Large organizations love to talk about innovation portfolios. They create committees, slide decks, stage-gate processes, and elaborate governance structures to decide which initiatives deserve investment. You can do that sort of thing when you live inside a towering corporate tornado made of money. Most small businesses don’t have that luxury. Instead, us little guys tend to operate in reaction mode. The loudest customer request wins. The most urgent operational problem consu

My favorite test for an operating model is brutally simple: show it to someone new. Someone smart, capable, and completely unfamiliar with your organization.