Innovation is a cost for most firms. That is a problem because it turns innovation into a budget item to cut instead of the buoy that enables organizations to survive and thrive. You may wonder if this is the time to take risks, when nothing is the same due to looming environmental, health, and financial […]
“How service firms outsmart tech companies” was the title of my TedX Tysons Talk. In today’s world of artificial intelligence tech companies are taking over many services. Yet, at the end of the day, when we are ill or have a serious legal or other problem, we still want a professional service provider – a […]
Recently, I coached three participants of the New Business Development program at the Rotterdam School of Management. These participants worked respectively for an architecture, a law, and an IT firm. Three totally different professional service providers, yet their new business development challenges were remarkably similar. The business development function They all work for firms that […]
Professional service organizations (such as law firms, hospitals, and consultancies), are organizations whose primary asset is a highly educated professional workforce and whose outputs are intangible services encoded with complex knowledge. As a result, these organizations differ significantly from manufacturing firms in their organizational structures, employee composition, and decision-making processes. The most valuable asset of […]
Lawyers, clinicians, engineers and other professionals have a few things in common. They are all smart, busy, and have super specialized jobs. What they also have in common is that their services need modernizing. That is, they need to incorporate new technologies and service models that clients have come to expect in the 21-st century. […]
When evaluating business case proposals, it is difficult to differentiate between good and superior teams. Which team will be a winner and have the highest likelihood to succeed? How to differentiate between good and superior business case proposals?
Lawyers, clinicians, engineers and other professionals have a few things in common. They are all smart, busy, and have super specialized jobs. Due to technologies like big data, block chain, artificial intelligence, etc, there are many opportunities for new service concepts and new business models in the professional services. However, developing such innovative new service concepts is challenging […]
While related, business plans, business cases, business models, and business model canvases are very different things that serve different purposes. What to use when? Business plan, case, model, or canvas? Let me first explain what is what. A business plan A business plan is a detailed description of how you plan to start and grow […]
The innovation process is like an innovation value chain, consisting of idea generation, development and implementation. The process is as strong as its weakest link. If you are great at idea generation, but not so good at development, very few of the brilliant ideas generated will come to fruition. To be an effective innovator, you need to be good at all phases.