A picture of me standing at a lectern, working on a laptop computer, on the stage of the FWD50 digital government conference

Hi! I’m Alistair. I write surprisingly useful books, run unexpectedly interesting events, & build things humans need for the future.

CONTACT ME

Tag: innovation

  • The perils of local maxima

    Preamble: It’s been nearly two years since I wrote something here. In that time, I’ve worked with a dozen or so big public companies trying to understand how to balance keep-the-lights-on, milk-the-cash-cow marketing with the pursuit of disruptive innovations. I’m trying to assemble these thoughts into something—maybe a book, maybe an online course, maybe a […]

  • A life less optimized

    When data lets us optimize everything, the sub-optimal will be novel. Is optimization the enemy of taste?

  • Everyone knows it’s broken

    One of the biggest frustrations innovators face is that of trying to change things that are obviously outdated or flawed, but for which the organization seems unwilling to alter its product, market, or delivery strategy. Modern retail banks make money from re-investing the money you store with them at a higher rate. But increasingly, they […]

  • Mercedes and the three maxima of innovation

    Peter Yared is a smart guy. Since he started writing games and utilities at age ten, he’s founded and sold multiple tech companies. Recently, he left his post as CTO of CBS Interactive to launch another one. Recently, Peter wrote about innovation on Techcrunch, specifically addressing the coming fight between upstart Tesla Motors and incumbent […]

  • Innovation, culture, and design: SCM’s Valerie Coulton

    A month ago, Ben Yoskovitz and I visited Barcelona to run a Lean Analytics workshop for Schibsted Classified Media, one of the world’s largest classified publishers. We were initially contacted by Valerie Coulton, whose official title is Innovation Catalyst, about joining their worldwide meeting. Valerie and her team had read Lean Analytics, and wanted us […]

  • Tomorrow is not like yesterday, only more so

    Here is the thing about the future. Every time you look at, it changes, because you looked at it, and that changes everything else. Cris Johnson (Nicholas Cage) in Next (2007) Most companies’ innovation is focused on sustaining the current business model—doing what Sergio Zyman calls “selling more things to more people for more money […]

  • Apple’s next trick

    Apple’s next trick

    Without Steve Jobs at the helm, Apple has been widely criticized for incremental innovation. Critics charge that the firm isn’t breaking new ground the way it once did: the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini were just incremental improvements. To use Clay Christensen’s vernacular, they were sustaining, not disruptive changes. Everyone’s got high hopes for Apple’s […]

  • Unemployment is not a bad word

    A few weeks ago, I met with a minister for economic development. I wanted to convince him that the world tomorrow would not be the world yesterday, only more so. I needed an example pulled from science fiction, but also credible. The stuff of both dreams and headlines. I settled on the self-driving car. Google’s […]

  • Twitter’s attention tax

    TL;DR: If you can convince millions of people to test which topics are interesting on a platform you control, you can tax those topics when they become popular. Welcome to Twitter’s real business model. If I tell you that I’m going to build the next Facebook, your skepticism isn’t around whether I can assemble a […]

  • David McRaney on cognitive bias

    I first read David McRaney’s blog a while ago, and found him to be a likeable contrarian, pointing out the silly ways we’re easily led astray. As someone who spends a lot of time telling people to listen to data, it’s clear to me that data alone isn’t the answer: despite the best facts, we’re […]