The Innovation Booster #9

The Innovation Booster is a monthly periodical bringing you five great reads on innovation, strategy, and growth that will inspire you to act, kick off your creativity, and challenge you to think differently.

In this issue of The Innovation Booster I feature great reads on leading innovation, diagnosing growth problems, economics of token factories, human-in-the-loop failings, and the importance of taking learning seriously:

1. Four Paradoxes for Leaders of Innovation by Paul Sloane. Being tasked with "leading innovation" is not an envious job. You must be different, but not too different; you must be creative, but not too creative; you must explore, but you must deliver too. Paul briefly explores four paradoxes innovation leaders face.
2. How Companies Quietly Lose Product-Market Fit Without Noticing by Brent Harrison. This is a guest post on Ben Yoskwitz's (of Lean Analytics fame) blog. Brent details for signals that we ought to keep attention to in order to spot eroding product-market fit in time. They are ideal customer profile drift, product signal decay, and messaging drift. All three are helpful for growth ventures within established enterprises.
3. Who’s Afraid of Chinese Models? by Ben Thompson. Data centres are modern-day factories. They produce tokens. They also break our mental modes of what a factory is, what are the key cost drivers, and how value can be produced.
4. What humans in the loop (really) do by Phanish Puranam. There is a great debate about the quality of output from generative AI solutions. One stream of thought is that by having human in the loop improves the quality of the process, and therefore, final output. INSEAD professor of strategy challenges that idea.
5. On Taking Learning Seriously by Bruno Pešec [subscriber exclusive]. There should be no balance, trade-off, or compromise between performance and learning goals. They are not in conflict, they are not opposites, they are not competing. They are interwoven and mutually reinforcing. If we wish to improve innovation performance, we must take learning seriously.

Mastering Innovation Management

If you are measured on innovation results, this programme addresses the root cause of failure: the absence of actively managing innovation investments. Through twelve strategic deep dives, you will master innovation boards, portfolios, accounting, and more. Click here for details.

The Living Strategy

What do you do when the plan no longer fits and the decision cannot wait? Join Holger Nils Pohl and me in Cologne on 7 October to find out. Three hours, hands-on, small group of senior peers. Early bird €300 while it lasts. Register here.

Playing Lean Facilitator Training

If you help others learn how to innovate, this is for you. Join me in Frankfurt on 12 October for a full day of Playing Lean Facilitator Training: hands-on practice, personal feedback, certification, and the complete facilitator toolkit. €400 until 12 September. Register here.