The Innovator's Attitude Newsletter

The Innovator's Attitude™ newsletter is published on the first of every month.

It is freely available, alongside many other strategy and innovation resources, to the subscribers.

Please find all the issues, sorted from latest to oldest, below.

Volume 3 (2024)

• Issue 12, December: On Feedback. Receiving and giving feedback are distinct skill sets that can be improved with deliberate practice.
• Issue 11, November: On Perfecting the Craft. Personal reflections on improvement written between two training sessions.
• Issue 10, September: On Understanding it Takes Time. Developing innovation capabilities demands patience for sustained practice.
• Issue 9, September: On Killing Ideas. How to balance ego and succeeding with innovation?
• Issue 8, August: On Known and Unknown Unknowns. On the dangers of getting out of the building.
• Issue 7, July: On Wonder and Inquiry. What would you like to know about innovation?
• Issue 6, June: On Learning and Sharing. A sneak peek on my latest project.
• Issue 5, May: Five ways to supercharge your innovation process using lean practices. I spotlight five specific lean practices and how they can be leveraged to innovate better.
• Issue 4, April: One System, Few Roles. Three layers of innovation management system.
• Issue 3, March: Many Ideas, One Portfolio. Three tips for managing innovation portfolio.
• Issue 2, February: One Target, Many Tactics. On importance of clear objectives and flexibility in achieving them.
• Issue 1, January: On Time. You have just six big moves per year. What will they be?

Volume 2 (2023)

• Issue 12, December: On Pieces of the Puzzle II. Exploration of three difficult questions: how to develop products, services, and businesses iteratively, how to make the most out of what you have today, and how to recognise bad business advice.
• Issue 11, November: On Differentiating Innovation and Improvement. They are not opposite extremes on the same spectrum!
• Issue 10, October: On Pieces of the Puzzle. Exploration of three difficult questions: how to improve product development processes, how to segment a new market, and how to grow organically.
• Issue 9, September: On "Real" Innovation. A raw conversation about importance of different forms of innovation, managing innovation in large enterprises, and how can innovators thrive.
• Issue 8, August: On Inspiration, Quality Edition. What can be learned from the pioneers of quality management?
• Issue 7, July: On Discipline. Testing business ideas and developing them into tangible products and services requires dedicated work.
• Issue 6, June: On Expertise. Today we are seeing confluence of rejecting the experts in tandem with increased feeling of doubt amongst those with demonstrable expertise.
• Issue 5, May: On Collaboration. Innovation teams are the most basic, the most fundamental ingredients for corporate innovation. Without them everything else is in vain.
• Issue 4, April: On Self-Care. Innovation is a wild ride with many highs and lows.
• Issue 3, March: On Creativity. Wrestling with identity, labels, and creativity.
• Issue 2, February: On Paying the Price. While failure might be a part of the learning process, the attention should be on the data collected, insight generated, and decisions made.
• Issue 1, January: On Change. If you can't change yourself, how could you change your own organisation?

Volume 1 (2022)

• Issue 10, December: On Paying Attention. The best ideas are spotted; observed; recognised. They are not engineered or machined in some artificial idea lab where people are forced to come up with the “future.”
• Issue 9, November: On Innovating at Scale. What’s more important: the process of transforming an idea into business or how the above process happens in an organisation?
• Issue 8, October: On Innumerable Pathways to Value Creation. Without strategy all pathways look alike. With strategy some pathways are more aligned than others. Life is too short to tread ill ground.
• Issue 7, September: On Learning the Hard Way. Five lessons from personal failure.
• Issue 6, August: The Art and Science of Lean Experimentation. What exactly is value? What are people willing to pay for? How will we build it? The questions are endless. Assuming we know the answers can be devastating: from failed product launches, to tanked careers to unprecedented value destruction.
• Issue 5, July: On Being A Reflective Innovator. Proclivity for action is great. But if you wish to increase the likelihood of repeating your own successes and avoiding failures, then you ought to practice critical reflectivity as well.
• Issue 4, June: On Curiosity. Asking questions with genuine intent to learn is a wonderful way to reduce uncertainty, create more innovative solutions and business models, and live a more fulfilled life.
• Issue 3, May: On Good Ideas. Innovation is all about transforming ideas into value (money, benefits, positive outcomes). But not all ideas are equal. In fact, generating hundreds of ideas is a trivial matter—all you need is a team of five, a sentence, and 30 minutes to generate 150 ideas.
• Issue 2, April: On Connecting the Dots. Companies don't innovate. Innovators do. Ideas don't materialise out of thin air. In fact, some of the best ideas appear at the intersection of personal experience and noticing something few others have.
• Issue 1, March: On Relentless Pursuit of Value. Value creation is what makes invention and innovation different. Successful innovators understand that they must make a meaningful impact to their customers.