Thoughts & Insights
Top 5 Missteps of Innovation Labs
A successful corporate innovation lab, incubator, or accelerator depends upon three things: people, people, and people. That’s what I learned by speaking with the heads of innovation labs at 12 Fortune 500 corporations over the course of eight weeks. These market...
A Look Inside Peer Insight’s Virtual Working Sessions
This video tour gives you an inside peek into how we design and execute virtual working sessions at Peer Insight.
The Design Brief: a North Star for Any Project
It’s easy to lose track of the big vision when you’re in the weeds of a project. That’s why it is important to have a Design Brief so it can help ground you and your team as the opportunity you’re tackling gets more wicked. Simply put, your Design Brief is a charter, the North Star, for your project.
How Virtual Research Can Move Your Challenge Forward
As you are figuring out your new normal, you have deadlines from leadership that still must be met. You’re likely trying to decide what to move forward, and how. And if you’re responsible for understanding customer needs to create or improve new products and...
7 Strategies to Accelerate Through Uncertainty
You thought you knew a thing or two about navigating uncertainty; racked up a few wins creating new revenue streams for your company, or new experiences for customers. But now the foundation underneath us has crumbled away. We now have even more uncertainty...in the...
How to Manage and Reduce Your Innovation Risk
In the world of venture capital, understanding and weighing risk is core to assessing any business opportunity. For corporate innovation, assessing risk is just as crucial, if not more: corporate innovation projects, or ventures, need to see success early, and early...
The Pinocchio Problem: Why Your Product Wishes It Could Be a Service
Pinocchio was a wooden puppet, carved by the shoemaker Geppeto, who wished he could be a boy. In the same way, your tangible product wishes it could be a service. Why? Being consumed as a service makes your product more than a collection of atoms. It becomes the...
Don’t Let Your Digital Transformation Efforts Get Stuck in the 90’s
(even though old habits die hard) Most newly appointed Chief Digital Officers or CTOS remember the 1990s well - they were earning their stripes while listening to Boyz II Men & Pearl Jam on the radio and CDs. The music might be different now, but this current tech...
Stop Slowing Down Your Innovation Projects
Disruption of markets worldwide has proven that speed is an important attribute of strong innovators. Companies that aren’t optimized for speed often don’t generate the returns on innovation and product development that they’re looking for; in fact, 42% of global...
10 Essentials for Starting a Venture
For many of the people we work with who launch new business ventures, our collaboration together is their first trip to Venture Island. “What’s the weather going to be like?” they often ask. After launching PX, our venture studio, it looks like we’ll be taking even...
What Manufacturing Leadership Looks Like in Industry 4.0
The steam engine and mechanical loom, mass production and commercial electricity, the personal computer and digital technology—these advances powered three industrial revolutions. Today, we’re in the midst of a fourth revolution. This one’s driven by cloud storage,...
The Future of Supply Chains and its Impact on Manufacturers and Retailers
Retailers and manufacturers hoping to compete in the $2.3 trillion global e-commerce market rely on a supply chain under increasing pressure from competitive innovation fueled by rising consumer expectations. To withstand that pressure, the concept of the traditional...
Stop Asking Your Team to Innovate Like Entrepreneurs… Until You Make Decisions Like VCs
Corporate innovation teams are taught in their organizations, and in the media and classes, to act like entrepreneurs navigating risk in a new venture or idea. But entrepreneurs usually work in partnership with their Venture Capitalists (VCs), because together they...
The Challenge of Measuring Innovation
Since 1955, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has decreased by 44 years. And in the last 15 years alone, 52% of S&P 500 companies have disappeared. Whichever way you slice it, it’s never been harder for companies to survive, let alone thrive. And in...
Are Your Breakthrough Innovations Failing to Break Out?
It is always difficult to develop an early idea, earn revenues, and exit. This struggle is especially true whenever firms fall in love with that new idea and manage (and fund) it like a traditional project. There’s an alternative path, though.
2020 Insurance Trends: Good Vibrations for Agile Insurers
If you swim in the waters of insurance and financial services, it’s a good time to paddle out and stand up. While the potential blockchain tsunami remains trapped behind legal and regulatory reefs, several good vibrations are creating strong waves to propel you forward. The question for insurers is: How can we get in the best position to ride these new industry dynamics?
The 8 Hidden Venture-Killers
Large enterprises struggle at launching fast-growing ventures because they fall victim to hidden venture-killers. Many of these obstacles are the corporate attributes you’re most proud of. Here are the 8 venture-killers, and what to do about them.
How to Set Price: 10 Steps That Will Reveal the Right Price for Your New Offering
As we help firms introduce new, breakthrough services and experiences, there comes a moment that can feel like the first day of school: No matter how much preparation has come before, the venture team can suddenly feel uncertain, anxious, and wracked with doubt. ...
