Question of the Week - Where's your next emergency?

During these challenging times, it's often difficult to focus on anything but survival. How to keep today's customers; how to make this month's payroll. Seth Godin's recent blog, about realizing game changing trends, got me thinking about what my company needs to be thinking about as we adapt to the "new normal" that comes out of this economic crisis.

I always like these types of exercises because not only do they force you to focus on what could completely change/destroy your current company, but it typically also leads to some thinking about how to create a company that could bring about that emergency. Especially in the technology world, the barrier to create that emergency is becoming lower and lower.

Question(s) of the Week - Killer Questions

One of the comments you hear frequently mentioned throughout all the doomsday news reports is that the greatest innovation often comes from down times instead of good times.  I'd tend to agree with that..."our backs are against the wall"...."necessity is the mother of all invention", etc, etc..

At my previous company, when I was working in one of their Incubating Technology groups, I used to frequently read Phil McKinney's Blog.  Not only does Phil lead one of the large innovation groups at HP, but he also gives back quite a bit of time to explain and explore the lessons he's learned about innovation in his career.  I still subscribe to his Killer Innovations podcast, but I had lost track of it as I changed jobs and got heavily invested in the MBA program.  But recently I found myself listening to the podcast again, and also spending some time thinking about Phil's Killer Questions.

When I first started this blog, I considered a segment called "Decision of the Week".   But the more I read things like Umair Haque's 21st Century Growth Manifesto, the more I think my time would be better used in trying to weave together Phil's questioning model with Umair's problem structure model and a few sprinkles of my ideas (and hopefully my classmates). Focusing on today's decisions may just be an exercise in extending 20th century thinking that isn't going to work much longer.