As I get ready for a two week vacation, I want to share a reflection that I published in a column for Madison Magazine a few years ago. It contains a good message for all of us to remember – slowing down to the speed of life some days can actually speed up our creativity. I buttoned my skirt, not anticipating the implications. The ankle-length garment’s straight lines markedly shortened my stride. By noon that day, my slowed speed had forced me to recall the vital but easily forgotten lessons from a sabbatical I had taken from my business. The unfilled calendar space of those months enabled me to move at the speed of life versus the speed my crammed schedule demands. I’m not alone in seeing any open space in a day as an opportunity to accomplish just one more thing. There’s…
Are your business model decisions aligned?
I had occasion this week to look at a number of different frameworks containing questions that help you design and innovate business models, each one developed by an insightful strategist and each offering advantages. While they varied in details, there was a singular logic that leaders, charged with ensuring their company is competing with winning business models, could benefit from. To illustrate, a story might fit the bill. All Pleasant Rowland’s advisors argued against her desired channel strategy. A former schoolteacher turned grade-school textbook writer, Rowland wanted to create a doll that would help mothers keep their daughters’ attitudes and dress younger, longer. An aunt herself, Rowland had observed how contemporary culture encouraged girls to consider make-up and the like at earlier ages than had Rowland. Rowland wanted to sell the doll through direct marketing (just catalogues at the time) in lieu of…
Don’t let paradigms preclude business model innovation
Business model innovation lessons abound in the daily news, and not just in the business section. CNN and Fox News provide recent examples. Both offered breaking but inaccurate news that the US Supreme Court ruled Obama’s signature healthcare reform – the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – as unconstitutional. Their paradigm – a mental model for how things work – coupled with competition to offer breaking news resulted in their reporting mistake. Most of the courtroom and media debate about the ACA centered on whether the US Constitution’s commerce clause allowed the federal government to mandate insurance coverage. This discussion produced a paradigm that the case would be ruled on this clause. Chief Justice Robert’s reading of the majority decision even started with the mandate not being constitutional under the commerce clause. So CNN and Fox jumped to a false conclusion. That’s what paradigms…