Exponential
The Strategy X Blog
A strategically curated perspective just for you
Four Traits Your Next CEO Must Have For Your Organization to Thrive
Staff • 14 January 2022
CEOs come and CEOs go. Some – like Steve Jobs at Apple, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, and Richard Branson at Virgin – are excellent. They generally ‘get it’. Others – like Steve Balmer at Microsoft, Jeff Immelt at GE, and Dick Fuld at Lehman Brothers – not so much. They really ‘don't get it’. What makes the difference between these ‘good’ CEOs and their ‘not so good’…
Its Time to Move… Beyond a Culture of Innovation
Staff • 17 December 2021
Many words have been penned, and many pages written, about that elusive piece of the business enterprise we call ‘culture’. Culture is to a business what the persona and soul are to an individual. It defines who it is, how it thinks, what it does, and what are and are not the right ways for it to move into the future. When strategies sputter…
The 12 Disciplines of Consistently Innovative Organizations
Staff • 19 November 2021
Ever notice that some organizations seem to be far more consistent at delivering new innovation than most? We have. Ever wonder why this is… what they do differently? We certainly have. Indeed, like so many others before us, we've spent our entire adult lives working in and around organizations that were trying constantly to deliver better value to their markets…
Staff • 15 October 2021
There's an insidious debate that's bounced around for probably the better part of twenty years now. It's the debate of whether or not ‘innovation is everyone's job’. Some think that ‘innovation is everyone's job’ because we have to bring the entire organization into the grand practice of innovation and engage them in finding new opportunities to pursue, and innovative new…
The Secret to High Energy Innovation Spaces
Staff • 17 September 2021
Innovation Spaces… come in all sorts, shapes, and sizes. Perhaps the most commonly understood of these is the ubiquitous Innovation Lab. However aside from formal ‘labs’ per se, Innovation Spaces can also be incorporated in many ways into other, more comprehensive spaces, so long as they meet certain criteria that is important to innovation work.…
Wisdom From Above The Clouds
Staff • 13 August 2021
Have you ever been on a plane flight where as you take off all you can see out the window is hazy and overcast weather, only to at some time later have your flight break through and emerge above the clouds, where all of sudden the sun is shining bright and clear? If so, you'll know how this gives one a sense of achieving clarity after having a long period of uncertainty and…
Design Thinking Grows Up — Welcome to Experience Thinking
Staff • 16 July 2021
Design Thinking is an incredibly powerful way to approach the design of just about anything that involves an interaction with people (or other intelligent creatures). Its underlying philosophy of Human Centered Design requires that we develop a comprehensive empathic understanding of the customer and their situation in a particular context…
The Undeniable Power of the Garage Experience
Staff • 11 June 2021
If you're like us and a lot of other entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs around the world, then you've likely romanticized – at least at some point in time – about what it must have been like in great companies like Apple, HP, Google, and Cisco when they were just getting their start – in their founders' garages of all places (or in some cases in their parents' garages)…
Meaning Making — Using Innovation to Impart Purpose & Meaning
Staff • 14 May 2021
As we visit and observe what we call the ‘existential festivals’ – events like Burning Man, SXSW, TED, Sundance, Bonnaroo, and ArtPrize, for example – we ask ourselves, “What are people really trying to accomplish here – besides just having fun?” The answer we've come away with – after quite some collective pondering – is that people are trying to…
How Organizations Innovate Themselves Straight Into Oblivion!
Staff • 16 April 2021
There are a lot of business organizations in the world – some estimate 500 million or more. They all provide some manner of product or service that makes our world work the way it does today. Nearly every one of these – based on our encounters with all shapes, sizes, and flavors of them – have some effort in place to innovate. There is without question no shortage…
The Secret Formula for Achieving Market Leadership
Staff • 19 March 2021
Unless your business strategy is to be a fast-follower (an increasingly risky and dangerous strategy), you invariably have markets or market segments in which your objective is to be the Market Leader. As Jack Welch so skillfully demonstrated while he led GE, Market Leadership is the one real strategy that has long-term staying power…
The Only Three Swim Lanes That Matter To A Business
Staff • 19 February 2021
In the course of our training with business leaders, we inevitably come to the existential business question… “What is the purpose of a business?” This is a great question, and one with a very simple answer. The purpose of a business is to create value. That's it. To create value. Plain and simple. That is what a business does. On the front end, a business…