Red Thread Thinking: Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation

Chris Zook’s research at Bain & Company demonstrates how pivotal looking under the hood can be. He found that about 9 out of 10 companies that successfully renewed themselves built that renewal on hidden assets. It is all about seeing what potential is there that is taken for granted or underleveraged. That means that you have to go back and lo

Particularly revolutionary ideas can be too much change for people to handle. Innovations often need to be explained in terms of the status quo. Think about metaphor as a way to use cultural imprinting to provide useful explanations that will aid adoption, which might explain why automobiles are rated in horsepower and electric lights in candlepowe

“I tend to be anti-focus group because people answer questions with what you want to know, which is not helpful,” says Genevieve Bell, Intel’s resident anthropologist.

True insights are hard to come by because they are so masked by habits; it’s difficult to be objective with behaviors that seem routine on their face. Insight needs clarity. It needs to be specific.

Achievement demands connecting to your personal motivations and desires, but then reaching beyond your feelings, and often past your comfort zone, so that you can expand your knowledge, face obstacles with curiosity rather than fear, accept and judge criticism, and act, always act.

Simply put, you can’t make sound judgments on how a consumer might act in the future based on his short-term behavior. Every innovation decision you make can be better served by looking at consumer and cultural behavior over a long period of time.

Don’t waste anybody’s time with a barrage of details. Maybe it took you five years to develop your idea, but no one wants to hear about that when you’re trying to sell your idea (to an investor or a customer)—that can become part of your legend later on. You need a sharply focused plan, with all its various strands woven together into a cohesive un

Passion is not blind allegiance to your idea. On the contrary, it’s a willingness to explore, experiment, play, invest energy, hit a dead end, and then chase a new direction that allows your mind to refine, revise, alter, and grow good ideas.

innovations are often initially perceived as uncertain and even risky. To overcome a feeling of uncertainty (and at the same time satisfy their natural curiosity), most people seek out others like themselves (part of their cultural milieu) who have already adopted the idea or are using the product.