10 Disruptive Trends for 2020

Disruption is everywhere. Here are 10 trends that will create opportunities – and threats – in 2020. Twenty years ago, when I started advising startups and Fortune 500 companies on their innovation strategies, a “2020 vision” served as a key staple in most business planning efforts. The future is finally here. Emerging technologies catalyze disruption. But 2020 promises to be…

Forget Your Business Plan. Create a Strategy Map.

Strategic plans become outdated the moment they’re created. Instead, create a one-page strategy map. Having run the internal strategy consulting group at HP, and then consulting to both startups and big companies like Disney, Visa, Colgate, Medtronic and others, I’ve created hundreds of strategic plans. Business strategy used to be a clear and methodical process. No more. Today’s discontinuous technologies and…

Create a Culture of Innovation with the 10 Laws of Trust

Trust is the currency of business success. Here’s how to build it into your corporate culture. Leading organizational change to create a corporate culture that delivers continuous innovation is one of today’s most strategic business imperatives. But how do you do that? We’ve seen what happens to companies when customers lose trust in their brands – just think Target (data breach),…

The Future of Smart Cities

Our communities are getting really smart. Here’s what to expect. I’m sitting here in a large convention center in Los Angeles about to deliver the closing keynote at the Southern California Public Power Authority annual conference. It’s basically a gathering of the top municipal utilities in Southern California that serve more than 5 million people and deliver…

How Big Companies and Startups Use “Co-Creation” to Innovate

The latest research says “co-creation” is an untapped opportunity for innovation. Here’s how to do it. When I ran the internal strategy consulting group at HP, we constantly asked ourselves, “how can we get our $40 billion global behemoth operating more like a startup?”  That’s because like most big companies, we struggled with risk-taking and moving fast. Startups…

Silicon Valley’s Next Target: Disrupt the Construction and Real Estate Industries

‘Construction Tech’ and ‘Real Estate Tech’ are the next greenfield market spaces. Every industry, every company, and every leader must recognize one simple fact: every product, service, process, and business model will be disrupted–it’s just a matter of time. Companies that think they’re immune to the trends and technologies upending every industry on the planet risk…