Innovation Unpacked | Mike Boysen

Introduction: The Unwinnable War Let's be honest. It feels like you're under siege. Every day, you pour your heart into creating incredible food and a welcoming atmosphere, only to watch a fleet of anonymous drivers carry your hard work out the door in a plastic bag. And for that privilege, a tech company a thousand miles away takes a 20%, 25%, sometimes even 30% cut of your revenue. They call the...

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 Before I dive in, I just dramatically reduced the price of my original JTBD Masterclass on using AI to reduce most of the consulting work needed for qualitative JTBD innovation research. It started at nearly $1000 almost two years ago. I’ve just dropped it from $197 to $67 (65%) . So, if budget was an issue, it shouldn’t be any more. It’ll be gone soon…I do mean the product. So, hurry...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The Illusion of Optimization Take a moment and think about the last piece of fruit you ate. An apple, maybe a banana. Now, try to imagine its journey. The odds are it was harvested thousands of miles away, passed throug...

Y-Combinator's NOSO LABS is building an AI sales tool for field techs. Here's a detailed blueprint for how they could become the central nervous system for all industrial operations by applying First Principles, JTBD, and the 10 Types of Innovation. The Allure of the Obvious Problem If you follow the Y-Combinator batches, you’ll see a pattern. You’ll find dozens of companies building clean, AI-pow...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Illusion of Prevention in the Age of AI Let's talk about the game you're playing. Right now, as generative AI weaves itself into the fabric of every industry, you're likely playing a frantic game of ch...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Illusion of Connection, The Reality of Chaos Let's be honest. You've been sold a story. The story is that a decade of innovation in collaboration tools—Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat—has made your...

Introduction: The Unchanging Job of a Changing Room The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Side Note: I’ve actually done this research, and I wasn’t the first one. When I did it, the client didn’t want to hear anything about anything other than paint . It wa...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Innovation Blind Spot Imagine the boardroom of a company we'll call "InnovateCorp." The air is thick with the smell of dry-erase markers and lukewarm coffee. The Head of Innovation stands before the ex...

Introduction: The Siren Song of the "Better" Product Let me tell you a story you’ve probably heard before. It’s about a founder—let’s call her Sarah. Sarah is brilliant. She and her team spent two years and every dollar of their seed funding building a project management tool. It was beautiful. It was faster, had more features, and integrated with more apps than any competitor on the market. It wa...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Red Ocean of AI The current race in the Large Language Model (LLM) space feels like a frantic sprint, but it's actually a marathon being run with a flawed map. From the outside, the competition is dazz...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Innovation Paradox in a Mature Market Let's talk about CRM. For most businesses, it’s the heart of their customer operations—a vast, complex, and expensive system of record. It’s also a market that, fr...

The traditional web browser is becoming obsolete. As we shift from navigating information to achieving outcomes, a new paradigm is emerging—one driven by intelligent agents that get jobs done. Here’s what the future holds and how to prepare for it. The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becomi...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The End of an Era – The Silent Revolution in Sales Let's be honest. Take a hard look at your sales stack. You’ve got your CRM, the sun around which everything is supposed to orbit. Then you have the planet...

The Speed Trap of Modern Development We all love Agile. It’s given us speed, flexibility, and a way to finally break free from the rigid, waterfall-era monoliths of the past. Your teams are running sprints, clearing backlogs, and shipping features faster than ever. It feels like progress. But what if it's an illusion? Speed is useless without direction. And the hard truth is that many "customer-ce...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Twin Bottlenecks of Innovation If you're reading this, you probably live with the core dilemma of innovation every single day: the relentless need for deep, authentic customer understanding is constant...

Introduction: The Invisible Chains of Coupled Ecosystems In many of our most important industries, we're trapped. We're caught in a web of invisible chains, shackled by a complexity that has been built up over decades. It’s a complexity that makes products and services expensive, processes slow, and customers deeply frustrated. Think about healthcare, finance, education, or construction. We've spe...

Introduction: The Shifting Sands of SaaS and Cloud Storage You're running a business, managing a team, or just trying to keep your digital life organized, and you've probably come to rely on cloud-based file storage. It's transformed how we work, replacing clunky servers and email attachments with seamless sharing and accessibility from anywhere. For years, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model f...

Introduction: The "Solution in Search of a Problem" Trap You have an idea. It probably started with a spark of technology. Maybe you were reading about the latest advances in large language models, real-time data streaming, or computer vision. You connected that technology to a problem you think you understand, and suddenly, the entire product vision unfolds in your mind. It’s brilliant. It’s eleg...

Tech Strategy is not Tech Implementation. So many get that confused and they really need to be separated Introduction: The End of the Traditional Enterprise Roadmap As a technology leader, take a hard look at the artifacts that govern your strategy. Your enterprise architects present meticulously crafted capability models. Your PMO manages a multi-year roadmap of complex system integrations and de...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Unseen Tax on Everything We Buy There’s a hidden tax on nearly everything you buy. It’s not a government tax, but it’s just as pervasive and, in many ways, more insidious. Every time a customer swipes,...

Introduction: The Twin Tsunamis Facing Higher Education For generations, the university has been a bedrock institution, selling a simple, powerful promise: a degree is your ticket to a stable, prosperous career. But today, that bedrock is being eroded by two colossal, converging tsunamis. The first tsunami is economic and immediate. You see it all around you. The crushing weight of over $1.7 trill...

The Practical Innovator's Guide to Customer-Centric Growth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Introduction: The Silent Revolution You're standing at the precipice of a silent revolution in personal computing. For decades, our digital lives have revolved around a familiar setup: a screen, a keyboard, a mouse, and...

Introduction: The Slow-Motion Collapse You feel it every time you walk into a supermarket. There’s a palpable friction. You see the half-hearted attempts to compete with the modern world: the clumsy integration of online order-picking that clogs up the aisles, the sad-looking café near the entrance, the ever-expanding "organic" section that somehow still feels overly processed. These are the frant...

Introduction: The Allure and the Flaw of the YC Model For over a decade, the Silicon Valley dream has had a single, unmistakable gateway: Y Combinator. It’s the institution that minted giants like Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. Its mantra, "Make Something People Want," has become a sacred text for aspiring founders worldwide. The allure is undeniable—a potent mix of capital, mentorship, and a networ...

Introduction: The End of the “Job” as We Know It You’ve seen the headlines. A new AI model can write code, design graphics, or draft legal documents in seconds. For many of us, the abstract fear of automation is no longer abstract. It’s a creeping reality that makes you wonder: Is my job next? This question creates a deep sense of uncertainty. The traditional career path—get a degree, land a stabl...