I recently unearthed my (real world) drawing pencils and purchased a pixel point stylus to add more illustration to my public works. If you’ve worked with me, you know that drawing — on a whiteboard, legal pad, printer paper, using Visio, wherever — is a huge part of my process. Drawing helps me understand new ideas, think […]
Informing the pursuit of digital era ambitions and challenges
I never intend to halt my public writing. It just happens. A client invites me to work on interesting problem, which can lead to another interesting problem or client, and before long only the crickets remain here. During this latest, much prolonged, cricket chorus I’ve been helping clients pursue digital agenda items. It is critical to […]
Want better answers? Ask better questions.
Some years ago, I was engaged in a discussion with leadership peers on tackling a particularly challenging issue that seemingly had no answer to satisfy the trifecta of ambitions, resource constraints and ability to execute. We’ve all been in this meeting. You circle until one of two things happens. Some person or faction gives in, […]
Link: Why Nordstrom’s Digital Strategy Works (and Yours Probably Doesn’t) – HBR
From the esteemed Jeanne W. Ross on studying customer obsessed, digitally ambitious Nordstrom: DON’T: Only a small percentage of companies will gain competitive advantage from [social, mobile, analytics, cloud, and internet of things] SMACIT technologies. Those that do will focus less on the individual technologies and more on how they rally all those technologies, in […]
Connective thinking is rare, crucial – 1959 Essay by Isaac Asimov on Creativity
Connective thinking ability cited as key trait in newly published Isaac Asimov essay on Creativity: But what if the same earth-shaking idea occurred to two men, simultaneously and independently? Perhaps, the common factors involved would be illuminating. Consider the theory of evolution by natural selection, independently created by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. There is […]
