Page 96 - Free the Idea Monkey

Greed: taking short-term profits at the expense of long-term
growth. The stock market demands a high rate of return that natu-
rally results in safe bets like line
extensions. Line extensions
are fine, but they leave you at
risk of being blown out of the
water by an industry-chang-
ing idea. The solution? Create
two teams. Put an internal one in
charge of evolution and the other, partnered with outside experts, in
charge of revolution. You’ll get both short- and long-term growth.

Sloth: which we define as not doing the hard work; not following
the proven process; taking shortcuts. Too many otherwise brilliant

leaders have made the mistake of thinking that speed and
shortcuts are the only way to innovation success.
While we agree that being overly cautious—“let’s
test the idea for the 83rd time”—is also potentially
fatal, there is a happy medium. Think big, quan-
tify, qualify, refine and launch. This should take
no more than 12 months. If you can do it in eight,
great! If you can do it in three, then you have left
something out—or you have a very, very tired staff

on your hands. Remember: just because it takes one
woman nine months to have a baby doesn’t mean that
nine women can produce one in 30 days.

Wrath: being so focused on your competition that you miss the
same opportunities that they are missing. If you concentrate on what
they are doing, you are both going to
get your butt kicked from some-
one outside your industry who is
rightly focused on the consumer
(and not either one of you).

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