Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category

My Favorite Question to Ask When Hiring Marketing Professionals

Tuesday, April 5th, 2022

Throughout my career I have hired a number of people into marketing roles, and have also aided other companies and organizations in finding, interviewing, hiring and onboarding marketing staff. It can be challenging to effectively assess job candidates for any role—when hiring for creative roles it can be even more challenging. How can you determine whether applicants have both the aptitude and the innovative chops to be a valued member of your team?

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Could Holographic Tech Change the Way We Communicate?

Friday, August 30th, 2019

by Justin Grensing, Esq., MBA

Communication is key to any business, whether it’s a meeting with potential clients on a sales opportunity or coordinating and staying in touch with staff. Distance is becoming less and less of a hindrance to effective and meaningful communication. New technologies introduced over the last two centuries have greatly enhanced our ability to stay connected; from the telegraph to the telephone to internet and video conferencing we can now see and hear people from anywhere in the world in real time. And a recent strategy by a 2020 presidential hopeful is demonstrating the increasing development of the latest iteration of long-distance communication. (more…)

Forget Disruptive Innovation: How NON-disruptive Innovation Can Help You Expand Your Market

Monday, May 27th, 2019

Many of us are familiar with the concept of disruptive innovation: a new product or service enters the market and overthrows established competitors by fundamentally changing the paradigm. Common examples include the advent of the automobile, the personal computer,  or direct streaming services. But, do we really need to be disruptively innovative? (more…)

What We Can Learn From Amazon’s HQ2 Failure

Thursday, March 7th, 2019

by Justin Grensing, Esq., MBA

 We recently wrote a blog post on some of the lessons to be learned from a decision by retail giant Amazon to abandon plans to open one half of its HQ2 in New York City. The media have been quick to label the decision as a failure and a PR disaster for the firm that stirred up months of media frenzy when it announced its search for an HQ2 several months ago. (more…)

How Will You Make Your Audience Want To?

Tuesday, January 13th, 2015

I’m a big fan of EContent, a media outlet that focuses on content related to digital publishing, media and marketing. They have a number of very influential contributors* who write about trending topics, and useful strategies and tactics to help readers succeed in the online world.

It’s one of the many media outlets that I try to read as often as I can. Recently, when browsing through the topics on their homepage, I came across a piece by Theresa Cramer, the editor of EContent: Lessons From Serial: The Myth of the Shrinking Attention Span. I found it to be a very thought-provoking piece, and I was especially struck by one particular line in the piece: (more…)

Engaging Customers in Real-Time Product and Service Development

Wednesday, November 26th, 2014

Traditional forms of marketing often pose a challenge for businesses in that they are often necessarily reactionary. Generally, marketers can’t determine customers’ satisfaction with a product or service until it’s already been created and introduced. By that time, it may be too late. (more…)

Unlikely Collaborators Come Together to Tackle Ebola

Tuesday, November 4th, 2014

In the midst of the current Ebola outbreak, there has been much made of the role of big pharma in the race to stem the tide of the deadly virus. Many commentators, non-governmental organizations and governments have been critical of drug companies in the past and currently for what is seen as their lack of interest in developing vaccines and cures for illnesses that are deadly, but just not profitable.

But numbers are numbers, and the decision-makers of publicly-traded companies are obligated to conduct their business in a way that returns an acceptable return on investment to shareholders.

In an editorial for Forbes (more…)

The Innovator’s Edge: Addressing Needs That Don’t Exist!

Thursday, October 16th, 2014

Despite the fact that business and advertising classes and textbooks tell us that the first stage in the consumer decision-making process is identifying a need, there are certainly instances when consumers don’t know they have a need. That’s where innovators can have an edge.

Lee E. Miller and Kathleen Hayes Onieal recently wrote a blog post for Harvard Business Review called “Getting People to Believe in Something They Can’t Yet Imagine.” In the blog post, Miller and Onieal discuss the fate that often befalls new, groundbreaking innovations: Nobody believes they will catch on! The very fact that something is so revolutionary and unheard of often makes getting buy-in from key decision-makers next to impossible. The authors point out some of the reasons for this, including organizational inertia, fear of change, financial disincentives and fear of failure, among others.

So what can be done to overcome these obvious challenges? Certainly, companies introduce innovative products and services all the time. What makes the champions of change within those organizations succeed? Miller and Onieal point to several paths to success: (more…)

Breaking Through the B.S. (Brainstorming) – Some Tips for Better Results

Tuesday, May 27th, 2014

Brainstorming is one of those activities that, on the surface, seems pretty simple. In reality, though, effectively using this technique can be challenging, Why? Because we all have a tendency to want to discuss/debate and comment on the brainstorming comments of others — and even our own!The key for an effective brainstorming session is to ensure that a wide range of “top of mind” inputs can be gathered — not to dissect and discuss each point that comes up.

We work with organizations on strategic planning activities regularly. One of the keys to a successful planning effort is ensuring that all inputs are gathered and that good ideas/inputs are not “shot down” or dismissed as part of the brainstorming process.

A couple of things that we have done to help ensure that the brainstorming process works as it should: (more…)

Does Thinking Outside the Box Require Being Outside the Box? Yes – An Outside Perspective Breeds Innovation

Tuesday, June 4th, 2013

Daniel Pink, one of the leading modern thinkers about work and the business environment, and the author of several books including, most recently, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, suggests in a recent The Telegraph article that we are more creative when solving other peoples’ problems. He presents the results of a very interesting experiment that demonstrates that a group of people working on a problem on behalf of someone else do far better than a group of people working on what they are told is their own problem.

Fascinating, but upon reflection, not all that surprising. In fact, (more…)