Business Change Management

In my previous blog on Innovation Games, I talked about how "serious games" have the power to change the way you work, approach problem-solving, and seek out new buyers of your product or service. How do they do this?, you might be asking. What's the secret sauce? In a word, collaboration. Innovation Games work so well because participants come together as a team to generate new ideas and new ways of offering customers what they want.

Can playing games really lead to innovations? Yes, with Innovation Games!

Have you ever sat in a staff "ideation" meeting where the purpose was to come up with groundbreaking, business-building, innovative ideas, and no one could come up with anything? Or if someone did throw out an idea, everyone shot it down? Pretty depressing, right? Well, what if I told you there is something that gets teams engaged, encourages them to work together, and enables them to arrive at breakthrough ideas and accomplish goals faster. All while having fun. What is this magic solution, you ask? Innovation Games.

These are chaotic times. And we are in crisis mode. And while there are significant problems, there are also great opportunities. We can re-create our companies and ourselves for the future. No doubt it’s going to be very different. The challenge, however, is that people are uncomfortable when there’s no certainty. What I am suggesting is that this is the time for us to begin to use new tools and to see how we can adapt ourselves, our companies, our staff and our customers in innovative ways.

Our weekly podcast, On The Brink, was recently ranked among the top 10 futurist podcasts by TAFFD, an organization focused on "providing a transdisciplinary awareness about the future." This made us wonder, what is futurism? What are we doing at SAMC to share with others what’s coming next? And, how do people actually understand the future?

Deciding to delve into this topic further, like many of you we Googled "What is a futurist?" Here's what we found, from futurist.com: "A futurist is someone who studies and researches probabilities for the future empirically or scientifically."

A futurist is also defined as someone who:

1. Forecasts the future, using quantitative and qualitative means
2. Imagines the future, using primarily intuition and writing skills
3. Creates the future, using techniques of planning and consulting

Wow! That's exactly what we do at Simon Associates for our clients: help them accept, prepare for and adapt to change. In other words, see what's coming and get ready for it now, rather than wait for a crisis to hit and be left scrambling. Who knew we were futurists!

We'd like the share the stories of 3 others we've interviewed who are obsessed with the future, see it coming and are excited about what’s next

Although it's becoming harder and harder to make serious financial returns in today’s retail world in the age of Amazon, there's still room for entrepreneurs to excel at retail and e-commerce. So how are some succeeding when so many are failing? By driving change. But to drive change—i.e., sustain growth in changing times—takes courage, stamina and ingenuity. And, dedication, persistence and a lot of hard work.

But even in today's harsh market demands and strong competitors, can young businesses still make it big and maybe even transform the world of retail? Yes!

As proof, take a look at this list of retail startups led by successful entrepreneurs that broke out of the pack in recent years, either through smart marketing, unique services or highly specific target markets.