Posts Tagged ‘Innovation’

Before you fight them… Choose them wisely!

by Himanshu Jhamb, Mar 8, 2010

Not all customers are created equally. While some are very rewarding to work with, others are a drain on your resources. We need to pick them wisely and conserver our resources to fight the good fight. When you see your competitors taking on high maintenance clients, remember Napolean Bonaparte’s quote: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”. more…

Change Management #7 – Products: A tip to assure Darwinian survival

by Gary Monti, Mar 9, 2010

In this concluding post of the seven-part series, Gary draws a parallel between Darwin’s theory of natural selection and product management. Gold plating requirements and succumbing to feature creep will ensure failure and end up the dodo way. But following the natural selection way will ensure survival. more…

Once I make a commitment…

by Himanshu Jhamb, Mar 10, 2010

You are measured by your ability to keep your commitments to others. This is possible only if you possess the integrity. It is easy to understand the concept of integrity in physical structures and Himanshu provides a couple of examples in this article. Just like the lack of integrity will cause a structure to collapse, lack of integrity in your life will cause it to collapse. The bollywood actor’s dialog may help you maintain your integrity – he says “Once I make a commitment… I don’t even listen to myself”. more…

Dancing for your Tribe

by Guy Ralfe, Mar 11, 2010

First off, hearty congratulations to Guy for taking the leap in to entrepreneurship. We wish him the best in his new endeavor.

Reflecting upon how he was able to make the transition to his new career, Guy credits the power of networks for his ability to make such a drastic change. Luck does not come calling, but is a factor of who you associate with. Associating with the right tribes and creating an identity that is portable across tribes, is essential component of success. So, get started and make some noise, tweet, call someone – get out there and pick your opportunity – Dance for your tribe! more…

Author’s Journey #12: How to create a content plan for your book?

by Roger Parker, Mar 12, 2010

Before you can write your book, you need to create a content plan for your book. Mind mapping makes it easy to identify and organize your ideas. In this article Roger explains how he used a three step process to successfully create a content plan for his book using Mindjet’s MindManager and Microsoft Word. more…

Magesh is an accomplished software professional focused on building enterprise value through creative use of technology. Magesh enjoys working with people and is passionate about bringing out the best in everybody to achieve results that are larger than the sum of individual accomplishments.

Tagged as: active garage, business, Business Management, business planning, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship, execution, gary monti, Guy Ralfe, himanshu jhamb, http://activegarage.com, Innovation, management, purpose, roger parker, Writing for Business

For many it is performance appraisal time of year, a time of reflection and setting of goals for the coming year. It is a frantic time as everyone digs deep to recall the goings on of the past 12 months. The net result is that employees are really only as good as the most recent performances their manager can recall at the time of the interview.

At the same time bonus packages are being calculated and targets adjusted for the coming year. This measure is usually computed month over month and so it does amass the individuals performance over the period. The trouble though, is that employees only appear to be conscious of this metric for the last 6 weeks of any bonus period as it is usually in this time frame they then can comprehend the chances of achieving their targets and gaining the benefit of a financial bonus.

For all the effort placed into the Appraisal and Bonus process it yields a relatively low return.

I read a quote made by Jacqueline Novogratz in her contribution on Dignity in the ebook What matters Now released here on Active Garage.

“Giving a poor person food or money might help them survive another day… but it doesn’t give them dignity. there’s a better way. Creating ways for people to solve their own problems isn’t just an opportunity in 2010. It is an obligation.”

Motivating individuals and aligning an organization is a difficult task at best, but if we think about it in the context of Jacqueline’s quote, making the goals and performance metrics to support building an individual’s dignity we could better produce the longer term objectives the appraisal process sets out to achieve for the organization and the individual. Today’s process supports the survival approach to objectives, not the fostering, growing and building produced through teaching someone how to do something.

Here are a few thoughts I had to create such a situation:

1. Shorter time frames – measure and reward on a quarterly basis. Building dignity repeatedly will enforce the behavior.
2. Center goals around the employee – focus on the employees ambitions and align the organizational metrics to that. When you are hungry you look for food, associate the corporate goals with the food and you will get a person working to take care of themselves and as a result the organization at the same time.
3. Formulate don’t deliver/direct – mandating a goal is the same as being given something and not knowing how to fend for it again. Formulate a plan in a way that you educate how to attain the goal without directing to the goal. This produces stimulation, thought and learning which will go a long way to help individuals fend for themselves and the organization in the future.
4. Social Dignity – we are all social by nature and need our networks to survive. Produce situations of dignity for the individual in their social network, at work or at play, will increase their stature as a result of attaining their goals.

Being human is to take care of ourselves first, look to that to produce better results from your employees and your organization.

This article was contributed by Guy Ralfe, co-founder of Active Garage and co-author of the upcoming book "ProjectManagementTweets". You can follow Guy on Twitter at gralfe.

Tagged as: Action, active garage, appraisal, Business Management, Guy Ralfe, Innovation, motivation, organization, performance, purpose, resource management

My father has just been in to have surgery to remove cataracts from his eye. Into hospital, operated on and out in a few hours, with virtually no pain to report and on the road to recovery at home the same day. In discussing the procedure, my mother rewinds a couple of years and explains to me that it wasn’t like that when she was a nurse in the late 60’s.

Back then people came into the hospital for cataract surgery which involved hours of surgery and over a week to recover. There was a lot of discomfort and the patients had to remain still afterward for a number of days with their eyes covered up. She explained it as a risky procedure and requiring a “good” surgeon. I think for any surgery I would want the best surgeon, but with my sight I would probably want the best I could afford or get access to.

She also described today’s procedure and how quick it was, 30 minutes of theater time compared to hours, how non-invasive the procedure was via three micro incisions and how an artificial lens is placed into the eye where thick glasses were depended upon before.

Fundamentally the same health condition exists today as it did 40 years ago, what has changed is the way the condition is dealt with. In my view the surgeons back in time, when my mother practiced as a nurse, were scarce and a major differentiator between successful and failed operations. But with the advances in medicine and technology this procedure that used to endure a patient to a week of suffering, today has evolved into a standard procedure lasting under an hour.

Initially the costs and value of cataract surgery lay in the surgeon and hospital facilities for recovery and would likely have been rather exorbitant and not accessible to many (substantiated in the paper Measuring the Value of Cataract Surgery). Today this surgery is available to many more people because of the improvements in technology and the refinement of the procedure to almost a routine repeatable process. What this has done is drive down the value of the cataract surgery per patient, so now the surgeon and hospital have to handle many more patients in the same period to maintain their value. In addition to the increased patients, technology suppliers have taken a share of the treatment through their offerings of artificial lenses as a valuable part of these procedures, which now are likely the main differentiators in the procedures offered today.

Looking into the future this procedure may one day no longer require a hospital visit or the skills of a surgeon and will become a commodity product much like LASIK eye treatment has become today.

This is a classic example of how the marketplace continuously drives down the value of scarce commodities and how competitors will always fight to gain a share of any successful market. All businesses are subject to these same threats on a continuous basis. The pace of erosion on ‘value’ will only increase into the future, this is why businesses must innovate and adapt to the changes or be consumed by the marketplace. It is easy to look back over 40 years of change and see the evolution but it is an essential survival skill in business to notice and move to counter the subtle changes staking place in your marketplace – Time will not be on your side if you ignore the signs.

This article was contributed by Guy Ralfe, co-founder of Active Garage and co-author of the upcoming book "ProjectManagementTweets". You can follow Guy on Twitter at gralfe.

Tagged as: active garage, business, Business Strategy, execution, Innovation, management, Strategy, technology, www.activegarage.com

We all understand that customer is a priced asset. And most companies have tried to listen to the customer for forging innovation. The only caveat to this is – that how we have listened to the customer in the past is irrelevant now. There is new phenomenon that is emerging with social media. Pushing out “listening to them” campaigns alone is just not going to cut it. You need to adapt to the new skills to listen actively… and in doing so, you need to give up the old ways – because only the adaptive survive in the marketplace.

It is the recession that tests your listening skills. Many companies have suffered because they were not competent in listening to their customers – e.g GM, Linen N Things, Circuit City etc.

Here are some ways you can listen

1.   Engage in a continual dialogue:   A company needs to keep engaged through company’s own Web portals, blogs and experts’ blogs.  The rising chorus of social network users (4 out 5 US adults online interacted with a social site in ‘09 – Forrester) continue to up the expectation for brands and companies with respect to presence and interaction online. The 24×7 consumer and social technologies have enabled new-media users with an ongoing interaction cycle that necessitates attention from brands.

2.   React quickly. A new study that was just released from Cone reports claimed that among new-media users, a staggering 78% of them interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools — up from 59% the year before… and that these users are conversing with brands more often: 37% say they interact at least once a week — which is up from one in four when Cone did the study last year. There are huge quantities of information and opinion people distribute on the internet. You need to be able to collect and process this information and respond quickly to any feedback or misaligned information that could potentially hurt your brand.

3.   Cut through the clutter: Segmentation and being knowledgeable about your target customer helps you understand exactly ‘who your customer is’. Their psychographic and demographic profiles can help you determine how to listen to them. Acknowledge the importance of cutting through the clutter to reach overloaded consumers.

Securing brand equity in the recession requires companies to add resources and capital to innovation and communication. This downturn will accelerate efforts of agile and smart companies to listen to consumers’ needs to keep their brands from slipping.

—

Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth. Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world. You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle

Tagged as: active garage, Branding, Communication, customer, deepika bajaj, downturn, engage, Innovation, invincibelle, listen to customer, listening, listening skills, listening to customer, react quickly, recession

In the last article we discussed the need to create a cohesive IP strategy, in this article I’ll discuss the first step in creating your strategy.
Like every article I’ve written on this topic, I’ll remind you that you need help, and you need the best help you can get.

Strategy Creation:
A few guidelines to help things along:
1. Be clear on why you are creating an IP strategy. All reasons are valid, some will work better than others. For example: if your goal in creating an IP strategy is to to tell all of your friends how many patents you have; you may want to think a bit more deeply about what you will do with those assets (make no mistake they are assets if treated right) and how much you are planning on spending to create them. On the other hand if you plan to exploit what you have invented, create a new business, and bring new products to the marketplace, then you are thinking in the right direction for strategy development.
2. Determine the direction you want your IP portfolio to grow into, find your market landscape. For instance; if you are making wire coat hangers and you suddenly come up with a new idea to make them cheaper, faster or in some other way better for the same cost, that’s a great invention in your current market landscape. If, on the other hand you make coat hangers and you come up with a great new telescope design, you may want to think about the new invention within the direction of your market landscape and the way you prosecute that innovation in the marketplace. Is it a different marketplace? The direction component of your strategy helps to keep costs under control. Costs can include nearly everything you can think of, from time spent thinking about the innovation, to the actual patent write up and filing fees, and everything in between.
3. Determine what areas you are NOT going to explore, such as a wire coat hanger manufacturer working on auto parts cleaning machines. It doesn’t matter what limits you put in place but you must at least think about them, and draw limits that suit your situation and remember they are your limits, you can change them any time you wish.
4. Determine when you will start, never when you will stop, and start. Create consequences for not starting, and rewards for getting going. Innovation should never stop, it must be continuous if you are to be successful in the long term.
This all sounds like a lot of work and, that said, it’s not a trivial task. However, as humans, we are what we practice, and our practices define us. Therefore you need to develop a practice of creativity, and a practice of managing your strategy.

So, having read all the above; It’s time to get moving!

This article was contributed by Thomas Frasher, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Thomas on Twitter at tfrasher.

Tagged as: Business Management, business planning, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Intellectual Property, purpose, Return on Investment, Strategy, technology, www.activegarage.com

What’s better?  Metered or flat-rate billing?  This question has been asked for as long as people have been transacting.  Do you charge on a per transaction basis or a simple flat monthly rate that allows your customers to use your services all they want?  Do you continue to innovate and possibly affect revenue growth?  Telecommunication service providers have been struggling with these questions for quite some time as they fight to gain market share.  There’s pros and cons for both businesses and customers.

Flat rate billing made it easier for the end user as it eliminated confusion every month on what they would be charged.  Remember how great it was when your local ISP offered a flat monthly rate for their broadband services or when your cell phone provider offered unlimited monthly calling and data plans?  No longer were you worried about overage charges. 

Now look at it from the standpoint of the provider, at&t for example.  While at&t’s  wireless revenue was up 15.8% for the second quarter in 2009 versus the second quarter in 2008, data services surged.  This month, at&t’s CTO, John Donovan, announced at the CTIA IT & Entertainment conference how their mobile data traffic has increased over 5,000 percent on the at&t network over the past three years with the introduction of the iPhone, netbooks and e-readers to name a few.  Most of these devices access the internet with unlimited data plans offered by the service providers.  Using the example of at&t’s iPhone, these customers tend to use 400 Mb of wireless capacity per month versus 40 to 80 Mb of wireless capacity per month with a typical smartphone user.  This surge in data traffic has overwhelmed the at&t network in certain parts of the country as was reported in a recent Los Angeles Times article even though at&t states that the network is “ample and sufficient”. 

What happens when you neglect your service for the sake of growing revenues?  Eventually it will lead to a defection of customers as some analysts are stating will happen to at&t if or when it looses its exclusivity agreement with Apple to carry the iPhone.  If you neglect your service and your customers, as AOL did when it failed to upgrade its dial-up customers to broadband during the tech boom, it’s just a matter of time before your business erodes as providers who continue to innovate and listen to their customers will not only grow their customer base but their revenues as well.  It’s a fine balancing act for businesses to continue to innovate and grow its revenues, but one that should be managed properly and not overlooked.

This article was contributed by Robert Driscoll, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Robert on Twitter at rsdriscoll.

Tagged as: active garage, business, Business Management, business planning, Business Strategy, http://activegarage.com, Innovation, Leadership, management, Robert Driscoll, sales, Sales and Marketing, Strategy, technology, www.activegarage.com

Intellectual Property Strategy

This article is a three part article on the need for a cohesive strategy for creating, developing, protecting and managing your companies intellectual property.

In previous articles I illustrated the ways to protect your intellectual property in the United States by availing yourself to the US Patent and Trademark Office. These articles were the beginning of the process. In this first part of a three part series I will cover the importance of creating a comprehensive Intellectual Property Strategy that will protect your market and your investment. As I have said many times before you need help to do this! And, you need the best help you can get! That said again, lets dive in!

Review of Concepts:

Let’s first review some basics:

1. What is a patent? A patent is a legal monopoly granted by the government to exploit your intellectual property for a specified time. A patent can cover a device, a process or any composition of matter created by a human being. It must
be novel and non-obvious and it cannot have already been rejected.

2. Types of patents: There are three types of patents in the US: Utility, Design and Plant. Utility patents cover most things that have function, design patents cover the outward appearance and plant patents cover asexually
reproduced plants. In the interest of full disclosure I have never worked on an Plant patent, nor do I know anyone that has, if that is your forte’ good luck and you are on your own.

3. What is a copyright?  A copyright is a law or laws that gives you ownership of the things your create. These are generally creative works including but not limited to: books, pictures, poetry, paintings, photographs and the like. The copyright gives you the right to reproduce the creation, distribute, create derivatives, perform or otherwise display publicly the work you have created.

4. What is a Trademark? A trademark is a type of intellectual property comprised of a distinctive symbol, sign or indicator used by an individual, business or other legal entity to help the consumers of the product or service
distinguish between themselves and others.

Need for a IP Strategy:

A cohesive IP strategy provides several things all are protective.

1. A strategy provides the direction for new development

2. A strategy provides the boundaries where your innovation can flourish without the intellectual and more importantly financial distractions can be reigned in.

3. A strategy defines where you specifically are going and also importantly where you are not going.

All these together save your business cash, time and effort while protecting your marketplace, your brand and your time.

Getting Started:

The get started developing any strategy you must first know your ultimate goal, until this is achieved you are working only with tactics, working without purpose; this is especially true when working with Intellectual Property, a mis-designed strategy will lead to wasted effort, resources and lost time.

Strategy must also be discerned from tactics, a distinction that many fail to understand. Strategy is the plan of actions, practices, roles and situations that must be produced to reach the ultimate goal. Tactics are the individual actions, practices, roles and situations that are performed in support of the Strategy to reach the ultimate goal, tactics may include interim goals along the way. That said the first step is to decide on your ultimate goal. Be specific; remember you are designing the future, so it’s big stuff you are doing here. With IP tactics include finding a good IP attorney, organizing your portfolio, determining your product roadmap, writing disclosures, working with developers, working with clerks and writing. All of the above items require you to get help.

Do It!

Step 1. Design your Ultimate Goal (i.e. Create A IP Portfolio for protecting and exploiting …..)

Step 2. List all the tactics needed to achieve that goal. (i.e. contact IP attorney, setup meetings, write disclosure, ….)

Spend quality time on Step 1, this is the most important step. The more clearly you define the strategy the more you will be able to see if your tactics are betraying your intention and you can correct to maintain alignment of your tactics to your ultimate goal.

This article was contributed by Thomas Frasher, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Thomas on Twitter at tfrasher.

Tagged as: Business Management, business planning, Copyrights, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Leadership, Patents, Strategy, technology

Documenting Inventions

In my last article is wrote that a laboratory notebook is an effective method for ensuring that you protect your intellectual property during development. This article comprises guidelines to help protect the integrity of the contents of your notebooks such that the contents are without reproach.

In patent law it is generally the first to conceive of an idea that is awarded the patent, a properly kept notebook is often the first documented evidence of a concept, development or process.

Generally speaking it is adequate to have a small drawing and some descriptive text to document a concept. The lab notebook aids with extending that concept in a protective manner.

Guidelines:

1. Take your notes contemporaneously with your development, as close to the time of your research or lab work as possible.

2. Remember that you are working to make sure that someone with your skill level can recreate what you’ve done, solely from the notes in the notebook.

3. Very few people organize their notebooks efficiently, with the possible legal outcome in mind. Remember: the lab notebook is your first line of defense.

4. If you need to have a blank page for some reason, draw a diagonal line and write “Void” on the line, initial and date the line. It is best however to avoid blank pages.

5. VERY IMPORTANT: IF you make a mistake, do not scribble over it, draw single line through the error and initial and date the line. you can do this for large areas by lining through at a diagonal and, again initialing and dating the line. At no time is it acceptable to remove any part of or all of a page. This will call into question the contents of the notebook as a whole.

6. When spanning multiple pages use “(Continued)” or “(Cont)” at the top of the page to denote a continuation from the previous page. If you are continuing something from an earlier page use “(Continued from page #)” or “(Cont from #)”.

7. Avoid fragmentary notes, make sure you use as complete a description as you can.

8. All entries are either in ink or printed and attached to the page with tape or glue. If attaching a page to the notebook, draw a line across the boundary of the attachment and the page and initial and date the line, this ensures that the date of the attachment is in congruence with the dates in the notebook.

9. Your writing must be legible. If someone else can’t read it, it must be redone. If it is illegible it might as well not exist. Remember you are writing to the future in your notebook, it must be clear.

What To Put In the Notebook:

1. Table of Contents. Leave room at the front of the notebook if there isn’t an explicit table of contents. Keep this up to date. This helps with finding information quickly in the event of a search through multiple notebooks (a very common occurrence).

2. Include a list of your assumptions as you begin.

3. Include any formulae or calculations that are important to your work.

4. Data, drawings, sketches, processes, procedures, notations, corrections, part numbers, assemblies, code snippets, tests, test results, etc. In General your thinking.

All of the above items are relatively easy to maintain once you get the mindset that you are writing to the future, in addition to the present.

Go get a notebook, set down and innovate, create and invent! It’s fun!

Image Courtesy: Paul Watson on Flickr

This article was contributed by Thomas Frasher, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Thomas on Twitter at tfrasher.

Tagged as: Copyrights, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Intellectual Property, possibilities, Return on Investment, Strategy, technology

Why do some people always seem to find new opportunities and new solutions, while some don’t. We all know that the first step is to keep looking. But sometimes even if we keep looking, we cannot recognize opportunities. However hard we work and think, we cannot spot opportunities.  The reason is we don’t have the right knowledge. Consider this story.

Two friends Jack and  John traveled to a foreign country for the first time and Jack took care of all the arrangements. One day, both of them were taking an evening walk enjoying the soft, cool breeze. As they went about chatting during their stroll, a paper floated gently in front of them. John ignored it as it was just a paper, while Jack ran after it and grabbed it. John was perplexed and he asked jack whey he was running after a piece of paper, Jack said that it is not a piece of paper but it was a local currency  equivalent to a US $100 bill.

What just happened? Well…  since Jack already had the knowledge of what the local currency looked like (remember? He made the travel arrangements), he was able to spot the opportunity, while John was not.

Each one of us live in our own worlds. Millions of people still believe that this world should appear the same to everyone, but scientists have proven that this is not the case. The world appears differently to different people based on their knowledge, which is a pre-requisite to spotting great opportunities. So, the question then becomes – How do we accumulate knowledge relevant to us so that we are in a position to spot great opportunities?

Here are 3 steps:

1. Decide what is important to you :  First we have to decide what is important to us in our life. There are 7 main areas in life. We can write down the goals in each one of them, commit to them and set out to make them real.

• Social
• Financial
• Family
• Physical
• Mental
• Spiritual
• Career

2. Look for Fundamental Knowledge : Once we know what is important to us we need to get down to acquiring fundamental knowledge in those domains.

Here’s a small example: We know that all humans have an inherent need to belong to communities. This  is fundamental knowledge about humans.  Once we know this, we can understand why people become members in  myspace, facebook and other social networks.  Then we see trends… like Myspace slowing down. Why does that happen? Well… fundamental knowledge again… its the same need of humans to belong to communities; only now the community is moving to facebook.

So, one of the important areas you can consider to focus on to accumulate fundamental knowledge is study humans and how they behave.

3. Look for Practitioners: In the entrepreneurial world, Practitioners are entrepreneurs who are successful and who are willing to teach. They don’t have to teach you one on one -  you can learn from them by looking for any books, blogs which they write and/or following them. Keep looking for fundamental knowledge from them as they too rely on fundamental knowledge through which they interpret the world… and chances are you will learn a lot quicker and a lot more with them around you than without them!

Special thanks to Robert Kiyosaki for the inspiration for this story.

——–

Vijay Peduru is an entrepreneur in the bay area and is the co-founder of a bootstrapped startup. His interests are bootstrapping, leadership and spirituality.

Vijay Peduru is an entrepreneur in the bay area and is the co-founder of a bootstrapped startup. His interests are bootstrapping, leadership and spirituality.

Tagged as: active garage, business opportunity, Business Strategy, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, possibilities, robert kiyosaki

Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.” For the most part this is true. This article attempts to explore if genius is necessary to succeed in a technology business.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s I worked to build one of the very first voicemail machines. It was elegant, interfaced with many different PBX systems and even main telephone switches. It was an attractive, well built, exceptionally engineered device, built to telecom NEBS, U.L. and C.S.A specifications; very safe and very reliable.

Our technology was miles ahead of our competition and was arguably the leading edge.

We got our clock cleaned by a competitor that was merely “good enough”.

Our competition’s cost of acquisition and ownership was less than ours, maintenance was simple and the machine was smaller. More importantly the machine “looked” like every other piece of equipment that the customers were already using. It was a tragic thing for those of us that had spent years developing this genius device. We were too far ahead of our customers.

If you have an innovative product or service that is too far in front of what your customers can see as a possibility you have no market. If you are able to market to your customers, setting a new standard, you have pulled your customer forward, and you will have a market to yourself for a while. If, on the other hand, you haven’t educated your customer well and helped them understand your product, then your market will not exist and indeed your competition may use you as a springboard, taking advantage of your efforts and relieving you of your profits.

The further you are ahead of what your customer can see as a possibility, the more you will have to do to teach your customer about the future this product helps them build. The first part of doing is closing your mouth and listening to your customer. Listen for the opinions and biases they already have. You have to learn to see the world through their eyes, this means listening. After you have listened and learned, create a story to help them see the new possibilities your product or service will be for them from your eyes. The better you do that, the easier the customer can see your new innovation in their future.

Something to remember: your story has to be complete, anything you leave out your customer will not, it will be a detraction from your product or service that makes it easier for your competition to encroach.

There is still a place for innovation beyond your customer’s site, it gives you a road map to create a strategy to move along in creating new products that lead to your innovation and beyond.

So while genius hits its unseen targets, talent must reach targets just far enough to innovate within range of the customer’s view of their future.

1. Listen to and learn from your customer,
2. Create your innovation,
3. build your road map,
4. listen to your customer,
5. Have Fun,
6. Repeat over from step #1

This article was contributed by Thomas Frasher, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Thomas on Twitter at tfrasher.

Tagged as: business, entrepreneur, Innovation, management, marketing, Project Management, technology