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Good morning Launch Key 🚀 community! |
More than a few of you emailed and commented on Don't Listen to the Bozos, so I'm revisiting the topic. |
Building innovative products is hard – but its doable. And helpful tools are free. |
Plus, its a lot easier to innovate if you're not a behemoth trapped in the success of your past. |
Comment below and let me know if we're on the right track. |
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Table of Contents |
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Pull to Eject |
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72% of all new products fail according to global consultant Simon-Kucher. |
And much of that failure is self-inflicted. |
But the failure of existing products is even more spectacular. |
Corporate innovation costs massive amounts of capex and R&D to gain a market leadership position. |
Then the sports analogies come into play. Teams play more conservatively when they have a lead. |
And they lose. |
Just like these market leaders did: |
Blockbuster Blackberry Atari Tivo Tower Records
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Today's largest tech companies have the financial muscle to allocate tens of billions of dollars per year to projects. |
But even the very best companies can get stuck. |
 | Tim Cook is running out of ideas | Under Cook's tenure, Apple's share price has soared, and investors have been kept happy with increased share buybacks and a quarterly dividend. But other than the Apple Watch, which was already in the works before Jobs' death, there have been no earth-shattering product launches. |
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Companies bet on big ideas that they can execute well. |
Processes are optimized for managing a proven business model and value proposition rather than innovation. |
It's part of the reason why the longevity of the Fortune 500 continues to decline. |
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The Power of Small |
One of the very best parts of having a small business is adaptability. |
You can literally innovate new products or services during a lunch meeting. |
I've done it. |
A large client has a need and you quickly determine that you could solve it. Plus, you can think of 10 more companies who need the same thing – Voilà ! |
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. |
Entrepreneurs saying 'yes we can' is how most businesses light their fuse. |
Forbes Council Post: 15 Innovation Tips Big Businesses Can Learn From Small Businesses | By taking steps to reduce bureaucracy, larger organizations increase increase their chances of becoming truly innovative. |
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You can be wrong - but you can fix that fast too. |
Nimble, creative, risk-taking is part of the allure of not working for someone else. |
A dream in a garage started a lot of today's behemoths. |
From Amazon to Harley Davidson to Google, Apple, Disney and Dell. |
Gritty founders innovated huge ideas without the trappings of corporate overhead. |
 | 15 of the most successful companies that started in homes, basements, sheds, and bedrooms | From Jeff Bezos' garage to Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room, many big companies were born in small places. |
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Steal These Ideas |
The astronomical costs of corporate innovation has given big consulting even bigger innovation practices. Just a few examples: |
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And they share plenty of ideas that small business can borrow liberally. |
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One of the foundational starts is the Business Model Canvas. |
Creating this visual chart with elements describing your product value prop, infrastructure, customers, and finances, is a solid way to fill in the gaps in your innovative idea. |
Is it just a good idea? or can it actually flesh out a new business? |
 | Business Model Canvas - Wikipedia | is a strategic management template used for developing new business models and documenting existing ones |
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Organizing all your files can be as simple as creating Notion pages in a way that works best for you. |
Or you can look at standalone innovation tools like: |
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I happen to like the 10 Types of Innovation framework I covered in the Bozo's issue. |
Your mileage may vary. |
The point is – the technology is not the thing holding back your innovation. |
You are probably not going to create something as innovative as Software-as-a-Service (Salesforce) or native operating system integration (Dropbox) or reusable rockets (SpaceX). |
But you might. |
Can you find a little space in your garage? |
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Now go launch something 🚀 |
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| ❝ | | | Whether you think you can, or you think you can't -- you're right. | | | | Henry Ford |
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Modern Tools |
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I have been a fan of Figma's design tool for a while. It allows you to design and generate prototypes without coding. |
Drag and drop easy. |
But their brainstorming tool is just icing on an already cool toolset. |
Of course it's free. |
 | Free Online Brainstorming Tool for Teams | Create innovative ideas with our free online brainstorming tool - ideate together using stickies, dot votes, stickers, and more with FigJam. |
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Free SOC 2 Compliance Checklist from Vanta |
Are you building a business? Achieving SOC 2 compliance can help you win bigger deals, enter new markets, and deepen trust with your customers — but it can also cost you real time and money. |
Vanta automates up to 90% of the work for SOC 2 (along with other in-demand frameworks like ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR), getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving you up to 85% of associated costs. |
Download the free checklist to learn more about the SOC 2 compliance process and the road ahead. |
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Old School Wisdom |
Originally published in 1973, Small Is Beautiful presents eminently logical arguments for building our economies around the needs of communities, not corporations. |
Schumacher inspired such movements as "Buy Locally" and "Fair Trade," while voicing strong opposition to "casino capitalism" and wasteful corporate behemoths. |
Named one of the Times Literary Supplement's 100 Most Influential Books Since World War II. |
 | Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered | Small Is Beautiful is Oxford-trained economist E. F. Schumacher's classic call for the end of excessive consumption. |
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 | Beehiiv: The newsletter platform built for growth. | Starting a newsletter? Access the best tools available in email, helping your newsletter scale and monetize like never before. |
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Free Knowledge |
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Steve Blank is an author, professor, founder, and speaker who is widely regarded as 'the founding father of modern entrepreneurship.' |
His books and lectures have started tens of thousands of new companies leveraging his Customer Development model at the heart of any Lean Startup. |
His class was adopted as the curriculum for the National Science Foundation I-Corps and is now taught at 98 universities. |
Blank gives away a ton of free knowledge on his sites, but here's his view on 3 types of innovation. |
 | There Are 3 Types Of Corporate Innovation. 2 Minutes to See Why |
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Recommendations |
 | Startup Hustle Newsletter | Weekly tips and stories for entrepreneurs and startup leaders from Matt Watson and Startup Hustle podcast guests |
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 | Seven Deadly Stupidities | 80% of Success is Avoiding Stupidity. Discover the Patterns that lead to Failure and Learn How to Avoid them. |
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 | Bullseye Trades | Get free daily HOT STOCK & Options trading ideas with real-money 💰 TRADE ALERTS from trading genius, Jeff Bishop |
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 | Big Desk Energy | Startup insights, stories, and vibes sent to your inbox every Tuesday |
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 | Marketing Memos | Proven Marketing Tips for Founders in Your Inbox |
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 | IDiyas | Patent Newsletters | Learn what the prolific patentors, inventors, engineers, executives and entrepreneurs are creating in each week's issue. |
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 | The Dealroom: Business Success Uncovered | Learn directly from billionaire entrepreneurs on how to grow a business. Join a community of 2,000+ innovators. |
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Visual Crapshoot |
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How did we do this week? |
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