Posts by Ric Merrifield
Innovation Opportunities in Shipping Industry
In fairness, this issue isn’t limited to UPS, that just happens to be the source of my most recent bad experience with this. What’s the shipping dinosaur? SIGNATURE REQUIRED. When you ship something to your workplace, it’s no big pain. The delivery person seems completely disinterested in who signs as long as they get a…
Read MoreFive Major Trends to Watch Now
I spend a lot of time looking at and writing about disruptive business models (many of them are discussed in my most recent book, Surviving a Business Earthquake, and lately I have been talking about a handful that I think are really meaningful that will continue to mature over time and work their way into…
Read MoreFinally a Much Needed Earthquake in Health Insurance
For years I have wondered why health insurance hasn’t been treated like other insurance, like car insurance. With car insurance, the riskier your profile, the more expensive the insurance. You get caught driving drunk, you have accidents, you drive a sports car, those all make you higher risk to an insurer, so your rates reflect…
Read MoreThe Duh Innovation Awards for 2010
The Top 10 Rethinking Ideas of 2010 – Plus One by Ric Merrifield Looking forward to next year – in true “This is Spinal Tap†fashion – we will go to 11, so forget the top ten list. this is a top 11 list for 2010. The majority of these ideas are so simple (in…
Read MoreCompetition is Becoming Increasingly Distributed
When you think about who might topple a software giant like a Microsoft or a Google, you might be inclined to think of Goliaths like, well Google and Microsoft. The same is true of any industry, you probably think of a company of similar size or larger as being the type of company that would…
Read MoreMaking Money From Free
Coinstar has figured it out. Has your business? by Ric Merrifield I have been following Coinstar for a really long time, in large part because the founder went to my high school (as did Bill Gates and TVs Batman Adam West for what it’s worth). If you don’t know Coinstar, their model is pretty straightforward…
Read MoreThe Slippery Slope of Laziness
Some things in our lives are easier because technology made them easier and that’s good. But other things come about purely because we are lazy, and time and again we have seen that there’s a lot of money to be made banking on the increasing laziness of the consumer. Exhibit A is the pre-cut, pre-washed,…
Read MoreDangers of Innovation Peer Pressure
My growing fear is that innovation is on course to become the fad of the day in the same way quality was in the 90s. Having said that, I expect that Braden Kelley’s new book – Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is going to prove a very helpful guide for organizations making decisions about where innovation…
Read MorePrescription Produce is a Great Idea
Talk about some great rethinking in the world of health care. . . $14.1 billion is the current annual cost of child obesity in the US in terms of direct costs according to this article by Natasha Singer. The new program that is aimed at reducing childhood obesity is really clever and I think that…
Read MoreDo you know what business you are NOT in?
The title of this post was the original working title of the Harvard Business Review article that I co-authored that was published in 2008. I still use the phrase often, for the simple reason that it is very frequently the case that where a company makes its money isn’t where we would expect. The fact…
Read More