Is your organization looking forward, or is it focused on the problems of the
present and immediate short-term competition?

Will your organization create new rules of competition in the future? Is it
imagining new ways of doing business, building new capabilities, and setting new
standards of customer satisfaction? Is it alert to possible risks from
unconventional rivals, new business models, changing demographics, and global
opportunities and uncertainties?

It is no longer a question of being able to operate lean and mean. Trimming jobs
and cutting costs, while important tasks, will not put you and your company into
a front running position for industry leadership of the future.

Looking at the Wrong Things

According to Hamel and Prahalad, “Any company that succeeds at restructuring and
reengineering, but fails to create the markets of the future, will find itself
on a treadmill, trying to keep one step ahead of the steadily declining margins
and profits of yesterday’s business.”

Keys to Creating Success for the Future

Value-building companies that find creative ways to address broad social
concerns and who cooperate with interest groups may be better positioned for
future success than those with a single-minded pursuit of the bottom line.

Focusing time and energy to creatively evaluate potential risks and
opportunities is the key to creating and maintaining a successful future for
your organization.

This is a synopsis of the full 2,000-word article which contains the following
concepts:

Why Leaders Don’t Look Ahead
Looking at the Wrong Things
Risks and Opportunities in an Uncertain World
Five Drivers of Change
Keys to Creating Success for the Future
Futurist Thinking

Here are the order links for this article with full reprint rights. You can use
this article as your own in your newsletters, ezines and marketing materials.

a. Text, 2000-word Article with Full Reprint Rights $79. To order click HERE.

b. Text, 1,000 word article full reprint rights $57. To order, click HERE.

All word lengths are approximate.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay, computer scientist

Self-managed volunteer hackers pool their skills every day on the Internet. Thousands of solo programmers compete to build software that’s bought by companies with whom they have little or no contact. Open sourcing has sparked a new way of innovating, even in other more traditional industries. It involves recruiting ideas from outside the company: from customers, freelance scientists, engineers and designers—in short, a global audience of enthusiastic creators.

Influential figures from important global companies are incorporating open source principles and practices into how they organize R&D and launch new products. Excellent case studies are revealed in William C. Taylor’s and Polly LaBarre’s book, Mavericks at Work. Companies as diverse as GoldCorp, Procter & Gamble, Eli Lilly and the World Bank Development Marketplace use open source principles and the Internet to spark new ideas and solve problems. CEOs and executive teams are tapping into the wisdom of highly intelligent, resourceful professionals interconnected on the web.

When you invite lots of smart people – customers, engineers, rank-and-file enthusiasts – into your organization, it unleashes bottom-up innovation. This is a huge shift for organizations, requiring them to become comfortable with openness, transparency and the loosening of controls

====
This is a brief synopsis of a 2000 word article suitable for consultant newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights which means that you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences.

There are 2 versions of this article: 2000 words, and 1000 words (approximate word counts). The full article covers the following sub-topics:

Rethinking Innovation
Inventing New Ways of Inventing
3 Keys to Innovating
Basic Principles That Squelch Innovation
Exploiting Old Ways, Exploring New Ways
Darwin’s Theory Applied to Bright New Ideas
Seeing Old Things in New Ways
11½ Weird Ideas That Work
Break with the Past
The Creative Attitude
Recommended Reading

====

If you are a regular subscriber to Customized Newsletters and already have an account, no need to order by using the order links below. Just send me an email to confirm that you wish to use this article for your next newsletter.

All others, please use the order links below.

a. Text, 2000 word article with full reprint rights, $79, click here.

b. Text, 1000 word article with full reprint rights, $57, click here.

All word lengths are approximate.