Why you don’t define desired outcome

During multiple meetings this week (online, obviously), the same challenge came up: companies and their customers are extremely poor at precisely defining what the desired outcome is that they’re looking to accomplish. At first blush, every person that I meet claims to know exactly what he or she is looking to achieve, but when push … Read more

This is not the end

All of Europe, as well as the rest of the world, is in the throes of the Corona virus and some people I meet are comparing it to the start of one of those apocalyptic movies where the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Of course, nobody can ignore the human suffering … Read more

Combining innovation and operation

One of the well-known struggles of every company I work with is to combine innovation with efficiency-oriented operations. This is the classic problem of ambidexterity: the company needs to deliver on today’s revenue and margins while securing its future. The problem is not that companies aren’t aware of the challenge but that they lack the … Read more

Are you building a minimal viable elephant?

As part of the research in Software Center, I work with dozens of companies in the software-intensive embedded systems space on a variety of topics. One of these topics is the development of new products. Having worked with online companies, as well as startups, I’ve become indoctrinated with Steve Blank’s ideas and the “lean startup” … Read more