What might your customer secretly be hoping for?

The stresses of running any business with even moderate success are pretty much all-consuming. It’s no wonder, therefore, if enterprises sometimes lack the time to stand back and think creatively about innovation – and suffer accordingly down the line.

We can get into the habit of mentally...

Of any current business activity, we can ask ourselves: what is the bigger version of this? One can ask: what is the underlying principle within the business? And what would it look like for the business to apply that principle in larger ways?

When teasing out the underlying prin...

Innovation is the key because – in the sense we’ve been exploring – it is the process of working out business-solutions to problems that are most important to us.

The products that any company is currently offering might only be a small part of the customer’s real needs in a given area. C...

Does the problem that you’re fixing exist somewhere else and would it make sense for you to fix it there?

The designer Giorgio Armani founded his clothing business in 1975 and soon found widespread success. What motivated him was the desire to fix the chaos and clutter...