When I was growing up, running a lemonade stand was easy.  You picked a hot day, made sure you had a good location, priced it right, and provided a quality product.
But in the Web 2.0 world we live in, that just isn’t enough.  Everyone knows that it takes much less capital to start a business then it did 20 years ago, so everyone in your neighborhood is probably thinking about starting a lemonade stand too.  How will you ever be able to beat the competition?  Here is your guide to …

We took the kids to the Carnegie Museum of Art yesterday.  To keep little kids interested they have a scavenger hunt, where they describe a painting in each gallery that the kids need to find.  I always appreciate businesses that provide these types of family activities, or at the very least a way to distract the kids (like a restaurant that hands out crayons and coloring paper to kids – every restaurant should do this).
As I walked around the museum I had two separate thoughts on innovation.  First, I began …

I wrote earlier about how I was underwhelmed by my Apple iPad after the first few weeks of use.  With my iPhone and my laptop always handy, I just never had a real need to use it.   Now I need to (slightly) revise that opinion.
I just came back from a 2 week vacation with my kids, my wife, and her parents, and the iPad was in constant use by all 6 of us.  The USA Today app is fantastic (while its free) and we all used it to get …

I wanted to use my iPad for at least a few weeks before writing about my experience, first with the setup and then with my usage, and what I think the future holds for the device.
Wi-Fi reliability. During the first few days after the iPad’s release, the most common media topic was the iPad’s poor Wi-Fi reception.  I was so concerned about it that I actually logged onto Apple to cancel my order, figuring I would wait to see what ultimately came of the issue.  Even though my unit hadn’t …

We subscribe to a lot of magazines, and I’ve found it difficult to manage the renewal process.  It doesn’t help that magazines start the renewal process six months or more before your subscription actually expires.  Between the outside cover renewal cards and the repetitive mailings, I can’t remember if I (or my wife) renewed a subscription or not.
So I was pleasantly surprised that two magazines I read, Fortune and Mens Journal, both offered online renewals.  

During my holiday shopping on www.patagonia.com, I was able to learn firsthand how not to implement a web-based chat feature.
As soon as I went to the Patagonia website, before I had a chance to click to anywhere else, a popup chat window opened with a nice customer service representative asking if they could help me find anything.  Like 99% of anyone who has ever just arrived at an ecommerce site – or for that matter just stepped foot in a store – I said “no thanks” (in this case by …

Time magazine just published its list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009.  A lot of the inventions are interesting, but are mostly outside the scope of the InnovationMinute where we focus more on “everyday innovations”.
What made the list?  Scientists have successfully teleported data from one atom to another.  A person was able to tweet a message wearing sensors on his skull that turned his thoughts into letters.  We can now send a probe to study Mercury that can withstand the 700 degree Fahrenheit outside temperatures.
There were a few interesting …

I think that I want an Amazon Kindle.  As a self-professed early adopter of gadgets, the Kindle should certainly rank near the top of my list.  I wish the product did more (touch screen, color, play movies, etc.) but I’ll just have to wait for the future Apple tablet to give me another multimedia toy.   At $299 it is also fairly expensive as noted by many reviewers, but that hasn’t stopped me from buying cool technology before.
So why haven’t I taken the plunge?  Because I have at least a dozen …

Over time new business models are often created by innovative startups that begin to threaten an incumbent’s business.  The incumbent’s unwillingness to change, which often leads to its eventual disruption, is a subject written in various ways and in numerous books and articles (including the Innovator’s Dilemma – see the About page of this website).  So I certainly can’t take credit for the theory, but I enjoy seeing theory play out in different industries.
In the technology world, probably the most prevalent example of this is the difference between perpetual licensing …

I was in desperate need of a productivity “pick me up” – a personal database to house those websites, notes, articles, pictures, and anything else digital or scannable that I came across and wanted to save and reference later. I use Microsoft’s OneNote 2007 as an online binder for taking notes with my tablet, but it just didn’t seem to be the best solution for a broad personal database.
I had heard a lot of positive buzz about Evernote (www.evernote.com) so I decided to try it out. (With their tagline …