Creativity, Ideas, Innovation

Scaling a Creative Solution to a Tough Problem

One of the key environmental challenges is the accumulation of plastic waste in our oceans. There are a lot of people who are trying to solve this specific problem in their own ways. Some have built trash collecting robot boats, and other devices. I came across this interesting solution that AB Inbev is implementing in Mexico. You can read about this solution and more information about the project here. The company that owns the Corona brand of Beer found an interesting way to solve this problem in Mexico. The company runs a competition amongst fishermen. The competition is based on […]

Innovation, Strategy

Does Deploying Technology Lead to Competitive Advantage?

In a recent post for Gartner Blogs, Scott Nelson talks about how IT leaders obsess about not using a technology that their competitors use for a given business function. The key reason that they seem to think about is around “competitive differentiation”. As Scott rightly points out, the differentiation doesn’t necessarily come from the technology or the solution that they deploy. The competitive differentiation comes when we focus on “How” and the “Why” and not on the “What”. The reason (Why) a business might deploy the exact same technology or even product can be very different. Some might want to […]

Customer Engagement, Ideas, Innovation

Should We Listen to our Customers?

In an insightful post, the strategy guru Roger Martin talks about the different facets of customer feedback, from a product development perspective. You can read his entire post here. If you are a product manager or in any way responsible for collecting customer feedback, I would highly recommend that you read his entire post first. He explores this question from the lens of the context within which the customers are requested for feedback, which brings a very interesting perspective to the topic. He takes a topic that is very divisive and thought of as “binary” by most people (customers know […]

Leadership

Nature of Work has Changed, Now Leaders Need to Respond

I am super impressed by the ability of Seth Godin to observe what is going on below the surface around him. Earlier today, he shared another one of his brilliant insight about the nature of work and how it has changed in the recent past – from being clearly defined, measurable and manageable chunks; to ambiguous, requiring applied creativity, needs initiative on the part of the employee and being led than being managed. You can read his post here. So, as a leader or manager, what do we need to do differently? Here is a list to get started: Make […]

Ideas, Innovation

Origin Story of The first CT scan (Republished from The Conversation

50 years ago, on 1st October 1971, the first CT scan let doctors see inside a living skull – thanks to an eccentric engineer at the Beatles’ record company Godfrey Hounsfield stands beside the EMI-Scanner in 1972. PA Images via Getty Images Edmund S. Higgins, Medical University of South Carolina The possibility of precious objects hidden in secret chambers can really ignite the imagination. In the mid-1960s, British engineer Godfrey Hounsfield pondered whether one could detect hidden areas in Egyptian pyramids by capturing cosmic rays that passed through unseen voids. He held onto this idea over the years, which can be […]