When I eat at Taco Bell, I usually get chicken, steak, or even just a filling bean burrito, but I have tried the seasoned beef and can confirm that it is beef. I love to cook and naturally prefer my own cooking (and tend toward vegetarian fare these days), but being familiar with ground beef, …
The Real Beef Behind the Lawsuit: Taco Bell and the Burden of Class Action Lawsuits Read More »
One of the most challenging areas for innovators, entrepreneurs, and businesses of any kind now is field of children’s products. Innovation fatigue has reached new heights in this area due to “external innovation fatigue”–the kind that comes when outside forces from government and others, often with the best of innovations, deliver hard-to-evade punches to the …
Further stories in the news illustrate the important issue of external innovation fatigue factors as raised in our book. Recent examples: The Feds vs. Fruit Juice: The FTC goes to war against those who promote the health benefits of the pomegranate. Small-Scale Regulation May Bring Big-Time Troubles for Wisconsin Nanotech Licensing to Kill from today’s …
More Examples of External Factors Contributing to Innovation Fatigue Read More »
Innovators and business leaders doing their best to achieve commercial success need to understand the set of innovation fatigue factors that they face. These include personal factors due to the bad behavior of individuals; corporate or organizational fatigue factors reflecting inadequate systems, culture, or flawed judgment; and external fatigue factors due to the burdens of …
In Conquering Innovation Fatigue, we explain how “Patent Pain” is one of the external innovation fatigue factors that can slow down innovation. This factor includes actions by courts and lawmakers that add to the difficulty and expense of protecting intellectual property rights. A new aspect of this problem is the recent explosion in risk to …
Used Patents: A Potentially Deadly Part of Your Portfolio Read More »
Without wishing to be political, I have to say that I am worried about the future of innovation in light of “external innovation fatigue factors” that arise when government creates imposing barriers for innovators, especially for small businesses and lone entrepreneurs. As we note in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, the problem is often one of unintended …
The Summer 2010 issue of American Educator (a publication of the American Federation of Teachers) ably illustrates one of the lessons we teach in Conquering Innovation Fatigue: metrics to drive performance can have unintended consequences that may actually hurt rather than help. Indeed, unintended consequences are a major theme of our book, as we explore …
While many US citizens are tempted to make political points from the problems we’re facing in the Gulf, there are some basic organizational issues that transcend political parties and get at one of the basic problems in responding to unexpected changes. The problem is bureaucracy and the myriad of personal and departmental incentives that are …
The BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf: Innovation Fatigue in Full Force Read More »
Gene Quinn’s article, “ Proposal: Unlocking Job Growth with Patent Acceleration” over at IP Watchdog, reminds us of the powerful link between IP rights and economic growth. It’s an issue we take up in Conquering Innovation Fatigue when we discuss Hernando de Soto’s findings (countries with respect for property rights have much better economic growth …
Job Growth Through Sound Intellectual Property Rights and a More Efficient Patent System Read More »
The lifeblood of innovation is capital. Investment of capital is the primary difference between great ideas and great teams that go nowhere and those that change the world. From the airplane to the iPod, from wonder drugs to wonder software, innovation requires invested capital to bring concepts to commercial reality. Angel investors play a crucial …