Monthly Archives: September 2022

The Reasons Physicians are Losing the Branding Wars

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

Maybe the last time you walked into a retail-based clinic, you did not see an MD. Maybe the same thing happened at your hospital outpatient clinic or an urgent care center. Physician “extenders” and advanced practice professionals, like primary care pharmacists, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are winning the war on branding. They and their professional associations have done a good job branding their services while complacent doctors have not. What happened? Doctors are now “providers”. The latest spin is to call yourself a surgicalist. A surgicalist is a highly trained, board-certified surgeon who provides emergency surgical care within a dedicated hospital setting – the foundation of a surgical hospitalist program. A surgicalist career path affords talented surgeons the chance to design the life they want.

Staffing shortages among healthcare providers are having numerous downstream effects on everything from patient care to reimbursement and thinning margins. But they’re also causing a shift in public perception: More people now trust pharmacists to play a larger role in their care management, according to new research from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City and Express Scripts Pharmacy.

With more than half (51.8%) of the U.S. population experiencing at least one chronic condition, and one-quarter suffering from multiple chronic conditions, prescription medications are often the first line of defense to help patients manage these conditions, the report found.

In the period from 2015–2018, nearly one-half of the U.S. population was using at least one prescription drug, nearly one-quarter (21.4%) were using three or more, and over 10% were using five or more prescription drugs.

All of that is putting pharmacists in the spotlight – along with the rise of chronic disease, increased medication use and shifts to value-based payment models.

Doctors don’t understand that branding a service, particularly one that is becoming more and more commoditized, is not like branding a product, like toothpaste. There are four keys to branding a service:

1. Don’t Mass Market To Your Target Market Take a look at the doctor ads. They are filled with platitudes like “quality care”, “personalized service” and “caring staff”. I would sure hope so. But, marketing to the masses with platitudes is like a CPA saying “I can do your taxes”. Instead, you need to “touch” your patients with highly targeted messages.

2. Focus On Relevance Over Differentiation Most product branding is about cheaper, smarter, faster, better compared to the competition. Service branding is about how I can solve your unique problem.

3. Worry About Growing Revenue, Not Market Share. Payer mix is an obvious difference when it comes to sickcare branding compared to product branding. As we all know, doctors don’t make the same profit seeing all patients. Some, in fact, are loss leaders. Soon, all of sick care might be a loss leader.

4. Help Your People Be Your Brand. Particularly in sickcare, your people are your brand, including the doctors. You are the product, not the doctor.

When it comes to these four elements, non-physicians are doing a better job than physicians and they are building brand equity. Take a page out of the FedEx playbook, and expect to see

A genuine and defensible market position
Improved external awareness, perception, and desirability
The development of a collaborative internal culture
Alignment and integration of all messaging
Revenue growth

Here are 10 ways to beat Commodity Care. For doctors to brand their services and win as incumbents in the market, they need to practice Othercare .

In the face of competition, substitutes and turf wars, doctors need to do more about their sustainable competitive advantage, particularly when it comes to practicing at the top of their license, building brand equity and innovating, all things that, up to this time, they have not done because they didn’t have to.

Maybe then, they won’t call you a provider anymore, doctor.

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Asking the Hard Questions About What We Create

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Beyond the Hype

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the relentless pursuit of “the next big thing,” innovators often get caught up in the excitement of what they can create, without ever pausing to ask if they should. The real responsibility of innovation is not just to build something new, but to build something better. It’s a call to move beyond the shallow allure of novelty and engage in a deeper, more ethical inquiry into the impact of our creations.

We are living in an age of unprecedented technological acceleration. From generative AI to personalized medicine, the possibilities are thrilling. But this speed can also be blinding. In our rush to launch, to disrupt, and to win market share, we often neglect to ask the hard questions about the long-term human, social, and environmental consequences of our work. This oversight is not only a moral failing, but a strategic one. As society becomes more aware of the unintended consequences of technology, companies that fail to anticipate and address these issues will face a backlash that can erode trust, damage their brand, and ultimately prove to be their undoing.

Human-centered innovation is not just about solving a customer’s immediate problem; it’s about considering the entire ecosystem of that solution. It requires us to look past the first-order effects and consider the second, third, and fourth-order impacts. It demands that we integrate a new kind of due diligence into our innovation process—one that is centered on empathy, ethics, and a deep sense of responsibility. This means asking questions like:

Who benefits from this innovation, and who might be harmed?
What new behaviors will this technology encourage, and are they healthy ones?
Does this solution deepen or bridge existing social divides?
What happens to this product or service at the end of its life cycle?
Does our innovation create a dependency that will be hard to break?

Case Study 1: The Dark Side of Social Media Algorithms

The Challenge: A Race for Engagement

In the early days of social media, the core innovation was simply connecting people. However, as the business model shifted toward ad revenue, the goal became maximizing user engagement. This led to the development of sophisticated algorithms designed to keep users scrolling and clicking for as long as possible. The initial intent was benign: create a more personalized and engaging user experience.

The Unintended Consequences:

The innovation worked, but the unintended consequences were profound. By prioritizing engagement above all else, these algorithms discovered that content that provokes outrage, fear, and division is often the most engaging. This led to the amplification of misinformation, the creation of echo chambers, and a significant rise in polarization and mental health issues, particularly among younger users. The platforms, in their single-minded pursuit of a metric, failed to ask the hard questions about the kind of social behavior they were encouraging. The result has been a massive public backlash, calls for regulation, and a deep erosion of public trust.

Key Insight: Optimizing for a single, narrow business metric (like engagement) without considering the broader human impact can lead to deeply harmful and brand-damaging unintended consequences.

Case Study 2: The “Fast Fashion” Innovation Loop

The Challenge: Democratizing Style at Scale

The “fast fashion” business model was a brilliant innovation. It democratized style, making trendy clothes affordable and accessible to the masses. The core innovation was a hyper-efficient, rapid-response supply chain that could take a design from the runway to the store rack in a matter of weeks, constantly churning out new products to meet consumer demand for novelty.

The Unintended Consequences:

While successful from a business perspective, the environmental and human costs have been devastating. The model’s relentless focus on speed and low cost has created a throwaway culture, leading to immense textile waste that clogs landfills. The processes rely on cheap synthetic materials that are not biodegradable and require significant energy and water to produce. Furthermore, the human-centered cost is significant, with documented instances of exploitative labor practices in the developing world to keep costs down. The innovation, while serving a clear consumer need, failed to ask about its long-term ecological and ethical footprint, and the industry is now facing immense pressure from consumers and regulators to change its practices.

Key Insight: An innovation that solves one problem (affordability) while creating a greater, more damaging problem (environmental and ethical) is not truly a sustainable solution.

A Call for Responsible Innovation

These case studies serve as powerful cautionary tales. They are not about a lack of innovation, but a failure of imagination and responsibility. Responsible innovation is not an afterthought or a “nice to have”; it is a non-negotiable part of the innovation process itself. It demands that we embed ethical considerations and long-term impact analysis into every stage, from ideation to launch.

To move beyond the hype, we must reframe our definition of success. It’s not just about market share or revenue, but about the positive change we create in the world. It’s about building things that not only work well, but also do good. It requires us to be courageous enough to slow down, to ask the difficult questions, and to sometimes walk away from a good idea that is not a right idea.

The future of innovation belongs to those who embrace this deeper responsibility. The most impactful innovators of tomorrow will be the ones who understand that the greatest innovations don’t just solve problems; they create a more equitable, sustainable, and human-centered future. It’s time to build with purpose.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Rethinking Work for Human Flourishing

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The Four-Day Week and Beyond

Rethinking Work for Human Flourishing

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The pandemic has forced a global reckoning with how, where, and why we work. As we emerge into a new era, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to not just return to “normal,” but to innovate the very fabric of our professional lives. The four-day week is not a radical luxury—it is a logical evolution toward a more productive, sustainable, and human-centric future.

For over a century, the five-day, forty-hour work week has been the unquestioned standard. Born out of the industrial revolution, it was designed for an economy based on manual labor and factory schedules. But our world has changed. The economy is increasingly driven by knowledge work, creativity, and problem-solving, all of which are fueled by focus, well-being, and sustained energy—not by simply clocking more hours.

The traditional model is no longer serving us. We see this in the rising rates of burnout, the struggle to maintain work-life balance, and the persistent feeling that we are always “on.” This isn’t just a humanitarian issue; it’s an innovation problem. Burnout is the enemy of creativity, and exhaustion is the antithesis of a proactive, innovative culture. As a result, businesses are leaving a tremendous amount of potential on the table.

The four-day week, often implemented as a compressed work week (working the same hours in fewer days) or a true reduction in hours with no loss of pay, is emerging as a powerful antidote. It is a human-centered change that is fundamentally redefining the relationship between time, productivity, and personal well-being. And it’s proving to be a catalyst for a deeper organizational innovation in how we manage our time, our teams, and our goals. The core idea is simple yet transformative: focus on outputs, not hours. By granting employees an extra day for rest, rejuvenation, and personal pursuits, we are not just giving them a benefit; we are making an investment in their capacity for future innovation.

Case Study 1: The Icelandic Experiment

The Challenge: Public Sector Burnout and Stagnant Productivity

In the public sector in Iceland, the long-standing five-day work week was taking a toll on employee well-being. Burnout was common, and a rigid, traditional structure was stifling innovation and engagement.

The Innovation: A Large-Scale National Pilot

From 2015 to 2019, the Icelandic government, in collaboration with city councils, conducted one of the world’s most extensive trials of a four-day week. Over 2,500 public sector workers—from offices to schools to hospitals—voluntarily shifted from a 40-hour to a 35-36 hour work week with no reduction in pay. The goal was to test whether reduced hours could lead to improved well-being without sacrificing service quality or productivity.

The Results:

The results were unequivocally positive. Researchers found a dramatic increase in employee well-being, with employees reporting lower stress and burnout, and a greater sense of work-life balance. Crucially, the pilot found that productivity and service provision either remained the same or improved across most workplaces. The success of the trial led to Icelandic unions negotiating new work patterns, and as a result, over 86% of the country’s working population now has either a shorter work week or the right to negotiate for one. This large-scale, national-level change demonstrates the viability and broad appeal of the four-day week.

Key Insight: The four-day week is a viable model for improving employee well-being and productivity, even in complex, service-oriented sectors.

Case Study 2: Perpetual Guardian, a Private Sector Pioneer

The Challenge: Low Employee Engagement and Stagnant Performance

Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand-based financial services company, was grappling with low employee engagement and a feeling that its workforce was consistently overworked and underappreciated within the traditional five-day structure.

The Innovation: The “100-80-100” Model

In 2018, Perpetual Guardian conducted a six-week trial of a four-day week for its entire staff. The model they used was innovative: the “100-80-100” approach, which meant employees were paid 100% of their salary for working 80% of their time, while maintaining 100% of their productivity. The key to the trial’s success was empowering teams to find their own solutions for becoming more efficient. This led to a range of creative innovations, such as shorter meetings, more focused communication, and a collective commitment to eliminate time-wasting activities.

The Results:

The results were groundbreaking. The study found a remarkable 24% increase in employee engagement. Employees reported a better work-life balance, a reduction in stress, and an improved sense of purpose. Crucially, productivity levels either remained the same or saw a slight increase, as the teams had become more efficient in their shortened work week. Following the successful trial, the company made the policy permanent, becoming a global benchmark for the private sector’s adoption of the four-day week.

Key Insight: By empowering employees to find their own path to efficiency, the four-day week can become a catalyst for bottom-up innovation in how work gets done.

Rethinking Work for a Thriving Future

The success of these case studies and many others is forcing us to confront a fundamental question: Is the five-day work week a truly effective model, or simply an outdated tradition? The evidence is mounting that it is the latter. A three-day weekend provides more than just a day off; it offers time for rest, family, hobbies, learning, and civic engagement. These activities are not a distraction from work; they are essential for cultivating the creativity, resilience, and perspective that fuel true innovation.

Beyond the four-day week, this movement represents a larger shift toward human-centered work design. It’s about questioning long-held assumptions and innovating new systems that prioritize well-being and performance equally. It’s about moving from a culture of busyness to a culture of strategic focus. It’s about trusting our people to manage their time and empowering them with the flexibility they need to do their best work.

The companies that will win in the future are not those that demand more hours, but those that foster an environment where employees can be more productive, more creative, and more fulfilled. The four-day week is not the end of the conversation, but a powerful beginning. It’s a bold first step toward a future where our work is not just a source of income, but a source of genuine human flourishing.

Extra Extra: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pexels

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Are You Building Trust or Destroying It?

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Are You Building Trust or Destroying It?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When someone tells you their truth, what do you do? Do you ask them to defend? Do you tell them what you think? Do you dismiss them? Do you listen? Do you believe them?

When someone has the courage to tell you their truth, they demonstrate they trust you. If you want to destroy their trust, ask them to defend their truth. Sooner or later, or then and there, they’ll stop trusting you. And like falling off a cliff, it’s almost impossible for things to be the same.

When someone confesses their truth, they demonstrate they trust you enough to share a difficult issue with you. If you want them to feel small and block them from sharing their truth in the future, tell them why their truth isn’t right. That will be the last time they speak candidly with you. Ever.

When someone reluctantly shares their truth, they demonstrate they’re willing to push through their discomfort due to the significance and their trust in you. If you want them to get angry, explain how they see things incorrectly or tell them what they don’t understand. Either one will cause them to move to a purely transactional relationship with you. And there’s no coming back from that.

When someone confides in you and shares their truth, you ask them to defend it, and, despite your unskillful response they share it again, believe them. And if you don’t, you’ll damn yourself twice.

When someone shares their truth and you listen without judging, you build trust.

When someone sends you a heartfelt email describing a dilemma and your response is to set up a meeting to gain a fuller understanding, you build trust.

When someone demonstrates the courage to share a truth that they know contradicts the mission, believe them. You’ll build trust.

When someone shares their truth, you have an opportunity to build trust or break it. Which will you choose?

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The Power of Open Innovation Networks

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From Silos to Synergy

The Power of Open Innovation Networks

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The era of the lone genius is over. The complex challenges and lightning-fast pace of modern business demand a new approach to innovation—one built on collaboration, connectivity, and the shared pursuit of a bigger goal.

For decades, the dominant model for innovation was a closed system: companies built walls around their R&D departments, jealously guarded their intellectual property, and believed that all the best ideas must come from within. This “not invented here” syndrome, while once a hallmark of industrial strength, is now a recipe for stagnation. The world is too interconnected, knowledge is too vast, and the pace of disruption is too rapid for any single organization to possess all the necessary expertise and insights to stay ahead. The future of innovation belongs to those who embrace the power of open innovation networks.

Open innovation is a strategic philosophy that acknowledges the limitations of internal knowledge and seeks to leverage external ideas, technologies, and talent to accelerate innovation and growth. It’s about building permeable boundaries around your organization, allowing for a vibrant flow of knowledge both inward and outward. This isn’t just about outsourcing R&D; it’s about building a robust ecosystem of partners—including startups, universities, customers, and even competitors—to co-create value and solve problems that would be impossible to tackle alone.

Adopting an open innovation mindset requires a profound shift in culture and strategy. It means moving beyond a zero-sum view of competition and embracing a collaborative, win-win approach. It also requires a deliberate and structured process to identify, engage, and manage external partnerships. Here are the key elements of building a successful open innovation network:

Cultivate a Strategic Focus: Start by defining your innovation gaps. What are the specific technological hurdles, market challenges, or customer needs that your internal teams are struggling to address? This clarity will guide your search for external partners.
Build a Robust Scouting Process: Don’t wait for ideas to come to you. Actively scout for innovation. This can involve attending industry conferences, running innovation challenges, participating in university research consortiums, or dedicating a team to monitor the startup landscape for promising technologies.
Adopt Flexible Collaboration Models: Open innovation isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. You might partner with a university for basic research, acquire a startup to gain access to a new technology, or form a joint venture with a non-competing company to enter a new market. Be prepared to be agile and creative with your partnership structures.
Navigate Intellectual Property (IP) with Purpose: IP management is often seen as a barrier, but it can be a facilitator. Establish clear, transparent frameworks for how IP will be shared, owned, and leveraged. The goal is to create trust and a clear value exchange, not to hoard every piece of information.
Champion a Culture of Openness: This is arguably the most difficult but most critical element. You must break down internal silos and encourage your teams to be receptive to “not invented here” ideas. Create incentives for collaboration and celebrate successful partnerships to embed this mindset into your company’s DNA.

Case Study 1: The Transformative Success of Procter & Gamble’s “Connect + Develop”

The Challenge: Overcoming Internal R&D Limitations

In the early 2000s, consumer goods titan Procter & Gamble (P&G) was facing a slowdown in innovation. Their internal R&D model was a powerhouse, but it was becoming too slow and expensive to keep up with changing consumer demands and emerging technologies. The company needed to expand its innovation pipeline without dramatically increasing its costs.

The Open Innovation Approach:

P&G launched its groundbreaking “Connect + Develop” program with a bold goal: to source 50% of its product ideas from outside the company. They created a global team of “technology entrepreneurs” tasked with scouting for external innovation. They established an online portal to review submissions from individual inventors, small startups, and established companies. The partnerships they formed ranged from simple licensing agreements to full-blown joint development ventures. This new model allowed P&G to leverage the collective intelligence of a global network.

The Results:

The program was a phenomenal success. It led to the creation of numerous iconic products, including the highly popular Swiffer Duster, which was developed from a prototype submitted by an external inventor. Other successes, like the Olay Regenerist skincare line and the Crest Whitestrips, leveraged external technologies and insights to become market leaders. By the program’s peak, P&G’s innovation success rate had more than doubled, and its R&D productivity had soared. The most important outcome was the shift in culture, proving that a global powerhouse could be agile and open.

Key Insight: Open innovation is not just for startups. Large, established companies can use it to revitalize their innovation pipeline, reduce costs, and accelerate time to market by leveraging a global network of talent and ideas.

Case Study 2: The Collaborative Frontier of Drug Discovery

The Challenge: Tackling Complex Diseases and Skyrocketing Costs

Developing new pharmaceuticals is one of the most expensive and risky innovation processes in the world. With R&D costs for a new drug often exceeding a billion dollars and clinical timelines stretching over a decade, the industry is constantly under pressure. Tackling complex diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and rare genetic disorders requires a deep and diverse pool of knowledge that no single company can possess.

The Open Innovation Approach:

In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has been at the forefront of open innovation. This includes pre-competitive collaborations where companies share non-proprietary data on disease mechanisms and molecular targets to accelerate foundational research. They also form strategic partnerships with nimble biotech startups to access novel drug candidates or cutting-edge gene-editing technologies. Furthermore, organizations like the Structural Genomics Consortium have created a global network of researchers who openly share data on protein structures, accelerating the discovery of new drug targets for the entire scientific community.

The Results:

This collaborative model is fundamentally changing how drugs are discovered. By pooling resources and openly sharing knowledge, companies are reducing redundant research efforts and accelerating the pace of scientific discovery. Partnerships with startups allow large pharma companies to de-risk their pipelines and bring promising therapies to market faster. Ultimately, this synergy helps to reduce the financial burden, advance scientific understanding, and increase the likelihood of bringing life-saving treatments to patients sooner. It’s a powerful example of how collaboration can be more effective than competition when facing a common and complex challenge.

Key Insight: In high-stakes, highly complex fields, open collaboration is not just an option—it’s an essential strategy for accelerating progress and creating a greater collective impact.

The journey from silos to synergy is a challenging but necessary one for any organization that wants to remain a relevant and powerful force for innovation. It requires a fundamental shift in how we think about intellectual property, risk, and partnership. It demands leaders who are willing to build bridges and foster a culture of trust and shared success.

In a world where change is the only constant, the ability to connect, collaborate, and co-create with a vast network of external partners is no longer a competitive advantage—it’s a core competency. The future is open, and for those who are willing to break down their walls, the possibilities for innovation are limitless.

Image credit: Dall-E

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Five Ways Discomfort Could Lead to Your Next Breakthrough

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Five Ways Discomfort Could Lead to Your Next Breakthrough

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

The disclaimer on investments is that “past performance is not an indicator of future results.” In other words, don’t get too comfortable with the past. All you have to do is look at the stock performance through last year (2021) compared to this year’s performance to know this is true.

Yet when it comes to people, the opposite is often true. Past performance is often an indicator of future results. Most people get comfortable and stay where they feel safe. But, what if you were willing to be uncomfortable? What if you were willing to go against the status quo, learn something new, regardless of difficulty, and take more risks? How would you feel living in a state of discomfort?

Sterling Hawkins, author of Hunting Discomfort: How to Get Breakthrough Results in Life and Business No Matter What, shares how successful people thrive on discomfort. These are the people whose past performance won’t always indicate what to expect in the future. They thrive on risk, stepping out of their comfort zones, and are fueled by something new and different.

In the book, Hawkins teaches his five-step process that produces results:

1. Expand Your Reality: Just because you were taught that something should be a certain way doesn’t mean it has to be that way. Some might call this “thinking outside the box.” It’s shattering paradigms and challenging the status quo.

This reminds me of the story that the late, great Zig Ziglar used to tell about a family dinner that included four generations. As the dinner was being prepared, a little girl asked her mom, “Why do you cut off the end of the roast before you cook it?” Mom said, “That’s the way your grandmother taught me to cook the roast.”

The little girl then went to her grandmother and asked, “Grandma, why do you cut the end of the roast off before you cook it?” Grandma said, “That’s the way your great-grandmother taught me to cook the roast.”

The little girl then went over to her great-grandmother and asked, “Great Grandma, why do you cut the end of the roast off before you cook it?” Great Grandma said, “A long time ago, the ovens weren’t as big as they are today. We had to cut the end off for the roast to fit into the oven.”

Just because we’ve always done something one way doesn’t mean we should keep doing it that way. Expanding your reality is just looking beyond the usual and ordinary.

2. Get a Tattoo: Hawkins believes you should commit so deeply to something that you’re willing to have it tattooed onto your body. You may disagree, but you do get the point. This is about commitment. The tattoo is a metaphor. You don’t really need to permanently put your feelings on your body, but consider this …

Scott Ginsberg is known as The Nametag Guy. While in college, he found that more people would talk to him if he wore a nametag. It made him approachable. He wrote a speech and several books about how to be more approachable. He committed to wearing a name tag every day. After five years, he made the ultimate commitment to his idea. He had the name tag tattooed onto his chest. That’s commitment!

3. Build a Street Gang: Surround yourself with people who will not only support you but also hold you accountable for your potential. According to Hawkins, having a trusted accountability partner can increase the likelihood of your success by up to 95%!

4. Flip It: The book covers a process for not just overcoming problems or obstacles, but instead using them to your advantage. To Flip It isn’t about seeing the reverse. It’s more about seeing the problem or challenge from a different perspective, starting with a complete understanding of the problem, obstacle, challenge or goal.

Hawkins quotes inventor Charles Kettering who once said, “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” Before you can solve a problem, you must first understand it. Clarity is paramount. You must be sure that the problem is not confused with the symptom. The problem becomes a challenge, and you must be clear about what impact solving that problem will mean to you or your organization. Most often, there is a larger purpose to the challenge. What’s the true end goal? For example, you may want to run a 10K race, but the larger vision is to be in good enough shape to run it.

5. Surrender: This isn’t about giving up. Instead, it’s about acceptance. Embrace inevitability and unpredictability. Be flexible and pivot when necessary. Sometimes you’ll find a breakthrough in the middle of the darkest problems. During the pandemic of the past two years, when faced with huge obstacles, some companies and brands not only survived but also found ways to thrive. The same is true for people.

We are in a world where change is happening at a faster pace than ever. We are faced with opportunities that are often disguised as problems and challenges. Hunting for the discomfort in your life and seizing it as the chance to have a breakthrough is what successful people do.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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Uncovering Hidden Opportunities for Innovation

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Mapping the Customer Journey

Uncovering Hidden Opportunities for Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the digital age, companies often focus on data, metrics, and technology, but the true frontier of innovation lies in one thing: empathy. The most powerful innovations aren’t born in a lab; they’re discovered by deeply understanding the human experience.

As an innovator, your greatest asset isn’t your product, but your customer’s journey. It’s the entire story of how they discover, consider, purchase, use, and advocate for your offering. By meticulously mapping this journey, we can move beyond assumptions and uncover the subtle, emotional truths that represent the greatest opportunities for transformative innovation.

Too often, businesses look at their customers through the lens of their own internal processes—sales funnels, marketing qualified leads, and customer support tickets. But this fragmented view misses the holistic experience. A customer doesn’t see a series of departmental touchpoints; they experience a single, continuous narrative. The friction in one stage, the moment of delight in another—these are the inflection points where innovation can make the most significant impact.

The disciplined practice of customer journey mapping is the foundational step in human-centered innovation. It’s a process built on empathy, not just data. It forces us to ask not just “what are they doing?” but “what are they thinking and feeling?” The answers to those questions are where the magic happens. The process is a strategic imperative and involves several key stages:

Define the Scope and Persona: Begin with a specific customer segment and a clear goal. Who are you mapping for? What is the start and end of their journey? Create a rich, detailed persona, complete with their aspirations, fears, and daily routines. This isn’t a demographic profile; it’s a living character.
Identify All Touchpoints: From the moment a customer first hears about you (a social media ad, a friend’s recommendation) to long after a purchase (a follow-up email, a review), map every single interaction. Don’t limit this to digital. Include physical interactions, customer service calls, and even third-party reviews.
Document Actions, Thoughts, and Feelings: This is the heart of the map. For each touchpoint, use qualitative research—interviews, ethnographic studies, and surveys—to capture what customers are doing, what’s going through their minds, and how they feel emotionally. Plotting this emotional arc is critical; it’s where you’ll find the hidden pain points and moments of truth.
Pinpoint Pain Points and Opportunities: Once the map is visualized, look for the lows on the emotional arc. These are the areas of friction, confusion, and frustration. Simultaneously, identify the highs—the moments of delight and ease. These are your innovation targets. The goal is to either eliminate a pain point or amplify a moment of delight.
Ideate and Prioritize: Bring a cross-functional team together to brainstorm solutions for the identified opportunities. Don’t just think about fixing what’s broken. Consider new services, new technologies, or entirely new business models. Prioritize these ideas based on their potential impact on the customer and feasibility for your organization.

Case Study 1: Transforming the Grocery Shopping Experience

The Challenge: The Checkout Bottleneck

A major grocery chain faced fierce competition and declining customer loyalty. Journey mapping revealed a critical pain point: the checkout process. Despite having a great in-store experience, customers felt frustration and a loss of time and control when faced with long, unpredictable queues during peak hours. This final, negative touchpoint was tainting the entire shopping experience.

The Innovation:

Instead of just adding more cashiers (an expensive and often inefficient solution), the journey map highlighted a deeper need for control and transparency. The company developed a two-part solution: a mobile self-checkout app for customers with 15 items or less, and large digital displays at the front of the store showing real-time wait times for each lane. The app allowed customers to scan items as they shopped and pay instantly, bypassing the queue entirely. The wait time displays managed customer expectations and gave them the agency to choose their best path to checkout.

The Results:

The innovations led to a 15% reduction in average checkout time and a significant increase in customer satisfaction scores related to convenience. The mobile checkout became a key differentiator, attracting tech-savvy customers and reinforcing the brand as a modern, customer-centric retailer. The most important result? Increased customer loyalty and repeat visits.

Key Insight: The innovation wasn’t about speed; it was about addressing the emotional pain of feeling a loss of control and transparency.

Case Study 2: Reshaping the Patient Journey in Healthcare

The Challenge: Patient Anxiety and Information Overload

A large hospital system recognized that their administrative and clinical processes, while efficient from an internal standpoint, were a source of immense stress for patients. From complex paperwork to confusing post-discharge instructions, the patient journey was marked by feelings of fear, uncertainty, and a lack of clear communication. This anxiety negatively impacted patient well-being and recovery.

The Innovation:

The hospital’s journey map, which included direct patient and family interviews, revealed the need for a more empathetic, human-centered approach. They introduced two major innovations: a Patient Navigator Program and a Personalized Digital Information Hub. Patient navigators were dedicated staff members who acted as a single point of contact, guiding patients and their families through every step of their visit—from initial registration to understanding medical jargon and coordinating follow-up appointments. The digital hub, accessible on tablets, provided a single source of truth for each patient, including their personalized schedule, details about their care team, and simplified explanations of their condition and medication. This hub also streamlined the discharge process with easy-to-follow, multimedia instructions.

The Results:

The impact was profound. Patient anxiety levels decreased, and HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores saw a remarkable climb. The navigators addressed the emotional need for human connection and support, while the digital hub empowered patients with clarity and control. This combination of high-tech and high-touch innovation transformed a stressful experience into one that felt supportive and coordinated, leading to better patient outcomes and a stronger reputation.

Key Insight: True innovation in healthcare isn’t just about clinical breakthroughs; it’s about creating a more human and supportive emotional journey.

From Map to Mindset: The Path Forward

These examples illustrate a crucial lesson: the customer journey map is not a deliverable; it’s a living tool. It’s a call to action. By using it to align cross-functional teams, you can break down internal silos and create a shared, customer-centric vision for innovation. The most powerful question you can ask is, “What if…?” What if we redesigned this touchpoint to be a moment of joy instead of frustration? What if we could anticipate their needs before they even know they have them?

In a world of relentless change, ignoring the customer’s journey is to operate blind. By embracing this powerful practice, you will not only uncover new opportunities for innovation but also build a more resilient, empathetic, and ultimately, more successful organization. Your customers are already on a journey. It’s time for you to join them.

Image credit: Pexels

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Six Simple Growth Hacks for Startups

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Six Simple Growth Hacks for Startups

GUEST POST from Soren Kaplan

Building a new business is tough. These strategies will help your startup succeed without a big investment.

As many of my readers know, I usually write about strategy, innovation, and leadership. But recently I’ve been asked a lot about how I helped establish Praxie.com as a destination website for hundreds of best practice digital tools and templates using growth hacking strategies. That’s because it’s incredibly hard to cut through the noise and establish a new brand, website presence, and business model in today’s increasingly cluttered competitive world.

So, here’s what we did to build a brand and drive tens of thousands of visitors to our website each month, all without any significant marketing investment. Anyone who’s focused, methodical, and willing take the time can do it.

1. Create Expert Content

Content is king. You can create it yourself or provide a platform that encourages users to contribute content as part of your business model. Content drives the brand and engages customers. Plus, Google and other search engines index and prioritize pages with solid content, so your specific webpages with noteworthy content will get a boost in SEO rankings and see increased traffic over time. Content comes in many forms: articles, blog posts, listicles, white papers, templates, and videos.

2. Syndicate Content to Grow Backlinks

Backlinks are the lifeblood of SEO. The more that reputable websites link back to your website (or sub-pages on your site), the higher you’ll rank will be in search engines. And the higher your rank, the more organic visitors you’ll receive. Whatever you’re doing or providing as part of your business, position yourself as the expert. Become a source of knowledge and insight for the press, get interviewed on podcasts, write articles for other sites, or do anything else that gets your name (and backlink) out there on the net. This strategy also builds your brand.

3. Become a Video Star

Content isn’t just about the written word. YouTube is now the number-two search engine in the world, right behind Google. Video content highlights your expertise. It gets shared. And it drives traffic to your website that can convert to newsletter signups, subscriptions, and product purchases. Be sure to include keywords in the titles and descriptions of your videos. Also include a plug at the end of the video for where the viewer can learn more (e.g., your website). Re-purpose your videos on social media and embed videos into your website to further reinforce your content expertise.

4. Build Email Relationships

While just about every email inbox is cluttered with spam these days, when someone gives you their email address, they’re essentially giving you permission (opting in) to connect with them. While the same principle applies to social media, email is still a unique, higher-touch, form of connection-making. As compared with social media, email is like pinning a flyer up on someone’s front door versus hoping they see one that has been posted on the corner telephone pole as they walk by. So, create easy ways for people to sign up for newsletters. Connect with others on LinkedIn, where most profiles include email addresses. Focus on building a list and providing high-value communications that use expert content to connect with your audience versus just trying to sell them your product. Many free or inexpensive tools can get you started like Mailchimp and Constant Contact.

5. Measure Everything Using Dashboards

The only way to gauge progress is to measure it. Use Google Analytics to track your most important metrics, like the number of visitors, landing pages, conversion rates for your newsletter and purchases, and more. Use free tools like those provided by Moz and Similarweb to benchmark yourself against the competition. Connect social media metrics and advertising into a dashboard that provides a holistic picture of the business. But don’t spend too much time cobbling together data. Keep it simple so you can get a quick read on how you’re doing while spending most of your time doing the things that grow your business.

6. Test, Retest, and Test Again

Google recently introduced a great tool called Optimize. Optimize allows you to quickly run tests on your website or individual web pages. By creating A/B tests that serve up different page headings, product prices, button colors, etc., you can gain insight into what works and what doesn’t based on what you’re trying to achieve. Track which market positioning statements result in the most newsletter signups or which price model delivers the greatest revenue. Running tests should be an ongoing activity which essentially means you’re taking the winning formula from your A/B test and then running another A/B test using that as the baseline. Connect your tests to your data analytics to track what works (and doesn’t) over time.

Most small startups don’t have big funding. That’s why growth hacks are so important. Use a little elbow grease, coupled with savvy customer engagement strategies, to build the basis for market traction. You might need to give it a little time to yield results, but that’s also what’s needed to create an enduring business.

Image Credit: Getty Images (acquired by Soren Kaplan)

This article was originally published on Inc.com and has been syndicated for this blog.

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The Untapped Power of Purpose-Driven Innovation

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Beyond Profit

The Untapped Power of Purpose-Driven Innovation

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

For too long, the default engine of innovation has been the singular pursuit of profit. Companies have innovated to reduce costs, increase market share, and maximize shareholder value. While this model has driven incredible progress, it has also led to a significant oversight: the untapped power of purpose. The world’s most impactful and resilient companies are beginning to realize that the most potent innovations aren’t just about making money; they are about making a difference.

Purpose-driven innovation is a mindset that places a social or environmental mission at the heart of the innovation process. It moves beyond traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and integrates purpose as a core strategic driver. It’s about asking, “What problem in the world can we solve, and how can our innovation and business model be the solution?” This approach doesn’t just create new products or services; it creates new markets, builds fierce customer loyalty, and attracts the best talent. When purpose becomes the lens through which we innovate, we create a powerful feedback loop where doing good and doing well become one and the same.

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The Untapped Advantages of a Purpose-First Mindset

The greatest misconception about purpose-driven innovation is that it comes at the expense of profitability. On the contrary, purpose can be the very catalyst for profitability. By solving a significant social or environmental challenge, companies can create a strong competitive advantage that is difficult for others to replicate. They build an emotional connection with consumers who are increasingly making purchasing decisions based on their values.

Purpose as a Strategic Lever

Deepened Customer Loyalty: Customers today are looking for authenticity. They want to buy from companies that share their values. Purpose-driven innovations create a bond that goes beyond a transactional relationship, fostering loyalty that withstands market fluctuations and builds brand advocacy.
Attracting and Retaining Top Talent: The best and brightest employees are no longer motivated solely by salary. They are seeking meaningful work and a sense of belonging. A clear and compelling purpose is a powerful recruiting tool, and it inspires employees to bring their full creativity and passion to their work, driving internal innovation.
Opening New Market Categories: By addressing an underserved social or environmental need, purpose-driven innovators can create entirely new market categories. They see problems not as liabilities, but as opportunities for growth and value creation, expanding their total addressable market in novel ways.

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Case Study 1: The Eyewear Company with a Global Vision

An innovative eyewear company built its entire business model around a single, powerful purpose: to help people see. For every pair of glasses sold, the company provides a pair to someone in need. This isn’t a side project; it is the core of their brand identity. Their innovation extends beyond product design to their business model itself, creating an efficient supply chain that can deliver affordable eyewear to communities in need, while simultaneously building a premium, stylish brand that appeals to conscious consumers.

The result? The company has not only grown into a multi-billion dollar enterprise but has also provided millions of pairs of glasses globally, improving quality of life, their ability to work, and educational opportunities.

This case study demonstrates how a powerful purpose can become an unshakeable differentiator and a primary driver of financial success, turning a social mission into a core competitive advantage.

Case Study 2: The Outdoor Apparel Brand and Sustainability

A well-known outdoor apparel company has long championed a purpose rooted in environmental sustainability. Their innovation is not just about making the best gear for the outdoors; it’s about innovating to protect the outdoors. This has led to groundbreaking innovations in sustainable materials, like recycled polyester, and has pushed the entire industry towards more responsible practices. They created a repair program that encourages customers to fix their gear rather than replace it, a radical idea in a consumer-driven world.

Their purpose has created a fiercely loyal customer base that views their purchases as a form of environmental activism. When a customer buys their product, they are not just buying a jacket; they are making a statement about their values.

This company’s purpose-driven innovation has created a powerful brand identity that is synonymous with sustainability, allowing them to command a premium price and maintain a leadership position by fostering a community of shared values.

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Building Your Purpose-Driven Strategy

To become a purpose-driven innovator, organizations must start by defining their purpose—not as a marketing slogan, but as a genuine commitment. It requires leaders to be brave enough to ask tough questions about their company’s impact on the world. The shift requires moving from a “what” and “how” mindset to a “why” mindset. Consider these steps:

Identify a Core Purpose: What is a problem your organization is uniquely positioned to solve? This purpose must be authentic and align with your brand’s heritage and capabilities.
Embed Purpose in Innovation KPIs: Move beyond traditional metrics like ROI and consider “Return on Impact.” How will you measure the social or environmental outcome of your innovations?
Empower Your Teams: Give employees the autonomy to innovate with purpose. They are often the best source of ideas for how to integrate social impact into your products and processes.

This is the future of innovation. It is a world where profitability and purpose are not mutually exclusive, but rather, are two sides of the same coin. The most successful innovations of the 21st century will not only solve a market need, they will also solve a human need. They will be driven not just by a desire for profit, but by an unwavering commitment to a bigger, more meaningful purpose.

Image credit: Dall-E

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Are You Hanging Your Chief Innovation Officer Out to Dry?

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Are You Hanging Your Chief Innovation Officer Out to Dry?

GUEST POST from Teresa Spangler

Only 7 percent of companies are delivering on the growth triple play by unifying creativity, analytics, and purpose. They are driving average revenue growth of 2.3 times versus peers from 2018–19 (which increased to 2.7 times versus peers from 2019–20). McKinsey

Many innovation leaders are feeling “hung out to dry.” It’s not for the lack of desire to innovate for sure. The challenge is the current innovation processes themselves are not always conducive to actually innovating:

the effort hits the balance sheet and potentially impacts profits
organizational teams fear the unknown and not being involved so often does not support the effort
some innovation leaders alienate team members by pushing too hard
and the priorities of the day simply just get in the way of doing new things.

Innovation is not a buzzword, it is not easy or for the faint at heart. In a hyper-disruptive economy where technologies are impacting everything and changing at unfathomable speeds, keeping pace with trends will take a concentrated effort with very little tolerance for complacency.

Times of uncertainty bring times of doubt and fear on taking risks and making changes. However, the opposite is needed to continue growth in challenging economic times. Companies that infuse creativity and combine creativity with analytics and as McKinsey notes, PURPOSE, continue growth at a faster pace. These companies are creating new products that matter to their customers, they are innovating new campaigns and ways to engage customers as well as new ways to acquire new customers. Innovating methods, business models, and campaigns are just a few outcomes of driving creativity and an analytic savvy in your company’s culture.

Innovation does not have to be groundbreaking disruption (of course it can be! but does not have to be). Iterative changes to the benefit of future needs of customers can be a ground-breaking change for your company’s growth strategy. What is your company’s risk tolerance? What freedom to play with new ideas does your innovation team have or your new product development team encourage? How well aligned are creative process with sales, marketing and product teams?

Plazabridge Group has been involved with 100’s of projects over 15 years and we’ve seen success come to those that double down in the hardest times staying future focused. Segmenting out a future’s team that focuses on the future is important. The day-to-day business must keep going. There are a number of methodologies that work well but none will work at all without a few key changes to the organization to ensure ideas flow from ideation to commercialization.

In the The Wall Street Journal article: Why More Companies Are Putting the LEGO Group Bricks in the Office, Lego Serious Play (LSP) has been used by the U.S. Naval War College (Warfare Division), and spread across energy, transport and finance industries. Companies including Google, Ernst & Young, Microsoft, Visa, Lexus and Procter & Gamble have used it. Plazabridge Group uses LSP in our innovation future planning workshops for companies.

The key is not all play! The necessity to drive a stronger analytic savvy is critical to the effort. In the efforts to create, we must answer the questions: WHO CARES? and WHY? and WHAT WILL THEY CARE ABOUT IN THE FUTURE?

Here are a few tips to consider that may help make driving innovating just a bit easier on the organization:

Build your innovation team’s sandbox and give them freedom to work within these constraints. Innovation is not permission to roam freely and haphazardly. Under a defined set of guidelines with a defined budget and set of resources the innovation team can be quite effective.

Remove barriers to approvals under the above guidelines. Allow the innovation team to introduce to departments and company leaders new ways of thinking by hosting events or information sessions to the teams. By doing so it begins to remove fear of the unknown and the mystery around the effort. Open communications and systems can be a very positive outcome.

Don’t be afraid to approach innovation from outside. There are a number of ways to do this, but you will need a strong leader inside to lead the way and manage the inside out and the outside in process.

Recognize that new innovations do not always fit nicely in the current company structure, processes and culture. Consider spinning it out and investing in new ventures as their own entities.

At the end of the day, you need strong people with a tenacity to pursue outside the world of the unknown. This does not always feel comfortable to the organization. Just don’t leave the innovation team “hanging out to dry!”

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