Jeffrey Phillips

Senior consultant and author

Jeffrey Phillips is the lead innovation consultant for OVO, which offers assessments, consulting, training and team definition, change management, innovation workshops, and idea generation space and services. Phillips has led innovation projects in the United States, Western Europe, South Africa, Latin American, Malaysia, Dubai, and Turkey. He has expertise in the entire “front end of innovation” with specific focus on trend spotting and scenario planning, obtaining customer insights, defining an innovation process, and open innovation. He’s the author of Relentless Innovation (McGraw-Hill, 2011), and 20 Mistakes Innovators Make (Amazon Digital Services, 2013), and co-author of OutManeuver: OutThink—Don’t OutSpend (Xlibris, 2016).

Wed, 06/12/2019 - 14:52
Disruptive Innovation: Where, Not WhatWhere did you say that market was?
Mon, 12/14/2020 - 12:03
First, a slight diatribe. Why is it that company leaders think their people can do successful innovation when they don’t share a common language? In this article’s title I’ve used the word “disruptive,” and by this I mean innovation in the “third…
The Important Gap Between Capability and NeedWhat’s needed are solutions addressing specific needs, and regulatory bodies willing to take risks
Thu, 09/10/2020 - 12:02
I will be writing occasionally for my friends at the Collective, a group focused on autonomy, mobility, and the use of drones. I think this group has an excellent opportunity to create new solutions and influence new products. I’ve learned a lot…
The Digital DilemmaPutting data to work
Wed, 07/08/2020 - 12:02
Throughout human history we’ve constantly sought out tools and capital to make us more productive. From the formation of basic tools to assist in farming to real cultivation and shaping of the land for greater yields, humankind learned to grow food…
How to Know When the Old Models Don’t Work Any More It’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop
Thu, 06/27/2019 - 12:03
As Malcolm Gladwell and other business writers have found, it is entirely possible to write a compelling article around a rather obvious point, and still hold the reader’s attention. As an example I draw your attention to this article, titled “Why…
Beware Conventional Wisdom in Digital TransformationStarting small and then scaling up is valuable only when the technologies are still new
Mon, 04/29/2019 - 12:03
One of my favorite quotes comes from George Bernard Shaw, who said that all change in life originates from unreasonable people. Reasonable people, he said, will accept the status quo and change their lives to adapt to the status quo. Unreasonable…
Which Way at the Digital Transformation and Innovation Crossroads? The road to success is heading toward new business models
Thu, 02/28/2019 - 12:02
I went to a meeting about innovation recently with a former client, and a discussion about digital transformation broke out. It was both interesting and strange. Most corporations are struggling to comprehend the changes in front of them, but at…
Signals, Not Predictions, About Innovation in 2019One signal loud and clear is ‘ecosystem’
Tue, 01/15/2019 - 12:02
I recently wrote an article about innovation during 2018, and in it I made some disparaging remarks about Apple, which may or may not have caused it to lose a tremendous amount of market capitalization. Or perhaps the stock was overvalued, and Apple…
Innovating What We InnovateIf we can innovate products with alacrity, we can create organizational structures that allow businesses to remain nimble
Mon, 10/22/2018 - 12:01
It finally came to me last week. For more than a decade I’ve been working with corporations, trying to help them accelerate their ability to generate new, interesting ideas to market as viable products and services. In some instances we’ve been…
Let’s Focus on Product DeconstructionWhy doesn’t innovation focus on the obsolescence problem?
Wed, 07/25/2018 - 12:01
Ihave been thinking a lot lately about innovation and how we may have emphasized one component at the expense of another. Here I’m talking about something that should appear obvious—the focus of innovation in building new things. We are constantly…
Six Ideas to Accelerate Success at the Front EndAn appropriate amount of good failure (early) can eliminate bad failure (late)
Mon, 04/23/2018 - 12:01
I have been thinking a lot about why innovation fails. Not about why supposedly innovative new products fail, because there are multiple reasons for that. A product could be too early or too late in the market window, or it could simply have the…