OK, I didn’t know what either of these meant either before I read the article by Henry Doss in Forbes, “Innovation: Time to Ditch “Model T Leadership.” It is such an interesting read about what I believe is a fundamental change in the way we look at employees today and how we hire them for… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Operations
Three Lessons Learned from Open Innovation
As we continue to build more around being an innovative company, it is interesting to learn from others what works and where companies stumble along the path to being effectively innovative. One recent blog post from Andy Zynga of Harvard Business Review, “Where Open Innovation Stumbles,” talks exactly about this issue. I wanted to share… Continue Reading
Apple just THINKS different when it comes to products
I was thinking about our own company over the holidays and looking at who we were and where we are going in the coming year. We have been quite successful and to me, being the competitive person I am, this is when we should really accelerate our innovation. While others might sit back, I want… Continue Reading
Want the “Unexpected” – Create a Process
In talking with various people and reading stories about how companies have been successful and being more innovative than their competitors, one thing clearly stands out – they have a process. But here’s the interesting twist – the standard, routine, everyday process is what generally creates the unusual, unexpected, revolutionary discoveries and innovations in their… Continue Reading
Are you “Leading” or “Managing” Innovation?
As the CEO of a company and now blogger in the area of innovation, I struggle with this question when I talk with people our own employees. Innovation is fun. Innovation is exciting. Innovation is challenging…and it is being on the forefront of something new or improved. Who wouldn’t want to be involved in innovation?… Continue Reading
The ITW Innovation Process – Steps to Success…
As you have probably read about in one of my earlier posts, ITW is one of those companies in our industry that is a leader in Innovation and has really set the bar high for any of their competitors. But how exactly do they do this and what is at the core of their process?… Continue Reading
5 Strategies to making Open Innovation is a reality…
Open Innovation is a very interesting idea, especially for small and mid-sized companies, like us, because to me it isn’t an intuitive concept to grasp. Understanding the concepts behind it is pretty interesting and can help us as we look for more ways to be innovative. Basically “Open Innovation” means you should use external ideas… Continue Reading
Innovative HR Groups – a Hidden Asset
I recently attended a meeting that Rick and I are participating in where the top leaders in businesses get together and talk about how we can be more innovative companies. The group is called CEOtoCEO Innovation Teams and in just my first session there were tons of good ideas and discussions. But it has gotten… Continue Reading
Innovation at Yahoo might look a bit like Google
With the recent news of Marissa Meyer’s new role as CEO at Yahoo, there are definitely going to be some changes and shakeups. She is known to be quite innovative and this is an area I’m sure Yahoo will certainly be interested in taking advantage of from her past successes at Google. Since we get… Continue Reading
“Linchpins” in Alaska…the Travis Bylsma story
Almost on top of the World sits our Anchorage Operation. While isolated from the “lower 48”, as they like to refer to us, Alaska is an amazing part of the country with amazing people. And if you think it’s too cold to be creative, you guessed wrong! One thing about innovation is it comes in… Continue Reading