Innovation Copilots

Innovation Copilots

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🤘 We now have a podcast (kind of)

🤘 We now have a podcast (kind of)

I've been teasing that for a few days, but let's say we are officially experimenting with a podcast version of our articles. To be clear, Stéphanie and I have been struggling with this idea for months as we don't have the material time to record things. We also have a

❌ Are we past social media?

❌ Are we past social media?

Facebook has been losing steam for years, and now Instagram has also started to feel stale. Twitter has objectively devolved into a toxic cesspool, and Mastodon feels like a half-backed, overly cumbersome platform. As innovators, we feel in our bones that such a market is ripe for new entrants, if

📦 Pricing technology

📦 Pricing technology

When dealing with innovation, a constant issue is being able to get out of the product mindset. As most decision-makers come from a marketing, financial, or engineering background, the default mode is thinking of price, product, promotion, etc. Something doesn't sell? Lower the price! Still not working? Promote more aggressively!

🧐 B2C Is always harder...

🧐 B2C Is always harder...

When you're working in startup mode, one of your core missions (if not a unique mission) is to understand the problem you want to solve for your market. And I've been repeating for eternity that it's somehow easy in B2B, while B2C is always fantastically more complicated. The reason essentially

🤑 Is TikTok a propaganda machine? It's certainly a cash machine.

🤑 Is TikTok a propaganda machine? It's certainly a cash machine.

TikTok has been, for a few years, the center stage of heated debates about being a Chinese propaganda machine in the West. The irony of American tech companies and social networks pointing the finger on how TikTok could sabotage democracies when the January 6 committee is still trying to figure

🍎 The Lisa is 40 years old, and we still misread it as a failure

/ Business models and Strategy

🍎 The Lisa is 40 years old, and we still misread it as a failure

You probably heard many stories about Apple's Lisa historical flop. Launched in January 1983 at a 5x to 7x price point above the best-selling IBM PCs of the time, Lisa was discontinued in 1986 (its remaining inventory was famously buried in a Utah landfill to justify a tax write-off). The

🍔 Understanding the slump in an innovation market as a positive signal

/ Business models and Strategy

🍔 Understanding the slump in an innovation market as a positive signal

In a previous newsletter, I addressed some misconceptions about timing market entrance for innovations. 🟢 Timing technology push and market pull for incubation programsOne of the most requested frameworks I often have from corporate customers is how Gartner’s hype and innovation diffusion work together. To my knowledge, this is weirdly

🤫 The shop that didn't need a website

🤫 The shop that didn't need a website

One of the shops in our cozy city of Haarlem sells high-end HiFi. As I pushed the door for the first time a few years ago, I was surprised at the really exceptional brands they had in store. The friendly owner was surprised too. He politely asked if I had

🤖 The digital native myth

🤖 The digital native myth

Today, a quick note for future reference as I still hear a lot of marketers still strategizing about "digital natives." The digital native demography is a common target of many incumbent companies trying to get more into digital. How to address the digital natives effectively has been the main theme

💳 An Amazon-like store without market awareness

💳 An Amazon-like store without market awareness

Since a few months ago, the supermarket chain Aldi has been testing a fully automated checkout-free store in Utrecht and London (Aldi Shop & Go). This is a classic but always interesting move of prototyping at scale technology to understand how your market reacts to it and, most importantly, if there's

🤢 The U.S. army doesn't think VR is ready, either

🤢 The U.S. army doesn't think VR is ready, either

Being mostly bearish on VR, I'm still monitoring a few reasonably useful applications. Among them, there is the U.S. army Integrated Visual Augmentation Systems (IVAS) initiative, promising to equip the "soldier of the future" with enhanced capabilities such as: * Allowing soldiers in the back of fighting vehicles to have

📺 A fire chat discussion about tech, the U.S., Europe, design, and a few other things

📺 A fire chat discussion about tech, the U.S., Europe, design, and a few other things

In 2019, I was having a 'fire chat" discussion as I was the host of the tech conference Blend Web Mix in Lyon (France) to debrief many of the topics that were addressed on stage for two days. And I know it's kind of old news. But I wanted to

🦐 To continue, you must change...

🦐 To continue, you must change...

René Redzepi is one of the most famous chefs in Europe and admittedly on the planet. His restaurant, Noma, in Copenhagen, has been on top of all charts, reviews, guides, and food websites since 2012, when he reinvented the notion of local cuisine. A 2016 movie is even paying homage

🐭 The lessons from Disney's flywheel effect

/ Business models and Strategy

🐭 The lessons from Disney's flywheel effect

In the fifties, Walt Disney famously laid out his business strategy. It was not about values, excellence, marketing, or any other vague descriptor. It was about a methodic interconnection of businesses, feeding each other and creating ongoing reasons to engage with the Disney brand. Today, we would talk about a

🥸 Apple glasses... again?

🥸 Apple glasses... again?

I already discussed a few times where Apple would be standing regarding augmented or virtual reality glasses. Whether you care about Apple or this market is not so much the point of using this as an interesting discussion about what innovation is and how such a powerful company deals with

👻 CES, the tradeshow where tech goes to die

👻 CES, the tradeshow where tech goes to die

Every year for the CES Las Vegas, I have to shut down my social networks and stop listening to tech podcasts. But this is never 100% failproof, and I always catch glimpses of the recurring non-sensical projects pitched in the faint hope of generating some ephemeral buzz. I'm not even

💶 The most overlooked question a startup should ask to start with...

💶 The most overlooked question a startup should ask to start with...

There are a dozen key questions you should ask yourself as a startup founder. One of these that is essentially overlooked is simple: can you be bootstrapped? The term bootstrapped indicates a business model that can start with modest capital and be rapidly fuelled through its own operating revenues without

🤖 The future always starts in crappy mode

🤖 The future always starts in crappy mode

When I started to travel and regularly work in Shanghai back then, many things were surprising in how technology was developed and incorporated into everyday life. Many things that would later make China a tech super-power were junky at best. But they were there, burgeoning from duct tape, exposed wires,

🐥 The charm of Elon

🐥 The charm of Elon

As much as I've tried to disconnect from Twitter lately, I'm catching myself going to it far more than I would like. A few days before Christmas, I ended up listening in a Twitter space to a few Silicon Valley engineers talking about scale and complexity in tech ventures and

🎄 That's a wrap for 2022!

🎄 That's a wrap for 2022!

Before I pause posting for a few days, I wanted to reflect on what posting five articles a week for more than nine months achieved (including starting to grow organically a long-form newsletter discussing our tools and sharing market analysis) and what's next. Keep in mind that besides tracking the