The only article to read on blockchain…

Blockchain is over-hyped and confusing. Can’t understand what « an append-only data structure that contains data records that are cryptographically linked together » means? This is normal. And by the time someone explains it to you you’ll feel like you already forgot what it was all about to start with.

Yet, it’s such a broad technology that the overly complex explanations and lack of real applications for now, shouldn’t deter you to wrap your head around it.

I’m not going to write an article about it. I don’t need to. Adrianne JEFFREYS just did. And it’s perfect.

Read it here.

Fixing your innovation pipeline with a reverse pipeline

Last year, I briefly teased one of the most strategic tools we’ve been using for years rebuilding innovation capabilities with industries. The innovation reverse pipeline. This way of working solves the usual conundrum of a typical innovation pipeline where you start with a hundred smart ideas, select the best ones, refine a few, invest in one or two, bake for a two to three years, launch… and fail.

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Corporate Culture and HR Strategic Role

A recent podcast about “How to fix your company’s culture” grabbed my attention because it illustrates how rarely big corporations actually work on their culture. Although, I would say the “fixing” entails something is broken and I wouldn’t say that corporate culture could be broken. It might be mismatched with its environment or within itself (vision and values are not aligned with behaviors), or worse, your culture might just have faded away…

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Retail needs a digital wake-up call, but not the one you’re thinking about

The digital wake-up call you need is maybe not the one you think. You are understandably worried that you don’t own the platform where your customer experience and your brand are dissected live every second. But what is the option anyway? PR you way back to relevance?

Continue reading Retail needs a digital wake-up call, but not the one you’re thinking about

The 20 articles on innovation I wish I had written in 2017

Last year was a long year with many new projects to start, new customers to engage and work trips to China, Japan, the US and six different EU countries. You might think that such period are the worst to be writing on innovation and you be both wrong and totally right. Such level of activity actually puts your brain in hyper vigilance mode. You see ideas and potential articles in everything… But then you’re exhausted and can’t write enough to catch up with all the potential ideas.

Nonetheless if I try to clear up my 2017 notes, I would retain twenty articles I really wish I had written:  Continue reading The 20 articles on innovation I wish I had written in 2017

When technology does magic

Phil SCHILLER discussing Apple AirPods:

At the surface level, it’s an incredibly simple product. But the reality is it’s actually an incredibly complex product to make. Each AirPod really is its own computer, running software and hardware. And those two computers need to deliver this very clear experience that you want, and they have to work together, because we’re very attuned to synchronisation in audio as a species. And so it has to work the way you want.

Spectacular innovation is not always about flashy new things like virtual reality or 3D printing. It’s sometimes about making complexity disappears and technology does magic.

It’s easy to dismiss such products at first as plain incremental improvements. But they bring something past just being unplugged. The change runs deeper. If in doubt, check how many Bluetooth headphones are currently struggling on the market… But also think about how FaceID is making passwords or even other forms of biometric authentication seem clumsy and heavy-handed.

This is linked to one of my keynote this year on « Invisible Technologies ».

The Video on my Trading Risks Keynote is out

A few months ago I was invited by Merck Innovation center in Darmstadt for a one hour keynote on risk, startup and multinationals. As always a trendy topic, but it happens to be ones that I know a few things about.

Skip to 0:10:55 if you really don’t want to know anything about all the smart work that Merck Innovation Center is doing, but you’d be missing out.

Continue reading The Video on my Trading Risks Keynote is out