Nolan Bushnell knew he had a hit when he heard about the trouble at Andy Capp’s Tavern. Atari’s founder had created only one prototype of its first video game, Pong, and it had stopped working after just two weeks – the can for collecting coins kept getting overstuffed.
There’s one, single component of a company’s culture that has more impact than any other on innovation: truthfulness. Truth-telling is foundational for cultures that prize speed, creativity, decisiveness, and risk-taking. But it’s often missing. Here’s why:
In an era of disruptive change, managers who rely on old playbooks risk rapid obsolescence. The need for quick responses to hard-to-predict events calls for agility and creativity – in short, for innovative leaders.
Here’s one of the most popular and least effective management methods: a strategy template that starts with a company’s Vision and Mission and cascades down to Strategies and Objectives. This strategy template has many problems, such as not mentioning customers’ priorities or your competitive strengths (these should be foundational!). It often produces vague, generic results that avoid making difficult choices.
In a single day, Nike lost $24 billion in market value – an 18% decline in its stock price. What can we learn from such a spectacular failure by such a sterling brand?
