Hugh Molotsi

The following article was published on LinkedIn Even though just about every company purports to care about innovation, not all companies are equal.  Some companies have innovation superpowers - that is, they consistently deliver breakthrough innovations making life next to impossible for would be competitors. Google is one such company that seems to possess innovation superpowers, especially when it comes to their money-printing search engine.  Since Larry Page and Sergey Brin invented the PageRank algorithm and launched their company in 1998, Google became the search engine of choice, a mantle they haven’t relinquished in the almost two decades since.  This is not because people haven’t been gunning for Google. They’ve managed to keep raising the bar on their search engine in a way that competitors haven’t been able to match. Panama Take for instance the story of Project Panama. This story starts in June 2000, when Yahoo!, not realizing the strategic si...

The following article was published on LinkedIn Perhaps the most under-utilized assets in most companies are the ideas in their employees’ heads.  As many companies strive to be more innovative, jump-start their stagnant growth, and improve employee engagement, they overlook one fundamental truth: Frontline employees are more likely than senior executives to come up with game-changing innovations .   This is because frontline employees are more likely to be working with customers and working on the products that customers use.  Executives are more likely to be spending most of their days in meetings with other executives.  The every-day experiences of frontline employees provide them the insights on unsolved customer problems and ideas for better solutions. The evidence of these “hidden assets” is most apparent when employees leave a company to launch their own startup to turn their ideas into products.  In many of these instances, these start...

The following article was published on LinkedIn . Every company cares about innovation.  Innovation drives growth and keeps companies relevant in a rapidly changing world.  Companies want to do the disrupting instead of being disrupted.  They want to attract the best employees and cultivate a culture that keeps them engaged and highly productive. That is why many companies have launched grassroots innovation programs that tap into their employees’ passion to drive growth.  These programs come in many shapes and sizes.  Some provide training to help employees become more innovative.  Others feature regular hackathons with prizes and the possibility for employees ideas become formal projects.  Some set aside time for every employee to work on their own ideas. But are these programs really effective or are they, what Steve Blank has coined, innovation theater ?  Certainly, many of these grassroots innovation programs have been successful....

In the last 40+ years, we’ve seen the launch of several high-minded educational television networks. TLC (“The Learning Channel”) was founded in 1972 to be an instructional network providing real education through the medium of television. The Discovery Channel was established in 1985 to provide documentaries focused primarily on science, technology and history. The History Channel, established in 1995, originally broadcast documentaries and historical fiction series. But what these channels are most known for today are their reality series and pseudo-documentaries like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Jon & Kate Plus 8 . After starting out with lofty ambitions to educate and inform, how did they end up peddling brain-dead entertainment? These companies were not purpose-driven, and instead placed profit-making as their highest priority. Reality television was too profitable for programmers to resist. Reality programs are relatively cheap to produce and are like catnip ...

One of the biggest challenges for parents raising young children is transporting their kids to school and after-school activities.  For working couples, school gets out inconveniently in the middle of the afternoon.  The challenge is further compounded if their kids are active in sports that have several practices and meets during the week. Here are three startups that are tackling this problem by creating “Uber for Kids” offerings.   1.      Shuddle – Shuddle touts the safety of their system they call “ShuddleSafe”.   They hire drivers who will use their own cars.   Drivers have undergone extensive screening and background checks.   They also offer the ability for parents to track the ride while it’s in progress.   A ride costs a minimum of $15.   They also offer carpooling for $8 per family per ride.   (The service is currently offered in the San Francisco Bay Area).   2.      Boost ...

When Steve Bennett became Intuit’s CEO back in 2000, one of his first change initiatives was to make the company more operationally rigorous.   Improving efficiency involved reorganizing and managing out several leaders of underperforming groups.   Later, Steve would have skip-level meetings with employees from these groups.   He would ask them about decisions they had made or ways they were working that didn’t seem to make sense.   Often the answer was “We agree that doesn’t make sense!   It was the guy you just fired who made us do it!” Steve didn’t like how convenient it was to scapegoat bad decisions on the people who were no longer around.   So he was inspired to teach the concept of “True North” – the ultimate guide to making good decisions. True North for Intuit was articulated as: “Deliver best we can be results in the current period for employees, customers, and shareholders, while building the foundation for a stronger future.” ...