More 'guru' advice on thinking big

The last two gurus in our 2009 Innovation Leadership Guru Series were Gene Slowinski (well-known alliance guru and author of Reinventing Corporate Growth) and Rob Shelton (co-author of Making Innovation Work). Both continued the 'think big' theme (see my previous blog entry).

Gene's main advice: Go for alliances that shake up an industry, otherwise it's very easy to underestimate resources. Better to do a few powerful deals than many which are marginal. He outlined his Alliance Framework (tm) which helps determine if a partnership should happen or not - and if it does, how to make it work. Further, he talked about how becoming "partner of choice" leads to strong competitive advantage. Overall, when done well, alliances significantly improve NPV (Air Products, GSK, and Kraft are examples) and can indeed change the game.

Rob Shelton also suggested that being “partner of choice” presents the best opportunities for innovation, “good partners attract the best external ideas.” (He cited Apple, Toyota, Intuit, NIKE, and Amazon - but cautioned that not many companies excel at collaboration, even internally.)

Rob's overarching message was about business model innovation. While technology innovation is critical to success, most companies use technology levers fairly well. Business model innovation, on the other hand, is not used widely and has even greater impact on your company’s bottom line. He suggests thinking about new ways to bundle products and services, re-examining your supply chain/ecosystem, offering a new value prop, and entering different markets. Whatever you do, don't let fear of change stop you. Chances are not changing is riskier.

So now that the 2009 series is over, what's next?

As it turns out, there were other topics raised by the gurus that seemed worth delving into more deeply; i.e. developing low-end yet innovative products for emerging markets such as India and China to then launch globally, organizational alignment and adaptability to change, leveraging ecosystems, and sensing out untapped market opportunities.

So we've put together a new guru faculty to lead the 2010 Innovation Leadership Guru Series:
1. George Day, Wharton University, will discuss peripheral vision, the ability to detect unseen opportunities and threats.
2. Navi Radjou, Executive Director, Centre for India & Global Business, University of Cambridge, will talk about capitalizing on opportunities in emerging markets such as India and China.
3. Steve Steinhilber, Vice President, Strategic Alliances, Cisco, will share Cisco's approach to alliances, including "compartnering" and ecosystems.
4. Don Reinertsen, well-known 'lean' guru, will describe how leading companies are applying lean to innovation and uncertainty - with measurable results, and finally...
5. Michael Watkins, author of The First 90 Days and Your Next Move will tell you how to navigate and motivate your staff through major transitions.

Check it out here. Hope you'll join us!