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I talk with a fair number of start-up companies and I'm always able to tell who chose the company name.  Not the specific person who chose the name, but whether or not the name originated from within a marketing function or a technical function. I can also...

I've been thinking about trends lately.  Not in how I might identify them, but in observing how other people think about them.  Some want to be trend setters.  Others are fearful that they will miss an opportunity if they fail to recognize a...

The internet doesn't encourage people to do anything they wouldn't already do.  It does, however, make it easier for them to do what they would want to do anyway, such as finding others with whom they share interests.  Today, groups of people...

While we're on the topic of publishing, Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools published an article I wrote about guiding innovation with consumer research.  It's a brief how-to, illustrating how consumer research is applied differently for incremental improvement or...

For the last few months, I've been fortunate enough to be a participant in Seth Godin's online experiment - Triiibes.  This is a learning community, (currently, membership is by invitation only) and participants are actively exploring questions about...

The mantra that good ideas can come from anywhere is true.  It is also true that some of the best innovations are inspired by solutions found in nature or other unrelated categories, such as George de Mestral's idea for velcro coming from burdock thistles....

I was thinking about a class I taught last month.  It was a section on innovation for an MBA product development course.  I teach this class every year and, in the beginning of the class, I ask the students to define what innovation is to them.  I am...

I recently wrote about how good design embraces constraints.  In the comments, Kelly asked how we should go about focusing a client on the possible design constraints upfront in the process.  This is a good question, and the extent to which you can identify...

Unless you've been living under a rock, you are aware that the current financial crisis is causing many businesses to rethink what they are doing.  That often entails scaling back or postponing large innovation efforts, or modifying new product releases to...

Michael Mandel, chief economist at Business Week believes that innovation is "the only game in town."  In this time of financial meltdown and economic crisis, he believes that the only way we can pull out of this mess is for innovation to prevail in our...