While working with a team focused on making digital products, I was introduced to the I.D.E.A Cycle. It visualizes the many iterations that go into creating apps, sites, experiences, or any other digital products. Rather than take a lengthier “waterfall” approach, we researched, sketched, prototyped, tested, and modified — all in 1–2 week sprints. These cycles of inquiry, definition, experimentation, and adaptation happened quickly while moving us closer to launching our big-picture vision. When taking this approach, whiteboards are your friend. This framework is great for pitching clients and stakeholders on the approach to get their buy-in to move quickly with the team from the outset, expecting check-ins to be rough and iterative while the team sprints.

I was introduced to the concept of “Crossing the Chasm” by a start-up client who was not only introducing a new technology to the world, she was creating an entirely new category via a new consumer behavior. No small feat. For her, the notion of getting beyond Innovators and Early…

What a visual analogy in a framework. The brand iceberg shows us how brands are built mainly from a foundation of intangibles, which leads to what you can see from a brand in the real world.

This model is called the Strategic Choice Cascade and is built on the premise that strategy is a series of choices. To simplify strategic definition from the outset, the authors defined 5 key questions to take you from ambition into a go-to-market strategy that can be operationalized. The structure relies on the integration of answering these key questions together, and if one can answer a follow-on question, it may mean going back and revising what decision and answer came before. This framework is useful for the early days of marketing planning.

In the peak of purposeful branding, there are plenty of brands out there making bold statements about their proposed reason for existing beyond profit, and are then not acting in accordance. The SCORE framework exists to combat just that by linking purpose to actions. Writing down a memorable rallying cry…

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about how creativity and innovation happen. In 2004, Arne Dietrich wrote a paper on creativity from a brain and neuroscience POV. In this paper, it is proposed that there are four basic types of creative insights, each mediated by a distinctive neural circuit and…

Simplistically, shared value is the notion that what is good for business and what is good for society should not be mutually exclusive, and that businesses that address societal needs create a long-term advantage. The central premise behind creating shared value is that the competitiveness of a company and the…

This framework is all about sizing the market opportunity and requires market research ahead of time to define. There are varying methodologies to define these different levels of market size, depending on the need of the business, but overarching the principles are below: Total Addressable Market — What is the…

The aim of this model is to avoid battling competition head-on, instead opting for finding the disruption customers are clamoring for and is yet to be created by the industry. This is great as a workshop exercise in break-out groups during annual planning cycles. Or this framework could be used…