latest Global Survey – this one focused on Innovation and Commercialization. There were many significant highlights from their research. Below are a few that stood out for me.
50% of businesses expect to achieve growth outside of their core business – 32% by growing beyond the boundaries of the core business and 16% by growing as a result of adjacent opportunities. In either case half of the companies surveyed are looking outside their comfort zone for growth. What is problematic with this goal is that most companies don’t change their process for inputs. Or, in other words, companies don’t change how they generate innovative ideas and collect data about the likelihood for market success for new innovations. It’s the same one day fly in – brainstorm – prioritze – fly out process that regurgitates all the projects that were previously killed. Garbage in, bad products out.
Over 60% of companies acknowledged that they are not good at commercializing new products or services. The challenge McKinsey identified appears to be in handing off ideas to those who would convert these ideas to commercially viable products. Companies appear to have a significant talent gap in finding folks who can translate vision into reality…that’s not surprising since most folks are good at one or the other. But it may also be a factor of garbage in, bad products out.
Another issue associated with the successful handoff of new ideas to market reality is picking the winners; 43% said their top challenge was choosing which ideas to move forward. Not surprisingly 40% use an ad hoc process to make these commercialization decisions and 77% do not address these decisions at corporate leadership meetings as a regular agenda item. New ideas don’t just surface during the annual strategic planning process – this needs to be well-funded ongoing initiative.
Vision & Execution has experience helping companies improve their inputs. We run innovation workshops that help shake up corporate mythology about what business a company is really in. When you rethink the way you define the business you’re in, you increase your clarity about where to expand your business. We also help companies use the plethora of web-based solutions designed to actively engage customers and innovators outside the organization to vet or enhance new ideas. And lastly, we help companies implement expedient ways of sizing and categorizing market opportunities to help senior management prioritize which products or pieces of a product to bring to market first.