Category Archives: Strategy

Shifting Mindsets to Compete in an Ecosystem-Driven World

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 1980 Harvard professor Michael Porter published Competitive Strategy, which recommended that firms create advantage by driving efficiencies throughout the value chain and mastering competitive forces by maximizing bargaining power. These concepts drove corporate thinking for decades.

Yet as AnnaLee Saxenian explained in Regional Advantage, around the same time that Porter’s ideas were ascending among CEOs in the establishment industries on the east coast, a very different way of doing business was gaining steam in Silicon Valley. The firms there saw themselves not as isolated fiefdoms, but as part of a larger ecosystem.

Competitive advantage can no longer be reduced to the sum of efficiencies in a value chain, but is embedded in webs of connections. To compete in an ecosystem-driven world, Leaders need to do more than adapt how we deploy assets, we need to look at things differently. It is no longer enough to merely plan and direct action, we need to inspire and empower belief.

Shifting From “Compel And Control” To “Access And Empower”

In the 1920s Henry Ford built the almost completely vertically integrated River Rouge plant. Because the company had the ability to produce just about every facet of its product itself (the plant even had its own steel mill), it had tremendous control over the value chain, making it virtually immune to the bargaining power of suppliers.

However, as the industry matured, other companies began to specialize in particular components. Ford, unable to compete in so many directions, became integrated into the larger ecosystem. In fact, during the financial crisis in 2008, the company’s CEO, Alan Mulally, said this in testimony to Congress:

“In particular, the collapse of one or both of our domestic competitors would threaten Ford because we have 80 percent overlap in supplier networks and nearly 25 percent of Ford’s top dealers also own GM and Chrysler franchises”

In a value-chain-driven world, Ford would have welcomed its competitors’ demise. In an ecosystem-driven-world, however, their collapse would damage nodes that the company itself depended on. Clearly, the principles of competitive advantage have changed. Today your fate depends less on the assets and capabilities you control, than what you can access.

That, in essence, is why we need an ecosystem strategy. Control has become a dangerous illusion. It’s what led to the demise of the East Coast technology companies such as DEC and Data General that AnnaLee Saxenian wrote in her book. By seeking full control of their value chain, they cut off connection to important parts of the ecosystem. When the market and technology shifted, they were left on their own island.

Building Silos Of Excellence

It’s become so common for pundits to complain about organizational silos that few even think about what it means anymore. Why do silos form in the first place? Why do they persist? If silos are so egregious, why are they so common? And once we get rid of them, what takes their place? To “break down silos” and not ask these questions is just lazy thinking.

Silos aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Essentially, they are centers of excellence. It’s true that people who work closely together naturally form a working culture and tacit domain knowledge that can be hard for others to penetrate, but breaking those units apart can undermine the important work they do.

Another problem is that when you reorganize to break down one kind of silo, you inevitably create others. If, for example, your company is organized around functional groups, then you will get poor collaboration around products. But when you reorganize to focus on product groups, you get the same problem within functions.

The truth is that you don’t want to break down silos, you want to connect them. What we need to learn is how to network our organizations to help silos become interoperable with other silos that have complementary resources and areas of areas of expertise. That, essentially, is what an ecosystem is, a network of interoperable networks.

Paradoxically, we need silos of excellence to provide value to the ecosystem in order to get value out. The best way to form a connection is to have something attractive that others want to connect to.

Connecting Silos To Leverage Platforms

It’s become clear that no organization can survive focusing exclusively on capabilities it owns and controls. Today, we need to leverage platforms to access ecosystems of technology, talent and information from a variety of stakeholders, including customers, partners, vendors and open platforms. Yet, that is often easier said than done.

The truth is that while platforms offer enormous possibilities to scale, they also have deep vulnerabilities. Yes, platforms can help connect to capabilities and assets, but they are no substitute for a sound business model that creates, delivers and captures value. That was one problem with Uber, it created connection, but little else.

Organizations that successfully leverage platforms do so with silos of capability at the core. Amazon has leveraged decades of investment in building an unparalleled logistic capability to create a dominant commerce platform. In a similar way, IBM has leveraged its expertise in quantum computing to create a network of like-minded organizations. Corporate Venture Capital (VC) funds leverage industry expertise to access entrepreneurial innovation.

There are a number of ways even small firms can leverage platforms to access ecosystems. The Manufacturing USA Institutes cater to small and medium sized firms. Local universities are often overlooked resources to access deep expertise. Harley Owners Groups are a great example of how firms can leverage their own customer networks.

Strategy Is No Longer A Game Of Chess

Traditionally, strategy has been seen as a game of chess. Wise leaders survey the board of play, plan their moves carefully and execute flawlessly. That’s always been a fantasy, but it was close enough to reality to be helpful. Organizations could build up sustainable competitive advantage by painstakingly building up bargaining power within the value chain.

Yet as Rita McGrath has pointed out, it’s no longer as important to “learn to plan” as it is to “plan to learn.” Today, a better metaphor for strategy is an online role-playing game, where you bring you certain capabilities and assets and connect with others to go on quests and discover new things along the way.

Unlike chess, where everyone knows that their objective is to capture the opponent’s king, in today’s ecosystem-driven world the basis of competition is in continuous flux, so we cannot be absolutely sure of the objective when we start out, or even if our opponent is really an opponent and not a potential ally.

That’s why strategy today requires a more Bayesian approach in which we don’t expect to get things right as much as we hope to become less wrong over time. As I wrote in Harvard Business Review some years ago, “competitive advantage” is no longer the sum of all efficiencies, but the sum of all connections. Strategy, therefore, must be focused on deepening and widening networks of information, talent, partners, and consumers.”

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Pixabay

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5 Business Myths You Cannot Afford to Believe

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5 Business Myths You Cannot Afford To Believe

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Sometimes a business idea or strategy seems to make total sense. Yet once it is implemented, it turns out to be a mistake. We rely upon research, stories and data to help us formulate what might work best. It’s okay to fail. But if you already know something is wrong, don’t make it worse by relying on a flawed business strategy.

I’ve taken some of my favorite topics I’ve researched and written about over the years and uncovered five myths that, while seeming to make sense, could cost you money, customers and maybe even your business. So, with that in mind, here are my five favorite business myths and the explanations behind why believing them cost your organization dearly.

A Repeat Customer Is a Loyal Customer – The customer keeps coming back, so they must be loyal … wrong! Just because a customer comes back doesn’t always mean they love you. You must find out why they keep coming back. Maybe you have a physical location that is two miles closer than your competitor’s location. What if a competitor builds a store between you and your customer? You may find out they were loyal to your location and not to you. Or maybe your price is the lowest. If that’s what the customer loves, guess what happens when your competition offers a lower price? It turns out they were loyal to their wallet, not your store. There are a number of reasons customers come back that have nothing to do with how much they love the experience of doing business with you. But when you find someone who is truly loyal, keep doing what they love about you, and you may have them forever.
We Want Satisfied Customers – This is a perfect follow-up to A Repeat Customer Is a Loyal Customer. No, you don’t want satisfied customers. You want loyal customers. In my customer service and CX research (sponsored by RingCentral), we asked more than 1,000 U.S. consumers if they were to rate an experience as “average” or “satisfactory,” how likely would they be to come back. Almost one in four (23%) said if they had a satisfactory experience, they would not be likely to or would never come back. Satisfactory is average, and the first opportunity the customer has to do business with a place that’s even slightly better than average, it’s a good possibility that they will move on.
Only the Front Line Needs Customer Service Training – Customer service is not a department. It’s a philosophy that everyone in an organization must embrace. Everyone either deals directly with a customer, supports someone who does or is part of the process that drives or supports the customer experience. Someone in the warehouse may never see a customer, but if they fail to pack merchandise properly, they will negatively impact the experience, causing the customer to call and complain and make the company double its effort to send a product that isn’t damaged. Once the employees in the warehouse realize their impact on the experience, they will view their job in a new way and be focused on creating a better customer experience.
Customer Loyalty Programs Create Loyal Customers – Customer loyalty programs are often about points, perks and discounts. An important question to consider is, “If you take those perks away, would the customer still be loyal to you?” That doesn’t mean you should do away with the program. While these types of programs may not drive true loyalty, what they will do is drive repeat business. So, recognize a loyalty program for what it is: a repeat business and marketing program. And if the customer keeps coming back, each and every time is an opportunity (beyond the points and perks) to validate their decision to do so with an experience that will keep them from even considering switching to your competition.
The Customer Is Always Right – No, the customer is NOT always right, but they are always the customer. This is one of my favorite myths. Ten years ago, I wrote an entire article (Your Customers Are Not Always Right) devoted to this concept. For today, I’ll summarize it in one sentence: If the customer is wrong, let them be wrong with dignity and respect.

Don’t make the mistake of believing any of these myths. Rather than clinging to conventional wisdom that sounds good but potentially fails in practice, focus on understanding what’s behind these myths and what will work. Brainstorm with your team how you can “bust” these myths and create the experience that customers love and come back for.

Image Credit: Unsplash

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

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Audacious

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How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World

Exclusive Interview with Mark Schaefer

Mark W Schaefer The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to a tsunami of AI-generated content, and according to Gemini these are some of the concerns for marketers:

Erosion of Brand Authenticity: AI can generate marketing copy, social media posts, and even personalized emails. The fear is that over-reliance on AI-generated content could lead to a loss of genuine brand voice and connection with customers, making marketing feel impersonal and manufactured.

Decreased Content Quality and Creativity: While AI can produce grammatically correct and seemingly relevant content, it may struggle with nuanced storytelling, truly innovative ideas, and emotionally resonant messaging that connects deeply with human audiences. This could lead to a decline in the overall quality and impact of marketing content.

Over-Saturation of Generic Content: If many marketers use similar AI tools and prompts, there’s a risk of the internet becoming flooded with repetitive and unoriginal content. This could make it harder for brands to stand out and capture attention in a crowded digital landscape.

Misuse for Deceptive Marketing Tactics: AI could be used to create highly targeted but deceptive marketing campaigns, such as generating fake reviews, creating convincing but misleading product descriptions, or even impersonating real people or brands. This could erode consumer trust and damage the reputation of ethical marketing practices.

Loss of Control Over Brand Messaging: While AI can assist with content creation, marketers may find it challenging to maintain complete control over the messaging and tone of AI-generated content. This could lead to inconsistencies in branding and potentially even PR crises if the AI produces something inappropriate or off-brand.

Now that we’ve got the ironic bit out of the way of asking AI to tell us what marketers have to fear from AI (in italics), let’s dive into the heart of this article and hear from the humans.

The Audaciousness of Humans

I had the opportunity recently to interview Mark Schaefer, a globally-acclaimed author, keynote speaker, and marketing consultant. He is a faculty member of Rutgers University and one of the top business bloggers and podcasters in the world. Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World is his eleventh book, exploring how companies can create more effective marketing by being audacious.

Below is the text of my interview with Mark and a preview of the kinds of insights you’ll find in Audacious presented in a Q&A format:

1. We are seeing a marketing evolution from messages to stories, agree or disagree? Or is the evolution to something else?

This is an interesting question. Marketing is about creating customers. Our ability to do that has been dramatically changed by technology.

Let’s say 50 years ago, messages and taglines were about our only options. Advertising is expensive. Space was limited.

But in the Internet age, we have virtually unlimited space to tell a story at no cost. And stories can be created by anyone. I think the evolution of marketing right now is when we can do something so worthy, so memorable, so useful, that our customers can’t wait to tell the stories for us.

2. What impact are we seeing from AI on marketing?

There are two types of marketing – performance and brand marketing.

Performance marketing is about repetitive acts like ads that create traffic for the top of the funnel. These activities will almost certainly be dominated by AI.

Brand marketing creates meaning – an emotional expectation for your company or product. In this respect, AI can still have a major impact on creativity and planning, but I forecast that there will still be a human role to play for years to come.

The most effective connections still come from relationships with people!

3. Product, service, solution, experience… In today’s world, which is the most important?

The beauty of our world is that it is filled with people who have diverse perspectives and needs! Some people might buy on value, some might buy on performance, or even the status they feel when they own a product.

However, at the very highest level, I think experience is an interesting opportunity for brands. Let’s look at Patagonia, for example, it does not product the cheapest clothes, or the most functional or beautiful. But the brand MEANS something to a devoted fans because of a shared experience or responsible outdoor recreation.

4. With people drowning in content, how are marketers supposed to reach their target customers?

This question really cuts the heart of my research and writing over the last 15 years and it is the theme of my new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

The book reveals research that shows that the vast majority of marketing and advertising is boring and ineffective and AI is making it more so. I would say we are in a pandemic of dull.

Competent doesn’t cut it. Competent is ignorable. So we need to ignite human creativity in a new way by disrupting traditions and norms. Changing HOW we tell a story. Changing WHERE we tell a story. Changing WHO tells the story.

It is time for audacity in our marketing. That is the only way we’ll cut through the clutter to be seen and heard. Audacity is now a survival skill.

5. Shock and Awe, which one should marketers focus on and why?

I actually address both of these in the new book!

Awe is an under-appreciated source of success in marketing. It’s not just about something that is vast and overwhelming. It can be something as simple as bringing people together in a meaningful new way that creates a shared experience. Wouldn’t it be amazing if people added more awe to their marketing?

Shock is also an overlooked idea. I don’t mean being offensive or reckless, but just waking up the sense to something completely different. A good example of this is Liquid Death, the fastest-growing beverage brand in America.

Nobody calls their product “Death.” So right from the start they have your attention. Their advertising features water boarding and kids chugging glasses of sugar. It is difficult to watch. But you don’t forget it, either.

6. You’re in charge of marketing the iPhone 17 and it’s basically the same as the iPhone 16, except now it’s available in Magenta. How would you change the marketing for a product that basically hasn’t changed?

This product introduction might actually work, but not for everyone.

You might recall that Apple introduced a black “U2” iPod many years ago. It sold out. It only worked because Apple already had a massive base of loyal fans – and so did U2! So even though the product wasn’t very different, the meaning for the fanbase was.

Normally, introducing a product with no discernible new value would be foolish but it is possible if the brand has meaning.

An example from my book is the game Cards Against Humanity. People invested in a hole in the ground and dried cow turds because they just wanted to be part of the fun. The value was in the meaning, not the product.

7. What does disruptive marketing look like now and in the future? What will become normalized?

The irony is, disruptive marketing is rapidly normalized. Here’s what I mean. The cover of my book is a world first – a QR code that creates an evolving, morphing cover based on the stories in the book. That is disruptive.

But you can only be disruptive once. From here on out, anybody who has QR code book cover will simply be copying me. The disruption has been normalized. You can only be audacious once.

8. Why are there so many damn QR codes in the book? 😉 (wink)

My book is full of “oh wow” moments. But a lot of them are better viewed than described. For example, a star of the book is Michael Krivicka, the king of viral video. I have never met a person with a keener sense of storytelling. There is no way you can appreciate his skill without seeing a video, so I provided QR code links so everyone has the chance to do that!

9. Where should marketers be careful as they challenge the standard ways of marketing, to be audacious?

There are lots of reasons why marketers should be conservative and traditional, especially when following laws and regulations.

However – if you’re staying in a boring box because there is fear in your organization, because dull is normal in your industry, or simply afraid, then you are vulnerable. The AI bots are here. They are competent, and in most cases more than competent. But you still own crazy. The companies that unleash the unique human fireworks of creativity will thrive in the AI era!

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Mark!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek into the mind of the man behind the inspiring new title Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World!

Image credits: BusinessesGrow.com (Mark W Schaefer)

Content Authenticity Statement: If it wasn’t clear above, the short section in italics was written by Google’s Gemini and the rest of this article is from the minds of Mark Schaefer and Braden Kelley.

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The Real Winners of Mega Events

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From the Super Bowl to Rock Concerts

The Real Winners of Mega Events

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Fans who attend major sporting events and concerts may have memories to last a lifetime. The owners of the sports teams and producers of major music events may smile as they look at a sold-out crowd. The athletes and musicians are well-paid for their performances. And we can’t forget the sponsors who pay large sums of money to be affiliated with events, enjoy brand recognition and see a return on their advertising dollars. But there’s one other “happy customer” that many people don’t think about: the city that gets the honor of hosting these events.

The Super Bowl is next month, and for many, it is a festive occasion. For the city that hosts the biggest sporting event of the year, it’s a windfall in economic benefit. This year, that city was Las Vegas. Even before the Super Bowl was hosted in its new stadium, the city profited from major sporting events. People flock to Vegas to party, gamble and enjoy their favorite major sporting events on the gigantic screens in the casinos around the city. Although the NBA championship may be played in a different city, it’s still hard to find a room at a high-end hotel like Bellagio, Wynn or Caesars.

The point is that the host city receives a huge economic impact beyond the game, even if its main street is not lined with casinos. Two years ago, Major League Baseball’s World Series pitted the Houston Astros against the Arizona Diamondbacks. There was an economic windfall for the two cities.

According to a local economy study, Houston First Corp. found that each game played in Houston was worth $12.5 million. In Phoenix, where the D-Backs play, the numbers are similar. Even though fans want their team to win quickly and decisively, there is an economic benefit to the best-of-seven match going the distance. Restaurants, hotels and more benefit, and the taxes charged benefit the cities and states.

The NCAA March Madness “Final Four” basketball tournament is ironically played in April. Last year’s “winning city,” regardless of the teams playing, is Phoenix. The last time Phoenix hosted the tournament was in 2017, and a Seidman Research Institute study at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business found an estimated 59,761 visitors stayed an average of 4.16 nights and spent an average of $487.19 per day, with a total economic impact of $324.5 million.

The benefits of sporting and entertainment events for their respective cities can’t be ignored. Be it sports, concerts, festivals, art shows, etc., these events are not just enjoyed by people attending. The trickling benefit of a boom to the area makes the effort to produce and host the events worthwhile.

Last year I met with Steve Schankman, the president of Contemporary Productions, who has produced concerts, special events and music festivals for more than 50 years. His events range from high-school venues where he booked Chuck Berry in the ’60s and ’70s, to the Super Bowl halftime show with U-2, to major music festivals starring Elton John, The Beach Boys and many other music icons, with millions in attendance throughout the years.

A couple of years ago, Schankman, with his partner Joe Litvag, produced Evolution Festival, a two-day summer music festival in St. Louis, with the goal of bringing the local community together to enjoy a talent lineup that featured Brandi Carlile, The Black Keys, Ice Cube, the Sugarhill Gang and more. If the lineup seems eclectic, that was purposeful, as Schankman’s dream was to unite music fans from every part of the area. “Music should bring people together, regardless of color, religion and sex,” says Schankman. More than 25,000 people—7,500 from outside the St. Louis area—enjoyed the festival. But it’s more than just entertainment for music fans, and he can’t wait to do it again with a lineup even more exciting and diverse than the first year’s festival.

In an article recapping the inaugural Evolution Music Festival, Schankman said, “I got 600 people working here. Besides that, we have employment taxes, we have sales taxes. We’ll do seven figures in concession sales. Seven figures in ticket sales. So just the taxes alone for the state and the city are great.”

The Metro St. Louis area, with a population of more than 2.7 million people, profits from a major music event like Evolution Festival just like it would from a major sporting event. Looking beyond the fun-filled weekend, the financial side of the sports and entertainment industry benefits more than just the talent on the field, court, or stage. Even though a concert experience like Evolution Festival doesn’t have the same financial impact as a Super Bowl championship or Final Four tournament, there are still similar benefits.

According to Brian Hall, chief marketing officer at Explore St. Louis, the average travel party to St. Louis consists of three guests staying 2.4 nights and spending $969 on hotel rooms, restaurants, attractions, etc. Then you add on ticket sales for the event, food and beverage, and souvenirs, and the numbers grow. With approximately 7,500 out-of-towners attending the Evolution Festival, the city and state enjoy a windfall of tax revenue to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, there are future benefits. Hall says, “Visitation to a community is a precursor to economic development, including moving, relocating a company or starting a business in St. Louis.”

The events business, be it sports, a concert/music festival or any other large public affair, always has support from local, national and international sponsors. Large brands like AT&T, American Express and Anheuser-Busch put millions into major sporting events. While Schankman won’t compare the Evolution Festival to the Super Bowl, he said, “Cities like St. Louis offer sponsors the chance to be seen by a geographically targeted audience. The festival created 31 million impressions through the in-person experience, on social media and with our traditional advertising and marketing.”

Several times Schankman emphasized bringing people from all walks of life together. At the end of our interview, he summed it up by saying, “At a time when we’re experiencing racial and religious tension, political divide and terrifying world events, let’s remember what Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is known for preaching, ‘Peace and love!’ That’s what Evolution Festival is all about, and the businesses and brands that support it should want to be a part of something that special!”

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com.

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Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

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After a week of torrid voting and much passionate support, along with a lot of gut-wrenching consideration and jostling during the judging round, I am proud to announce your Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024:

Greg Satell
Greg Satell is a popular speaker and consultant. His first book, Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age, was selected as one of the best business books in 2017. Follow his blog at Digital Tonto or on Twitter @Digital Tonto.

Janet Sernack
Janet Sernack is the Founder and CEO of ImagineNation™ which provides innovation consulting services to help organizations adapt, innovate and grow through disruption by challenging businesses to be, think and act differently to co-create a world where people matter & innovation is the norm.

Mike Shipulski
Mike Shipulski brings together people, culture, and tools to change engineering behavior. He writes daily on Twitter as @MikeShipulski and weekly on his blog Shipulski On Design.

Robyn Bolton
Robyn M. Bolton works with leaders of mid and large sized companies to use innovation to repeatably and sustainably grow their businesses.
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Pete Foley
A twenty-five year Procter & Gamble veteran, Pete has spent the last 8+ years applying insights from psychology and behavioral science to innovation, product design, and brand communication. He spent 17 years as a serial innovator, creating novel products, perfume delivery systems, cleaning technologies, devices and many other consumer-centric innovations, resulting in well over 100 granted or published patents. Find him at pete.mindmatters@gmail.com

Geoffrey A. Moore
Geoffrey A. Moore is an author, speaker and business advisor to many of the leading companies in the high-tech sector, including Cisco, Cognizant, Compuware, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and Yahoo! Best known for Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win with the latest book being The Infinite Staircase. Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. Chairman Emeritus Chasm Group & Chasm Institute

Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times, bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

David Burkus
Dr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, his forward-thinking ideas and books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. David is the author of five books about business and leadership and he’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and more. A former business school professor turned sought-after international speaker, he’s worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

John Bessant
John Bessant has been active in research, teaching, and consulting in technology and innovation management for over 25 years. Today, he is Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Research Director, at Exeter University. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He has acted as advisor to various national governments and international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank, and the OECD. John has authored many books including Managing innovation and High Involvement Innovation (Wiley). Follow @johnbessant

Braden Kelley
Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, workshop leader, and creator of the Human-Centered Change™ methodology. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change from Palgrave Macmillan. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Howard Tiersky
Howard Tiersky is an inspiring and passionate speaker, the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, innovation consultant, serial entrepreneur, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. IDG named him one of the “10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today”, and Enterprise Management 360 named Howard “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.”

Stefan Lindegaard
Stefan Lindegaard is an author, speaker and strategic advisor. His work focuses on corporate transformation based on disruption, digitalization and innovation in large corporations, government organizations and smaller companies. Stefan believes that business today requires an open and global perspective, and his work takes him to Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.

Dainora Jociute
Dainora (a.k.a. Dee) creates customer-centric content at Viima. Viima is the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world. Passionate about environmental issues, Dee writes about sustainable innovation hoping to save the world – one article at the time.

Teresa Spangler
Teresa Spangler is the CEO of PlazaBridge Group has been a driving force behind innovation and growth for more than 30 years. Today, she wears multiple hats as a social entrepreneur, innovation expert, growth strategist, author and speaker (not to mention mother, wife, band-leader and so much more). She is especially passionate about helping CEOs understand and value the role human capital plays in innovation, and the impact that innovation has on humanity; in our ever-increasing artificial/cyber world.

Soren Kaplan
Soren Kaplan is the bestselling and award-winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an affiliated professor at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, a former corporate executive, and a co-founder of UpBOARD. He has been recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top keynote speakers and thought leaders in business strategy and innovation.

Diana Porumboiu
Diana heads marketing at Viima, the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world, and has a passion for innovation, and for genuine, valuable content that creates long-lasting impact. Her combination of creativity, strategic thinking and curiosity has helped organisations grow their online presence through strategic campaigns, community management and engaging content.

Steve Blank
Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia University. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship, credited with launching the Lean Startup movement that changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Jesse Nieminen
Jesse Nieminen is the Co-founder and Chairman at Viima, the best way to collect and develop ideas. Viima’s innovation management software is already loved by thousands of organizations all the way to the Global Fortune 500. He’s passionate about helping leaders drive innovation in their organizations and frequently writes on the topic, usually in Viima’s blog.

Robert B Tucker
Robert B. Tucker is the President of The Innovation Resource Consulting Group. He is a speaker, seminar leader and an expert in the management of innovation and assisting companies in accelerating ideas to market.

Dennis Stauffer
Dennis Stauffer is an author, independent researcher, and expert on personal innovativeness. He is the founder of Innovator Mindset LLC which helps individuals, teams, and organizations enhance and accelerate innovation success. by shifting mindset. Follow @DennisStauffer

Arlen Meyers
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an instructor at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School and cofounding President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameyers/

Ayelet Baron
Ayelet Baron is a pioneering futurist reminding us we are powerful creators through award winning books, daily blog and thinking of what is possible. Former global tech executive who sees trust, relationships and community as our building blocks to a healthy world.

Leo Chan
Leo is the founder of Abound Innovation Inc. He’s a people and heart-first entrepreneur who believes everyone can be an innovator. An innovator himself, with 55 US patents and over 20 years of experience, Leo has come alongside organizations like Chick-fil-A and guided them to unleash the innovative potential of their employees by transforming them into confident innovators.

Rachel Audige
Rachel Audige is an Innovation Architect who helps organisations embed inventive thinking as well as a certified Systematic Inventive Thinking Facilitator, based in Melbourne.

Art Inteligencia
Art Inteligencia is the lead futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. He is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Art travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. His favorite numbers are one and zero.

Paul Sloane
Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader and editor of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, both published by Kogan-Page.

Phil McKinney
Phil McKinney is the Author of “Beyond The Obvious”, Host of the Killer Innovations Podcast and Syndicated Radio Show, a Keynote Speaker, President & CEO CableLabs and an Innovation Mentor and Coach.

Ralph Christian Ohr
Dr. Ralph-Christian Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.

Jeffrey Phillips
Jeffrey Phillips has over 15 years of experience leading innovation in Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies and non-profits. He is experienced in innovation strategy, defining and implementing front end processes, tools and teams and leading innovation projects. He is the author of Relentless Innovation and OutManeuver. Jeffrey writes the popular Innovate on Purpose blog. Follow him @ovoinnovation

Dean and Linda Anderson
Dr. Dean Anderson and Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson lead BeingFirst, a consultancy focused on educating the marketplace about what’s possible in personal, organizational and community transformation and how to achieve them. Each has been advising clients and training professionals for more than 40 years.

Shilpi Kumar
Shilpi Kumar an inquisitive researcher, designer, strategist and an educator with over 15 years of experience, who truly believes that we can design a better world by understanding human behavior. I work with organizations to identify strategic opportunities and offer user-centric solutions.

Scott Anthony
Scott Anthony is a strategic advisor, writer and speaker on topics of growth and innovation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, and currently serves at the Managing Director of Innosight’s Asia-Pacific operations.

Anthony Mills
Anthony Mills is the Founder & CEO of Legacy Innovation Group (www.legacyinnova.com), a world-leading strategic innovation consulting firm working with organizations all over the world. Anthony is also the Executive Director of GInI – Global Innovation Institute (www.gini.org), the world’s foremost certification, accreditation, and membership organization in the field of innovation. Anthony has advised leaders from around the world on how to successfully drive long-term growth and resilience through new innovation. Learn more at www.anthonymills.com. Anthony can be reached directly at anthony@anthonymills.com.

Paul Hobcraft
Paul Hobcraft runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities. Follow @paul4innovating

Jorge Barba
Jorge Barba is a strategist and entrepreneur, who helps companies build new puzzles using human skills. He is a global Innovation Insurgent and author of the innovation blog www.Game-Changer.net

Chateau G Pato
Chateau G Pato is a senior futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. She is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Chateau travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. Her favorite numbers are one and zero.

Douglas Ferguson
Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based change agency that helps enterprises spark, accelerate, and sustain innovation. He specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques.

Alain Thys
As an experience architect, Alain helps leaders craft customer, employee and shareholder experiences for profit, reinvention and transformation. He does this through his personal consultancy Alain Thys & Co as well as the transformative venture studio Agents of A.W.E. Together with his teams, Alain has influenced the experience of over 500 million customers and 350,000 employees. Follow his blog or connect on Linkedin.

Bruce Fairley
Bruce Fairley is the CEO and Founder of The Narrative Group, a firm dedicated to helping C-Suite executives build enterprise value. Through smart, human-powered digital transformation, Bruce optimizes the business-technology relationship. His innovative profit over pitfalls approach and customized programs are part of Bruce’s mission to build sustainable ‘best-future’ outcomes for visionary leaders. Having spearheaded large scale change initiatives across four continents, he and his skilled, diverse team elevate process, culture, and the bottom line for medium to large firms worldwide.

Tom Stafford
Tom Stafford studies learning and decision making. His main focus is the movement system – the idea being that if we can understand the intelligence of simple actions we will have an excellent handle on intelligence more generally. His research looks at simple decision making, and simple skill learning, using measures of behaviour informed by the computational, robotics and neuroscience work done in the wider group.

If your favorite didn’t make the list, then next year try to rally more votes for them or convince them to increase the quality and quantity of their contributions.

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023

Download PDF versions of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 lists here:

. . .

. . .

Happy New Year everyone!

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3 Strategies All Changemakers Should Know

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3 Strategies All Changemakers Should Know

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

All too often, we see change as a communication exercise. We think that if people really understood our idea, they would embrace it. In this view, bringing about change is really just a matter of messaging. Find the right slogan and deliver it in the right way, and you will ignite the passions required to drive transformation.

Nothing can be further from the truth. If a change is important and has real potential for impact, there will always be some people who won’t like it and they will work to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded, and deceptive. Change rarely fails because people don’t understand it. Most often it is actively sabotaged.

A more elegant slogan won’t save you. What you need is a sound strategy to overcome resistance to change. Fortunately, we know from social and political movements that radical, transformational change is possible and, as I explained in Cascades, their principles can be highly effective in organizations. Here are three strategies that you should know.

1. Start With A Majority

Change starts with a belief. If people believe that a change is good, they will be likely to adopt it. If they believe it’s bad, it’s going to be tough to convince them otherwise especially, as is often the case, their beliefs are rooted in their identity and sense of self. In fact, research has shown when we are presented with facts contrary to our beliefs, we tend to question the evidence rather than our own preconceived notions.

This raises an important question: How do we come by our beliefs? As it turns out, the best indicator of not only our beliefs, but our actions, habits and even some aspects of our health, is the people around us and studies suggest that the effect extends out to even third degree relationships. So not only our friends, but the friends of our friend’s friends influence us.

The truth is that majorities don’t just rule, they also influence. That’s why when we seek to bring about change, it’s important to start with a majority. The secret is that you get to choose where you start. It might be a small, local majority of, say, three people in a room of five. As long as supporters outnumber detractors, change can move forward.

You can always expand a majority out, but as soon as you are in the minority, you will feel immediate pushback. When that happens, you can lose momentum and send the entire initiative off the rails. In many cases, you will never get the momentum back and your hopes for change will end before they really start.

There’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature that drives us to want to convince skeptics. Resist it and focus on empowering your supporters.

2. Prepare For A Trigger

It’s easy to confuse a moment with a movement. A movement links together small, but often disparate, groups in the context of shared purpose and shared values. A moment occurs when an event triggers a temporary decrease in resistance and opens up a window of opportunity. Movements require preparation. Moments often emerge on their own.

What’s crucial for changemakers to grasp is that a trigger eventually emerges that creates a moment. It’s rare that we can predict exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s not too hard to see that one will come eventually and prepare for it. Political revolutions have leveraged this for decades, focusing on particular stress points in which a trigger is likely to emerge.

For example, the color revolutions in Eastern Europe targeted elections that they knew were likely to be falsified. After Martin Luther King Jr.’s failed Albany campaign, he moved on to Birmingham, because he knew that Bull Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety, was a hothead and likely to employ the type of brutal tactics that would trigger a moment.

In much the same way, the Covid pandemic triggered digital transformation in many organizations. Economic downturns trigger efficiency measures. When a competitor comes out with a hit product, it tends to trigger enthusiasm for innovation. We don’t know when these things are going to happen, but we know that they are likely to happen eventually.

One reason why so many change efforts have failed in recent years is that the movements were built in response to a moment. Once the moment comes, it’s too late. You build your movement to prepare for a trigger, so that once it comes you can make the most of it.

3. Leverage Your Opposition

Change thrives on passion. The status quo always has inertia on its side and never yields its power gracefully. That’s why so many would-be changemakers start out by attacking their opposition, seeking to meet them head on, expose their misconceptions and show the value of doing things differently.

This is almost always a mistake. Directly engaging with staunch opposition is unlikely to achieve anything other than exhausting and frustrating you. However, while you shouldn’t directly engage your fiercest critics, you obviously can’t act like they don’t exist. On the contrary, you need to learn to love your haters.

In fact by listening to people who hate your idea you can identify early flaws, which gives you the opportunity to fix them before they can be used against you in any serious way. They can also help you to identify shared values. For example, the LGBTQ movement prevailed by emphasizing their commitment to stable marriages and happy families, exactly the ideas that were used against them for decades.

Perhaps most importantly, you can leverage your opposition to your advantage. If left to their own devices, they will often overreach and send people your way. Bull Connor’s brutality, which he was all too eager to display for the TV cameras, furthered the cause of civil rights. In the color revolutions, the activist group Otpor found a way to even use arrests to weaken the regime and empower the revolution..

The truth is that to bring about real change you need to attract, rather than overpower. Being seen fighting the opposition may fire up your most active supporters, but it won’t bring anyone to your side. However, if the enemies of change see you gaining traction, invariably they will lash out, overreach and send people your way.

Applying Strength To Weakness

In the final analysis, the reason that most would-be revolutionaries fail is that they assume the righteousness of their cause will save them. It will not. Injustice, inequity and ineffectiveness can thrive for decades and even centuries, far surpassing a human lifespan. If you think that your idea will prevail simply because you believe in it you will be sorely disappointed.

Tough, important battles can only be won with good strategy and tactics, which is why successful change agents learn how to adopt the principle of Schwerpunkt. The idea is that instead of trying to defeat your enemy with overwhelming force generally, you want to deliver overwhelming force and win a decisive victory at a particular point of attack.

Yet Schwerpunkt is a dynamic, not a static concept. You have to constantly innovate your approach as your opposition adapts to whatever success you may achieve. For example, the civil rights movement had its first successes with boycotts, but moved on to sit-ins, “Freedom Rides,” community actions and eventually, mass marches.

Starting with a majority, preparing for a trigger and leveraging your opposition are only three ways you can apply strength to weakness. The key to success isn’t any particular tactic, leader or slogan but strategic flexibility. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what most change efforts lack. All too often they get caught up in a strategy and double down, because it feels good to believe in something, even if it’s failure.

Change, like many things, largely boils down to strategy and execution. It’s not a simple matter of belief or passion. You need to learn how to operate effectively, by studying those who succeeded and those who failed, building on your successes, dusting yourself off after the inevitable setbacks, correcting mistakes and returning to fight with renewed vigor.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Pixabay

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Voting Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

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Happy Holidays!

For more than a decade I’ve devoted myself to making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, because I truly believe that the better our organizations get at delivering value to their stakeholders the less waste of natural resources and human resources there will be.

As a result, we are eternally grateful to all of you out there who take the time to create and share great innovation articles, presentations, white papers, and videos with Braden Kelley and the Human-Centered Change and Innovation team. As a small thank you to those of you who follow along, we like to make a list of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers available each year!

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Do you just have someone that you like to read that writes about innovation, or some of the important adjacencies – trends, consumer psychology, change, leadership, strategy, behavioral economics, collaboration, or design thinking?

Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking to recognize the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024.

It is time to vote and help us narrow things down.

The deadline for submitting votes is December 31, 2024 at midnight GMT.

The ranking will be done by me with influence from votes and nominations. The quality and quantity of contributions to this web site by an author will be a BIG contributing factor (through the end of the voting period).

You can vote in any of these three ways (and each earns points for them, so please feel free to vote all three ways):

Sending us the name of the blogger by @reply on twitter to @innovate
Adding the name of the blogger as a comment to this article’s posting on Facebook
Adding the name of the blogger as a comment to this article’s posting on our Linkedin Page (Be sure and follow us)

The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024 will then be announced here in early January 2025.

Here are the people who received nominations this year along with some carryover recommendations (in alphabetical order):

Adi Gaskell – @adigaskell
Alain Thys
Alex Goryachev
Andy Heikkila – @AndyO_TheHammer
Annette Franz
Arlen Meyers – @sopeofficial
Art Inteligencia
Ayelet Baron
Braden Kelley – @innovate
Brian Miller
Bruce Fairley
Chad McAllister – @ChadMcAllister
Chateau G Pato
Chris Beswick
Chris Rollins
Dr. Detlef Reis
Dainora Jociute
Dan Blacharski – @Dan_Blacharski
Daniel Burrus – @DanielBurrus
Daniel Lock
David Burkus
Dean and Linda Anderson
Dennis Stauffer
Diana Porumboiu
Douglas Ferguson
Drew Boyd – @DrewBoyd
Frank Mattes – @FrankMattes
Geoffrey A Moore
Gregg Fraley – @greggfraley
Greg Satell – @Digitaltonto
Helen Yu
Howard Tiersky
Janet Sernack – @JanetSernack
Jeffrey Baumgartner – @creativejeffrey
Jeff Freedman – @SmallArmyAgency
Jeffrey Phillips – @ovoinnovation
Jesse Nieminen – @nieminenjesse
John Bessant
Jorge Barba – @JorgeBarba
Julian Birkinshaw – @JBirkinshaw
Julie Anixter – @julieanixter
Kate Hammer – @Kate_Hammer
Kevin McFarthing – @InnovationFixer
Leo Chan
Lou Killeffer – @LKilleffer
Manuel Berdoy

Mari Anixter- @MariAnixter
Maria Paula Oliveira – @mpaulaoliveira
Matthew E May – @MatthewEMay
Michael Graber – @SouthernGrowth
Mike Brown – @Brainzooming
Mike Shipulski – @MikeShipulski
Mukesh Gupta
Nick Jain
Nick Partridge – @KnewNewNeu
Nicolas Bry – @NicoBry
Nicholas Longrich
Norbert Majerus and George Taninecz
Pamela Soin
Patricia Salamone
Paul Hobcraft – @Paul4innovating
Paul Sloane – @paulsloane
Pete Foley – @foley_pete
Rachel Audige
Ralph Christian Ohr – @ralph_ohr
Randy Pennington
Richard Haasnoot – @Innovate2Grow
Robert B Tucker – @RobertBTucker
Robyn Bolton – @rm_bolton
Saul Kaplan – @skap5
Shep Hyken – @hyken
Shilpi Kumar
Scott Anthony – @ScottDAnthony
Scott Bowden – @scottbowden51
Shelly Greenway – @ChiefDistiller
Soren Kaplan – @SorenKaplan
Stefan Lindegaard – @Lindegaard
Stephen Shapiro – @stephenshapiro
Steve Blank
Steven Forth – @StevenForth
Tamara Kleinberg – @LaunchStreet
Teresa Spangler – @composerspang
Tom Koulopoulos – @TKspeaks
Tullio Siragusa
Yoram Solomon – @yoram

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We’re curious to see who you think is worth reading!

Back to the Basics of the Performance Zone

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Back to the Basics of the Performance Zone

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

As the global economy gropes its way to a new normal, with buyers still looking to regain their confidence to invest, most companies are dealing with sluggish performance—not terrible, but not great. In such circumstances, management attention gravitates to the Productivity Zone, where the focus is internal on ourselves, and the goal is to optimize our processes to prop up our operating margins. All good, but only half the solution.

The other half is to reengage with the Performance Zone. The goal of this zone is to not to improve–it is to win the game. There is no process for doing this (if there were, then Germany would win the World Cup every year), so internal focusing will not help. Instead, we need to reexamine our relationship with others, specifically with our customers and our competitors. Strategy begins, in other words, when we divert our attention from us and put it on them.

Investigating our Customers

In a doldrums economy, we know that existing budgets are tight, so if we are to find growth opportunities, we need to detect where new budgets are emerging. In other words, we are looking for forces at work in our target markets that are changing the investment priorities of our target customers. The key unit of examination here is the use case.

Use cases live at the intersection of our portfolio of offerings and customer value realization. We already have libraries of established use cases, but those are the ones that are under budget constraint. We are looking for emerging use cases, typically gnarly problems that are possible to solve with our stuff, but only with net new innovation and additional attention from us. Such use cases are at odds with our Productivity Zone focus on efficiency, but they are key to finding growth opportunities in trying times.

Each use case is a shorthand representation for a mini-TAM (Total Addressable Market). We are not looking for big here, we are looking for urgent. We want use cases that will activate customers to invest now, even when budgets are tight, keeping in mind that even the most highly focused use case with the smallest immediate TAM is normally a harbinger of bigger things to come. First-mover advantage in an emerging use case is like winning an early primary election—it is modestly valuable in itself, but even more so in terms of its impact on later competitions in bigger venues.

To detect these opportunities we need to interrogate our customer-facing teams in sales, solution engineering, and customer success to extract from them anecdotal evidence of novel use cases, regardless of who the vendor is. We also want to hear stories about customers struggling with problems that no one is solving. The question we are trying to answer is, what does the world really want from our company now? What would cause prospective customers to line up to spend money with us today?

To be sure, pursuing net new use cases requires investment at our end, and we too are under budget pressure, so there can be no “spray and pray” here. We need to stack rank whatever opportunities we detect on a risk/reward gradient and focus on the top one or two only, the limiting factor being that whatever we do fund must get “all the way to bright.” Adding even just one more opportunity than there is budget to fund results in all opportunities getting underfunded and nothing getting over the finish line. It is the most common cause of companies losing their way and drifting into irrelevance.

Learning from our Competitors

Here again we should divide up the landscape into legacy versus future competitors, as we will treat each differently. The legacy group are competing for the same constrained budgets as we are, using tactics we are now quite likely to be familiar with. This is the realm of execution, not strategy. It rewards campaigns led by the Productivity Zone focused on extracting the best returns we can from what is a low-yield, but also a low-risk, situation. Our customers are not going away, but they are going to sweat their assets and consolidate vendors wherever they can. Inertia here is our friend, and we need to leverage it as best we can by eliminating any sources of friction that would diminish our returns.

On the other hand, our future competitors do warrant strategic attention, for any number of reasons. For example, any recent wins they may have had could signal an emerging new use case, one that we too should be checking out. Alternatively, we may learn they are attacking our own target use case, in which case we need to differentiate quickly and dramatically in order to block them out early (a mini-TAM is too small for more than one winner). A third possibility is that we may be getting blindsided altogether, our installed base under some whole new form of attack, potentially jeopardizing the future of our entire franchise. It’s a wake-up call nobody likes to get, essentially forecasting an existential threat, but that is often what it takes to prod an established enterprise to adjust to a changing market landscape.

The standard unit of work for investigating future-oriented competition is the win/loss analysis. Again, we need to bring in the customer-facing teams to get their anecdotal evidence. Analyst reports don’t help much—they tend either to track us and our legacy competitors in established markets, or to glom onto the next potential disruptive technology and make extravagant extrapolations of its future returns. Instead, we want to look closely at the new use cases, regardless of whether we have won or lost, to see what the customer ended up prioritizing and why that drove their buying decision. As always, we prefer to win, but it is imperative regardless that we learn.

Changing the Narrative

Once we have focused on others, once we have revised our understanding of what the world wants from us, and who we are going to be competing with, we can now legitimately focus our attention on ourselves and our stakeholders. These include our installed base, our ecosystem partners, our investors, and our employee workforce. Our new strategy calls for a change in our course and speed, and we need everyone in our boat to row in the same direction. This can only happen if we change the narrative.

It is hard to overemphasize this point, so let me put it another way. If we do not change the narrative, nothing new will happen. No one will change course and speed. Even if we make clear the course corrections we are making, things still won’t change. That’s because everyone always assumes that things will be more or less the same, and that goes especially for established franchises. Getting stakeholders to turn a big boat requires a big signal.

The structure of the successful new narrative is always the same. It is never about you. Nobody cares about you (well, except your mom, of course, God bless her). Stakeholders have plenty on their own plates to worry about without taking on stuff on yours. What they do care about, on the other hand, is what is happening in their world, how it impinges on their hopes and plans, where it is creating risk for them, and what, if anything, you might be able to do to help them mitigate that risk. That’s what your new narrative must be all about. It’s a new you because it is a new world, and you are rising to meet the occasion. Not only does this change people’s focus, it energizes those whom it attracts, giving a real boost to the team at a time when everyone can use one.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Nominations Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

Leave a reply

Human-Centered Change and Innovation loves making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, because we truly believe that the better our organizations get at delivering value to their stakeholders the less waste of natural resources and human resources there will be.

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking for the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024.

The deadline for submitting nominations is December 24, 2024 at midnight GMT.

You can submit a nomination either of these two ways:

Sending us the name of the blogger and the url of their blog by @reply on twitter to @innovate
Sending the name of the blogger and the url of their blog and your e-mail address using our contact form

(Note: HUGE bonus points for being a contributing author)

So, think about who you like to read and let us know by midnight GMT on December 24, 2024.

We will then compile a voting list of all the nominations, and publish it on December 25, 2024.

Voting will then be open from December 25, 2024 – January 1, 2025 via comments and twitter @replies to @innovate.

The ranking will be done by me with influence from votes and nominations. The quality and quantity of contributions by an author to this web site will be a contributing factor.

Contact me with writing samples if you’d like to publish your articles on our platform!

The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024 will then be announced on here in early January 2025.

We’re curious to see who you think is worth reading!

SPECIAL BONUS: From now until December 31, 2024 you can save 30% OFF on my latest best-selling book Charting Change on either the eBook (immediate download) or the hardcover (free shipping worldwide) when using code HOL30.

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Human-Centered Change and Innovation

Keynote Speaker & Futurist – Braden Kelley

Category Archives: Strategy

Shifting Mindsets to Compete in an Ecosystem-Driven World

Shifting From “Compel And Control” To “Access And Empower”

Building Silos Of Excellence

Connecting Silos To Leverage Platforms

Strategy Is No Longer A Game Of Chess

5 Business Myths You Cannot Afford to Believe

Audacious

How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World

Exclusive Interview with Mark Schaefer

The Audaciousness of Humans

1. We are seeing a marketing evolution from messages to stories, agree or disagree? Or is the evolution to something else?

2. What impact are we seeing from AI on marketing?

3. Product, service, solution, experience… In today’s world, which is the most important?

4. With people drowning in content, how are marketers supposed to reach their target customers?

5. Shock and Awe, which one should marketers focus on and why?

6. You’re in charge of marketing the iPhone 17 and it’s basically the same as the iPhone 16, except now it’s available in Magenta. How would you change the marketing for a product that basically hasn’t changed?

7. What does disruptive marketing look like now and in the future? What will become normalized?

8. Why are there so many damn QR codes in the book? 😉 (wink)

9. Where should marketers be careful as they challenge the standard ways of marketing, to be audacious?

Conclusion

The Real Winners of Mega Events

From the Super Bowl to Rock Concerts

Top 100 Innovation and Transformation Articles of 2024

3 Strategies All Changemakers Should Know

1. Start With A Majority

2. Prepare For A Trigger

3. Leverage Your Opposition

Applying Strength To Weakness

Voting Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

Back to the Basics of the Performance Zone

Investigating our Customers

Learning from our Competitors

Changing the Narrative

Nominations Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024