Firms are running out of good ideas. How is this possible? In the age of technology where we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, should we not be able to refine product attributes, develop new features, and streamline roadmaps to fit robust innovation cycles at a record pace? 

Something is seriously wrong, Economists estimate the decline in innovation and its effect on productivity is happening at a rate of about 2.3% across the economy. Preventing this from infecting the individual firm should be a priority otherwise obtaining a competitive advantage will become increasingly challenging.  In fact, a business, in any competitive ecosystem, is required to follow the conditions of proliferation (growth) and differentiation (modifying, maintaining, and developing new value-generating products) -this is the Red Queen hypothesis applied to business organizations.

There are various reasons for the observed decrease in innovation and diminished capabilities of firms. First, academics have argued that managers are not aware of these phenomena, fail to remain on the bleeding edge of research, they see on-going personal development as highly costly and, thus, don’t possess the aptitude to battle the effects, and, finally, don’t know how to implement change in a way that sows the seeds for future innovation payoffs. Second, certain inherences  behind expanding computational capabilities are being limited (the decline of Moore’s law).  Third, firms tend to do a poor job of project and operations management outside rigorous and simple processes.

Finally, I believe that we also tend to incentivize the wrong behaviors -for example,  managers are not compensated to avoid negative payoffs as much as they are to merely do something to make themselves visible. Working to make some arbitrary “impact” is not likely to improve the conditions in the firm. In fact, these actions are highly iatrogenic, and, as such, they actually harm the firm and lower both productivity and innovation. 

In addition to the management considerations, much of this decline also resides in the way information works today, and managers must be aware of this fact. You see, it is very difficult to capture the right signals (the real information that helps facilitate development, innovation, and organization) in an age where the rate of information proliferation -bad or good- is extremely fast; here,  you tend to get noise amplification over signal. These effects produce idea entropy that lowers innovative potential and drives productivity down  (consider the SNR where, over extended time, ): 

(c) 2020 by John Piccolo

I am dedicated to innovating and removing risks. I focus on minimizing noise and capturing the real signals that fuel those payoffs that keep firms strategic, drive organizational productivity, and create new options for on-going differentiation and growth. 

Personally,  I remain focused on personal development -education, certifications, professional collaboration, and heavy study; second, for those that I work with, I try to drive critical thinking and organizing efforts to reduce noise so as to keep a robust focus on product attribution, empirical testing, operations, and analytics. I am also not a proponent of the modern office interruption (getting hailed on Teams or Slack) that contributes significant time costs  (the multiplicative communication paths have become endemic in today’s modern business environment and don’t foster the innovation and reflection we need in the work place).

I have a unique background that has helped me prepare for the challenges we are seeing in today’s market. In 2012, I obtained by B.A. in Philosophy at Weber State University. Later, in 2015, I completed my B.S. in Applied Mathematics, and in 2019, I was awarded a M.B.A from the University of Utah (currently, I am working on a masters in Data Science).

I have experience as an entrepreneur -where I have been involved in international real-estate development projects, food service, and consulting. In 2018, I was contracted by N+1 Consulting and worked with several food manufacturing businesses where I optimized processes and developed new products. I also had the pleasure of working as a global product manager for ThermoFisher Scientific where I supported various products and developed a new way of pricing service contracts that returned 250% more over traditional cost-plus contracts. Today, I have the honor of being the senior go-to-market strategy manager at XANT.ai.