(6 minute read) “We don’t know who discovered water but we know it wasn’t a fish. A pervasive environment, a pervasive medium is always beyond perception.” - Marshal McLuhan If there is one rule of thumb for the last year, it has been to concentrate on what you can control…

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. - Rudyard Kipling In the last article, I explored why noncustomers are the fountainhead of the plausible impossible. Yet we must navigate deeper. What makes…

“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.” - Walter Bagehot We dream vaguely, but dread specifically. This is how my colleague Jules Goddard describes the Gordian Knot of innovation. But maybe we can dream specifically. Extraordinary imagination is based on extraordinary realism…

“I don’t have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who’d be mad at me for saying that.” - Mitch Hedberg You must obey the forces you want to command. Consider if you were tasked to make Theodore Levitt’s proverbial 1/4 inch hole.(1) But what if you had to…

“There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently something that which should not be done at all.” - Peter Drucker It may be hard to believe, but customers have only recently entered the innovation center stage. Until 30 years ago innovations were largely developed in laboratories and skunk works then…

Companies are consumed by their consumers. Worldwide, firms strive to understand them ($47.3b a year on market research), to give them choice (250,000+ new products every year) and to communicate with them ($628.63b a year on advertising).(1) Despite these efforts, companies rarely surprise and delight their customers. Of the 250,000+…