Ahead of the Curve

Daily links and thoughts that will make you smarter and better.

Jorge Barba

Hello my name is Jorge Barba, I live in San Diego, CA.

I am the Director of Strategy and Innovation at Digital Marketing Firm Blu Maya.

Please take a moment to visit my blog, if you have any thoughts on innovation that you want to share follow me on Twitter @jorgebarba.

           

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The need for a Chief Detail Officer (TED)

Big problems require expensive solutions right? Wrong.

Here's a great talk by Rory Sutherland on how the small details amount to have the biggest impact. The talk is well worth your time!

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Posted 7 days ago

#Innovation Radar: 12 Dimensions of Business Innovation (PDF)

Download full MIT article on the 12 dimensions of business innovation from the link below:

http://www.box.net/shared/jpjh50rtfz

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Posted 19 days ago

How Apple Dominates

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Posted 21 days ago

How to brainstorm more effectively


Four parts of every designer's process that can be optimized to come up with better ideas faster:

* Strategy: Relating what you've been tasked to design back to a client's stated business problem.

* Articulation: Knowing what questions need to be answered through ideation.

* Ideation: Answering those questions via brainstorming activities such as timeboxing—the use of short, structured sprints to reach stated ideation goals.

* Synthesis: Mixing and matching the ideas created during your brainstorm to create even better ones.

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Posted 27 days ago

How to create cultural change

Great presentation and well worth watching. Here are the main ideas to create cultural change:

1. Try something new.
2. Create a group identity.
3. Welcome newcomers.
4. Be relentless.
5. Be relentlessly happy.

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Posted 1 month ago

Don't invent, Reinvent

To use a musical analogy, Apple's specialty is the remix. It curates the best ideas bubbling up around the tech world and makes them its own. It's also a great fixer, improving on everything that's wrong with other similar products on the shelves.

Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying:

"Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

The above quote represents a core piece of their strategy, none of the products they've released have been new to the public, they've just been better and different versions of what came before.

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Posted 1 month ago

Criteria for Intelligent Failures #innovation

The concept of intelligent failure makes a difference here. Sitkin's criteria for intelligent failures are:


  • They are carefully planned, so that when things go wrong you know why
  • They are genuinely uncertain, so the outcome cannot be known ahead of time
  • They are modest in scale, so that a catastrophe does not result
  • They are managed quickly, so that not too much time elapses between outcome and interpretation
  • Something about what is learned is familiar enough to inform other parts of the business.
  • Underlying assumptions are explicitly declared
  • These can be tested at specific checkpoints, identified in advance, since planned results may not be equivalent to outcomes.

From Sim Sitkin's Learning through failure: The strategy of small losses

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Posted 1 month ago

The Six Secrets of Business Model Exploration (PDF) #innovation #strategy

Download PDF here --> http://www.box.net/shared/njixay8y94

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Posted 1 month ago

Kobe Bryant: Imitating Greatness

(download)

 

There's a lot of useful discussion around the business case of 'imitating' as a business strategy, the fact is everyone imitates. If we had robots running businesses from their desks then it would be a different story but as long as there are people running businesses, imitation will continue to be adopted.

 

Do as Kobe Bryant does, practice selective stealing. Take some pieces and adopt them to whatever it is you're doing to be better.

 

 

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Posted 1 month ago

How To Get People To Pay For Content

Answer: Focus on access. Make more content available, on more devices, in the most convenient ways possible

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Posted 1 month ago
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