"A championship team instead of a team of champions"

The title of this post is a slightly paraphrased dictum, #4 of his "7 notions of innovation," from Kodak's Antonio M. Perez, as quoted in BusinessWeek's IN special section (here).

On Wednesday next week I'm sitting down with my own team at BURRIS and talking again about what defines us, what separates us from others who say they do what we do, and what we in fact enjoy about doing it in the first place.

At this time I believe we have a championship team, and it's probably our greatest strength. Six individuals, each with his or her own unique personality and skill set, but all enjoying what we do, (most often) for whom we do it, and - at least I believe it - getting along quite well as a team.

What we need now, what we seem to always need, are more customers to replace the ones whose projects we just completed. We have to keep selling, the key to selling what we do is being able to define it.

So that's our meeting next week. Wish us luck.