Matthew May, Chief Strategist for MBox Design on 4 traps in the way of a culture of constant innovation. Excerpts below.
I want to know: What traps have you seen?
“1. Swinging for fences. In sports we worship the game-clinching grand slam home run, the three-point field goal at the buzzer, the blinding slapshot in overtime, the “Hail Mary” pass, and the hole-in-one. Likewise in business, we worship the killer app: it’s impressive, it’s newsworthy, and it puts us ahead of the competition for a time.
But moments like these are rare. There are no baseball teams with a roster solely made up of home run hitters, and the most accomplished home run hitters generally have a low batting average and a high strikeout rate. In business that translates to huge risk and is usually accompanied by high cost.
Therefore, it might just make more sense to have the whole team focus on making it to first base every time at bat.”
Posted by Kathy Sandler on Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 12:03 AM