Why Your Customers Are Slowing You Down

Every company is part of an business ecosystem. In the ecosystem, we find the partners, the suppliers, the customers, competitors, complementors as well as other stakeholders. A business ecosystem was more formally defined in the early 1990s by Moore as an economic community with three key characteristics. First, there is a symbiotic relationship between the … Read more

Why Failure Is The Only Option

During the last weeks, I’ve spent time with or close to the innovation units of otherwise traditional and conventional companies. As I wrote in another post earlier this year, it seems that every company has some kind of innovation initiative ongoing. As I had a bit of time to discuss with the people responsible for … Read more

When Did You Last Talk To A Customer?

Several of the companies that I work with have change initiatives ongoing. Some of these initiatives are more technology oriented, others affect the business strategy and yet others seek to re-position the company in the ecosystem it is part of. However, all these initiatives have one thing in common: customers will be affected by the … Read more

How Agile Are You Really?

Although there are still companies out there that are going through the agile transformation, most of the companies that I work with have adopted agile practices at least at the team level. Agile teams are more empowered and because of that, among others, more productive and more motivated. However, if we lift our focus up … Read more

The End of Control

This week I spent in Buenos Aires (Argentina) at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2017), which is the premier event in the field. As usual, I enjoyed the pre-events such as workshops, smaller co-located conferences and panels more than the main conference itself. Although many will disagree with me, I feel that the … Read more

The End of Order

Everyone loves order. Order gives structure, predictability, safety and comfort. Our brains are wired to seek order, either by shaping the world around us to maximize it or by avoiding situations where we might lose it. There is nothing more comfortable than sitting smack in the middle of our comfort zone. For the entire history … Read more