Photo: The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry

Bent Flyvbjerg studies spectacular mega-project flameouts.  I study (often) spectacular innovation mis-steps.  Who knew the process that produces both has so much in common?  Who knew that the path...

Some business models are inherently more attractive than others, yet investors and other stakeholders often don’t ask the obvious questions. Here’s a checklist that makes sure you are not one of them.

People like to make thinking about business models really...

The first step of discovery driven planning lies in specifying what success looks like. For for-profit projects, this usually takes the form of a level of growth or enhanced profitability.  But there are many kinds of projects that don’t have such a clearly defined outcome – this...

Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his great book “The 7 Rules of Power” declares that “success excuses (almost) everything.”  Success also determines which stories about the origins of that success get told and which headlines are buried.  This makes it all but impossible to...

Through Valize, Ron Boire and I have been working with clients to use the tools we have developed to bring Discovery Driven Planning / Discovery Driven Growth to life. Although we’ve got years of experience doing this, and over 100,000,000 hits when you search on the term, it’s still...

Through Valize, Ron Boire and I have been working with clients to use the tools we have developed to bring Discovery Driven Planning / Discovery Driven Growth to life. Although we’ve got years of experience doing this, and over 100,000,000 hits when you search on the term, it’s still...

The article “Discovery Driven Planning” was published in 1995. The book-length treatment came out in 2009. And yet, we’re only now catching up to what entrepreneurs and corporate innovators have long understood – when you are dealing with uncertainty, you need a...