New ventures are completely focused on innovation by developing new products and solutions that create value for a growing customer base. As the successful venture grows, its priority often shifts to excellence in execution with a focus on sales, margins and growth. It becomes very good at doing what it has always done and not […]
Realizing Innovation: It Takes a Village!
When executive management looks to improve a company’s innovation capability, their gaze typically settles on the group of technical folks; engineers, scientists and/or programmers collectively called something like R&D, Development or Engineering. I suppose this is a reasonable place to start, but true improvement needs to extend beyond the technical team as can be seen […]
Executing on Innovation within the Matrix
In an earlier blog post, Cory Hixson referenced an interesting book on executing innovation entitled Beyond the Idea, which discusses different types of innovation projects within larger organizations. While the book provides a good macro perspective on how innovation works in a larger company, implementation of an innovation effort of any reasonable size within a matrixed […]
Interim Leadership: An Outside View Looking In
I have been in the executive search vertical for 18 years, spending over half of those years in the Silicon Valley and the remainder in the Midwest US. Over the years I have interacted with multiple companies conducting Board of Director, C level and VP searches for all types of companies. Those companies range in […]
My R&D Manager Quit!
Imagine walking in to work on a quiet Tuesday morning and you notice your R&D manager Julie has requested a meeting with you at 10 am. You’ve got an open-door leadership style and it’s not unusual for your staff to drop in for a quick conversation. Your R&D manager is a bit more structured and likes to […]