INNOVATION COPILOTS - We design and deliver effective innovation programs with 10 years of track record in Europe and Asia.

Business Model Canvas for Innovators

I’ve been sharing for many years our own business model canvas that we’ve been using with a wide range of customers (from startups to multinationals) in many industries. If you ever been frustrated with the generic business model canvas and were not really able to activate it and gets real life results with it, well, there is a reason. And you might want to check this.

I already made a case in 2016 for letting go of the now generic business model canvas. Story short: it’s a fantastic training tool. As such, it’s very open and can be used by a lot of trainers, consulting enthusiasts, or business schools. The price to pay is that it’s a blunt tool with no credo, no vision, and worse: no teeth!

Innovation is a contact game that is played at high velocity. We require sharper tools.

Let’s see how it works shall we? Continue reading “Business Model Canvas for Innovators”

Pick our brains as a Service

Some of our customers are already using this retainer-on-demand consulting format but most companies still contact us too early or too late to work on innovation projects.

Too late, when they have thought through many points already and have engaged resources, they contact us to legitimize their approach or they hire us on a too narrow scope.

Too early, when the initiator doesn’t have the power to put into action, doesn’t have the resources or the back up. So it becomes a very short mission/discussion to help the client have the next steps clear to sell internally.

All in all if we decided to share about our on-demand format of consulting, is to ensure our clients (and potential ones) can use us to the best of our potential of value creation. Innovation is motion, so as co-pilots it is key that we are present at the right time to support and more often the case trigger the shift.

Hema Market, the Full ‘Digital is Over’ Experience

For the last ten years I’ve been in China at least once a year. As such, there is no way I consider myself an expert with deep understanding of this market. No, what I have now is a long string of snapshots, flowing together in an accelerated vision of how this market is evolving.

Since 2016 (a bit more actually), I’ve been pushing this simple concept: Digital is over! Being back in Shanghai right now, is among many things a perfect opportunity to check how far digital has been integrated in the every day life of this massive consumer market.

Remember, last year when I was especially impressed by how Alibaba and Starbucks did partner up to build flagships vision of the future of retail? By now this snapshot has consolidated into a full-fledged retail operating system (IT, big data platform, social web marketing, and supply chain all rolled into one “as a Service” retail mainframe) for every corner shop in China.

That’s the reason why, this year I was really excited to understand on site what Alibaba was now doing with Hema Market.

3 Tips for Business Blog Writing

Beyond the usual and excellent writing tips you can find in books and online, there is the hurdle of overcoming your own writing blocks. So here are 3 (sometime counter-intuitive) insights to help you write your business blog.

1. Do not write for an audience

I know this goes against all good marketing advice, which say “you should know your audience”, “you should speak their language”, etc. Etc. You know that already.

But somehow too much empathy leads to self-censorship. And writing is about self-expression, so you see the problem here. If you overthink about who is going to read you, then you might be tempted to be less authentic in favour of adapting to your imagined audience (that’s for all the people pleasers) or you might over judge what you write (that’s for the less confident ones) or you might even freeze for fear of judgement, or consequence on your social image (that might be for the overly self-conscious).

Microsoft understands what being an OS in 2020 means (maybe)

As a major surprise, Microsoft at the end of 2018 turns out to have now a higher market cap than Apple. Although Microsoft doesn’t manage to have the same customer’s reach that Apple commands in B2C, the Redmond firm managed to regain its leadership in B2B… even maybe in parts of the business that you don’t see coming!

I was discussing a few weeks ago how Alibaba is swiftly becoming the default operating system of retail stores in China. Reframing your perception from what was an e-commerce platform 10 years ago, to something with much deeper and global strategic intent is challenging. It is very interesting to see that Microsoft (as a traditional PC operating system and cloud platform) is moving in the same direction in the US.

Apple is Doomed (Again!)

Every six months or so, we have another warning that Apple is doomed. Well doomed or not, wiping off $74.6 billion in valuation on a trade day is unprecedented in the history of business. So yes, let’s pause a moment on that.

It is now obvious (in hindsight’s what’s not?) that the iPhone both reached a plateau in term of units penetration, but also price point. Don’t expect to see in 2019 +30% growth in iPhone penetration in US or EU compounded by unit’s price reaching 2,000 USD / EUR.

Reboot your innovation mindset

Do you want to reboot your innovation mindset?

Then, you have to look forward; not in your rearview mirror so much. You might look a tad crazy in the process. It actually means you start to let go of everyone’s preconceived ideas and shared wisdom. You enter the slightly weird zone of seeing what is changing in the market, more than the building blocks that got us there.

It means that for you Tesla is an energy company.

Fortnite is the social media of choice for the post-Facebook generation.

Apple aims at being the first and only platform that ensures privacy for your family’s daily life.

Amazon or Alibaba are the next operating system for every retail, grocery and food. So probably pharmaceuticals too at some point.

Hyperloop sells updates in urbanism and real estate opportunities (what should most public transportation companies or Vinci do, but they don’t anymore).

Facebook and Google are now just incumbent companies that successfully reinvented ad business ten years ago, and that are probably lacking a business model for 2030.

At some point you might even ask yourself what is your own company delivering in the proximal future. It might lead to an unpleasant answer of course (is there anything?), but you’ll have rebooted anyway. You can start to innovate.

Future-proofing your company

Innovation is taking responsibility for the fact that your company will still be there in 2022. Not everyone might be concerned right now, but you have to make sure that it’s not handed away to a small team without political power that will work « as a startup » or « learn by doing ». If it doesn’t make sense to handle your financial or manufacturing process, it’s probably unreasonable for future-proofing your company.