Sleepless over innovation?

What keeps you up at night? Personally I’m troubled by what I read in the news these days – and not just about Iran, North Korea, or even Madoff. I’m worried about product development and innovation.

First, about a week before A.G. Lafley resigned as CEO, market analysts were criticizing Procter & Gamble for not being innovative enough. P&G not innovative enough?! That’s like Hollywood producers saying Lindsay Lohan isn’t thin enough. Good grief.

Then there’s Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner team. They had over 900 orders lined up – now down to 850 and dropping. Their strategic roadmapping and vision were brilliant, but production delays are killing them. What went wrong? Internal communication? Suppliers? Materials? What??

Even Toyota, for all its lean-ness, is bracing for its biggest losses ever. “We may have stretched more than we should have,” said Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder, quoted in WSJ (6/26).

And there’s more – the decline of IP value, the rise of Twitter and other ‘social media,’ the uncertainty of supplier quality/safety, patents expiring, the new popularity of house brands and generics, the need to drastically pare variety if you sell to Walmart, the rush to Clean Energy if you want funding, the scarcity of most other funding, the financial instability of partnership deals…and on.

I don’t know about you, but when I can’t sleep I look for answers. And that’s one of the reasons I decided to put together the Innovation Leadership Guru Series. http://innovationgurus.com/

We know travel budgets are cut and time is short. In fact that’s another reason I lie awake – will people still attend our conferences? But I digress…

Anyway, I thought if we could round up a panel of gurus to provide practical guidance and advice for dealing with today’s uncertainty, and conduct sessions via teleconference/webinar, it would be fantastic.

So I’m delighted that six top innovation experts have agreed to do it. In six 90-minute sessions starting in September and running through December, they will each offer specific ways to reduce the risk and cost of innovation. Scott Anthony is the first one up, on Wednesday, September 16 at 1pm ET. He’s best known for his work with Clay Christensen on disruptive innovation and Seeing What’s Next. He’ll discuss how to find - and choose - the most promising opportunities, even in the midst of chaos.

The other five are: Jay Paap, one of the foremost gurus on technology planning, on how to make a business case when ROI is unpredictable; Marc Meyer, widely respected product platform guru, on leveraging core strengths and moving into adjacent markets; Rita Gunther-McGrath, best known for Discovery Driven Planning and Real Options analysis, on how to reframe strategic direction and test assumptions about futures at the lowest possible cost; Gene Slowinski, the alliance “doctor,” on how to avoid the ‘landmines’ of open innovation and achieve breakthroughs that would otherwise not be possible; and last but not least, Robert Shelton, co-author of Making Innovation Work, on how to increase margins through six key levers and use integrated service-product innovation as a differentiator.

To get the ball rolling, we’ll send out copies of all their books to people who sign up, we’ll also take questions in advance.

If there are specific challenges that are keeping you up at night, I’d love to hear them. If we start an online dialogue here, we can get questions off to the gurus now. Maybe others who are wrestling with similar challenges will jump in with their thoughts and experiences as well.
Hope to hear from you. Thanks!