You should have a differentiation strategy. Differentiation is about being different in a way that causes customers to prefer you to your competitors. You can be different by doing something unique, doing something uniquely well, or both. But the difference must provide customer-perceived value.

Customer-perceived value is summarized by the equation Value = Benefits - Costs. But we can “cheat” our way to the simpler equation Value = Benefits. It’s much easier to think about a benefit proposition than a value proposition.

Electronic brainstorming is a collaboration technology, or groupware technology, that supports face-to-face and online meetings. This video shows the major features of electronic brainstorming technology and the way it can be combined with an AI technology like ChatGPT to provide a new way of enhancing the collective intelligence and collective creativity of a team-size group.

Watch this video to learn how nonprofit, government, and commercial organizations can use Processes (group & task processes), Platforms (collaboration technologies), and People (a meeting facilitator and cognitively diverse group) to improve the way their teams collaborate.

There are four kinds of strategy. A differentiation strategy is one kind of competitive strategy. A competitive strategy is one kind of growth strategy. And a growth strategy is one kind of problem-solving strategy.

John Dewey said it best, “Theory without practice is empty; practice without theory is blind.” Why? Because theory informs practice, and practice informs theory. That’s why my posts include some of both.

Group IQ has less to do with the group member’s individual IQs and more to do with their social intelligence. To increase a group’s collective intelligence, the group members should engage in thoughtful behavior.

Companies have a lot to gain by doing a better job of customer experience management, including the revenue gains driven by incremental sales from existing customers, revenue saved by lower churn (loss of customers), and new sales driven by word-of-mouth.

Management teams would do well to learn methods for voting to select or rank-order alternatives that are more sophisticated than a simple show of hands.

There are three types of talk—cumulative talk, disputational talk, and exploratory talk. Exploratory talk makes the most of the group members’ knowledge. There are eight practices you can use to promote exploratory talk.

The next time you’re thinking about acting on an alternative (alternative-focused thinking), first stop and think about the objectives of that action (objective-focused thinking).

Thinking together is the ultimate core competency. Two things your team can do to do a better job of thinking together are to employ conversation mapping tools and to master the practice of inquiry.

Conversation mapping enables you to keep track of the topics, issues, positions, and reasons that progressively unfold during a conversation. While any diagramming tool will do, Compendium is a software tool specifically designed to map the elements of a dialogue.

Does thinking occur in your mind alone? Or does it also loop through other peoples’ minds and through thinking tools like calculators and computers? Read this post to find out.

When it’s all said and done, management is fundamentally about thinking. But exactly what does it mean to think? This post explains that when stripped to its essence, to think is to link.

Collaborative thinking requires a space—be it a napkin, flipchart, whiteboard, or some other medium—where the collaborators are able to share their thoughts.  

Strategic issue diagnosis (SID) is about monitoring the problems and opportunities that are coming down the road. In essence, SID is a thought process in which the inputs are diffuse, ambiguous signals and the outputs are focused, interpreted issues.

Should you dismiss innovation as a trite, over-used buzzword? Or is it better to embrace the idea that innovation matters and start constructing your company’s capacity to innovate. Former Harvard professor John Kao proposes the latter.