What stops Us from Creating Breakthrough Innovations

Have you ever been part of an innovation project that started off with big ambitions and dreams about coming up with disruptive innovations which are expected to be game changing and end with a me-too or a watered down incremental innovation to an existing product category? I have been part of a few such projects which start with much fanfare and later on become run-of-the-mill projects with no breakthrough’s to show for. I was always interested to understand why is this so? Why do well-intentioned people, who have all the motivation and incentives to create breakthrough innovations, end up watering […]

Strategies for Employee Engagement in a Gig Economy

EY recently announced the results of a Contingent Workforce Study that unearths key insights into the nature of the freelance or contingent workforce (the “gig economy”). Some of the key insights from the study regarding the future state of the Gig economy that they quote are as below: By 2020, 25% of organizations expect to use 30% or more contingent workers and the proportion using less than 10% will fall from 35% in 2016 to 22% in 2020. The gig economy is going to continue to grow, by 2020 almost one in five workers will be contingent workers. Two in […]

Book Recommendation: Look by James Gilmore

One of the most important aspect of innovation is the ability to observe our customers or prospects in action in their own world. There is a lot of information about various stages of innovation but I always felt that someone needs to explore the process of observation in much more detail than has been done so far. So, when I came across the book – Look by James Gilmore, I was excited to read on. I must say that the James has not only done a fabulous job of going deep in the process of observation but has also used […]

Bad News is Good News

Most of us don’t like to be bearer of  bad news, neither do we like to hear bad news. However, one of the most important things that you could do is to create a culture where the people you lead feel that it is fine to be the bearer of bad news – the earlier the better. This is critical for the following reasons: If there is any bad news, it is best if we bring it out in the open and deal with it sooner than later. Most bad news are not as bad as they originally seem to […]