Patrick Lefler

Peter Drucker said something very similar. “Don’t confuse novelty with innovation.” And what he meant was that innovation is much more than just change. It’s all about new products or new markets for existing products, or even new ways to sell existing products in existing markets.

It’s not so much about doing something different, as it is about doing something that increases profitability. And it’s usually not all that complex; it doesn't require anything close to being a "stroke of genius." In short, innovation is what differentiates you from the competition; it’s what gives you a competitive advantage that can’t be easily copied by your competitors; and it’s what affects bottom-line results.

In an essay titled “The New Venture,” Peter Drucker recounts a wonderful story of...

In a recent Wall Street Journal article titled To Pay or Not to Pay..., author Sumathi Reddy highlighted the newest pricing model de jour: pay-what-you-want. The concept itself is not new; I can remember going to NYC’s Museum of Natural History a few years back with my kids and seeing the admission price listed as something like “Suggested Donation: $10.” As I was getting the $50 out of my wallet, a local standing next to me remarked, “Don’t worry about the sign, it applies only to tourists, not local New Yorkers.” Despite the advice, I paid the full ‘donation’.

What’s unique about this trend is that it is now crossing over from non-profit institutions to for-profit businesses--in this case, the restaurant business. According to the author:

One World Café in Salt Lake City opened in 2003 as a pay-what-you-want café. Several years later, founder Denise Cerreta created a nonprofit that has helped launch more than a dozen similar operations,...

Hewlett Packard announced yesterday that it was not going to sell its PC business after all, but rather, it would keep the $40.7 Billion division. According to the Wall Street Journal,

Meg Whitman [H-P’s CEO] said Thursday that H-P will keep its $40.7 billion PC division, backing away from its prior plan—endorsed 69 days ago by Ms. Whitman and other H-P directors—to explore splitting the company. H-P said a new evaluation had found the move was simply too costly.

Too costly to sell? Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a division that was lagging industry rivals with a 5% margin. What kind of message does that send to its customers, parters, suppliers and stakeholders? What it tells me is that when the divestiture costs of selling the division become more acceptable, then it will once again be on the chopping block. Who wants to invest in H-P computer products with that type of risk hanging around?

The article went on to give other reasons...

It seems that Hewlett-Packard is now re-thinking an earlier decision to spin off its personal-computer division. If you remember, it was just two months ago that (now-replaced) CEO Leo Apotheker announced the decision to split the computer company into two and sell off the personal-computer division. With Apotheker now gone (and nearly forgotten), newly-installed CEO Meg Whitman is taking a second look at the controversial decision.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Whitman is “crunching the numbers of the proposal” and reports seem to suggest that HP might be better off keeping the personal-computer division, which contributed $40 billion in revenue and $2 billion in operating profit in H-P’s most recent fiscal year. But it seems that the folks from H-P are also looking at other reasons for keeping the business. According to the article:

In particular, separating the PC division would significantly diminish H-P's buying power with component makers...