“I went to school on Tom’s ideas!”
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com
A Clear Eye.
On customers, brands and marketplace success
by Tom Asacker
“I went to school on Tom’s ideas!”
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com
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Happy birthday to my favorite 20th century philosopher, Yogi Berra! Yogi once said, "When you get to a fork in the road, take it." That's great advice for writers and artists, especially when our muse has gone ahead without us. But it's terrible advice for organizations struggling to remain relevant in today's hypercompetitive marketplace.
What's needed instead is the insight and passion to create a brand new path in the road; or better yet, to inspire people to build, and jump aboard, a big balloon and float high above the fray.
You can read my latest thoughts about the second most misunderstood word in the business lexicon - innovation - in my new article: The Enemy of Innovation. (Note: The word "brand" is still, by far, the most misunderstood).
Please let me know your thoughts. Also, if you're interested in receiving notification of new articles by email (along with some random statistics, news and interesting links that you won't find on this blog), you can sign up by entering your email address, clicking the submit button, and then confirming your subscription from Aweber. Thanks! And please note: You'll only receive about one email a month, and I will never use your address for anything else. Promise.
P.S. The following is my favorite innovation metaphor of all time. Enjoy and have a great week!
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"Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas."
- Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
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Tom,
I think you nailed down the spirit of innovation with these themes:
- Passionate intent on improvement
- Long term orientation
As you point out, there's no real point in making a conclusive definition for innovation. It is after all, a nominalization - a noun made from a verb. What give innovation meaning are:
- Context of the application (sales, manufacturing, accounting, etc)
- Preceding adjective (process, incremental, evolutionary, discontinuous etc.)
You describe innovation as affecting 'everyone'. I believe this is true in a figurative sense, since interdependent phenomena is the nature of life; But of course, innovations have to each party a degree of visibility, and relative importance.
Great job Tom, and I look forward to more insights.
- Cheers
Posted by: Mario Vellandi | May 12, 2008 at 12:34 PM