There I was, 2 weeks ago sitting in an auditorium on a Sunday attending TEDxCMU.   It was an inspiring and emotional day with 12 fantastic talks from local and national presenters.
One of the talks was by Luis von Ahn, a CMU professor.  It only took me a minute to realize that I was in the presence of an amazing innovator, and that I had the privilege of being one of the first people to hear about his latest project.
All the confirmation I needed that what I witnessed was important came …

Four Hollywood studios are rolling out a “Premium VOD” service on DirectTV and some Comcast markets that allows you to rent a movie that was just in the theaters for $30.
Is $30 too high or too low?  Probably both.  On the one hand, I could wait to buy the DVD for $20, or wait to pay $6 for regular on demand service, or wait even longer to get it on Netflix.  On the other hand, paying for movie tickets, popcorn, drinks, and babysitters can be a lot more expensive than …

Let’s play an innovation game.
Here is the scenario: You are trying to increase donations to feed hungry children around the world – a noble cause if there ever was one.  According to the World Food Programme, it only costs $0.25 per day to feed one child.   You are going to use the web to create a site to solicit donations.  What can you do on the site to maximize the likelihood of a visitor donating?
Odds are you didn’t think of this: The Feedback calculator.  You type in your favorite food, …

Two years ago, in the second post I ever wrote on Innovation Minute, I wrote about the Flip Video camera:
Add video recorders to the list of industries being disrupted by “good enough” products that, with less features than the established players, become both easier to use and less expensive.  Have you seen the Flip Mino?… Seriously, you couldn’t make something easier to use.  It is fantastic.
But, I ended with this paragraph:
The problem is that the Flip is also a great example of a product that quickly disrupts an industry, only to itself …

Changing user behavior is really, really hard. It has to be one of the biggest obstacles to reaching innovation success. I’ve seen it with my start-ups that have introduced new products, and I’ve seen it with companies that make seemingly insignificant changes to what a user has already learned about a product. It is impossible to underestimate the effort and risk at asking a user to do something new.
I was reminded of this golden rule when I came across a Quora article titled “Why hasn’t another product …