Tag: innovative

Swiss Army Knife Innovation

That ubiquitous red contraption contains just about every feature you can imagine.  A nail clipper, ice pick, and Philips screwdriver.  None of the individual tools are especially remarkable – you could buy a corkscrew that is higher quality and more beautifully designed – but all of these mediocre features are crammed into one product. Is […]

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The Hard Part

Whether you are running a startup, building a relationship, or rebuilding a community, there’s an easy part and a hard part.  One requires less work in the moment while the other unlocks the potential of your efforts and concurrently is the playground for personal growth. Those comfortable things that require little thinking, risk, or effort exist to test […]

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Leadership Lessons from Floyd Mayweather

Love him or hate him, Floyd “Money” Mayweather, Jr. is the champ.  With a perfect record of 43-0, he’s the highest paid athlete in the world having earned over $200 million in the ring.  In Saturday’s pay-per-view bout, he made a cool $32 million; putting his total purse from the last three fights over $100 […]

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You Can’t Hug Every Cat

This hilarious video has been viewed over 21 million times.  As a young lady records her first dating video for eHarmony, she gets a bit, well, distracted: As if that didn’t make you laugh hard enough, the Songify folks then made an even funnier auto-tune song from the video. That video has been viewed nearly 17 […]

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The 10X Factor

So you’re launching a new business.  Or pitching to a new potential client.  Or trying to snag that promotion.  What will it take to bring home the win in today’s hyper-competitive environment? You need to be better by a factor of ten. Breaking through inertia to disrupt the status quo can feel more daunting than […]

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Extra Turn of the Knob

There have been countless books written on getting ahead, habits of successful people, and forging solid relationships.  Each year, some new psycho-babble buzzword or slick management technique emerges to help success-starved individuals reach the next level. When you really boil it down, the most effective thing you can do is simply over-deliver.  That’s right, no […]

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What’s Your Range?

Grammy-winning singer Mariah Carey has a five-octave vocal range.  She can stretch her voice to reach those super-high notes, and she can also swoop way down low to hit those rich, deep tones. The best entrepreneurs and business leaders have a similar ability: they can zoom out to a 50,000 ft. view of their business, […]

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Overnight Success?

As Chris Dixon pointed out in a recent blog post, Angry Birds, the incredibly popular game, was software maker Rovio’s 52nd attempt. They spent eight years and nearly went bankrupt before finally creating their massive hit. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites in history, but struggled for a long time. Pinterest’s CEO recently said that […]

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Aspirin or Vitamins?

If you have a burning headache, you’ll do whatever it takes to subdue it.  If it’s 3:00 am on a cold, snowy night and you are out of pain killers, you’ll bundle up, drive to a 24-hour pharmacy, and desperately pay nearly any cost to alleviate your pain. Vitamins are a different story.  They are […]

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Razor’s Edge Creativity

In an age when the pressures of the world can overwhelm the best of us, it can feel like the window of opportunity has become smaller than a tic tac.  Many entrepreneurs look back in time and long for the days when there were oodles of products not yet invented.  It’s one thing if you […]

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