New Book! Lean Entrepreneurship: Innovation in the Modern Enterprise
I am pleased to announce that Lean Entrepreneurship, my newest book, is now available. In this book we discuss obstacles to innovating in established organizations, the behavioural anti-patterns that result, and how they can … Continue reading
5 Reasons to Invest in External Startup Accelerators – Even if You Have Your Own
Recently I was asked about the benefits of investing in external accelerators (startup accelerators not owned by the business investing in them). Though people understood the value in investing in … Continue reading
Drive Innovation by Leveraging Your Inexperience!
What makes someone truly qualified to work in information technology? In recent months, my news feeds have been teeming with passionate, and at times toxic, debates on the level of experience required for an IT career. These … Continue reading
Why Great Meetings Are Killing Your Productivity
There’s nothing like a bad meeting to ruin your productivity, and sometimes your day. Though, without a deliberate approach to collaboration, even great, productive meetings can be silent – and … Continue reading
To Innovate Successfully, Question Everything
In my experience, the people driving business transformation, creating new products or services, or innovating in any context, who are not deliberate about “questioning everything” throughout the entire lifecycle of … Continue reading
A Collaborative Approach to Escaping the Doom of Fanatical Process Orientation
“Why does fanatical process orientation seem an almost inescapable doom as an org/business grows? Is it possible to stay results-oriented?” This great question is not simply a perception based upon … Continue reading
Digital Privacy: Why We Need Clear Notice & Consent Protocols and Trust Frameworks
Read the fine print When was the last time you read the full terms of service or privacy policy for an app? Have you ever read them? When you received … Continue reading
The Importance of Digital Hygiene
As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is broadening globally, both the private sector and the public sector have taken action to address its public health impact and to dampen … Continue reading
What Musical Theatre Can Teach Us About Business Strategy
Musical theatre actors are amazing strategists. The similarities between the types of strategic decisions by a single actor in a musical and someone running a large organization are striking. Those … Continue reading
Converge in Canada’s National Capital Region
Known to many as a “sleepy Government town” at the intersection of two rivers, there’s a dirty little secret about Ottawa you may not know. The most educated city in … Continue reading
You’re Not Failing if You’re Learning
How “learn-fast” thinking can improve innovation and combat fear of failure “We’re a large organization. We can’t fail fast and break things!” It’s the type of statement I frequently encounter, … Continue reading
Even Angels Need a Guiding Light
Make your innovation program more effective by training its governing team During a recent Lean Entrepreneurship CIO Event in Atlanta I was asked a fantastic question: “Did you have to … Continue reading
Why Innovation Competitions Backfire
Understanding the evolution of breakthrough ideas can be the key to a successful innovation program. Why do innovation competitions — aimed at delivering breakthrough ideas and improving morale and engagement … Continue reading
What Wilderness Navigation Taught me About Lean Transformation
Lean approaches drive benefits far beyond their profit-driven, private-sector roots I hear it often. “This lean and agile stuff is cool, but it’s not really applicable to me.” “We’re not … Continue reading
5 Characteristics of Good Intrapreneurs
by George Watt My last post shared an intrapreneur’s (an entrepreneur who creates a new businesses within an existing company) perspective regarding the top 5 things that motivate them. I also … Continue reading
What Motivates Successful Intrapreneurs
by George Watt At a summit in Boulder, Colorado, I spoke with a group of founders about what motivated them to become an intrapreneur (an entrepreneur who creates a new … Continue reading
Four Signs Too Many Resources are Killing Your Innovation
How to spot the signs and what to do about it. Often when a new idea promises to be the next big thing, organizations will throw as many resources as … Continue reading
Five Innovation Killers and How to Stop Them
Want innovation to flourish at your company? Avoid these common problems. By George Watt Innovation is hard. Many of the hardest parts of the journey come long after an innovative … Continue reading
Innovation programs: the worst thing to happen to innovation
Why many innovation programs kill innovation, and what you can do to change that. In “The Innovative CIO” I wrote about several innovation killers ranging from interpersonal styles to unnecessarily … Continue reading
What opening an airplane exit door in flight taught me about design
Product and feature design thinking must happen early and must center on the human perspective. Recently, as I sat waiting for a flight’s boarding to complete, I noticed an unusually … Continue reading
What being half naked on an airplane taught me about innovation
How to tap the true power of innovation and avoid building new products nobody wants. You never forget being half naked on a fairly full airplane. But what can that … Continue reading
Five Ways the Application Economy is Changing Fashion
Fashion industry evolution demonstrates the app economy is more than hype. We’ve heard it all before. Every new trend, every new movement is revolutionizing business. The latest hype machine is … Continue reading
Are IT security and the business really disconnected?
A recent survey suggests IT security and the business are closer than you might have thought. “If they think so alike, why do IT teams and the business teams they … Continue reading
How is the application economy impacting your job?
It’s not just senior IT and business leaders feeling the impact of the application economy. It’s causing a culture change across entire enterprise organizations. Rarely now do I open my … Continue reading
Surviving the “application economy paradox”
How an encounter with my grandfather and an oil change changed my innovation perspective forever. What is the “application economy paradox”? It begins with the desired result: modern apps deliver … Continue reading
The innovation pot of gold you may not know you already have
There’s nothing like success to suck the innovation out of a great team. I have seen it many times. A team has a great, innovative idea. They have that magical … Continue reading
Supplier partnerships are a strategic weapon in the application economy
What being a cloud provider taught me about licensing and supplier relationships. “Please don’t make me count.” Just as we were celebrating that we had solved a tremendous business agility problem with … Continue reading
How to catch the app development skills boomerang
Why you may already have the app development skills you desperately need “Application developers? Why would we need to have any of those in-house?” No developers, please If you have … Continue reading
We all need a life jacket when wading into the application economy
What a canoe trip taught me about the application economy and how preparation is key for those charting new waters You may not think that canoeing and the application economy … Continue reading
Untold stories of the application economy
How a retail technology company was born from a unique consumer brand that provides personalized fashion for brides When people discuss the application economy, their focus is often or nearly … Continue reading
Security Becomes an Innovation Driver in the Application Economy
“Hi. I’m Al. I work in IT Security. My job is to suck the fun out of life.” That was how the instructor of one of the first security training … Continue reading
Increased Productivity Can be a Symptom of a Dysfunctional Culture
Though the many dire consequences are well known (low morale, lowered productivity, lack of creativity, decreased innovation, lack of motivation…) we still frequently encounter corporate and institutional “cultures of fear”. … Continue reading
4 Reasons Cloud Adoption Rises While Security Concerns Increase
I have read several articles recently that suggest CIOs are moving to the cloud while ignoring security concerns. Some note that cost savings or profits trump fear; or that people … Continue reading
Beware! Aggregated Data Can Harm Your Business
This is truly an exciting time for people in the information technology industry. We have more capability than we’ve ever had, and we are more connected than we’ve ever been. … Continue reading
7 Reasons to Consider Hosting Your Cloud In Canada
Thanks to Edward Snowden the cloud computing conversation has finally started in earnest in Canada, according to thestar.com. Even before Snowden seemingly shook up the cloud computing world there was … Continue reading
In 2014 Cloud Computing is So Last Year
Let’s face it. Cloud computing just isn’t that exciting anymore – mainly because it’s no longer something people feel compelled to debate or question. Not only do we continue to … Continue reading
No Unicorns or Rainbows for Cloud Computing in 2014
As someone who suffers from an inability to predict the past I reluctantly agreed to stare into my crystal cloud again this year. As I prepared my 2014 cloud computing … Continue reading
Cloud Computing’s Shockwave and How It Can Benefit Your Business
The value of cloud computing is becoming widely understood, with many reporting that it has delivered beyond their expectations. But there is an opportunity for even greater return from cloud … Continue reading
Cloud Computing: Salesforce.com Attends Camp Hybrid
This week during its never-disappointing Dreamforce event, Salesforce.com announced a partnership with HP to deliver a new service named Salesforce Superpod. According to the announcement, Salesforce Superpod is a “dedicated instance” … Continue reading
Cloud Computing: Embrace Diversity and Avoid The Money Pit
If we have learned nothing from the recent Snowden revelations and stories of cloud outages the one irrefutable lesson we have learned is that you should always choose the most secure, most resilient cloud service, right? … Continue reading
Prepare for More Cloud Outages
A recent outage at Amazon, which was caused by a network device failure, has reignited discussion and debate about the reliability of cloud computing services. While I believe that cloud services can … Continue reading
The Mobility Bar Has Once Again Been Raised
Microsoft’s recent purchase of Nokia’s handset division has left many people focused on what that might mean in terms of a new CEO for the software giant. While some are writing off … Continue reading
Privacy is Dead. Long Live Privacy!
Recently Ben Way (@bway) tweeted the following question to me: That is an outstanding question, and since this topic is so broad, the greatest challenge is where to begin. Though … Continue reading
Stop Innovation Loss! Prepare Innovation’s First Responders!
In today’s economy, and with today’s new business models, innovation is more than ever the lifeblood of business. Yet every day businesses let that lifeblood flow away. Every day countless … Continue reading
The You, Me and We of Innovation’s Managers
Have you ever seen someone assigned to a project they were passionate about, but they found themselves unable to bring that passion to the work? Have you ever seen someone … Continue reading
Cloud Computing: Regulatory Complexity Requires Systems Thinking
In a recent article Peter Wayner cautions that “No one knows which laws apply” in reference to the fact that a customer may be in one jurisdiction and the cloud instance they … Continue reading
Mobility Trends Demand CIOs Become Chief Experience Officers
Recently, while thinking about several of the technology trends impacting mobility and mobile computing, my thoughts again turned to the one trend that I believe is driving all of the … Continue reading
Harnessing Cloud Power: Quantum Cloud Computing Project Delivers Promising Results
This April Fools’ Day article was posted on April 1, 2013. Last week researchers at the Center for Theoretical Physics Quantum Computing Laboratory provided a small group with an early look at … Continue reading
The 4 MYs of Cloud Computing and IT Transformation
It is often stated that technology is easy and people are hard. Whether or not you agree with that, the sentiment must be heeded. Otherwise, even the best technical solutions … Continue reading
Cloud Computing Myth 7: Cloud Only Makes Sense for Large Deployments
In recent weeks there appear to have been an increasing number of articles written about cloud computing myths. I am not complaining about that. In fact, I have written a few … Continue reading
Innovation, Technology, and Life in the Cloud 