Innovation

• Most Topular Stories

• Pop-Up Human Capital: A New Employment Model?

  Endless Innovation | Big Think

  Dominic Basulto

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:31 pm

  Around the world, it's becoming easier than ever to sell your human capital - the sum total of your knowledge, experiences and talents - to the highest bidder. Using new P2P marketplaces like Sidetour and Gidsy, you can sell a lifetime’s worth of experiences and memories the same way you might ...Read More

• Why Most Innovations Fail?

  Creativity And Innovation Driving Business - Innovation Index

  Sanjay Dalal

  20 Jan 2012 | 12:19 am

  "Few businesses are any good at innovation. For all their brainstorming exercises and "open innovation" programs, they mostly just come up with reformulations of existing products, new pricing plans and basic updates--the same old things just a little cheaper, faster or better.Businesses ask their "strategic customers" where to innovate and get little advice. Those customers are usually strategic only in that they are large, not because they have any particular market insight. They too just want more, better and cheaper, which are hardly recommendations for true innovation.Why is failure the…

• Collaboration in Innovation Competitions

  Working Knowledge ®

  Andrea Meyer

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:29 pm

  Point: Innovation tournaments can be run either competitively or collaboratively, with each approach yielding better results for different purposes. Story: In his second book, Best Practices are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition, (named the 2011 best book on innovation by CEORead) innovation speaker Stephen Shapiro offers 40 tips on how to innovate efficiently.  His tip #11, for example, tackles the topic of innovation competitions and tournaments. The tip focuses on what role, if any, collaboration should play in these bounty-driven events. Innovation tournaments can be run…

• Put Your Customer in the Ad!

  Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog

  mro

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:24 am

      In my direct mail days, we used personalization whenever possible. Starting a letter with “Dear Roger” instead of “Dear Friend” responds better every time (if the recipient’s name is Roger, that is!). A sweepstakes that uses a personalized address message like, “Imagine our Prize Patrol ringing the doorbell at 123 Shady Circle,” will garner more entries than one that uses a generic message. read more

• Creative disrupters

  Blue Ocean Strategy creation with Gabor George Burt

  Gabor George Burt

  7 Dec 2011 | 6:58 am

  There is a growing recognition that creativity is a vital component for successfully handling unexpected, unprecedented and rapidly changing surroundings. As an example, the Bloomberg Businessweek article “What Chief Executives Really Want,” in May 2010, noted: “According to a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, CEOs identify ‘creativity’ as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.”  In its How to Lead a Creative Life series, Fast Company shares the thought-provoking, inspiring…

• 

  How to Change the World

• Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK

  GuyKawasaki

  20 Jan 2012 | 12:46 pm

  Over the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.I leave you with two sets of top ten lies: one of entrepreneurs and one of investors so that you know what not to say and what not to believe. Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs “Our projections are…

• Design a Sam Adams beer

  GuyKawasaki

  20 Jan 2012 | 10:24 am

  Now this is a fun project. I’m helping Sam Adams “tap” the knowledge of beer drinkers and crowd source its next brew. Join the party by getting the app and designing your beer: The final brew will be released in Austin in the first week of March. #sponsored

• How to Create an Enchanting Financial Forecast #OfficeandGuyK

  GuyKawasaki

  17 Jan 2012 | 3:52 pm

  This is the third post in my Microsoft partnership, and it’s all about numbers. The topic is crafting your financial forecast to include in your pitch. Bill Reichert, my partner at Garage Technology Ventures, created an Excel model and wrote this blog post. There’s a lesson in this too: Get the best person for the job. His grasp of financial models and how to present them exceeds mine by two orders of magnitude. The Purpose of Financial Projections When it comes to financial projections, there are two types of entrepreneurs: first, the “visionary entrepreneur” who…

• How to Create an Enchanting Business Plan #OfficeandGuyK

  GuyKawasaki

  12 Jan 2012 | 10:16 am

  Here is the second post in my series about planning, pitching, and launching a new business venture. In partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve created a Word document that outlines a good business plan. It’s saved to my SkyDrive folder here. Feel free to download it and use it as inspiration. And if you’re working with a partner, you can use the free Word Web App to stay in sync. I provided the PowerPoint document before the Word document because a good business plan is an elaboration of a good pitch as opposed to a good pitch being a distillation of good business plan.

• How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK

  GuyKawasaki

  9 Jan 2012 | 10:01 am

  Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts I’ll be doing as part of a partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps. Over the next two weeks, I’ll cover everything a budding entrepreneur needs to turn an idea into an enchanting investment opportunity—from the perfect pitch to a killer business plan to financial forecasts. I’m going to start with a little dissertation on creating effective PowerPoint pitches for your company. I embedded the sample deck for you to click through by using the PowerPoint Web App. When you’re ready to get started, you can download the…

• 

  Matthew E. May

• Artistry at Work: Heeding Basic Instinct

  mm

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:00 pm

  When actors ask, “What is my motivation?” they’re asking about what’s most important to the character they are playing so that they can make and commit to an authentic artistic choice in their role. But they’re also talking about values. The concept of values is not a difficult one to grasp: values are qualities held to be inherently worthwhile and important by the holder. Values are the principles and beliefs that give meaning to our lives – they are a source of strength, giving us power to take action. (The Latin root of value is “valor” – which means strength.) Values…

• Why Creativity?

  mm

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:29 pm

  It’s a simple enough question. But rarely asked. More rarely answered. Even more rarely answered seven different ways. Without further ado, download this wonderfully short and FREE ebook put together by my friend Tanner Christensen, available now at Aspindle, that asks and answers the question with short essays by Julien Smith, David Meerman Scott, Patrick Algrim, Gregg Fraley, Mike Brown, and Frank Chimero. Oh yeh, and me. I’m honored to be included in this group! It’s a perfect blend of irreverence and respect…my favorite essay is by Julien Smith. Loved it.

• The 7 Deadly Sins of Innovation

  mm

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:48 am

  According to Scott Anthony, who directs the Asia-Pacific office of innovation consulting and venture-capital firm Innosight, “the seven deadly sins have very clear parallels in the world of innovation, serving as a useful and memorable way to highlight an innovator’s most common mistakes. He highlights those in his recently published book, The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It, and shows you how to avoid them. Pride The sin of pride innovation is forcing your view of quality onto the marketplace, which often results in overshooting. The easiest way to avoid…

• Little Black Book Of Innovation

  mm

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:00 pm

  How would you like an innovation program in a box? Well, The Little Black Book of Innovation, just out by Scott Anthony, comes pretty close. Scott Anthony is Managing Director of Innosight Asia-Pacific, where he leads its Asian operations and venture-capital investing activities, and launched Innosight’s business prototyping and piloting practice. The point is, he lives and breathes innovation, has seen a plethora of new business ideas, ventures, and startups. He knows what works and what doesn’t. One of the great things Anthony does is to pose leading questions and then deliver…

• Artistry at Work: Depth Over Breadth

  mm

  21 Jan 2012 | 3:00 am

  If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all. -Michelangelo Talent is merely potential, and everyone has it. Talent is everywhere – but by itself it is nothing special. It is the developed talent – the artistic skill – that sets us apart in a distinctive way. Think of talent as personal raw materials to be converted into human performance: assets to be fully capitalized upon and developed in a purposeful way to produce desired results in our work. When we fail to exploit them, we shamefully squander our most valuable resources; indeed,…

• 

  Innovation Excellence

• This Just In – What Employment News Says to Business Leaders

  Holly G Green

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  The employment pendulum seems to be swinging back to the employee side. How does this impact your team? Now's a good time to look again at what employees - and business leaders - want and need. Continue reading →

• Why Creating New Categories is so Successful

  Jorge Barba

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:00 pm

  Creating a new category. The Holy Grail of Innovation. The Holy Grail of entrepreneurs. It’s when you can create a new category that you command the skies. Think of the iPad. Is it a new category? Continue reading →

• Chief Innovation Officer’s Agenda

  Paul Hobcraft

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  I tend to not like offering up checklists as blog posts, you know those one hundred and one ideas for this or that, although I have to admit I like collecting them as a kick-starting resource. Today I decided to change my mind, Why? The Innovation Champion has many jobs-to-be-done and I felt this would be a useful 'sparking point' to recognize the innovation jobs involved. Continue reading →

• Exploring the Knowledge Center for Innovation

  Mike Lippitz

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  (KCI) is housed at the Technion’s Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management in Israel. Founded in 2008, KCI aims to accelerate innovation by disseminating information and knowledge, fostering collaboration, and establishing a network of researchers, business people and policy makers. The KCI is part of a broader Israeli Government program supporting the creation of “Infrastructural Knowledge Centers” in a variety of fields, primarily in high tech and medicine. Knowledge centers serve as a hub for research papers and resources, as well as coordinating activities among participants…

• Plus 2 Visibility – Effective Intrapreneur Habit #5

  Steve Todd

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  This is the sixth in a series of articles that describe the unique traits of a corporate intrapreneur. Continue reading →

• 

  The Innovation DiariesThe Innovation Diaries | The Innovation Diaries

• Sustainable Fishing is Catching Up

  E.Meskhi

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:16 pm

  Sustainable fishing is the only method of harvesting protein rich aquatic creatures. Other fishing methods put our oceans and health at risk. There are two main factors that affect our ability to sustain oceanic fish populations: a) the health of the population, thus the rate at which they can renew themselves and b) the method of catching fish, which can be destructive to the sea floor (when bottom trawling), or indiscriminate to different species (when pair trawling). Greenpeace have actively campaigned to protect dolphins from this unduly slaughter. Furthermore the lack of widespread and…

• What is Green Fuel?

  Ben Terrington

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:29 pm

  Green fuel technologies are developing world wide to alleviate dependance on fossil fuels.  What is green fuel and what does it mean to a society that relies on fossil fuels? Green fuel is a general term, referring to “environmentally friendly” alternative fuels, specifically biofuels derived from organic materials that can be replenished. Although the word says “green” not all alternative fuels are actually environmentally sound- instead depending on the natural resource and processing used, detrimental pollution can result. For instance, green fuels often refer to…

• What is a Microclimate?

  Amanda Jackson

  18 Jan 2012 | 7:58 pm

  In this microclimate, one side of the slope is oriented to get more sun with limited ability to absorb moisture. The other side recieves less sun throughout the day, retains more moisture and creates the conditions to grow more vegetation. A microclimate, as the name implies, is a unique and “micro” climate found within a broader area with different climate conditions. A microclimate can be created naturally or purposefully through landscaping and building placement. One example of a microclimate is a small grove of planted trees. The trees retain more moisture and shade than the…

• What is Mineral Water?

  Ben Terrington

  17 Jan 2012 | 8:34 pm

  Italy - Mineral Water Bottles © by SoloXis Mineral waters, like the name suggests is a potable water that has a high mineral that has either added or is naturally occurring. The specific classification of “mineral water” is water having 250 or more ppm (parts per million) of mineral content. The specific mineral deposits will range, some of the common compounds are zinc, magnesium, iron and calcium. Not all mineral waters are suitable for human use. While mineral waters can be man-made through mineral additives, true mineral waters have occurred naturally overtime, soaking up…

• What is a Water Tower?

  Amanda Jackson

  17 Jan 2012 | 2:54 pm

  Water tower, Rableyheath © by anemoneprojectors Those large, round tanks elevated in the sky are water towers. What is a water tower and what are they used for? A water tower is a holding tank, usually for a municipality or even a farm that is used to maintain water pressure. Through the help of gravity, water puts pressure in the pipes allowing a continuous stream of water even in times of power outages. In fact before the days of electricity, water towers were used. Today they are regarded more as a backup system- and the amount in the tank is typically equivalent to a day’s use of…

• 

  IDEO

• Articles: GreenBiz on Open Innovation and Sustainable Cities

  IDEO

  23 Jan 2012 | 1:08 pm

  GreenBiz covers OpenIDEO’s Vibrant Cities challenge, calling it “a prototype for all that’s possible in creating a more sustainable world.” Read the post here.

• Articles: Fortune on Scanadu and the “Health Tricorder”

  IDEO

  18 Jan 2012 | 7:28 pm

  Health startup Scanadu “wants to make sure the future of medicine remains a human-centered experience.” Read Fortune’s on the company’s vision for the health device and IDEO’s involvement here.

• Articles: The Future of Retail: From Revenue Generator to R&D Engine

  IDEO

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:42 pm

  In a 5-page feature, IDEO partner Dana Cho and IDEO environments designer Beau Trincia show why tough economic times and emerging technologies are prompting consumers to change their buying behavior, and how smart retailers are responding with innovative in-store offerings.

• Articles: The Wall Street Journal on Saving and Behavior Change

  IDEO

  8 Jan 2012 | 9:54 pm

  Ryan Jacoby gives insight into why it’s so hard to save, and how to keep money resolutions by visualizing goals. Read the full article here.

• Articles: SmartPlanet on Innovation & Design in 2012

  IDEO

  28 Dec 2011 | 6:34 pm

  IDEO New York’s Ryan Jacoby is one of four experts asked to share predictions for design and innovation in 2012. Read more about his thoughts on what’s to come on the SmartPlanet site.

• 

  Knowledge@Wharton

• One, Two Three Free Trade Agreements: Finally, a New Era for Global Trade?

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:29 am

  Nearly five years after the Bush administration first negotiated free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, revised versions of those pacts were finally approved by the U.S. Congress last fall and will be implemented during 2012. Although global companies reacted with an anti-climactic sense of relief, many trade analysts welcomed the new opportunities that the pacts will open for U.S. exporters, and predicted more such agreements to come.

• Under New Leadership, Will Yahoo Find Its Way?

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:33 pm

  When Scott Thompson was named Yahoo's new CEO effective January 9, he became the fourth person in five years to take charge of the ailing Internet giant. Experts at Wharton say that Thompson, who was previously president of eBay's PayPal unit, might be Yahoo's last hope for becoming relevant again as a player in online display advertising, a market which the media company once dominated. But his main challenge, they say, is the same as his predecessors': Define what Yahoo wants to be.

• IBM's Sam Palmisano: 'Always Put the Enterprise Ahead of the Individual'

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:33 pm

  As far as a legacy goes, says IBM chairman Sam Palmisano, "I just want to leave the company better than I found it." Judging by IBM's successes over the past decade, Palmisano, who was CEO of IBM until he stepped down earlier this month, did just that. During an interview with Wharton management professor Michael Useem, Palmisano discussed the sale of the company's personal computer business, the PricewaterhouseCoopers acquisition, how a big company can encourage innovation, and what he learned from his mentors, among other observations drawn from almost 40 years at IBM.

• Revisiting the American Dream: Is the U.S. Providing Fewer Opportunities to Get Ahead?

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:33 pm

  The United States is widely seen as a place where a person can rise from extreme poverty to lavish wealth on the basis of hard work, ingenuity and a little luck. But has that vision of the American dream become less attainable in recent times? As economic inequality rises, and much of the population grapples with high unemployment and a stagnant housing market, observers say it is becoming harder and harder to go from rags to riches. Fewer opportunities to do so, they note, has real implications for the country's overall future.

• Customers, Competition and Cost: Sam's Club CEO Brian Cornell on the Essential 'Cs' of Leadership

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:33 pm

  For Sam's Club CEO Brian Cornell, good leadership is about getting inside the heads of the warehouse chain's 47 million shoppers and figuring out the product mix and shopping experience that will keep them coming back for more. At a recent Wharton Leadership Lecture, he talked about the "Cs" that govern his leadership style and the opportunities and challenges created by today's more value-conscious breed of consumer.

• 

  Gregg Fraley's Blog

• Why Creativity? Why Breathe?

  GREGG FRALEY

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:28 am

  I was invited by Tanner Christensen, author of the blog Creative Something to contribute a short piece to a free e-book on creativity. The assignment was to write a short response to the question “Why Creativity?” This is the first piece in ages that I wrote long hand first; maybe I should try that technique [...]

• It Takes Two in the Innovation Tango

  GREGG FRALEY

  21 Jan 2012 | 8:45 am

  Thank God for Susan Robertson. Susan is a friend and colleague, and a principal at the innovation firm Ideas To Go. I’m happy Susan took the time to respond to yet another article in a respected publication that downplays the value of collaboration in idea generation. I’ve written several pieces in this blogspace defending the [...]

• Moneyball is Innovationball

  GREGG FRALEY

  19 Jan 2012 | 3:17 pm

  As in-flight entertainment luck would have it, I’ve now seen the film Moneyball twice within a week. On the surface Moneyball is a true-story film about baseball — but it’s really an innovation story. I enjoyed the film but nothing about it struck me as profoundly good in terms of story, or character development. I [...]

• Do Innovation Consultants Kill Innovation? Oh please…

  GREGG FRALEY

  10 Jan 2012 | 5:34 am

  I get letters. A colleague of mine, Lisa Baxter, alerted me to an article recently published in Fast Company’s online Design section. The article, titled “Do Innovation Consultants Kill Innovation?” suggests that in fact, innovation consultants do indeed kill innovation. Authors Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen argue that innovation is too messy to [...]

• How To Avoid Innovation Infarction

  GREGG FRALEY

  4 Jan 2012 | 11:44 am

  As the son of a coach, and full-on sports participant in years past, I am not a stranger to exercise. I was doing push-ups daily before I entered kindergarten. I was an average athlete at best, but Dad was proud of how fit I was. The modest success I had was entirely due to good [...]

• 

  Bulldog Drummond - Uncommon Sense

• Redesign the Report Card

  admin

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  We are fans of GOOD’s most recent challenge: ‘Redesign The Report Card‘. This contest challenged designers to redesign the education system’s report card so that it’s visually appealing, informative, inspirational, and gives context to student achievement: Uncommon Sense in action.

• Ten Tips for Merging Business and Passion

  admin

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  I’m fascinated by the different types of people I meet in the business world and the way that their personalities show up in what they do. I’m drawn to people who have a quiet inner confidence that is expressed in their interactions and their output. I am comforted by their sense of self. They know who they are and they operate with a kindness of spirit that makes shared time and conversation pleasant. They exude confident energy to everyone they come into contact with. Matthew Larson is the Chief of Product Design for Matuse, one of the surf industry’s most exciting new…

• The Innovators

  admin

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

• When We All Think Alike

  admin

  19 Jan 2012 | 10:47 am

• Think Different

  admin

  19 Jan 2012 | 10:47 am

• 

  Endless Innovation | Big Think

• Status Update Anxiety and Facebook Timeline

  Dominic Basulto

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:37 pm

  Keeping up with the Joneses just got harder, with Facebook finally flipping the switch on its new Timeless Apps that make it easier to share every fleeting moment of your fabulous life with each and every one of your friends. The gossip and invidious comparison that goes on between Facebook friends ...Read More

• Digital Pirates, 3D Printing and the End of Copyright

  Dominic Basulto

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:15 pm

  If you think the copyright wars over SOPA and PIPA that resulted in the Wikipedia Blackout were contentious, wait until you see what happens when the debate over copyright is extended beyond music, film, video games and books and into the realm of physical objects like sneakers and toys. The ...Read More

• Enter the Dragon: Here Comes China's Creative Class

  Dominic Basulto

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:16 pm

  The Year of the Dragon – traditionally the year of big, innovative ideas and breakthrough projects - might just be the year that China's creative class enters the global spotlight. The latest signal comes from the art world, where the market for Chinese artwork is exploding, putting new Chinese ...Read More

• Pop-Up Human Capital: A New Employment Model?

  Dominic Basulto

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:31 pm

  Around the world, it's becoming easier than ever to sell your human capital - the sum total of your knowledge, experiences and talents - to the highest bidder. Using new P2P marketplaces like Sidetour and Gidsy, you can sell a lifetime’s worth of experiences and memories the same way you might ...Read More

• Are Newspapers Civic Institutions or Algorithms?

  Dominic Basulto

  16 Jan 2012 | 11:58 am

  The current state of the newspaper industry is unsettled at best: more than two hundred newspapers have either folded or stopped publishing their print editions since 2007. Even the most acclaimed newspapers in the country are downsizing their newsrooms or suspending home delivery of physical ...Read More

• 

  The Heart of Innovation

• Ten Simple Mindset Shifts for 2012

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:26 pm

  This is a marvelous, lucid, well-written blog post by Tom Asacker on ten of the fundamental mindset changes that you and your company will need to honor if you expect to thrive during these radically changing times. HINT: Your marketing efforts need to be less about branding and more about bonding. Who, on your team, do you need to meet with to explore Tom's key points? And when will you do it? Idea Champions Free the Genie

• Creative Thinking Technique #2

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  DREAM CATCHING Many great breakthroughs have come in dreams. Rene Descartes got the concept for the Scientific Method in a dream. Elias Howe came up with the final design for the lock stitch sewing machine in a dream. August Kekule arrived at the formulation of the Benzene molecule in a dream. In the dream state, our subconscious mind arrives at solutions that our conscious mind is unlikely to discover no matter much it obsesses. That's why Thomas Edison and Salvadore Dali used to take naps during the day. Click the link below for a simple technique you can use to help remember your dreams...

• Creative Thinking Technique #1

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:00 am

  This is the first in a series of 35 postings that describe simple techniques you can use to liberate your innate creativity. 1. WRITE ON! Buddha, as the story goes, once said that human beings have 2,000 thoughts per second -- and that he had slowed his mind enough to be able to identify the last two. Few of us are in Buddha's league. Our thoughts are often a blur, flying in under the radar -- great ideas mixed with odd bits about shoe sales, sex, and salad dressing. Like unremembered dreams, our ideas come and go, having little or no effect on our lives. That's why you need a way to track…

• The Rock and a Hard Place Exercise

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:32 pm

  Here's a fun 5-minute exercise -- a good icebreaker or brainstorm session starter. Make a list of every bad thing that will happen to you and your business if you don't figure out how to free yourself from being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Then take another five minutes and make a second list of everything you can do to prevent the stuff you just wrote down on your first list from happening. Go! Idea Champions

• The Seed of Innovation Moment

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:08 pm

  Let's cut to the chase: Innovation doesn't begin with processes, structures, and protocols. It begins with inspiration. And where does inspiration come from? It comes from inside the impassioned mind and heart of each person who works in your organization. When people's mind/mindset is in the right place (i.e. open, curious, imaginative, communicative), your organization is home to thousands of daily, spontaneous opportunities for innovation to take root. But all too often it doesn't.

• 

  Innovate on Purpose

• I'll Never Fall in Love (with ideas) Again

  Jeffrey Phillips

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:35 am

  With apologies to Burt Bacharach for liberating his song title, I want to develop the concept of the innovator as a cold hearted killer, a love 'em and leave 'm type more suited as the villain in a dime store novel more than the passionate, heroic leading man. Because people who fall in love with ideas, or products, often don't have the strength to do what they must.  Create a new idea or new product that makes the old one obsolete.Anyone who has worked as an innovator knows the risk.  It's easy to fall in love with an idea.  So many ideas are so perfect, so suited for the need…

• Innovation Contradictions

  Jeffrey Phillips

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:37 am

  Why is it that something as important as innovation should be so fraught with contradictions?  Today, as I was leading an innovation training class for a client, I stopped to think about the number and variety of contradictions that are embodied in successful innovation.  In fact these contradictions are what make innovation so difficult.The first contradiction is that innovation requires a business to embrace processes and methods that are far different from the efficient, effective processes that sustain short term profitability.  Innovation creates new, risky, uncertain…

• What is the definition of "innovation"?

  Jeffrey Phillips

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:20 am

  As an innovation geek, I always enjoy reading over the latest reports about innovation.  Like a kid at Christmas I eagerly await reports on innovation from management consulting firms like PWC or Booz Allen.  They provide a yearly assessment of the world of innovation, and especially what CEOs believe to be true about innovation.  And, like Christmas, many of them occur at this time of year.  Recently, GE published an innovation report entitled the GE Global Innovation Barometer.  It is worth taking a look at if you haven't done so already.One of the items that…

• Is it a fools errand to try to create a culture of innovation?

  Jeffrey Phillips

  16 Jan 2012 | 4:09 pm

  I was reminded of the Forrest Gump mantra recently - stupid is as stupid does - and it got me thinking.  Strange, almost ironic, isn't it, that a saying like that could make one stop and think?  Or perhaps I'm just living the mantra.  But there's a deeper meaning here for innovators, and for those who babble endlessly about creating a culture of innovation.  What are some of the challenges?First of all, most "cultures" aren't designed.  When Timmy and Jane decide to build an entrepreneurial company, they are doing so to solve a problem or bring a  new product to…

• Should Innovation be "professionalized"

  Jeffrey Phillips

  10 Jan 2012 | 8:07 am

  I read with some interest and trepidation the article in Co.Design entitled "Do Innovation Consultants Kill Innovation?".  Like many people who write for the web, I recognize a catchy title is meant to attract readers and create a distinct point of view.  As a person who earns a living as an innovation consultant, of course I'm concerned when anyone seems to cast doubt on my chosen trade.  So, perhaps it's a good question to ask - should innovation become a profession - whether inside an organization where innovation titles are appearing with increasing frequency, or should we…

• 

  Scott Berkun

• Is speaking easier than writing? Some advice

  Scott Berkun

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:30 am

  I get many emails asking about writing, in response to the popular posts I’ve written about writing. Recently Shawnee M. Deck wrote in asking about writing ones life story. I was immediately appalled by my lack of ability to put down on paper the words that seem to make everyone laugh whenever I tell my stories. This is common. Spoken language and written language work differently. The skills needed to tell a good story in one do not necessarily transfer to the other.  Our ears are more forgiving than our eyes. When listening, we can use people’s tone, pace and volume to get…

• On insecurity and writing

  Scott Berkun

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:54 pm

  A good friend mentioned he’d write more often if he dealt with his insecurities about writing. I look at this differently. All writers are insecure: they have doubts and fears that never go away. Kafka didn’t want any of his books published, and lived with perennial doubts about his talents. Fitzgerald and Hemingway both despaired about the quality of their current projects, whatever they were, afraid their new works wouldn’t measure up to their last (despite feeling this way about their previous works too).  Talk to any creator while they are creating and insecurity…

• Quote of the day

  Scott Berkun

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:27 pm

  The quote of the day: “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The more I’ve learned, the less I believe it. Power doesn’t always corrupt. What power always does is reveal. When a guy gets into a position where he doesn’t have to worry anymore, then you see what he wanted to do all along.” -Robert Caro, Interviewed in Esquire, 12/16/09 Related posts: Quote of the month Why ease of use doesn’t happen What do you miss from the past? Your quota of worry and how to shrink it Quote of the month

• What should I talk about? (Puget Sound SIG-CHI)

  Scott Berkun

  11 Jan 2012 | 1:02 pm

  I’m speaking this month at the Puget Sound SIG-CHI meeting (1/26, 6:30pm, location TBD) , a cool group of designers, researchers and UX-minded folks. Since it’d be daft to pick a topic without some form of user-research, I’m asking you, here and now, what you’d most like to have me talk about. Here are some suggestions: The top 10 mistakes UX people make Why designers fail How to be persuasive What I wish I’d learned in college (about UX) Why the world is hard to use (and always will be) What I learned designing WordPress.com If anything in the list resonates,…

• Self-publishing vs. working with O’Reilly Media

  Scott Berkun

  3 Jan 2012 | 9:13 am

  I met Joe Wikert, GM at O’Reilly Media, in 2008, while negotiating terms for Confessions of a Public Speaker. I’ve talked to many editors and executives at publishing companies, but he quickly charmed me with his genuine intelligence and honest good nature. Like my editor at O’Reilly, Mary Tressler, he’s one of my favorite people at O’Reilly Media. When I decided to self-publish my newest book, Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds, many people assumed there was some bad blood between O’Reilly Media and myself. It was one of the most common questions I…

• 

  BQF Innovation Blog

• Innovation starts with a Point of Pain

  Paul Sloane

  19 Jan 2012 | 7:53 am

  Necessity is the mother of invention.  And pain can be the father of innovation.  Whenever you or your customer has a problem, an inconvenience, a difficulty or a pain there is an opportunity for innovation.  A new product or service is called for to alleviate the pain. Nick D’Aloisio is a 16 year old London schoolboy who has just invented a mobile phone app called Summly.  He said, “I was revising for a history exam and using Google, clicking in and out of search results, and it seemed quite inefficient. If I found myself on a site that was interesting I was reading it and…

• Lateral Thinking in Action – the Car Parts Incubator Story

  Paul Sloane

  9 Jan 2012 | 5:58 am

  Every year over one million babies die within 24 hours of birth.  Most could be saved with the use of incubators, which are widely available in the developed world but not in under-developed countries.  Much of the medical equipment that is donated to hospitals in these countries falls into disuse because of the lack of spare parts or shortage of trained technicians.  There is also a common problem with interrupted power supply. The conventional approach to this kind of problem would be design a low-cost robust incubator with some redundancy and some spare parts.  However a company called…

• Find out What People Really Think

  Paul Sloane

  30 Dec 2011 | 3:45 am

  Here is an innovative idea for managers.  Find out what your employees really think. Happiily is a site that lets employees speak honestly and anonymously.  It means that they can give managers an early warning when there are problems. At the moment this Canadian start-up is offering its services free.  It is an opportunity to learn from your most valuable stakeholders – your workers. Paul Sloane

• Issue a Declaration of Innovation

  Paul Sloane

  16 Dec 2011 | 11:59 am

  Many CEOs and leaders talk about the importance of innovation in their organisations.   But often their words are bland and vague – just a form of management-speak.  If you want people to really believe then why not explain exactly what you mean with a Declaration of Innovation.  The Declaration of Innovation is a statement of commitment and intent.  It should contain the following elements: a)    An explanation of why innovation is critical for the organisation. b)    A list of some of the key areas where innovation is needed – e.g. launching new products or services, breaking…

• How to use the Disney Method

  Paul Sloane

  5 Dec 2011 | 4:37 am

  The Disney Method is a parallel thinking technique which has some similarities with the Six Hats. It is particularly useful as a group analysis tool for an issue and it leads to idea generation and idea review.  The team adopts four different thinking modes as outsiders, dreamers, realisers and critics. Initially the group thinks as outsiders and review the facts, data and external viewpoints regarding the issue at hand. They might take the roles of consultants, customers, suppliers or competitors in order to get a more rounded view of the issue. The group then leaves the room and re-enters…

• 

  Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen Shapiro

• Lessons of Pawn Stars

  sshapiro

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:24 am

  Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen ShapiroYes, you read that correctly.  PAWN Stars. This reality television show on The History Channel chronicles a pawn shop outside of Las Vegas.  I enjoy the show because of the history associated with the pieces that are brought in for sale.  In addition to rifles from the revolutionary war and antique political documents, people bring [...]

• One Small Step for Your Business, One Giant Leap for Success

  sshapiro

  13 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen ShapiroQuite a few books and studies recently have touted the power of incremental change. Small actions can have a huge impact on long-term business growth. The appropriate degree of change needed for innovating within organizations is, in general, a 45-degree change, consistent but not too radical. That tends to be more effective than a 5-degree change (purely [...]

• My 2012 Themes Revealed

  sshapiro

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen ShapiroAnyone who follows this blog knows that the New Year is my favorite time for reflecting on the past and creating the future. If you have not read my article on “Making Resolutions That Work,” please do so.  Or, if you prefer, you can read the variant of this article that appeared in the Wall [...]

• My Favorite Blog Posts of 2011

  sshapiro

  11 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen ShapiroGiven that we are in a new year, I thought it might be nice to reflect on the past year.  So today I want to share with you my favorite blog entries from 2011.  I chose my top 10 for three categories: 1)innovation & creativity, 2) general business, and 3) life and happiness.  Admittedly, the articles I [...]

• “Best Practices Are Stupid” Named Best Innovation & Creativity Book of 2011

  sshapiro

  10 Jan 2012 | 3:53 pm

  Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen ShapiroI am excited and honored to announce that my book, “Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition,” was just named the best “innovation and creativity” book of 2011 by 800-CEO-READ.  Winners in other categories include Jim Collins, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Eric Ries. You can see the entire list here on the 800-CEO-READ website. [...]

• 

  BusinessWeek.com -- Innovation

• For Successful Innovation, Sell Imperfect Products

  28 Jan 2012 | 5:15 am

  Many companies waste millions on R&D, while early-stage marketing can prove a more cost-effective way of developing new products

• Creating an Economy That’s 'Built to Last'

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:35 pm

  Obama wants America to get back to the business of making things. That means developing skilled workers at home

• Horse Ballet, Potato Show Honor Frederick the Great’s Birthday

  25 Jan 2012 | 6:04 pm

  King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who played the flute, argued with Voltaire, conquered parts of Poland and attacked Austria, would have turned 300 yesterday.

• Related Cos. Closes $825 Million Distressed Real Estate Fund

  24 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  Related Cos., the developer of Manhattan’s Time Warner Center, said it closed its first distressed real estate fund after raising $825 million.

• Stasi Hunt Winds Through Concrete Maze to Checkpoint Charlie

  24 Jan 2012 | 1:19 am

  The first time I tried to find the Stasi headquarters in Berlin I got lost. About 10 years ago, a group of five of us battled through gray East Berlin streets, lashed by icy wind and sleet.

• 

  Working Knowledge ®

• Collaboration in Innovation Competitions

  Andrea Meyer

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:29 pm

  Point: Innovation tournaments can be run either competitively or collaboratively, with each approach yielding better results for different purposes. Story: In his second book, Best Practices are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition, (named the 2011 best book on innovation by CEORead) innovation speaker Stephen Shapiro offers 40 tips on how to innovate efficiently.  His tip #11, for example, tackles the topic of innovation competitions and tournaments. The tip focuses on what role, if any, collaboration should play in these bounty-driven events. Innovation tournaments can be run…

• Mayo Clinic’s Collaborative Innovation Process

  Andrea Meyer

  13 Dec 2011 | 10:24 am

  Point: Collaboration between doctors, patients, designers and lab technicians brings healthcare delivery breakthroughs. Story: The inspiring origins of the Mayo Clinic illustrate the timelessness of collaborative innovation. Back in the 1880s, two brothers, Will and Charles Mayo, founded the clinic with their father, Dr. William Worrall Mayo, and introduced the concept of a group practice.  The Mayos sought medical breakthroughs by bringing together doctors, laboratory experts, and business people. As the younger Will Mayo said, “In order that the sick may have the benefit of advancing…

• Innovation in 3D: Ice Dream #DSCC11

  Andrea Meyer

  16 Nov 2011 | 9:14 am

  Point: Test large-scale innovations for 1/20th the cost by using 3D simulations to prove viability and performance. Story: Forty years ago, Georges Mougin got an idea: solve water shortages in drought-ridden countries by towing an iceberg over the sea to them. Floating icebergs are pure drinking water, but they slowly melt into seawater.  Why not harvest them before all that drinking water is lost? The idea of towing an iceberg, however, seemed crazy.  When Mougin talked with scientists about the idea, objections abounded.  “Once you get north of the equator, you’ll have…

• Make Your Product a Narrative — #BIF7

  Andrea Meyer

  20 Oct 2011 | 11:32 am

  Point:  Technology and innovation enable greater customer engagement through open-ended customizations, apps, add-on, and social features. Story: At BIF7, John Hagel, author of The Power of Pull, highlighted what he saw as a distinction between story vs. narrative. A story is complete, self-contained, and has a beginning, middle, and end. Stories have audiences: people who passively consume the story.  In contrast, Hagel defined a “narrative” as an open-ended, unfolding sequence that continues into the future.  Narratives frame the world and the people in it.  Under this…

• Breaking the Rules to Create a Bestseller

  Andrea Meyer

  23 Sep 2011 | 12:34 pm

  Point: Rule-breaking products may require business model innovations. Story: At BIF7, Alex Osterwalder told his story of breaking the rules when creating his book, Business Model Generation, now an international bestseller. Creating this book meant taking a lot of risks. The current business model for business books is broken, Osterwalder said. There are too many books and too few readers. Every year, another 11,000 new business books pile on top the 250,000-space of competing titles. The average book sells only 250 copies per year. Worse, book sales are declining: a 12% drop from 2007 to…

• 

  Creativity And Innovation Driving Business - Innovation Index

• Apple Creates History with New iBooks Textbooks

  Sanjay Dalal

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:18 am

  "Apple announced iBooks 2 for iPad, featuring iBooks textbooks, an entirely new kind of textbook that’s dynamic, engaging, and truly interactive. iBooks textbooks offer iPad users gorgeous, full-screen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, and unrivaled navigation. Leading education services companies including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson will deliver educational titles on the iBookstore, with most priced at $14.99 or less. And with the new iBooks Author, anyone with a Mac can create iBooks textbooks and publish them to Apple’s…

• How Business Defines Innovation?

  Sanjay Dalal

  23 Jan 2012 | 8:07 pm

  Which two aspects below most closely correspond to your personal definition ofinnovation?The implementation of new processes, products, organizational changes or marketing changesAn environment/culture that embraces positive change, creativity and continuous improvementResearch and development, new intellectual property (IP), and inventionsStaying ahead in the market and being a market leaderSolutions that benefit society and societal outcomes (including environmental outcomes)None of the aspects above is close to my personal definition of innovationSelected references:Leading eBook on…

• Why Most Innovations Fail?

  Sanjay Dalal

  20 Jan 2012 | 12:19 am

  "Few businesses are any good at innovation. For all their brainstorming exercises and "open innovation" programs, they mostly just come up with reformulations of existing products, new pricing plans and basic updates--the same old things just a little cheaper, faster or better.Businesses ask their "strategic customers" where to innovate and get little advice. Those customers are usually strategic only in that they are large, not because they have any particular market insight. They too just want more, better and cheaper, which are hardly recommendations for true innovation.Why is failure the…

• Startup Failure – Product Looking for Market

  Sanjay Dalal

  14 Jan 2012 | 2:42 pm

  [A] What’s the “product looking for market”? Well, it’s a product or product idea that is put together backwards. Rather than starting out with the question, “what do people want”, it starts with what the entrepreneur may think what people may want and then just goes about building it. Once he builds it, then he tries to go to the market and looks for people who may be able to use it. That’s putting a cart before the horse. It is even worse when such product idea has no basis or relevance to entrepreneur’s past experience. Then it’s a complete science fiction.

• Business Social Network

  Sanjay Dalal

  8 Jan 2012 | 6:21 pm

  Are you a small business, entrepreneur or startup?Promote your business and Find new customers on Ogoing!Boost your business on the leading small business social network!Ogoing is the fastest growing business social network!!Ogoing combines business networking, social networking and social media marketing!Get started now: http://www.ogoing.com/joinogoingDrive your business forward with social media!"Our customers have increased sales by over 20% within six months!" Join now! http://www.ogoing.com/joinogoingWhy Join?7 reasons why businesses should join Ogoing and jump start their social…

• 

  InformationWeek - All Stories And Blogs

• Rooting The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:11 pm

  Updating the T-Mobile Galaxy Tab 7 isn't as complicated as you might think. BYTE's David Chernicoff shows us how.

• Stolen iPhone Saved By iCloud

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:38 pm

  New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police follow Find My iPhone directions to nab a suspect and recover an iPhone in the space of four hours. InformationWeek's RSS Feed is brought to you by The next level in education with NEC   We bring you tailor-made solutions built on an in-depth understanding of your unique needs. Learn how NEC?s solutions and expertise in voice and data communications, networks and data storage can elevate your performance at www.nec.com/education www.nec.com/education Ads by Pheedo

• Google And Privacy: Nothing To See Here, Move On

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:29 pm

  If you use Google services you're already trusting it to manage your personal information responsibly. Nothing has changed.

• Twitter Country Blocks: 10 Key Facts

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:08 pm

  Twitter says functionality aims to help the company better respond to legal requirements. What restrictions already exist and what's next?

• InformationWeek's RSS Feed is brought to you by The next level in education with NEC

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:08 pm

    We bring you tailor-made solutions built on an in-depth understanding of your unique needs. Learn how NEC?s solutions and expertise in voice and data communications, networks and data storage can elevate your performance at www.nec.com/education www.nec.com/education Ads by Pheedo

• 

  ITIF Publication, Events and News Articles

• The Innovation Consensus: Economic Growth in 2013 and Beyond

  afearon

  19 Apr 2012 | 8:30 am

  Enable Registration:  off As President Obama asserted in his State of the Union address, America's innovation and competitiveness position is a historic challenge, tougher than our current fiscal situation but with more serious long-term implications. Reversing its decline is critical to job and income growth but it remains to be seen if policymakers will put partisan differences aside and give it the attention it needs to and develop and implement a comprehensive suite of real solutions. This spring, ITIF and Silicon Flatirons will bring together prominent business leaders, public…

• The Global Innovation Policy Index

  afearon

  8 Mar 2012 | 8:00 am

  Enable Registration:  Enable Registration Countries worldwide are engaged in a fierce race for global innovation advantage. The leading countries have implemented innovation strategies that coordinate their policies towards trade and foreign direct investment, science and R&D, information and communications technology, intellectual property rights, government procurement, tax, and education and high-skill immigration in an integrated approach designed to drive economic growth through innovation. However, to maximize global innovation, countries will have to implement these policies…

• Eddie Lazarus Reflects on a Dramatic Tenure as Chief of Staff of the FCC

  afearon

  23 Feb 2012 | 9:00 am

  Enable Registration:  Enable Registration Eddie Lazarus spent the last two and a half years as chief of staff of the Federal Communications Commission, a tenure rightly described by the Washington Post's Cecelia Kang as, "marked by brutal battles over Internet access rules and the reviews of two massive mergers." Indeed, Lazarus was in the center of high-stakes, politically-charged battles over the soul of Internet and the shape of the communications marketplace. As he leaves public service, ITIF is pleased to host him for some reflections on his experience and discussion about what's…

• American Competitiveness: What Works

  afearon

  13 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pm

  On February 14, 2012, ITIF President Rob Atkinson will be presenting on a panel as part of the American Competitiveness: What Works conference.

• Applying the DARPA Concepts to Energy Innovation: The Emerging ARPA-E Model

  afearon

  3 Feb 2012 | 9:00 am

  Enable Registration:  Enable Registration Driving growth through innovation isn’t just about boosting science funding and hoping for the best. Institutions – and their management models – matter. In the past, public agencies like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) helped develop and spur economy-changing innovations, most notably the Internet. It's high-risk/high-reward bets created new industries and yielded massive economy-wide returns on initial investment – some of the best “bang for the buck” imaginable. Because of such successes, many have advocated…

• 

  Technology Review RSS Feeds

• Apple and Labor

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:59 pm

  Following a scathing report, Apple CEO Tim Cook gets defensive. The New York Times has published a lengthy report titled “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad.” It begins with a scene that no Apple employee could feel particularly proud to read: “The explosion ripped through Building A5 on Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.” The story goes on to relate that the explosion came from an area of a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, where workers did nothing but polish iPad cases, thousands of them each day.

• The TV on Your Shirt

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:29 am

  Adafruit Industries announces a new wearable technology platform. Wearable electronics gets a new boost, with a new platform from Adafruit Industries, the brainchild of DIY-goddess Limor Fried (hacker handle: Ladyada). The new platform, dubbed the Flora, points to a future where people are wearing TV screens--or at least, something vaguely like them--on their T-shirts.

• Why 3-D Printing Isn't Like Virtual Reality

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:35 am

  Before you dismiss it as a fad, consider the evolution of 2-D printing. I'd like to sneak up on the question of 3-D printing by way of boring old 2-D printing.

• ... And Scrabble Proved PSPACE-Complete

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:10 pm

  Following news that Pac-Man is NP-Hard, theorists determine the computational complexity of Scrabble. Having been invented in the US in the mid-20th century, Scrabble is now available in dozens of languages and sells in numbers measured in hundreds of millions. That makes it one of the most popular games in the world.  

• New Virtual Helper Challenges Siri

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  An app named Evi uses semantic data to provide a wider range of answers. The market for sweetly named smart-phone assistants is heating up, as Siri, Apple's iPhone-based virtual helper, just got a new "frenemy" named Evi.

• 

  Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog

• Put Your Customer in the Ad!

  mro

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:24 am

      In my direct mail days, we used personalization whenever possible. Starting a letter with “Dear Roger” instead of “Dear Friend” responds better every time (if the recipient’s name is Roger, that is!). A sweepstakes that uses a personalized address message like, “Imagine our Prize Patrol ringing the doorbell at 123 Shady Circle,” will garner more entries than one that uses a generic message. read more

• Vickie Achee on the Grand Retail Eperiment at Patagonia

  Futurelab

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:33 am

  Today’s interview takes a peek behind the curtain at an extraordinary company, Patagonia.  Patagonia is known worldwide as an outdoor clothing and gear brand, but I wanted to better understand the company’s retail strategy. Who better to ask than the head of marketing for the North America Retail Division at Patagonia, Vickie Achee. read more

• Enter the Dragon: Here Comes China's Creative Class

  Futurelab

  24 Jan 2012 | 1:18 pm

  The Year of the Dragon – traditionally the year of big, innovative ideas and breakthrough projects - might just be the year that China's creative class enters the global spotlight. The latest signal comes from the art world, where the market for Chinese artwork is exploding, putting new Chinese artists on the same footing as the greatest names in the Western artistic tradition. read more

• Trust Shifts from Institutions to Individuals

  Futurelab

  24 Jan 2012 | 12:39 pm

  Today I had the opportunity to present to academics and industry experts from the international poultry industry (you can listen to a re-cap via a short podcast from "Agwired" here). During the presentation I was able to share some results from the recently released 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, in which the overarching theme is a general skepticism toward institutions such as government and big business with signs of hope when it comes to empowered individuals. read more

• Reinventing Libraries

  Futurelab

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:01 pm

  According to the 2010/11 Taking Part survey published by the Dept of Culture, Media & Sport the proportion of adults in the UK who visited a public library in the past year fell from 48.2% in 2005/6 to just 39.4% in 2009/10. At that rate of decline in less than two decades nobody will be visiting libraries. read more

• 

  Blue Ocean Strategy creation with Gabor George Burt

• Burn calories alongside your pet

  Gabor George Burt

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:02 am

  In order to stay relevant in a fast and continuously changing environment, you need to be market driving rather than market driven. Market driven, no matter how responsive, is a reactionary stance. In contrast, market driving is proactive, creating spaces of lifestyle enrichment that did not exist before. Take, for example, the world’s biggest food group Nestle, which has launched an online program inviting pet owners to team up with their furry friends to lose weight.   Via Reuters:   Nestle's pet and people weight management units Purina and Jenny Craig worked together on…

• What can sports teach us about business strategy?

  Gabor George Burt

  2 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  Enjoy Gabor’s latest article over at the American Express OPEN Forum. One arena with rich parallels to business strategy is the world of sports. Here is one example. The game of American football is a furious game of strategy. In fact it is so strategy-intensive, that the game is paused for half a minute between each play to allow both teams to formulate or select the best strategy for the next one. There are actual headsets inside players’ helmets, through which coaches can communicate strategic commands between plays from the sidelines. For the uninitiated the game can look downright…

• BlackBerry's waning Infatuation Interval™

  Gabor George Burt

  19 Dec 2011 | 12:31 pm

  The writing has been written on the wall for quite some time now. In fact, back in June Gabor wrote an article for Mashable entitled “Blackberry: how our infatuation waned,” which issued warnings for BlackBerry and its waning Infatuation Interval™. Now, looking for a blue ocean strategy-like solution—and one that reminds us of pages from the Kodak playbook—some investors now believe that the best way forward for BlackBerry just might be to jettison its core business.   Via Reuters: It might seem like corporate heresy but an increasing number of technology investors and experts are…

• Creative disrupters

  Gabor George Burt

  7 Dec 2011 | 6:58 am

  There is a growing recognition that creativity is a vital component for successfully handling unexpected, unprecedented and rapidly changing surroundings. As an example, the Bloomberg Businessweek article “What Chief Executives Really Want,” in May 2010, noted: “According to a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, CEOs identify ‘creativity’ as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.”  In its How to Lead a Creative Life series, Fast Company shares the thought-provoking, inspiring…

• When infatuation tips towards fanaticism

  Gabor George Burt

  5 Dec 2011 | 12:00 am

  While there is no such thing as a perfectly and continuously satisfied customer, there is such a thing as an infatuated one. But what happens when one’s infatuation goes overboard and tips towards fanaticism? A story from the recent USA post-Thanksgiving popular shopping day, Black Friday, gives us some insight. Via Yahoo!: A woman trying to improve her chance to buy cheap electronics at a Walmart in a wealthy suburb spewed pepper spray on a crowd of shoppers and 20 people suffered minor injuries, police said Friday.  The attack took place about 10:20 p.m. Thursday shortly after doors…

• 

  Creativity Central

• The 60 Minute Brand Strategist

  Creativity Central

  18 Jan 2012 | 1:07 pm

  I saw this amazing presentation by Idris Mootee CEO of Idea Couture a few years ago and was amazed just how well this single slide show condensed 20 years of branding lessons into about 80 slides. The thinking is remarkable. And the graphics are incredibly well done. If you want to rethink branding. Understand why it has replaced virtually every other term (advertising, marketing etc) then take a look at this inspiring Slide Share Presentation. Free Power Point Presentations

• Beyond Brainstorming. It's not either or, it's and

  Creativity Central

  29 Dec 2011 | 7:05 pm

  Like the cliff swallows of San Juan Capistrano, there is one annual event that generally ruffles the feathers of creative facilitators.  Usually it’s an article on the perils and pitfalls of brainstorming. Typically, the article cites a study that proves that individuals working alone produce more ideas working in a group. Or it’s the latest incarnation of the idea that brainstorming as practiced by most companies isn’t very productive. So what’s the feather ruffling part? It begins with an observation I recently shared in Nashville at the IFCA conference in a…

• Iron Giant Thinking

  Creativity Central

  10 Dec 2011 | 5:30 pm

  A few weeks ago, I listened to a talk by Bob Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He tells a great story in his book about Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles and Iron Giant. (Interestingly, I freelanced at Disney at the Ink and Paint building when both Bird and Pixar’s John Lasseter were working at the studio but never met the animators.) The story is about Bird’s experience working on the animated film Iron Giant.  “The Iron Giant team worked on a climate of fear before Bird arrived,…

• Creativity and the challenge of media choices

  Creativity Central

  14 Nov 2011 | 1:08 pm

  Chris Kocek, a strategic planner at the agency GSD&M, recently posted an interesting blog on Curiositycalled, Social Media Infographics from the Consumers’ Perspective. He asks, “What does the world look like if we put the consumer at the center of the social media universe?”  I am a huge fan of infographics -- and his historical approach to visualizing the exponential growth of the ways consumers can interact with companies and to each other is compelling. Compelling because the growth of media outlets is something many clients says they understand, but…

• The Pencil Experiment.

  Creativity Central

  4 Nov 2011 | 10:58 am

  At Inotivity, we call them ten-minute katas (a Japanese term describing detailed choreographed patterns of movements).  Today, kata is often used as a metaphor for a routine or pattern of thinking that leads to various levels of mastery. It’s a provocative way to jump start creativity. Hand out a pencil to everyone in your group or meeting. Ask everyone to look at the pencil and think about its attributes, qualities and benefits.  On a large note pad or white board write down the group’s ideas. In creative problem solving, the technique is typically called object linking…

• 

  DON! The Idea Guy

• A Year of Whensdays

  Don The Idea Guy

  1 Jan 2012 | 9:42 am

  Time for the annual New Year’s Whensday reboot! Think of this yearly recurring post as a “New Year’s Holiday Special” for inspiring you (and me!) to get more things done in 2012. January is an ideal time to adopt an “Everyday is Whensday” philosophy. By now you’ve probably noted the unique spelling (or at the very least [...]

• Wait Loss Program

  Don The Idea Guy

  31 Oct 2011 | 11:37 pm

  One might “gain weight” but there is rarely anything gained by waiting. On the contrary, the chances are greater that you’ll miss out on opportunities by delaying — you’ll experience “wait loss.”  Some delays are inevitable, but most are self-imposed delays based on fear, distractions, and insecurities. Fear Some fear failure, some fear success, some fear making the [...]

• Free Ace of Sales Account

  Don The Idea Guy

  31 Oct 2011 | 3:32 pm

  People know I’m a huge fan of Gitomer’s coolest sales toy ever — Ace of Sales. I liked it so much that I wrote an ebook sharing 52 ways to use Ace of Sales more creatively to brand yourself with clients, stand out from the competition, and to increase sales. I liked it so much [...]

• Scary Awesome Results from Social Media Photo Sharing

  Don The Idea Guy

  28 Oct 2011 | 6:54 pm

  Fantastic story about a haunted house that attracted a bigger audience seeking a scare NOT by showig how spooky their monsters were or how many cobwebs hung from their doorways, but by instead capturing the sheer terror of the people going through the house. Read the article here: How to Be a Frighteningly Brilliant Content Marketer This is [...]

• Squidoo-Over

  Don The Idea Guy

  27 Oct 2011 | 10:16 am

  For some reason Seth Godin’s web project Squidoo.com has been popping up on my radar recently.  I’d originally explored the site and its offerings back when Seth first launched it sometime in 2006.  I promptly created an account and began creating pages (Squidoo calls them Lenses) and would update them fairly inconsistently and infrequently.  It [...]

• 

  Idea Sandbox Brainstorming » SandBlog

• Achieve Goals + Resolutions With Bite-Sized Chunks

  Paul

  16 Jan 2012 | 3:23 pm

  Sand for Your Inbox January 2012 I hope your year is off to a great start! Have you ever tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle with 500 or 1,000 pieces? It takes a while… And, needs to be done in more than one sitting. One of the reasons we miss achieving our personal New Year’s resolutions or business strategies is that we try to accomplish too much at once. We approach the 1,000-piece goal as if it can be finished in one sitting. We get frustrated… The finish line seems a million miles away… And, we lose motivation. A better approach is to cut your goal into…

• On Resisting Change

  Paul

  9 Jan 2012 | 3:23 pm

  How To Deal With ChangeChanging versus Being ChangedHow ‘Riding Elephants’ Can Prompt Change: “Switch”Read “Switch” To Be A Champion Of ChangeDon’t Like The Way Things Are At Work?

• Todd Sattersten’s 11 Best Business Books of 2011

  Paul

  29 Dec 2011 | 10:30 am

  This article is a complete copy/paste from what Todd posted on his site on the 17th of December. Why am I stealing so blatantly? Todd “wrote the book” on great business books. No. Literally. He wrote “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You” with Jack Covert in 2009. Todd always does a great job summarizing WHY a book should be read. He lets you know the value of the read. (This is a lesson for any of us who write book reviews on our sites). Enjoy! Todd’s words are next… 2011 brought us some…

• NORAD Tracking Santa – Live!

  Paul

  24 Dec 2011 | 4:28 pm

  It is very exciting to be able to track Santa’s progress around the globe. As of this writing, he is making his rounds in Italy! The NORAD website (noradsanta.org) allows you to watch Santa as he flies over different cities and also tracks how many presents delivered along the way. [click for larger view] NORAD – which stands for North American Aerospace Defense Command – is a military organization responsible for keeping watch of the skies and waterways of North America. Normally they use their equipment to watch for air attacks and missiles. On Christmas Eve, their…

• What Is A Problem?

  Paul

  13 Dec 2011 | 7:23 am

  A simple way to define the word ‘problem’ is: a situation that needs attention. Wikipedia authors describe one as “…any situation that invites resolution.” That’s a nice way to put it – ‘invites resolution.’ A lot of folks are afraid of the word “problem.” To simply use the word – in relation to you or your business – is considered declaration of some sort of failure. So, we sugar-coat the situation, re-phrasing it as a ‘challenge’ or ‘opportunity.’ While I support optimism, over-sweetening a…

• 

  InnoBlog

• A.G. Lafley vs. Steve Jobs

  kblake

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:52 am

  Usually the question comes right after I tell an audience that I put former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley on my “Innovation Mount Rushmore” as a reminder of the importance of investing time and energy to understand the target market. “But how do you square that with Steve Jobs?” an intrepid audience member asks. “After all, Jobs said, ‘It isn’t the customer’s job to know what they want.’” It feels like a classic battle — the scientific approach of a company that launches 80 market research studies a day versus the intuitive…

• What now, textbook publishers?

  kblake

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:59 pm

  Apple just threw down the gauntlet to the K-12 publishing industry. In announcing iBooks 2, Apple is making a compelling case that if ever there was a time for school districts to switch from paper-based textbooks to a digital approach – it is now. Even in the absence of iBooks 2, the case was already compelling, with numerous districts and states delaying textbook purchases to explore the use of iPads in classrooms, but with these latest changes, Apple now embraces interactive textbooks, and more importantly provides the tools for anybody to create them – the very capability…

• When Your Job is to Laugh

  kblake

  19 Jan 2012 | 1:16 pm

  There’s an interesting example of Innosight’s jobs-to-be-done framework in action in February’s issue of Fast Company. It turns out that YouTube is organizing its search results around the concept. It started with an insight into customer behavior. Shiva Rajaraman, YouTube group product manager, says that the site’s top search queries are “funny videos,” “LOL,” and “make me laugh.” In other words, users aren’t necessarily going to YouTube to look up specific videos – they are hiring the site for a job to be done. As Rajaraman puts it, that job is “Entertain Me!”…

• Kodak and the Brutal Difficulty of Transformation

  kblake

  17 Jan 2012 | 12:50 pm

  2012 has not gotten off to a great start for Eastman Kodak. Three of the company’s directors quit near the end of last year, and word recently emerged that the company was on the brink of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The easy narrative is that Kodak is a classic case of a company blind to the disruptive changes in its marketplace. Like many easy narratives, this one is not quite right. In the 20th century, Kodak was truly one of the world’s powerhouses. Its rise to prominence began when it launched its affordable Brownie camera in 1900. In the decades that followed…

• How to Choose the Ideas Your Company Should Invest In

  kblake

  11 Jan 2012 | 9:49 am

  My last post described how Innosight follows a three-stage process to evaluate investment proposals from outside entrepreneurs. But deciding how to invest in ideas at a corporation is a different beast. In The Innovator’s Guide to Growth we suggested that companies should create one-page “Idea Resumes” that capture the essence of an idea on a single PowerPoint slide. After this starting point, however, our VC process holds pretty well. The first decision is whether to explore an idea more deeply. Consider some combination of the following criteria: Does what we hope to do…

• 

  Big Think Expert Ideas

• Is All Fair in Love and Tennis?

  Daniel Honan

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:34 pm

  In the fourth round of the Australian open on Sunday, Nicolas Almagro hit his opponent Tomas Berdych in the face with the ball as Berdych approached the net for a volley. At the end of what became a grueling match, Berdych surprised the crowd by refusing to shake Almagro's hand, even though Berdych ...Read More

• More Election Notes: Romney the Favorite Once More (But Santorum Might Be Surging)

  Peter Lawler

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:21 pm

  BIG THINKER Robert de Neufville has said, quite correctly, that Romney is the favorite for the Republican nomination two weeks in a row.  But it's a little misleading to say he remains the favorite.  He's the favorite once more. At the time of Robert's first post, it seemed to Romney was poised ...Read More

• Punk Rock Girls Against Putin

  Daniel Honan

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:08 pm

  It's not easy to take on Vladimir Putin. Just ask Nikolai Maksimov, who was thrown in prison, or Boris Berezovsky, who was forced into exile. Both men are billionaire tycoons who didn't play by Putin's rules.   On the other hand, if you have an $18 billion fortune and apparently promise to play ...Read More

• Field Notes from a Summit on Climate Change Communication

  Matthew C. Nisbet

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:58 am

  On January 19-21, the University of Michigan's Erb Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists hosted a major summit of more than 100 social scientists, scientists, professionals, and political leaders focused on the topic of  “Increasing Public Understanding of Climate Risks and Choices: What ...Read More

• There Are No Ideas Beyond Question

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  Read More

• 

  Innovationedge

• LilyPad uses solar power to keep our devices running strong

  Cheryl Perkins

  26 Jan 2012 | 5:09 am

  I love working with inventors. I don’t work with Dave Foster, but I’m sharing his interesting (and much welcomed) idea: using solar power to charge our electronic devices. Foster came up with a case he calls the LilyPad which does precisely that. The LilyPad uses new solar ink technology to convert outdoor and indoor light into usable energy to continually charge tablets such as the Apple iPad. Apparently this is no wimpy power output. You can run PowerPoint presentations or watch movies. For some reason he is not able to keep up with the demand and is out of stock on these. Check…

• Precise Forecasting Helps Maximize Wind Power

  Cheryl Perkins

  23 Jan 2012 | 5:54 am

  The winds of change may be unpredictable, but forecasts are improving. New partnerships between energy companies and government agencies are helping to predict wind speeds far enough in advance to save energy companies billions of dollars. Power companies, grid operators, and energy traders often pay close attention to the nightly forecasts on television news, but it isn’t easy to predict wind speeds far into the future. Even small fluctuations can make a big difference. But by improving the forecasts and predicting when the winds strengthen or change, these forecasts make the difference…

• Six Innovative Ideas to Watch

  Cheryl Perkins

  19 Jan 2012 | 5:47 am

  I’m passing along some ideas from Harvard Business Review that emerged in 2011 as powerful “innovation invitations.” HBR says these seem certain to intensify in global power and influence, and I do agree that they will spark innovation differentiation in the months ahead: 1. The Slacktivism Co-Opt As much a term of derision as global sociological phenomenon, slacktivism has emerged as social media’s way of making support for a cause as easy as a re-tweet or clicking Facebook’s “like” button. Critics insist that this “path of least…

• Can an iPad substitute for a passport?

  Cheryl Perkins

  16 Jan 2012 | 5:45 am

  Here is an interesting idea sparked by a man who recently entered the U.S. from Canada without his passport. Instead he presented the border authorities with his iPad, which contained a scanned image of his passport. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come? Read on: Martin Reisch said Tuesday a slightly annoyed U.S. border officer let him cross into the United States from Quebec after he presented a scanned copy of his passport on his Apple iPad. Reisch was a half hour from the border when he decided to try to gain entry rather than turn back and make a two-hour trek back home to…

• Helping Kenya go green with biochar

  Cheryl Perkins

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:13 am

    Imagine using human and livestock waste as a source of green energy. Many companies have explored this, but one in particular is getting the go-ahead to make some headway in Kenya with the development of biochar. Fast Company recently featured Jason Aramburu, the CEO of re:char, who is working with the emerging area of biochar thanks to a grant from the Gates Foundation to develop a system to transform human waste into biochar. Biochar is carbon negative, which means that every ton of biochar produced represents carbon extracted from the air, which cannot get back into the atmosphere.

• 

  innovation playground Idris Mootee

• Apple's Biggest Challenge Is What To Do With $100 Billion. Just Write A Check And Buy Sony Before They Further Destroy More Value.

  Idris

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:43 pm

  Apple's current biggest problem is not the next iPhone. It is the 100 billion dollar problem. Microsoft had been criticized for years for having too much cash and not putting them to use. They eventually started paying dividend starting 2003. It is not easy to deploy them in a way that creates the expecatation of return Apple's investors are expecting....

• You Think Innovation Is Hard. Business Transformation Is A Hundred Times More Difficult. And In Fact It Is The Number One Barrier For Strategic Innovation.

  Idris

  22 Jan 2012 | 2:12 pm

  People think innovation is almost just about new ideas. Funny how many think Blue Ocean Strategy is a big wake-up call when all it does is communicating the very the basic and simple idea of strategic innovation – how not to compete with your competitors in the same game and instead create a new game. A strategist has the choice...

• Design Thinking And Creating Social Capital. Here's An Example From Tampiquito, Mexico.

  Idris

  11 Jan 2012 | 10:27 pm

  Creativity happens everywhere. Not only in design firms or creative agencies. And you can easily find the results of creativity all around you; you don’t need to seek out a gallery. People think creativity only happens in art schools and innovation don't usually happens only in a lab. Design Thinking and Strategic Creaitivty is all around us and funny enough...

• Microsoft's Next Big Innovation: Google Maps Meets Grand Theft Auto

  Idris

  8 Jan 2012 | 9:41 pm

  What's new with GPS? There were the 3D maps, then traffic information with live refresh every two minutes so to help others to avoid heavy traffic jams and GPS watch? What’s next? Surprise the next big innovation will come from Microsoft. It is Grand Theft Auto meets Google Map. The company just granted a patent that is designed to make...

• There Is An Inherent Conflict Between Logic, Emotion And Creativity. So How Should We Deal With It?

  Idris

  5 Jan 2012 | 10:46 pm

  When peope ask the quesion "Do you know the correct answer?" I don't like that question at all. It is not a smart question as a start. The biggest problem with our formal education systems is our over-emphasis on finding the correct answer to a particular problem. While the quest for correct answers helps us to function at work, it...

• 

  innovation.net

• Review: The Wide Lens by Ron Adner

  Mike

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  I just finished reading a pre-release edition of The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation by Ron Adner of Dartmouth. I understand the point of the title, but it doesn’t really immediately impart the true nature of this book,...

• 24 hours to innovate and ship

  Mike

  8 Dec 2011 | 10:26 pm

  Here's an interesting mash-up of innovation challenges and motivating employees. Atlassian, an Australian (now global) software company has a unique approach to motivating its teams and unleashing their creativity to focus on solving problems and creating new innovations. They call...

• Interview with Adrian Ott - "The 24-Hour Customer" Part 2

  Mike

  15 Nov 2010 | 9:45 pm

  This is the second of a two-part post on Adrian Ott's insightful and very practical book "The 24-Hour Customer" Innovation.net: What are some of the key insights you can share from the book? Adrian Ott: Time-Value Innovation - Altering a...

• Interview with Adrian Ott - "The 24-Hour Customer" Part 1

  Mike

  12 Nov 2010 | 9:37 pm

  This is the first in a series of posts to share Adrian Ott's perspectives on her new book "The 24-Hour Customer". Adrian is CEO of Exponential Edge, a consulting firm focused on strategy and customer-centric innovation. Innovation.net: How does The...

• "The 24-Hour Customer"

  Mike

  10 Nov 2010 | 9:32 pm

  A few months ago, I read an early release of Adrian's book "The 24-Hour Customer". I must admit, if I hadn't been asked to review this book, it's unlikely I would have picked it up on my own. I've seen...

• 

  Creativity & Innovation

• Mel Brooks and Group Flow

  keithsawyer

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:59 pm

  What can comedian Mel Brooks teach us about “group flow”? Group flow is a state of peak performance, when a group is in sync and creative ideas are flowing. I’ve just published an article in a magazine edited at the University of California, Berkeley, called Greater Good. The article summarizes the ten keys to group flow (as originally presented in my 2007 book Group Genius). Visit the full article or take a quick look at the ten here: 1. A compelling, shared goal 2. Close listening 3. Use “yes, and…” to keep it moving forward 4. Complete concentration and…

• Mel Brooks and “Group Flow”

  keithsawyer

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:56 pm

  I’ve just had an article published in the online magazine Greater Good: The science of a meaningful life; take a look at What Mel Brooks can teach us about ‘Group Flow’

• Defense of Collaboration Published in New York Times

  keithsawyer

  19 Jan 2012 | 9:37 am

  The same day as my post below, I emailed a letter to the editor at the New York Times, and it was published today along with several other letters critical of Susan Cain’s article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/opinion/the-key-to-creativity-solitude-or-teams.html

• Does Solitude Enhance Creativity? A Critique of Susan Cain’s Attack on Collaboration

  keithsawyer

  16 Jan 2012 | 10:48 am

  I’ve just read a New York Times article by Susan Cain, author of the forthcoming book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. It’s the frustrated cry of a true introvert. Cain is clearly tired of everyone touting the benefits of collaboration; some people, herself included, just want to be left alone. And, she argues, those are the people who really come up with all of the great ideas. There’s a grain of truth to Cain’s claim: Psychologists who study creativity know that it requires both solitude and collaboration. Exceptional…

• Online “Badges”: Do They Threaten Colleges?

  keithsawyer

  12 Jan 2012 | 5:28 pm

  The Chronicle of Higher Education has just published an article (Jan 8, 2012) wondering whether online “badges” pose a challenge to colleges and universities. Here’s the phenomenon: The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today’s fast-changing job market. Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of “badges” to certify skills and abilities. At the free online-education provider…

• 

  Phil McKinney

• 3 CEOs who get innovation

  philmckinney

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:35 am

  Over my career, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know a number of CEO’s.  The general perception in the market is that CEO’s of public companies are only focused on meeting the quarterly numbers.  The following are 3 CEO’s I’ve had the opportunity to spend meaningful 1:1 time with and who “get it” when it comes to innovation. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO, DreamWorks Animation One of the biggest challenges for any CEO is the balance of risk and reward when it comes to innovation.  In the case of Jeffrey, his perspective on risk is unique.  During a…

• 3 Mistakes Kodak Made In Their Innovation Strategy

  philmckinney

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:42 pm

  With this morning’s announcement that Kodak would seek bankruptcy protection, I reflected back on how and why it reached this point.  In my opinion, Kodak fell into the same trap that most large, successful and once highly innovative companies get into – how to keep the innovation engine working over the life of the company. So what are the 3 mistakes that Kodak made? Weak innovation portfolio management Like most large successful companies, once they achieve a significant market position, management retreats into a defensive mode.  This includes how they make innovation investments. …

• You are invited to the book launch event

  Allen

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:18 am

  The book launch event for Beyond The Obvious is set for Thursday, February 16th at the Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA). The event will begin at noon with Phil being interviewed by John Hollar, the President of the Museum.  He will also be taking audience questions.  Following the event, Phil will be signing books. Kepler’s Books will be on-site selling copies of Beyond the Obvious before and after the event. At the event, Phil will also be revealing a new project he is working. The event is open to the public but registration is required    

• What were the most under-hyped innovations at CES?

  philmckinney

  17 Jan 2012 | 7:44 am

  Last week was CES and the hype machines where operating at full speed.  Ahead of the show, I posted a column over at Forbes on my prediction for the most over-hyped innovations for CES 2012. After a few days at CES, I  found three innovations that I felt have future potential (none of these innovations are shipping and thus outside the traditional CES hype cycle). Below is a video where Kym McNicholas and I take a look at the three. Click here to view the video on YouTube. Links to the three companies I mention in the video: MetaWatch - wearable technology Tobii – eye tracking…

• The First Review of My Book Is In …

  philmckinney

  16 Jan 2012 | 8:05 am

  Just as in Hollywood, the book publishing industry has a process of reviewing new books and authors and then telling others what they think.  In my case, the first review of my upcoming book, Beyond The Obvious,  has been reviewed by Publisher Weekly.  All in all, its a good a review. McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group, provides a thoughtful yet practical guide to consistently generating innovation. Arguing that ideas are a company’s most valuable currency, he maintains that an organization’s success will be determined…

• 

  Outside Innovation

• BestBuy’s Blogging CEO Sparks Criticism from Customers and Employees

  Patty Seybold

  21 Jan 2012 | 10:24 am

  Brian Dunn, BestBuy CEO [Photo: Businessinsider.com] Best Buy’s CEO, Brian Dunn, blogged a rebuttal to a critical Forbes article in early January. He took responsibility for a number of screw ups during the holiday season, but pointed out that Best Buy was a strong, profitable retailer and was working hard to create an even “more seamless experience between our stores, web sites, call centers and services teams.” The real news was the candor of the hundreds of comments that piled on within hours of Dunn’s post, including detailed critiques of operations from employees and former…

• Public Outcry and Wikipedia Stopped Legislation!

  Patty Seybold

  20 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Wikipedia's Blackout I agree with San Francisco Chronicle’s James Temple that the SOPA/PIPA Blackout on January 18 marked the Web’s political coming of age. The fact that Wikipedia consulted with its community of supporters and blacked out its site in protest of the proposed Internet censorship legislation was what turned the tide. As soon as it became apparent to senators and congresspeople that Wikipedia was going to shut down in protest and that other major web sites would join in the protest, they realized that the tide of public opinion was against the…

• Apple to Transform Textbook Publishing

  Patty Seybold

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:16 pm

  A textbook on Apple's ibooks 2 application Apple continues to transform education, now taking aim at the broken educational textbook industry. The creation, publishing, approval process, and distribution of educational textbooks for elementary, secondary, and university education have been ripe for a customer revolution for over 20 years. On-demand printing and the Internet both helped to accelerate the process. Visionary undertakings like Nature Education’s Scitable offering (high quality free life sciences’ learning materials) have also helped to pave the way. But it took Steve…

• Customers Want to Help You—and Themselves—Don’t Waste It!

  Patty Seybold

  16 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  By Ronni Marshak We have long advocated seeking help with innovation on new products, processes, business models, and relationship issues from your customers. They know what works and what is broken; they know what the competitors offer that is better and worse than what you provide; they know what problems they still have to solve; and they know how they want to get things done and how they want to do business with you. You probably have some ideas on all this, but you are looking at everything from the inside out, and, therefore, are stuck with a limited, self-serving, perspective. More and…

• What Comes After Social Networks and Cloud? Customer Ecosystems

  Patty Seybold

  13 Jan 2012 | 9:35 am

  Here’s an emerging pattern that we’ve been following for over a decade. We believe the time is right for these to begin to really take off. Customer ecosystems self-organize around things that customers care about and need to get done, like manage their money, manage their health, design a winning product, take a family vacation, embark on a new career, or complete successful projects at work or in their communities. They’re customer-driven in that customers get to decide what activities and resources they need, who they’d like to have as suppliers, and what constitutes success. So, a…

• 

  Innovation in Practice

• The LAB: Innovating the GPS with Attribute Dependency (January 2012)

  Drew Boyd

  23 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  GPS technology is great at getting you from Point A to Point B.   What if you had a system that alerted you to risk of crime, weather, points of interest, and cost savings tips along the way?  Microsoft seems headed this way in light of its newly-awarded patent that ties GPS location to useful information for pedestrians.  Here is a description: "As a pedestrian travels, various difficulties can be encountered, such as traveling through an unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures. A route can be developed for a person taking into account factors…

• The Innovation Tools Graduate Course

  Drew Boyd

  16 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  I'm looking forward to teaching “Innovation Tools,” the graduate marketing course at the University of Cincinnati.   The course teaches how to use Systematic Inventive Thinking, a method based on three ideas.  First, most successful innovations over time followed one of five patterns, and these patterns are like the DNA of products that can be re-applied to innovate any product or service.  Second, innovation happens when we start with a configuration (the “solution”) and work backwards to the “problem” that it solves.  It turns out that humans are better at this than the…

• Redeploying Your Core Competencies

  Drew Boyd

  9 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  Read this partial list of core competencies for a particular firm and try to guess what industry it is in: Consumer insights:  understanding what consumer want Design: making things easy to use Innovation: coming up with new ideas routinely Systems integration: making things work together Customer relationships: forming and maintaining customer loyalty From this list alone, you could imagine this firm being part of virtually any industry.  In fact, the firm with these core competencies would likely be the leader of that industry.  Which company owns these skills? In 2008, managers at Kodak…

• Master the Method: Innovation Suite 2012

  Drew Boyd

  2 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  I invite you to join me at Innovation Suite 2012 in New York City February 27 to 29.  Innovation Suite is a 3-day premium training course that teaches: How to apply SIT innovation tools on your specific business issues How to facilitate innovation sessions How to develop an innovation culture in your business My favorite part about this course: every participant gets a personal SIT facilitator to coach them before and after the course!  Whether you are an experienced SIT practitioner or completely new to the SIT method, this course helps you develop critical new skills on your road to…

• The LAB: Innovation for Couch Potatoes (December 2011)

  Drew Boyd

  26 Dec 2011 | 2:00 am

  This month's LAB features a former student of mine, Ryan Rosensweig.  Ryan is the first business-design hybrid from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. He earned his master’s degree in design after completing his bachelor’s degree in marketing, sustainable urban engineering, and interdisciplinary design innovation. As the graduate assistant for Associate Dean Craig M. Vogel, of DAAP’s Center for Design Research and Innovation, Ryan researched educational models for interdisciplinary innovation, the interaction between design…

• 

  INDIA INVENTS

• Tech Transfer 2012- hundreds of Life Science technologies on offer

  A.S Rao

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:02 am

  As a part of `Innovation Cluster' project, Foundation for MSME cluster is organising two tech transfer events, one in Hyderabad and second in Ahmedabad. This is continuation of tech transfer shows held in 2011. For the 2012 events, Entrepreneur ready technologies are globally scouted and  accessed by IKP Knowledge Park. The Hyderabad event is scheduled on 9th February at Hotel Katriya . Contact person; Sourabh, 9347345392, sourabh.gargav@msmefoundation.org

• Mosquito Repellent Wet Wipe from India

  A.S Rao

  24 Jan 2012 | 1:13 am

  A product developed for Army now protects millions of babies . Mosquito Repellent Wet wipe is introduced in the civilian market by Jyothy laboratories Limited based on technology (Diethyl Phenylacetamide technology) developed in DRDE Gwalior lab. The tech transfer is facilitated by FICCI. Product is priced at Rs 3/-.

• iAccelerator (CIIE-IIMA) 2011 start-ups making investment pitch on 25th January 2012

  A.S Rao

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:02 am

  Start-ups enrolled under CIIE iAccelerator program are making their pitch for investment and investors can see the demo physically at Ahmedabad or virtually, from anywhere in the world.  contact; pranayg@iimahd.ernet.in .  The line-up includes; Croak.it created by Srinivasa Teja and Protik Roychowdhury, facilitating social net workers to croak on any web site like Facebbook. Mangoreder enables publishing interactive e books.There is TV Buddy for social networking of TV viewers, alma connect for colleges, colored.by giving a choice of 16.7 million colors, Framebench idea…

• Innovation awards for MSMEs: Drugs/Pharmaceuticals/Bio-pharmaceuticals- Hyderabad cluster

  A.S Rao

  18 Jan 2012 | 5:56 am

  Several interesting innovations were shortlisted for this competition. Few given here; 1.Dr C Suresh Reddy of Nippy Chemicals developed AKG (Alpha Keto Glutoric Acid disodium salt) in partnership with DRDO. The product protects soldiers when they inhale cyanide. 2.Grace Drugs & Pharmaceuticals introduced in Indian market Liquid Filled two piece hard (Gelatin/ HPMC) capsules an alternative to Soft Gelatin technology. 3. Ocean Pharmacoat pvt ltd specializes in development of modified release pellets ( Ready to fill in capsules). 4.Herbochem developed process for extraction of Anti malarial…

• Indian Innovators Association (IIA)-new year (2012) wish list

  A.S Rao

  1 Jan 2012 | 2:45 am

  Time for new year wishes. IIA wish list for 2012: 1. Start local chapters: IIA is present in virtual world providing information and mentoring support to paid members and other innovators. Many innovators desired physical meetings and value added services for members. In the year 2012, IIA plans to start local chapters, starting with Ahmedabad & Hyderabad. 2. Promote Technology Management Professionals: Technology Management at firm level needs services of several professionals and IIA plans to develop market for their services in the commercial market. 3. Support regional entrepreneurial…

• 

  Come to Know

• Master Class on Idea Management

  Oliver

  22 Jan 2012 | 5:00 pm

  Nosco will be attending the NPD World Tour Scandinavia and will facilitate a Master Class on idea management. The three-day conference takes place at the award winning Bella Sky hotel in Copenhagen from January 31to February 2. Nosco partner Jesper Müller-Krogstrup will facilitate the Master Class on February 1. The class deals with achieving success with idea management and focuses on the fundamentals of idea management: how to collect ideas from people around your organisation and how to select the best ideas. Learn: What it takes to implement successful idea management Three great case…

• Redefining Idea Management Software

  Oliver

  20 Oct 2011 | 3:48 am

  Soon we will raise the curtain to reveal a brand new idea management software called Nosco App. During the last six years we have worked closely with a variety of dedicated and innovative companies on all kinds of different idea management projects. We have learned so much. Looking at our own and our competitors software we believed that something was missing. So we set out on a mission to create a whole new software to redefine idea management. In the near future, Nosco App will see the light of day. Until then we will leak small crumbs of information. So please follow us on Twitter,…

• 7 Disruptive Innovations

  Oliver

  10 Oct 2011 | 7:38 am

• A Couple of Case Stories

  Oliver

  15 Sep 2011 | 4:42 am

  We just made an update to www.nos.co. Besides the new improved looks, we have added three case stories from some of our best clients. Learn about the key ingredients to Pentax’s successful idea management. Read about how Visma Sirius engaged their employees in generating ideas for new and innovative smartphone apps to their customers, or how DSB tested how idea management could create value by running a series of idea campaigns with help from Nosco. You will find the cases here: www.nos.co/clients Oh, and try viewing www.nos.co on both your phone and tablet and notice how it…

• Idea Management on Gartner’s Hype Cycle 2011

  Oliver

  19 Aug 2011 | 4:56 am

  Gartner has moved Idea Management into “The Slope of Enlightment’ on their newly released Hype Cycle for 2011. That’s great news for the industry and certainly something we experience in our everyday. Idea Management Analysis By: Carol Rozwell Definition: Idea management is a structured process of generating, capturing, discussing and improving, organizing, evaluating and prioritizing valuable insight or alternative thinking that would otherwise not have emerged through normal processes. Idea management tools provide: support for communities (in originating and building out…

• 

  Lateral Action

• If You’d Like Some Help Achieving Your Goals for 2012…

  Mark McGuinness

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:08 am

  It’s the time of year for dreaming and planning big for the next twelve months. So if you’re setting yourself a big challenge and would like some help making it happen, you may like to consider my New Year’s Resolutionizer coaching program – back for a second year running. It’s a combined coaching and e-learning program to help you keep your New Year’s Resolution – or achieve any of your big goals for 2012 – by harnessing the four most powerful types of motivation. The Resolutionizer is based on my own approach to motivation and goal-setting…

• The Real Value of Tablet Computers to Creators

  Mark McGuinness

  23 Jan 2012 | 1:55 pm

  When the iPad was launched, amid all the huzzahs and hoopla, there were a few murmurs of discontent from the creative community. “Sure, it looks slick, but you can’t make anything with it.” “If this isn’t ‘lean back’ media, I don’t know what is.” ‘Lean back’, of course, was a reference to Jakob Nielsen’s well-known distinction between television (‘lean back’ = passive consumption) and the Web (‘lean forward’ = active creation). So criticisms of the iPad as a ‘lean back’ device were…

• 7 Ways Learning to Draw Can Improve Your Productivity

  Will Kemp

  10 Jan 2012 | 1:01 pm

  Drawings by Will Kemp Ever wanted to learn to draw? Have you daydreamed of just picking up a pencil and sketching? But inside there is a lingering doubt. A distant memory of a school teacher who told you once you were bad at art. An inner critic that holds you back…. Even before you begin. But what if you could learn to draw? What if the principles of drawing could help you to become more productive in other areas of your life. Would you give it a try? Feel the fear, and draw it anyway. Productivity is often linked to a fear of failure, an obsession with thinking rather than doing. Of…

• Why It Pays to Panic Early (and How to Do it Effectively)

  Mark McGuinness

  3 Jan 2012 | 9:34 am

  So. We have a whole new year spread out before us. Like a pristine sheet of paper. We can create anything we like, and it feels like we have all the time in the world. Pretty good huh? It’s exciting – but like all opportunities, there’s a flipside. Ask any writer or artist who has spent hours (or days) staring at a blank sheet of paper and they will tell you how paralysing creative freedom can be. And the freelance life may sound idyllic to those of you who have to report for duty in an office each day, but the freedom to arrange your own time can be just as intimidating as…

• Competition Winners – and a Special Bonus Prize for You

  Mark McGuinness

  20 Dec 2011 | 2:12 am

  Thank you to everyone who entered the What Inspires You? competition by leaving comments on the original post about your inspirations. Fittingly, the comment thread turned out to be an inspiration in its own right, with over 100 entries that reminded me what a special group of people read this blog. We had such a great response that I was glad I’d delegated the difficult task of judging to the artist himself, Mike Kammerling, so that I could simply enjoy the comments for their own sake. Mike has now chosen the five winners, listed below, who will receive a very limited edition print of…

• 

  WordPress.com News

• Chrome Users: Try the WordPress.com Extension

  Christopher Finke

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:54 pm

  Want to receive WordPress.com notifications instantly, even when you’re not on WordPress.com? Add the new WordPress.com extension for Chrome and as soon as you get a new follower or a new like on one of your posts, a notification will appear in your browser: Simply click the icon to view your latest WordPress.com notifications: Start following new blogs without visiting WordPress.com The Chrome extension also makes it easy to follow sites from your WordPress.com account by displaying a Follow button whenever you’re browsing a site that has an RSS feed. Clicking the Follow button…

• Your Stats Have a New Home

  Andy Skelton

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:46 am

  Are you addicted to checking your site stats? You are not alone. The stats dashboard has always been one of the most popular admin screens. It’s gratifying to know that people are visiting your place online. With the WordPress.com front page evolving into a one-stop shop for posting, exploring, following and reading blogs, it seemed natural to put your blog stats there, too.  Stats are becoming more and more about interacting with your readers and other bloggers. You’ll still see your summary stats and chart on your main dashboard, and the full stats page in your dashboard will…

• Reblogging is Back!

  Erica Johnson

  22 Jan 2012 | 1:27 pm

  As we mentioned last week, you can like and reblog posts directly from your reader, which displays a stream of all the updates published on all the blogs you follow from your WordPress.com account. We’ve also brought the reblog button back to the toolbar that appears at the top of the screen when you’re logged into WordPress.com. Note that you’ll only see the like and reblog options while you’re looking at individual posts. For example, you’ll see this on the left side of your toolbar while viewing http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/read-blogs: And your…

• New Theme: Newsy

  Philip Arthur Moore

  20 Jan 2012 | 12:18 pm

  It’s been an extra big week in the news ’round these parts, so much so that the launch announcement of our latest premium theme seems like an extra extra good way to headline our Friday. Newsy is a versatile business and news-friendly theme that offers up to ten different layouts, four footer columns, custom link and accent colors, and a custom site header. Brand and content-focused editorial teams will love publishing with this theme. Newsy: Home Page Designed by Themify, Newsy comes with an impressive set of Theme Options that afford you a great deal of flexibility with how you…

• Read All Your Favorite Blogs in One Place

  Erica Johnson

  19 Jan 2012 | 6:04 pm

  If you feel like it’s a chore to keep up with all your favorite blogs, you can now read posts from all the blogs you follow (even the ones that aren’t on WordPress.com!) in one convenient place on the WordPress.com home page: Your reader displays all the posts across all the blogs you follow in the order they were published, with the most recent content appearing at the top. You’ll see an excerpt of the introduction to each post, the first image in the post, and thumbnails of any other images that the post contains. You can even like and reblog WordPress.com content directly…

• 

  InnExperience - Innovation goes bananas!!

• TEN in 12 – The Ideafarms eGreeting

  Sunil Malhotra

  2 Jan 2012 | 3:04 am

  There are so many to thank for walking with us on this amazing journey. Many who made it possible. Many who made it memorable. Many who came aboard alighted along the way to further their own dreams. They are now our most loved ambassadors. Some stayed on to keep building a powerhouse of design and innovation. In some ways 2002 seems very very far behind. In most ways it feels like yesterday. Feel the inTENsity of our gratitude in 2012 We love y’all – Happy NEW Year!!! Filed under: heart capital, Innovation Tagged: Gratitude, Happy New year 2012, HNY

• Innovation, Now!

  Sunil Malhotra

  22 Nov 2011 | 6:37 am

  The continuing financial Tsunami has ceased to make waves. We ought to have seen it coming but were too scared to open our eyes. Like we’ve done in the past – all we’ve ever learnt to do is to solve problems based on ‘fitting historical patterns’ – we believe that we’re at the bottom of the economic downturn and things will look up from here on. Anybody noticed that the slide has been going on since September 11, 2001? And we’re satisfied waiting. The time for innovation is here and is urging us to do something – differently. Talk to technology and business people and they…

• Mentoring 101: A microcompilation

  Sunil Malhotra

  21 Nov 2011 | 4:10 am

  See this presentation on slideshare and download for personal use. Mentoring 101: A microcompilation. I put it together in 2004 for an internal Global HR initiative of Continental AG. Comments welcome. Filed under: Business, Leadership, Mentoring Tagged: Fun, Guide, Guru, Mentee, Mentor

• Innovation 101 – Cost vs. Quality. Deuce.

  Sunil Malhotra

  2 Nov 2011 | 5:26 am

  To me it doesn’t matter whether India will be able to maintain its cost advantage. What does is sustainable and long-term value as a combination of cost and quality. In my view we are seeing the end of the traditional benefits of outsourcing. In whichever way customers were disguising their need to leverage lower costs, the only reason for outsourcing was cost arbitrage. We have seen that gap closing especially in the case of Indian talent. Squeezing benefit from outsourcing purely on a cost basis is clearly the last remnants of Industrial age thinking, which besides all other…

• Bird in flight

  Sunil Malhotra

  16 Jun 2011 | 1:23 am

  Bird in flight, originally uploaded by sunilmalhotra. I’ve always had a fascination for ‘framing’ birds and animals in motion. It’s tricky and if you get it right, far more dramatic than the real thing. Composition you can correct, lighting too to an extent … colours, Viva la Photoshopping! Timing however is a different matter and so is focus. I got lucky on this occasion! Love the challenge of shooting birds in flight. Had to trash several photos of birds with clipped wings … literally. ) Filed under: Photoblog, Photography Tagged: Birds, flight, motion,…

• 

  Fast Company

• Artists: SoundExchange Has Free Money For You, No Nigerian Princes Involved

  Austin Carr

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:05 pm

  Since its inception, SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalty payments from digital music services like Pandora, has brought in more than $900 million--$292 million of which it collected last year alone. But how much of a cut does SoundExchange take for itself? Nothing, other than for operating and administrative costs. SoundExchange is a non-profit that's rapidly growing to become one of the most important organizations in the music industry. For many labels, it's the No. 2 source of digital revenue only behind iTunes. And for president Michael Huppe, it's now more important…

• This Week In Bots: Roboplayers, Robodancers, Robowarriors, And The Delicate Ethics Of Robosex

  Kit Eaton

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:40 pm

  Would you love your Roomba more if it had rat-like whiskers? How about if it saved people's lives in post-disaster situations? Yeah, us too.RobohockeyTeaching robots to play sports is a clever way to advance the science of robotic movements, environment sensing, and artificial intellgence all in one swoop. That's because a game or sport has a predetermined set of rules so it's simpler than the "real" world. Enter UPenn's Design of Mechatronics Students with their robotic hockey players. [youtube 7njq2hFbw14]See how instructive programming those little beasts must've been? They're not…

• Jon Rubinstein, Force Behind TouchPad, WebOS, Leaves HP: "We Ran Out Of Runway"

  Austin Carr

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:23 pm

  Jon Rubinstein, the former CEO of Palm and the man behind WebOS, has left HP.It's hard to imagine that only about 19 months ago, HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion. In that short span, HP embarked on an aggressive plan to produce smartphones and tablets running WebOS--before deciding to kill that original strategy due to poor sales, spin off its PC business, change CEOs, and radically pivot toward acquiring enterprise services company Autonomy for $10 billion. Now Rubinstein joining a slew of recently departed executives--including Phil McKinney and Richard…

• Spotify Growing By 8,000 Subscribers Per Day, More Than Netflix, Sirius XM

  Austin Carr

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:19 pm

  Spotify just hit 3 million paying subscribers, the Financial Times reports. That may sound like an impressive milestone for the popular on-demand music service, but how impressive is it really? Only about 64 days have elapsed since Spotify announced it reached 2.5 million subscribers in November. That means 500,000 users have signed up to pay for the service in that time--or, from another perspective, a back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that 7,000 to 8,000 users are subscribing to Spotify each day, on average. And remember: These are global statistics from a service that has been…

• Rubinstein Leaves HP, Twitter Can Block Tweets By Country, Cook Defends Apple On Worker Standards

  Nidhi Subbaraman

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:41 pm

  Breaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day.Jon Rubinstein Leaves HP. Rubinstein, formerly of Apple and then lead at Palm during its efforts to rival the iPhone, is leaving HP. It's being spun as simple fulfillment of contractual agreements, signed when HP bought Palm. But with the killing-off of HP's Pre smartphone and tablet efforts, a disorganized decision process about webOS and news that Jon has no current plans a different conclusion can easily be drawn. --HP--Updated 1:30 p.m. ESTApple TV Buzz: OLEDs And Remote Controls. The freshest leaks about Apple's…

• 

  Schumpeter's Century

• The Coming Prosperity

  BrianH

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:11 am

  New book by Philip Auerswald, and the subtitle is: How Entrepreneurs are Transforming the Global Economy. You can preorder at Amazon. Doing so affects the publishers decision to print more or fewer copies of the book, so if you think it's interesting, order now.Phil has started blogging the book. Here's one discussion on fear (Ch. 13), from his section on what's ahead for America.Here's a talk he gave on the Hill, summarizing some of the main points behind his approach.

• Publication of NoVa Clean Energy Economy Report

  BrianH

  5 Aug 2011 | 3:49 pm

  Produced by GMU's David Hart and a small team. Some details:The Clean Energy Report represents an effort by a small group at the George Mason University School of Public Policy to estimate the size and sketch the contours of the “clean energy economy” of northern Virginia. It is, by any definition, a rough draft. We relied on publicly available data in order to identify firms, government agencies, and other organizations that contribute to improving the region’s energy efficiency and expanding its renewable energy use. We have sought to make our methods and findings as transparent as…

• xkcd on standards proliferation

  BrianH

  22 Jul 2011 | 1:13 pm

• Schumpeter in Africa??

  Jeremiah Mitoko

  15 Jun 2011 | 10:17 am

  Few people will contest the assertion that most of the entrepreneurial growth in this century will take place in BRIC countries (actually mostly India and China). But Africa?? Africa, we hear, has too many little nondescript inchoate domains with a big-man at the top calling themselves nation states, while still struggling to curve a synthetic national identity out of the vestiges of a colonial past.I argue that all that is changing; has changed. Africa is democratizing, Africa is integrating. Africa is growing up. The so-called “Arab Spring” is in fact the tail end of a long African…

• Africa: 53 Countries, One Union – The New Challenges conference

  Jeremiah Mitoko

  15 Jun 2011 | 8:40 am

  ‘Africa: 53 Countries, One Union – The New Challenges‘ conference will take place in Washington, DC on June 15 and 16, 2011.Download the preliminary Conference ProgramThe main objective is to offer to senior policy makers and experts the opportunity to discuss the relevance of regional and continental integration in the solution of major African problems, including those generated by recent developments which now challenge our concepts of freedom and democracy.The Conference will focus on the roles of the United Nations, African Union, European Union and the United States and China…

• 

  Wright Creativity

• The New Facebook Timeline + Old Facebook Posts = Potential Problems.

  Kirsten Wright

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:26 am

  Whether you wanted it or not, the new Facebook Timeline is here. And as with any new changes to Facebook layouts, there are a few big changes to privacy.In this case, the new timeline opens a can of old (& potentially problematic) posts. Remember those posts and photos from when you were a little more carefree? Maybe before you were worried about finding a job or before you friended your mom and boss? All of those pesky posts are now visible to anyone you are friends with, despite when they were posted. This can be risky, especially for those in jobs that are not overly social friendly or…

• Would you like Glamour on Facebook if you saw this ad? [Poll]

  Kirsten Wright

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:49 am

  Click to enlarge & read the entire adEvery day, you are bombarded by advertising. As an average American who utilizing technology daily, it is absolutely impossible to avoid. Your magazines are filled with them, TV is swallowed by them and your social sites are absolutely crawling with them. But, these ads are not all about buying things anymore. Advertisers are getting smarter (damn them!) and know that it doesn’t take hard sells to convince you to buy – it takes connections, engagement and personality. Because of this, traditional advertisers are looking for unique ways to…

• Everyone deserves a name…especially the crazies.

  Kirsten Wright

  18 Jan 2012 | 11:02 am

  My social agency, 5150, found this poor lost mannequin from the beaches of Laguna. He was wrapped in a straight jacket and given a wire treatment on his head. He couldn’t talk, but we understood him anyway. After all, we’re 5150′s too! So, we’ve gave him a home in the front of our office, and gave him the nickname ‘Rugged Male’.However as the weeks have passed, despite his new home among the rest of us 5150′s like him, we noticed he is still depressed.And we’ve figured out why.: He wants a name. He needs a name. He deserves a name.But we…

• Of football, hashtags & NFC Championship games #BeatTheNYGiants

  Kirsten Wright

  16 Jan 2012 | 4:14 pm

  I am a huge 49ers fan…and while it wasn’t pretty the last decade, I have maintained my love for the red and gold.Needless to say, I was jumping around my living room, more than a little excited on Saturday afternoon.This morning, I checked out their website to see what they had done since they clinched the spot in the NFC Championship game. I was pleasantly surprised…not only did my boys rock out with a fabulous new landing page, it is a totally social new lading page.Look at all the pretty hashtags! And the one you can’t see in the picture, but is even more awesome,…

• Divvying up social media? My rebuttal to Fox Small Business.

  Kirsten Wright

  10 Jan 2012 | 1:12 pm

  Fox Small Business interviews smart people, after all they interviewed me in November! However, even brilliant minds are wrong every once in a while.Earlier this week, they published an article of aggregated tips from the Young Entrepreneur Council on divvying up social media responsibility. There were some awesome tips from some very smart minds, and 7 out of the 10 tips were on point. However, 3 of them (imo) were way off the mark.First, the solid tips included: No. 2: Use a Team Platform to Manage No. 3: You Have to Know What You’re Asking No. 4: Build a Social Media Strategy No. 7:…

• 

  Innovation feeder

• social media propaganda

  jen

  24 Jan 2012 | 3:56 pm

  Ok so I was just reminded by our friends over at Design Milk to have another peek at the social media propaganda posters that Aaron Wood did a while ago. Delightfully cute and great stimulus for a workshop when you want to push around social media. Here they are. Enjoy.   Filed under: Innovative stimulus, [...]

• eightbar show us your retail innovations

  jen

  10 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  I’ve also just come across another piece from eightbar. For those of you who only know eightbar as the common eightbar blues chord progression, eightbar here is the unofficial blog of cool and interesting things from the creatives and techies at IBM’s Hursley Park Laboratories in the UK. They’ve posted a podcast from the Financial [...]

• 14 transformations defining the future of retail shopping

  jen

  10 Jan 2012 | 3:07 pm

  A good pointer from Linked In I looked at this morning was this article on the 14 Transformations that will define the future of retail shopping in 2020. If you’re in the retail game or just focusing on conversion more than just consideration, have a sticky beak, it’s an interesting read > 14 Transformations Define Future of Shopping In 2020  [...]

• Pre-occupy Wall Street or why we should rethink education and listen to the #pencilchat

  jen

  7 Dec 2011 | 7:20 pm

  Following on from my previous innovation in education post, I wanted to share another thinker with you. John T. Spencer is a teacher from Phoenix USA who has become Twitter famous overnight.  John used to write a blog called Adventures in Pencil Integration, and a couple of years ago, he turned it into a book [...]

• delightfully visual

  jen

  6 Dec 2011 | 11:38 pm

  I saw this cute visual merchandising idea in Sportsgirl the other day and thought I’d share. Reminds us that even a simple borrowing from another category can freshen up a retail experience. Not only is the borrowing of the mixed sweets idea a super cute visual merchandising idea; it also encourages consumers to select multiple [...]

• 

  Information Design Watch

• Metadata in Action

  Henry Woodbury

  21 Jan 2012 | 10:23 am

  Doing a comparative analysis of search functionality, I came across an interesting interactive diagram at the National Archives of Australia. Using simple rollovers the diagram explains the metadata hierarchy used within the Commonwealth Record Series (CRS) System. To see the diagram, start at the Search the Collection page, click “Search as Guest”, then click the “RecordSearch – Advanced search” tab. Here’s a screenshot: Compare this to the boxes-and-arrows diagram used in the 4700-word CRS Manual. What gives the interactive chart its punch is the use of…

• SOPA Day

  Henry Woodbury

  18 Jan 2012 | 10:53 am

  Wikipedia (English) is blacked out. Wikipedia is just one of many. Other sites, including Google, are acknowledging the protest. Kirby Ferguson explains. Update: This is off-topic for this blog, but it is important to note that free use is not just about the internet. On Wednesday the Supreme Court failed to overturn a 1994 Congressional act that removes thousands of musical texts from the public domain.

• The Cost of Research

  Henry Woodbury

  13 Jan 2012 | 11:59 am

  As the rumble between intellectual property and free speech advances into the ring drawn by SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), Michael B. Eisen draws attention to a fight on the undercard. Eisen, professor of molecular and cell biology, critiques The Research Works Act which, in his words: …would forbid the N.I.H. [National Institutes of Health] to require, as it now does, that its grantees provide copies of the papers they publish in peer-reviewed journals to the library. If the bill passes, to read the results of federally funded research, most Americans would have to buy access to…

• What’s This Mobile Thing For, Again?

  Lisa Agustin

  28 Dec 2011 | 11:06 am

  With more and more folks jumping on the smartphone bandwagon, and clients asking for mobile as part of their redesign projects, it’s not unusual to see articles on how to make your site mobile, or the latest design trends for mobile apps. How to develop for mobile is one of the forefront concerns of many web designers. But how about the Why? What are the specific advantages of mobile other than its ability to keep you distracted (productive?) while standing in line? Back in 2008, author and former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen expounded on the unique opportunities of mobile as the…

• The Infographic Dump

  Henry Woodbury

  27 Dec 2011 | 9:57 am

  I’ve been meaning to write about a spate of bad infographics I’ve been seeing recently in blog posts and social media feeds, but Megan McArdle beat me to it: If you look at these lovely, lying infographics, you will notice that they tend to have a few things in common: They are made by random sites without particularly obvious connection to the subject matter. Why is Creditloan.com making an infographic about the hourly workweek? Those sites, when examined, either have virtually no content at all, or are for things like debt consolidation–industries with low reputation where…

• 

  Indexed

• You know they’re out there. Waiting.

  Jessica Hagy

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:15 am

  Share and Enjoy:

• It’s corporate science!

  Jessica Hagy

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:12 am

  Share and Enjoy:

• They all fall fast and brilliantly.

  Jessica Hagy

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:44 am

  Share and Enjoy:

• Flavors of heartache.

  Jessica Hagy

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:28 am

  Share and Enjoy:

• Suddenly, the market collapsed.

  Jessica Hagy

  20 Jan 2012 | 2:48 pm

  Share and Enjoy:

• 

  Adaptive Path

• Looking for a Few Good Interns

  Jamin Hegeman

  23 Jan 2012 | 3:52 pm

  Dear [Name Of Graduate Student] We are writing to you because you are studying one of the following things: visual design, interaction design, service design, design research, design strategy, business, or some kind of crazy hybrid or intersection. You recently expressed interest in seeing how your skills could be wielded to design great products and services. Do we ever have an opportunity for you! Adaptive Path is seeking graduate students with your unique combination of skills (and charm) for our internship program this summer! You’ll be part of our team, treated like a…

• Data Trumps Opinion: 4 Smart Services that Deploy and Learn

  Brandon Schauer

  18 Jan 2012 | 1:01 pm

  Tired of going with the design that will survive the organization's political gauntlet? What if we made decisions based on what actually worked for customers and produced results, not what snaggletoothed solution fit into every stakeholder's personal view of the world? A quick story of how I got hooked Five years ago I was working to redesign a major website when our team got stuck on just how to design landing pages for traffic coming through Google. Should we be satisfied with a Google searcher just viewing one page or should we put design effort into getting them to view more? The…

• Overcoming Serious Service Sag

  Brandon Schauer

  10 Jan 2012 | 5:11 pm

  Last week I posted about how businesses over-invest in advertising and under-invest in the improvement of the service experience, which creates what I call a Service Anticipation Gap, or SAG. Customers are falsely led to expect a service that's better than what it can be. The result is wasted ad spend and revenue losses from customer (dis)engagement. The Challenge Businesses have gotten used to confidently connecting spending on ads and seeing the returns in revenue. Or as @odannyboy overheard, "Advertising is a lazy man's monetization." And here's where the folks that plan and…

• Peterme Moves On

  Jesse James Garrett

  9 Jan 2012 | 12:52 pm

  Let's be clear on this point: There would be no Adaptive Path without Peter Merholz. Certainly, after nearly 11 years in business, the company's culture, strategy, and creative direction has been influenced by a lot of folks. But Peter was the one who brought together the original founders to talk about ways we could work together, a conversation that turned into a company. So it was a momentous day here when Peter let us know he was leaving the company. But in some ways it wasn't a total surprise. As Peter points out in his blog post, the ideas that have most energized him for…

• Serious Service Sag

  Brandon Schauer

  5 Jan 2012 | 3:50 pm

  Has a commercial ever brought you to tears? Images of families reconnecting in an airport or a child hugging their parent with delight because a service was able to bring together a magic moment? I think we've all seen some wet eyes resulting from a well crafted 30-second ad spot. How about tears brought about from an actual service? Or someone jumping in the air with joy because of how great that check-in process was? Nada. It's a rare, rare bird. But what if—WHAT IF—services were just as good as they were advertised to be? What if they were even close? Wouldn't that…

• 

  The Phoenix Principle

• Who's CEO of the Year? Bezo's (Amazon) or Page (Google)?

  Adam Hartung

  22 Jan 2012 | 5:40 pm

  Turning over a new year inevitably leads to selections for "CEO of the Year."  Investor Business Daily selected Larry Page of Google 3 weeks ago, and last week Marketwatch.com selected Jeff Bezos of Amazon.  Comparing the two is worthwhile, because there is almost nothing similar about what the two have done - and one is almost sure to dramatically outperform the other. Focusing on the Future What both share is a willingness to focus their companies on the future.  Both have introduced major new products, targeted at developing new markets and entirely new revenue streams for their…

• Creative Destruction is not inevitable - Kodak, Hostess, Microsoft

  Adam Hartung

  14 Jan 2012 | 1:20 pm

  A lot of excitement was generated this week when Mitt Romney said the words "I like to fire people."  I'm sure he wishes he could rephrase his comment, as he easily could have made his point about changing service providers without those words.  Nonetheless, the aftermath turned to a discussion of job losses, and why Bain Capital has eliminated jobs while simultaneously creating some.  Surprisingly, a number of economists suddenly started saying that firms like Bain Capital are justified in their job eliminations because they are merely implementing "creative destruction."  Although the…

• Drop 2011 Dogs for 2012's Stars - Avoid Kodak, Sears, Nokia, RIMM, HP, Sony - Buy Apple, Amazon, Google, Netflix

  Adam Hartung

  4 Jan 2012 | 7:24 pm

  The S&P 500 ended 2011 almost exactly where it started.  If ever there was a year when being invested in the right companies, and selling the dogs, mattered for higher portfolio returns it was 2011.  The good news is that many of the 2011 dogs were easy to spot, and easy to sell before ruining your portfolio.  There were many bad performers.  However, there was a common theme.  Most simply did not adjust to market shifts.  Environmental changes, from technology to regulations, made them less competitive thus producing declining returns as newer competitors benefitted. …

• Buy Into Trends - Buy Chipotle Sell McDonald's

  Adam Hartung

  31 Dec 2011 | 10:39 am

  Revenue growth is a wonderful thing.  It is so much more fun to work in a growing company than one that isn't.  And high growth is possible, even in this struggling economy, if leaders focus on trends. Take for example Chipotle.  Whether you eat there or not, Chipotle has grown rather spectacularly.  From 16 units in 1998 it grew to 500 by 2005 and has 1,100 company owned and operated stores today.  Revenues have more than doubled since 2005, to about $2B, while sales/store increased almost 12% in 2010.  And investors have been well rewarded, with a market cap…

• They stayed too long at the (holiday) party - The Oracle and Best Buy Hangover

  Adam Hartung

  31 Dec 2011 | 10:37 am

  It's a wise person who knows never to be the last person at a business holiday party.  Things never go well for those who stay too late.  Yet, far too many businesses stay way, way too long at their market party, focusing on the same strategy when they should have moved into new competition a whole lot earlier. This week Oracle missed earnings estimates, and the stock fell some 14%, from $30 to under $26.  For the year, Oracle is down about a third, from it's high of $37.  The question any investor needs to ask is the one headlined by ZDnet.com "Oracle Earnings: An…

• 

  FOLDEN eMedia Blog

• Video Awards and Social Networking

  FOLDEN.INFO

  19 Jan 2012 | 6:33 pm

  Beat100 is a site where everyone may upload a video and may win prizes. It is all about user generated video and social networking. People may participate in current awards by uploading their videos and let others vote and favor. The site has two categories, music videos and lifestyle at all, which summarizes everything interesting [...]

• Free P2P Search Engine and Search Engine Software

  FOLDEN.INFO

  12 Jan 2012 | 7:47 pm

  YaCy is a new search engine and search engine software. The software is based and working on the p2p principle, which means each user is a point in the network and by this one may use the search engine and contribute to it either on a private or even a company level. The idea is [...]

• Live Streams of Music Concerts

  FOLDEN.INFO

  10 Jan 2012 | 5:08 pm

  The online music scene has a new topic, live streaming of music concerts. After some early birds focussing on broadcasting big events like livedome, meanwhile by the way also broadcasting sport events, and Baeble Music lately some new services have been launched. These do embrace trends of today, do include social networking and show artists [...]

• The Video Social Network Kondoot

  FOLDEN.INFO

  4 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pm

  This is a great service to be the topic of the first post on a blog about online media in the new year. Kondoot is a social network totally based on video and furthermore with a great variety of video. It has a similar look like Facebook or Google+, but the whole communication is based [...]

• Microsoft launches Social Network

  FOLDEN.INFO

  20 Dec 2011 | 5:40 pm

  It already has been more than rumors as the name so.cl has been mentioned, that Microsoft will launch a social network and now it happened. Regarding the big players this step came late. But on one hand Microsoft as a software company is different and on the other hand the company tries to compete with [...]

• 

  ZenStorming

• Innovating For (and From) the Fringe

  Plish

  21 Jan 2012 | 1:04 am

  Innovation occurs in the fringes, at the edges. To really innovate, these areas require more than a passing glance...

• Designing Positive Experiences in a Doctor’s Office – One Bagel at a Time

  Plish

  12 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  Want to improve customer service and satisfaction? Here's one way a doctor did it.

• You Don’t Have to be Brilliant to be Creative, Just Combinatorial

  Plish

  4 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Great insights into creativity from Maria Popova

• Breaking Habits in the New Year? Innovate Instead

  Plish

  28 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  The best innovations understand human nature and the power of habit.

• Innovation Can Change the World When Spelled: L-O-V-E

  Plish

  21 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  Being more authentically human means that love should play a role in designing innovations.

• 

  Holiday Matinee - Love Your Work. Work Your Love.

• Holiday Matinee’s January Mixtape!

  kiran

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:29 pm

  Hi 2012! We know some people think you’re all we’ve got left, but let’s trust NASA on this one. And if we do have to put up with the hype around all year, let’s just make this the best year ever. We at Holiday Matinee think one way to kick that off is with a badass mixtape so here’s the first of many in 2012. We’ll call it… I Could Be A Mona Lisa.

• For the love of headphones and less clutter…

  dave

  19 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  This might be the best looking solution to leaving headphones on your desk. It’s called the Machook and beautifully designed by Workerman. Best of all, it adheres to the top of your iMac with nano-suction technology, that means it is easily removable and won’t leave a sticky residue behind. Just might have to pick one of these up. [via BTS]

• ‘Drink beer & make stuff’ and other resolutions worth keeping

  monique

  19 Jan 2012 | 11:59 am

  In case you haven’t heard, it’s the start of a new year, which means millions are running around, frantically creating lists of unrealistic goals that will soon be forgotten. Welp, resolutions are pipe dreams, but a visual reminder to make awesome might do the trick. The To Resolve Project is a collection of well designed, inspiring mantras for your iPhone, and soon, your wall. Making room for what matters has never looked so good. [h/t Quipsologies] Clockwise: 1, 2, 3, 4

• I seriously dig you

  dave

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:27 pm

  This would make a great Valentines Day gift. It’s made from a copper dog tag hand stamped letter-by-letter with a brass trowel charm and comes with an antique brass split ring. Available on Etsy for $14.95. Dig it!

• A water cooler that’s sure to get your co-workers talking (and buzzed).

  dave

  18 Jan 2012 | 11:21 am

  At MKG our water cooler is tucked away in a lonely, often dark storage closet. It definitely gets used but rarely do you see anyone hovering over it, talking about last night’s episode of Californication. Maybe people don’t see the genius of David Duchovny or they don’t have Showtime or maybe we just need to replace the water with our friends, Jack Daniels.

• 

  Inventor Spot - Inventions, Innovations, and Interesting Ideas for the Inventor in All of Us

• World's Largest Oranges Successfully Bred in Taiwan

  China.new

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:01 pm

  It's good to be the king... the King Orange, that is. A new, supersized hybrid orange developed at Taiwan's Agricultural Research Institute is not only the world's largest, it also offers majestic overtones of sweet and sour citrus flavor.

• Tame the Wild with MoroccanOil Hydrating Styling Cream

  LeFleur

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:08 pm

  For anyone who knows how difficult it is to keep treated or coarse hair hydrated, the MoroccanOil Hydrating Styling Cream is a product worth trying. The pure argan oil conditions and hydrates your hair and is ideal for adding prior to a blow out.  The cream adds soft definition while creating the perfect hair style leaving your hair shiny and sexy.

• TripAdvisor Japan's 'World Stinky Foods' Infographic Reeks Your World

  Steve Levenstein

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:01 pm

  Travelers and tourists used to soaking up the world's most exotic sights and sounds can now satisfy their sense of smell as well, thanks to the new, nasally-oriented, "World Stinky Foods" infographic from TripAdvisor Japan.

• Stem Cell Technology Used To Create Neuronal Model For Alzheimer's Disease

  T Goodman

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:00 am

  Researchers at UC San Diego have developed a "true human neuronal model" that replicates the early stages of Alzheimer's disease in actual human brain cells.  They have accomplished this model by using adult stem cells to more accurately demonstrate the pathology of the disease.

• Creative Heart Ideas for Any Day

  LeFleur

  25 Jan 2012 | 1:58 pm

  Valentine’s Day gets a lot of flak for being a made-up holiday that puts pressure on people to express their undying love for one another.  But I tell you as I sip green tea from my Tall Multi Heart Latte Mug from Target that sometimes it’s nice to have a heart in your view no matter what day it is, so here’s some ways to be innovative and add a little love into your life.

• 

  The Work In Colour Blog

• I Have This Great Plan, But The Universe Isn't Listening...

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:51 pm

  Towards the end of last year, I decided that next year was going to be MY year. I would achieve some goals I have long held, get back into a consistent writing habit, restore my vim and vitality and generally let it rip. (I did have just enough sense not to wish for the fountain of youth...)

• Time to Question Your Career?

  16 Jan 2012 | 4:10 pm

  My last post for 2011 was a list of questions, and I can't resist the urge to bookend and make my first 2012 blog about questions, too. It's because January is often a month for questioning your current job or career (especially if you find yourself near-hysterical at the thought of having to go back to work!). If that's you, pay attention to the signals you are receiving from your mind and body. It's time to search for a better working life...

• At The Turning Of The Year...

  17 Dec 2011 | 4:09 pm

  This week I want to say a heartfelt 'thank you' for your interest and support over this year. I love the emails I get, your online comments and the kind words from people I bump into who I didn't even know were readers of the blog. It means a lot to me. I'm off to Burma later this week, and this blog will be back in mid-January. Following on from last week's 'take a break' theme, here are some questions for you to think about at the turning of the year.

• How Long Since You Took a Decent Break from Work?

  12 Dec 2011 | 2:02 pm

  Like most of us about now, I have been thinking about taking time off. Next week I am going overseas for Christmas, and I am most definitely looking forward to that! Today's blog adds a work twist to taking a break, to stepping back from the day to day. It's about the power of taking time out from your work, for the sake of the quality of that work.

• Fear and Doubt as Fuel for Brilliance

  5 Dec 2011 | 4:07 pm

  I've been reading (Kindling?) a book by Jonathan Fields called Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance. I recommend it to anyone who is struggling on the edge of their comfort zone - he is a most creative man, and the book is packed with good advice. (He's the guy who said that in order to make a good guitar, you have to make five bad guitars...)

• 

  Creativity_Unbound

• A brief history of advertising

  edward boches

  24 Jan 2012 | 3:25 pm

  Welcome to Strategic Creative Development View more presentations from edward boches Thought I’d share a deck I recently used to kick off Strategic Creative Development, a class I’m teaching this semester at Boston University’s College of Communication. The premise behind the syllabus is simple: advertising is no longer about making ads. At least not all of the time. Now it’s as much about digital experiences, gaming dynamics, mobile utility, Facebook apps, and creatively leveraging the interest graph as it is about crafting a message. Of course you know that. Nevertheless, it was fun…

• Brandbowl is back with new features

  edward boches

  19 Jan 2012 | 8:15 pm

  Brandbowl is back with more features than ever It’s that time of year again. The online Superbowl party that Mullen started three years ago to celebrate the age of Twitter is well into development. If you remember, we began our annual project when there weren’t very many ad types on Twitter. In 2009, most of the industry was still like “huh?” A few of us at Mullen, the kind folks at Radian 6, and some friends like Sally Hogshead and Lisa Hickey made the effort to get ad land excited. We launched what was then called Trash Talk from the Twitter Section, shared instructions for how to…

• Can advertising really help Bank of America?

  edward boches

  15 Jan 2012 | 2:35 pm

  The bank we love to hate is looking for a new advertising agency. While still the second largest bank in America – JP Morgan recently snuck past BofA in assets, $2.289 trillion to $2.219 trillion – Bank of America’s stock – both on Wall Street and on Main Street has plummeted. It’s share price toppled by more than half in 2011 and its public opinion fell even more sharply. In fact it’s hard to find much positive sentiment anywhere. The Occupy Wall Street movement targeted the financial giant at every opportunity. A  congressman from the bank’s home state of North Carolina went…

• I need an Internet car

  edward boches

  12 Jan 2012 | 12:37 pm

  Fact: Twenty percent of the price of a new car is for the software.   My car didn't stop itself from hitting this tree, either. Monday I take my seven-year-old car in to have the front end repaired. I hit a cement block in a local garage because my car didn’t let me know that it was there.  It tore off the bumper and part of the grill. As you can see from the image on the left, hitting things head on is a recurring problem.   If I had an Internet ready car, it would have warned me.  It would also have checked me in on Foursquare so that people would know where I was. It…

• Social media gets interesting

  edward boches

  4 Jan 2012 | 8:26 pm

  What everyone in Silicon Valley and “Venture Land” conceive of as the real game-changing model involves capturing and capitalizing on the “interest graph. The company that succeeds in doing so would be “close to the Google search paradigm because it would be right in line with demand generation and with discovery that relates to product purposes.” Thus, it is the interest graph that defines the middle ground between Google and Facebook — between search, advertising, and the social graph. The above paragraph comes from a year-old post in Tech Crunch, following last winter’s…

• 

  SERVICE INNOVATION

• Creativity needed to create start-ups.

  Arnold Beekes

  24 Jan 2012 | 3:14 am

  Fromthe quote below, it is very clear that we urgently much create newjobs.“Despitestrenuous government efforts, the jobs crisis continues unabated,with one in three workers worldwide – or an estimated 1.1 billionpeople – either unemployed or living in poverty”, said ILODirector-General Juan Somavia. “What is needed is that job creationin the real economy must become our number one priority”.Andit is also highly unlikely that large companies will create these newjobs. Census Bureau data show that most of the net employment gainsin the United States between 1980 and 2005 came from…

• Let 2012 be sparkling for you and others

  Arnold Beekes

  17 Jan 2012 | 3:13 am

  Currently we are bombardedwith messages, research and predictions that 2012 will be a toughyear.While that may be thecase, there is always another side. Or like our most famousfootballer Johan Cruijff says “Every disadvantage has and advantagein it”.There is so muchcomplaining going on about the level of service which companies andgovernment provide. So, why don't you make sure that yourorganization provides excellent (and engaging) customer service, allthe time? Customers are even willing to pay more for great service!There is nothing which canbeat helping others. These others can be…

• Managers have to change as well

  Arnold Beekes

  10 Jan 2012 | 2:54 am

  It is nothing new that a lot is happening in the world and thatchanges are rapidly having an impact.There are many publications about the need for employees to change.Also is a lot is being written about how organizations in itselfshould change their culture, structure and approach to technology.Mostly managers are telling their employees that they have to changeand do things differently. The common denominator is that managersexpect employees to work harder and produce more. The favorite gameof managers seems to be changing the organization chart. Of coursethere are also challenging tasks…

• Job rotation for innovators

  Arnold Beekes

  5 Jan 2012 | 3:38 am

  It is veryattractive to let always the same people be involved on yourinnovation projects. These are the people who are experienced in theinnovation tasks and you know what you get. This leads to twopotential hick ups.The innovation people can become complacent themselves, as the innovation activities become routine itself. Continuously following the same steps and processes to do these projects might make you blind for newness itself.The people who are not involved in innovation are more and more settled into their comfort zone. This it becomes harder and harder to get them out of that zone.

• A fresh perspective needs a time-out and detachment

  Arnold Beekes

  27 Dec 2011 | 2:16 am

  Inmedium to large organizations there is a need to standardizeprocedures and to have habits. Here are some examples of habits:every monday morning there is a team meeting; R&D is donein-house; managers are senior men; we focus on addressing faults,mistakes and individual weaknesses. Mostleaders are not even consciously aware of these practices. They areso ingrained in the the 'way things get done here' (the 'culture'),that they are neither questioned nor improved.Whilesome of these habits are quite beneficial, like having regular teammeetings, others do often block innovation. Let's have…

• 

  The Brainzooming Group | Strategy Consulting and Strategic Planning

• Listening for Blog Content Is an Art within Your Grasp

  Mike Brown

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:50 am

  One of my blogging mantras is always be listening for blog content because you never know where content will appear. Maybe listening for blog content is easier said than done, but when you’re having to come up with 235+ blog posts a year, you can’t afford to miss great content just because it comes up in an unexpected situation. Last night, I dropped in on the sold out “Achieve Your 2012 Goals: Social Accountability Happy Hour” presented by Michael Gelphman of Kansas City IT Professionals. While big happy hour networking events aren’t the first thing I flock to,…

• Interesting Opportunities – 6 Ways to Identify Strategic Distractions

  Mike Brown

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:50 am

  There are many interesting opportunities floating around out there and all kinds of people who would love to spend time talking about them. Opportunities can be exciting, sound great, and very attractive to pursue. Interesting opportunities can be tough to turn down when they are presented to you all packaged up and shiny. It is clear you cannot pursue every opportunity someone has decided should have your name attached to it. But when does the next interesting opportunity with lots of potential become a strategic distraction? How about when . . . Pursuing it is more about feeling good than…

• Space and Creativity

  Mike Brown

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:50 am

  I was surprised  during the January #Ideachat session covered in last week’s piece on creative spaces to meet several people from Kansas City and another from my hometown of Hays, KS during the international Twitter discussion. One of the Kansas City-based participants, Bradley (Woody) Bendle, reached out to talk innovation last week. We had a great conversation about his efforts in developing insight and process-based innovation, and he agreed to share his thoughts on creative spaces to provide another viewpoint from #Ideachat. Here’s Woody Bendle on three different types of…

• Create Lasting Memories in Online Events – 10 Ways to Do It

  Mike Brown

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:50 am

  Jonathan Finkelstein of Learning Times did a great job during his Virtual Event Summit 2012 presentation in San Diego, addressing “Ten Ways to Create Lasting Memories in Online Events.” His presentation, mine on “Social Media Strategy for Events,” and many others are available free on January 26 as part of the follow-up virtual event.  It’s definitely worth investigating the “Epic Event” for great content relevant to virtual events, in-person events, and other marketing topics. Speaking of virtual, digital, or online events, here are Jonathan Finkelstein’s…

• Twelve Tough Twitter Truths for Community Management

  Mike Brown

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:50 am

  Photo: fransuess | Source: photocase.com Doing several recent social media strategy sessions on Twitter-based community management for businesses prompted requests from the participants for more time and content on the topic of using Twitter more effectively. Their questions and comments triggered this list of Twelve Tough Twitter Truths, adapted from previous @Brainzooming tweets. Twelve Tough Twitter Truths 1. Twitter is like shouting a conversation into a crowded room with almost no visual cues of who is listening, participating or even aware of you. 2. These should be your three most…

• 

  Breaking Glass by Rishi Dean

• NFL Playoff Weekend: It’s a Patriots Nation, According to Facebook

  Rishi Dean

  22 Jan 2012 | 10:11 am

  Reblogged from NANIGANS BLOG: This Sunday televisions across America will be set to watch the NFL conference finals, with the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens facing off followed by the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants. Who are Americans cheering for this weekend? We turned to Facebook data from the Nanigans Ad Engine to find out, creating the below infographic: … Great post from over at the Nanigans blog… Filed under: Data Analysis, Facebook, Shameless Plug Tagged: baltimore ravens, data mining, facebook marketing, facebook trends, new england patriots, new…

• Facebook’s New ‘Social Feedback Loop’ and 7 Recommendations for Marketers

  Rishi Dean

  24 Sep 2011 | 9:43 am

  Note: This posted originally appeared on the Nanigans blog. With the hype of Facebook’s f8 developer conference behind us, with its celebrity cameos and star-studded after parties probably calling in some help for the morning clean-up, it’s now time to think of the sobering implications of how this groundbreaking update to the Facebook platform causes us to rethink our social marketing strategies going forward. Facebook’s ‘social feedback loop’ While we’ve described tools like Timeline and the new Open Graph features in our post yesterday, the really…

• Facebook’s f8 2011 Keynote: What it Means for Developers and Marketers

  Rishi Dean

  23 Sep 2011 | 1:11 pm

  Note: I was live at Facebook’s f8 developer conference yesterday, and posted this originally to the Nanigans blog, and also to BostInnovation. I’ve made some minor grammar updates here, to correct for my speed-blogging. We’re at f8 in San Francisco today, with the keynote speeches just concluding. After an entertaining opening with comedian Andy Samberg masquerading as Mark Zuckerberg, the real “Zuck Dawg” (as Samberg called him) took the stage to deliver the true keynote. Facebook’s CTO Bret Taylor and VP Product Chris Cox followed, along with brief cameo CEO…

• Confusing Constraints with Goals

  Rishi Dean

  28 Jan 2011 | 6:00 am

  Summary: Too often we either confuse, or merge, goals with constraints. While both are necessary, it’s essential to understand how to use each one properly to design plans that work. E-mail. Tweet. http://rdean.me/fIefuP One issue that enrages me enough to rant about is is how often we conflate what is a goal with what is a constraint. While the differences may seem like nuance, confusing a business’ goals, with the the constraints they are subject to, leads to a lack of focus and ultimately failing to achieve what you really want. Goals are clear objectives for what you want your…

• ‘Work / Life Balance’ is a myth for entrepreneurs…and everyone else too

  Rishi Dean

  3 Jan 2011 | 3:30 am

  Summary: At a startup is there ever really such thing as “downtime”? How about “work / life” balance? The lines don’t exist for entrepreneurs, and is increasingly blurring in other jobs as well. Here’s a different way to think about what it all means.E-mail. Tweet. http://rdean.me/wlbmyth As an entrepreneur, your work and your life are intertwined, there is no such thing as a “balance” between them. You’ve made immense personal sacrifice, ask much of those people near and dear to you, so anyone who tells you you need to make crisper…

• 

  Christa in New York

• Leap: The Monkey Mind and The Inner Sage Can Walk Together

  Christa

  28 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  When we’re in a funk, it can be tough to pick our heads up and re-energize. When we’re down and out, sometimes it feels easier to stay that way. And for a while, I think that’s true. Every once in a while we do have the right to wallow a bit when something doesn’t go our way. The opportune word is “bit”. Throwing a pity party I have a friend who gives herself exactly 24 hours of serious self-pity when true disaster finds its way to her door – she turns on the music she only listens to when she really needs to bawl her eyes out, pours herself a stiff…

• Leap: We Could Learn a Lot About Business by Studying Coffee

  Christa

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  Last Sunday morning I went to Sur la Table with my friend, Allan, to take a coffee class. One of Allan’s new year’s resolutions is to learn more about food and its preparation so he asked me where he might take some classes. I had read about Sur la Table’s new course schedule in the Times a few weeks ago and wanted to check it out. Allan has also been a tremendous support of every adventure I’ve attempted over the last 7 years I’ve known him so I’m all too happy to return the favor. Judging by the fun we had on Sunday, I think the coffee class is just the…

• Leap: Shelter from the Storm Found at a Voice Over Class at Simple Studios

  Christa

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  Wait a minute! Did I go to bed and wake up in September 2008? This is the question I found myself thinking while at work yesterday. September 2008, 5 weeks after I joined my company, Lehman Brothers failed and the market went to hell. Several months later I was the only filled desk in an island of empty cubes. It was horrendous. I got through it, but it was no picnic and I’ve still got a few scars to prove I was there. You can’t see them, but pull up a chair any time and I’ll gladly tell you the story. (Not now, of course. But eventually.) This week, I found myself in that…

• Leap: Making a Big Career Choice Earlier Than I Expected

  Christa

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  I’ve got some career choices to make in a shorter time frame than I planned. The company I work for is going through some reorganization. Minimal reduction in headcount lots of reshuffling. This comes as no surprise; what surprised me was that I would have options. There are several different places that I could land in the organization. It may also be possible for me to opt-out, wish them well, and be on my way into the unknown. I’ll spend the next few weeks gathering information, assessing possibilities, and asking for a lot of advice from the smartest, most creative people I…

• Leap: In Love with Pinterest, a Celebration of Beauty in Images

  Christa

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:00 am

  The Lantern Festival, Honolulu, Hawaii from...Pinterest I found my way to Pinterest through a blog friend labyrinth. My friend Phyllis started a new blog, The Carb Lover Lady. Phyllis and I are bloggy friends after I asked to interview her back in 2009 for my Examiner column on entrepreneurship. Phyllis recently featured a recipe for Greek Yogurt Banana Bread on her blog from Ingredients, Inc., the site of Alison Lewis, a health expert. (By the way, I’ve started practicing my baking again thanks to the encouragement of MJ, another bloggy friend and great supporter of my writing and…

• 

  Breaking Glass by Rishi Dean

• NFL Playoff Weekend: It’s a Patriots Nation, According to Facebook

  Rishi Dean

  22 Jan 2012 | 10:11 am

  Reblogged from NANIGANS BLOG: This Sunday televisions across America will be set to watch the NFL conference finals, with the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens facing off followed by the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants. Who are Americans cheering for this weekend? We turned to Facebook data from the Nanigans Ad Engine to find out, creating the below infographic: … Great post from over at the Nanigans blog… Filed under: Data Analysis, Facebook, Shameless Plug Tagged: baltimore ravens, data mining, facebook marketing, facebook trends, new england patriots, new…

• Facebook’s New ‘Social Feedback Loop’ and 7 Recommendations for Marketers

  Rishi Dean

  24 Sep 2011 | 9:43 am

  Note: This posted originally appeared on the Nanigans blog. With the hype of Facebook’s f8 developer conference behind us, with its celebrity cameos and star-studded after parties probably calling in some help for the morning clean-up, it’s now time to think of the sobering implications of how this groundbreaking update to the Facebook platform causes us to rethink our social marketing strategies going forward. Facebook’s ‘social feedback loop’ While we’ve described tools like Timeline and the new Open Graph features in our post yesterday, the really…

• Facebook’s f8 2011 Keynote: What it Means for Developers and Marketers

  Rishi Dean

  23 Sep 2011 | 1:11 pm

  Note: I was live at Facebook’s f8 developer conference yesterday, and posted this originally to the Nanigans blog, and also to BostInnovation. I’ve made some minor grammar updates here, to correct for my speed-blogging. We’re at f8 in San Francisco today, with the keynote speeches just concluding. After an entertaining opening with comedian Andy Samberg masquerading as Mark Zuckerberg, the real “Zuck Dawg” (as Samberg called him) took the stage to deliver the true keynote. Facebook’s CTO Bret Taylor and VP Product Chris Cox followed, along with brief cameo CEO…

• Confusing Constraints with Goals

  Rishi Dean

  28 Jan 2011 | 6:00 am

  Summary: Too often we either confuse, or merge, goals with constraints. While both are necessary, it’s essential to understand how to use each one properly to design plans that work. E-mail. Tweet. http://rdean.me/fIefuP One issue that enrages me enough to rant about is is how often we conflate what is a goal with what is a constraint. While the differences may seem like nuance, confusing a business’ goals, with the the constraints they are subject to, leads to a lack of focus and ultimately failing to achieve what you really want. Goals are clear objectives for what you want your…

• ‘Work / Life Balance’ is a myth for entrepreneurs…and everyone else too

  Rishi Dean

  3 Jan 2011 | 3:30 am

  Summary: At a startup is there ever really such thing as “downtime”? How about “work / life” balance? The lines don’t exist for entrepreneurs, and is increasingly blurring in other jobs as well. Here’s a different way to think about what it all means.E-mail. Tweet. http://rdean.me/wlbmyth As an entrepreneur, your work and your life are intertwined, there is no such thing as a “balance” between them. You’ve made immense personal sacrifice, ask much of those people near and dear to you, so anyone who tells you you need to make crisper…

• 

  Wisepreneur: Creativity & Innovation for Entrepreneurs

• How to Stop the Dreaded “Decision Drift”

  Holly Green

  18 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Have you ever had a meeting that didn’t work out quite as a planned? Where everyone agreed to a specific course of action and two weeks later you discover that what they’ve been working on doesn’t come close to your vision of what should happen? When these situations arise, we usually blame poor communication. We Read More »

• The Problem With Outsourcing When Starting a Business

  K. MacKillop

  16 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  A great many startup “experts” now recommend that new entrepreneurs outsource as much of the noncore tasks as possible. The arguments sound logical – leave the work to the professionals; focus on your core competencies; don’t be distracted by accounting/marketing/whatever details. But there are a few problems with this advice that you should be aware Read More »

• The Importance of Relationships Within the Core Group

  David M. Nour

  8 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Within each organization is a core group that is chiefly responsible for the success of that organization. That core group might be a working team, an executive committee, or a board of directors. Or it could be an unofficial grouping of people from all three categories, typically consisting of no more than a dozen individuals. Read More »

• The Benefits of Starting a Think Tank

  Hazel Wagner

  4 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  The hardest part of building an innovative culture in an organization is getting it started. People aren’t sure what they should or can do. If you sit a team around a table and tell them to brainstorm for new ideas they will look around at each other expectantly or look down so they won’t be Read More »

• Crisis May Benefit Your Leadership Skills

  Mike Krutza

  2 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Whether we like it or not, crisis is a fact of life. Many leaders run into turbulent times and while many succumbed to the hardship, a number is lost and overwhelmed by its immense upshot. Handling crisis starts with the recognition that it’s a normal phenomenon. Everyday we are faced with crises of every kind. Read More »

• 

  Game Changer

• 3 cognitive limits we must overcome to think differently

  Jorge

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:13 pm

  Expertise is the enemy of innovation right? Yes, but even experts can think differently. And there’s much to learn from them on how they are able to overcome their ‘know-it-all’ tendencies. Indeed, research into expertise and expert performance explains how great strategists use mental frames to break cognitive barriers that prevent others from seeing new options. It is not just that experts know more about the problem—in fact they often know less—but they think differently. They restructure, reorganize, and refine their representation of knowledge so as to more…

• Why creating new categories is so successful

  Jorge

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:02 am

  Creating a new category. The Holy Grail of Innovation. The Holy Grail of entrepreneurs. It’s when you can create a new category that you command the skies. Think of the iPad. Is it a new category? It is. But not because people think it is, but because Apple defined it as such. Experts characterized the iPad as a tablet, but customers did not. That’s all that matters. Other examples of category creation exist. For example Gatorade created the sports drink category. Chrysler created the minivan. Toyota created the Prius. Each had a good amount of time before any competitor entered…

• Innovation posts of the week: The Genius behind “Genius Lunches”

  Jorge

  22 Jan 2012 | 4:59 am

  Flipping Orthodoxies: Overcoming Insidious Obstacles to Innovation – Monitor The Surprising Benefits of Solitude – HBR What is the definition of “innovation”? by @ovoinnovation How Apple Disrupts Markets and then Goes on to Dominate by @timkastelle and @digitaltonto Why Is Diversity Vital For Innovation? – Forbes The genius behind “Genius Lunches” – Salon Related Posts Innovation posts of the week: Unpredictability is the new consistency Innovation posts of the week: 10 common innovation blunders Innovation posts of the week: What is a culture…

• How are you over-delivering?

  Jorge

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:02 pm

  It’s a well known principle: Under promise. Over-deliver. But it’s far from common to see it actually applied. I have a client who just expanded it’s business to Tijuana. They are in 3 other states within Mexico and they’ve grown quite fast for a young company (4 years old). But their expansion to Tijuana has yet to pay off. And it’s getting dicey as customers have been leaving. They brought me in to investigate why and develop ways to turn this around. I’ve spent the last month or so practically living their business. Experiencing what they and how they do…

• This week’s innovation posts worthy of your attention: Do innovation Consultants Kill Innovation?

  Jorge

  15 Jan 2012 | 5:31 am

  Great Products Are Nice. But Great Businesses Add Services To Them – FastCoDesign Don’t Relax Constraints, Embrace Them -  Forbes Don’t Think Different, Think About Different Things – HBR Multiple Use of the Business Model Canvas by @paul4innovating Four Ways You Can Be More Innovative by @timkastelle Should Innovation be “professionalized” by @ovoinnovation   Related Posts Innovation posts worthy of your attention this week: Innovation is Impossible Innovation posts of the week: 5 types of people that kill innovation Innovation posts of the week: #1…

• 

  Steve Hill's Gritty Soul Blog

• The Lakai Team Wins King of the Road

  Steve

  22 Jan 2012 | 5:30 pm

  I remember back in 2003 when Thrasher Magazine held their very first King of the Road contest and introduced the entire skateboarding community to a new kind of competition where hi-jinx, not qualifying heats, was the norm. This year’s competition was [...]

• My Snowboarding Story

  Steve

  15 Jan 2012 | 11:51 am

  Growing up in the Midwest has its positives and negatives if you’re into adventure sports. One huge positive is that the cost of living here is super cheap so you can afford to travel to other parts of the country. [...]

• Underwater Ice “Fishing” in Finland

  Steve

  5 Jan 2012 | 9:10 pm

  When you have a winter that lasts for 6 months, sometimes you have to get a little creative to keep yourself busy. That’s exactly what the makers of “Fishing Under Ice” did in what I’m calling the next video to [...]

• Elevation Outdoors Magazine’s P.T.O. Giveaway

  Steve

  5 Jan 2012 | 8:25 pm

  Elevation Outdoor’s Magazine is running an awesome giveaway contest over at their site. They’re giving away a pair of Smartwool ski socks, a backpack from Green Guru, a shovel from Black Diamond, and a spring season pass for Eldora Mountain [...]

• Checking Out Left Lane Sports

  Steve

  4 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  Regardless of what your favorite outdoor activity is, all adventure enthusiasts can agree that having high-quality gear is critical to fun, safety, comfort. More often than not however, good gear often gets pretty expensive.   When I heard of a [...]

• 

  The Fertile Unknown

• Creativity Rocks Opposites

  Michelle

  18 Jan 2012 | 6:42 am

  Creativity comes to life at intersections. It thrives on opposites. It engages paradox until something new emerges. This transfers to the design of projects, processes, workshops, teams, organizations, etc. If we design for space to accommodate opposites (just like nature does) we have a more creative system. This is part of a presentation I'm giving on the yin/yang of creative process: There's no end to what could be added.

• Diffusion of Adoption: Using the Creative Differences

  Michelle

  12 Jan 2012 | 8:21 am

  By now, most people have heard of the "Diffusion of Innovation" bell curve, first introduced by Everett Rogers in the 60s. I remember learning about in college, and it seems to still be a relevant model today. According to wikipedia: "Diffusion of Innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. Everett Rogers, a professor of rural sociology, popularized the theory in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations. He said diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels…

• Bringing your Whole Brain to Work: We Mean Business TV interviews me

  Michelle

  4 Jan 2012 | 4:21 pm

  Steve Dorfman and Toby Marciante of We Mean Business TV recently interviewd me on creative (whole brain) thinking in the workplace. We talk about stories, improv, somatics, natural resistance, risk-friendly work cultures, generational creaitvity, discovery sessions, and more in this 30-minute interview.  

• Intersection for Inspired Action

  Michelle

  23 Dec 2011 | 9:35 am

  This morning I heard someone being interviewed on the topic of conscious business (on Waking Up in the Workplace) and they were asked, "What is the question that drives your work.?" I love that. It's aligned with the concept that we are all living our questions (whether we are conscious of it or not) so we need to choose them carefully. In that, we become conscious participants in the creation of our work. I was thinking about how I would answer, and it led me create the venn diagram below. My driving question is actually the intersection of 3 foundational questions. - not in…

• Creative Solution Finding: The AIIM Process

  Michelle

  22 Dec 2011 | 5:55 am

  A few years ago, when leading a Creative Thinking Program for a corporate client, I developed the AIIM Solution Finding Process to make it accessible, and to help them move onto the nonlinear nature of the creative process (when it is solution-focused, like in work settings) and still have a sequence to follow for those who like to engage more sequentially. I had been studying different models and approaches at the time and narrowed in on the same main patterns I saw showing up in each one, in addition thinking about the patterns I was seeing in the real-life experiences me and my clients…

• 

  Career Management and Workplace Culture Blog | TalentCulture.com

• #TChat Radio: Seeking good enough in HR Recruiting Technology

  Kevin W. Grossman

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:41 pm

  Politics aside, I was glad when the President called for action to reverse unemployment and create re-employment during his State of the Union address the other night. It’s not a new buzz mantra; it’s one many of us have been advocating from the bottom of the heavy-gravity economic crater. There are so many recommendations on what to do — the primary ones being changing the archaic tax codes, changing the banking system, improving our education system, embracing global trade, saving the Eurozone — but unfortunately so many disagreements on how to get there. Employers…

• TLNT Transform! Join the TalentCulture Crew There

  TLNT Transform

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:29 pm

  Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on TLNT.com Maybe you missed it in the end-of-the-year rush, but late last month, I was a guest on TotalPicture Radio With Peter Clayton, and we talked about a lot of different things concerning HR, talent management, the news trends of 2011, and of course, TLNT. If you didn’t get a chance to hear the interview, you can access the radio podcast here. We also talked quite a bit about the TLNT Transform conference that’s coming up next month in Austin, Texas, and I thought it was worth excerpting that section of the Q&A here, because it…

• What Lies Beneath: The Why of HR Tech in 2012

  Meghan M. Biro

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:12 pm

  Does technology emerge to fill a business need – say, serving customers better – or is technical innovation driven largely by cost pressures? Does a completely external, unknowable force influence the development of disruptive technologies? Was it foreseeable Jeff Bezos would disrupt big-box stores and consumer brands with a web site, when most brands had a web site? Was it predictable Steve Jobs would turn the music industry on its head with a digital music player, when everyone already had a Sony Walkman? I’ve been considering these questions because we are in a period of…

• The #TChat collaborative communication car pool fast lane

  Kevin W. Grossman

  19 Jan 2012 | 1:14 pm

  I got the invite to Chill with someone. And that’s when it hit me: there’s just too much information, too many content curation tools, too many sharing tools, too many communications tools that don’t really help me communicate. Whirlwind. Zoom. Zis-boom-ba. Turn the fire hose off and get me a real drink. Sure, early adopters are compelled by their very nature to keep the fire hose on their hip next to their smart phones — like six-shooters ready for action. We want to experiment with innovative ideas, build on them and launch our own. But do we really need this much…

• An Open Letter to Someone Taking an Employment Assessment

  Daniel Crosby

  19 Jan 2012 | 8:19 am

  Dear Job Seeker,   Hi there, it’s me, the organizational psychologist with whom you’ll be spending the next few hours. I know that you’re nervous and that I’m all that stands between you and this next gig, but I’d like to give you a few pointers to help make this process less painful for both of us. A few things to consider:   Don’t Make Shrink Jokes – I get it, my job is goofy. I also get that the stereotypes about beards and tweed are there for a reason. But, making a shrink joke with a psychologist is about as original as making a Men in Black joke to a guy named…

• 

  New and Improved Innovation Blog Site

• Would you deform your newborn’s skull to make them more creative?

  New & Improved, LLC

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:59 am

  If you saw these skulls would you think they belonged to extraterrestrials?

• Being Resolute with Your Resolutions

  New & Improved, LLC

  4 Jan 2012 | 10:59 am

  It is the time of passage to a new year. The calendar has moved to January, named for Janus, the Roman god of passage, time and prophecy.

• Position Available: Business Development

  New & Improved, LLC

  2 Jan 2012 | 2:41 pm

  New & Improved, LLC, is seeking a full time Business Development professional. Responsibilities focus on outside sales, including lead-finding, qualifying buyers, assessing potential client needs, creating proposals, pitching solutions and closing to contract. The ideal candidate has a strong network and history of sales in the training, facilitation, speaking, and organizational development consulting areas. We work with all types of large organizations, with a focus on corporate clients. Some travel required. New & Improved is an organizational Development firm providing training,…

• This is Your Mind on Questions

  New & Improved, LLC

  20 Dec 2011 | 11:01 pm

  One of the greatest features of your human brain is, if you ask it a question it will answer it.

• What’s the #1 thing you can do to help your employees to be more motivated and engaged? (Hint: It’s not what you think it is!)

  New & Improved, LLC

  16 Dec 2011 | 8:54 am

  What's the number one factor to help motivate and keep employees engaged in their work?

• 

  The Creators Project

• If Christian Marclay Could Put Time In A Bottle

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:49 pm

  Quite possibly the only critical piece you’ll ever read on Christian Marclay’s The Clock.

• The Chemical Brothers: The Movie [Directors Q&A]

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:24 pm

  Don’t Think is a psychedelic paroxysm of a concert movie.

• Hyped: The Week In Links 1/27

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:51 pm

  Busy week? Here’s some things you may have missed.

• What's It Like To Run An Online-Only Gallery? A Q&A With The Founders Of Bubblebyte.org

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:32 pm

  The internet-based gallery is celebrating its one year anniversary by staging a real-world gallery exhibition in London.

• Skinned Furbies And Badger Theremins: The Bizarre Mechanical Art of Michael Cranmer

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:59 am

  Inventor and artist Michael Cranmer uses the most unlikely of materials to create electronic music instruments and mechanical sculptures.

• 

  The Rohan Aurora

• How to Create a Cartilage Using 3D Printer & Living ‘Ink’ [VIDEO]

  Rohan Aurora

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:41 am

  3D printing technique is getting popular in the field of tissue engineering. They are being used to print living tissues/organs with the goal of treating disease and injury with the implantation of these organs. Here’s a brilliant video by Dr. Lawrence Bonassar, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University, describing a cutting-edge process he has developed in which he uses a 3D Printer and “ink” composed of living cells to create body parts such as ears. Thanks to Robby Bowles for sharing this news. He completed his Ph.D. under Dr. Bonassar last…

• The New Serial Two-Photon Tomography (STP) Imaging Technique

  Rohan Aurora

  15 Jan 2012 | 3:37 pm

  Currently, the techniques used for obtaining highly detailed anatomical images of whole brains and are painstakingly slow and available only to very few research teams. But now, a new technology developed by neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) can now automate and standardize the process of collecting whole-brain images in which different cell-types or circuit tracings have been performed. The image below shows the 3-D rendering of coronal section of a mouse brain imaged with STP tomography at 20x at a resolution of 0.5 micron. GFP-expressing pyramidal neurons in…

• Scanadu’s Star Trek-style ‘Medical Tricorder’ Scanner [VIDEO]

  Rohan Aurora

  4 Jan 2012 | 6:16 pm

  Star Trek? Yes, that’s what comes to my mind after reading tricorders. A biomedical tech startup Scanadu has created a scanner that seems to be inspired by those of Drs. McCoy and Crusher. The ‘Medical Tricorder’ scanner can take vitals such as blood pressure, pulmonary function, and temperature, and sends them to your smartphone. The device can make the difference between a needed trip to the emergency room or a waste of time and money for conditions that don’t need treatment. The idea is to put health information directly in the hands of health consumers. The competing…

• The Biggest Scientific Breakthrough of the Year 2011

  Rohan Aurora

  1 Jan 2012 | 8:08 pm

  2011 has been an amazing year for scientific discoveries. There have been plenty of scientific breakthroughs in all fields such as astronomy, archaeology, biochemistry, neuroscience, biomedical engineering, computers and so many fields. From all the innovations, over-hyped findings and controversial studies, I’d love to consider the brain chips and implants, they have to be my favorites. Brain implant to control virtual hand and feel virtual objects Duke University and the Ecole Polytechnic Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) developed a technology that has allowed monkeys to control a virtual…

• Top 15+ Biomedical Engineering Technologies of 2011

  Rohan Aurora

  1 Jan 2012 | 5:28 pm

  Happy New Year! So, 2011 had gone past, I found plenty of biomedical technology news which I couldn’t blog about. Let me share those bookmarks today… A Heart Pump without a Cord Now, usually, the heart implants receive their power from an external source encompassing a power cord that protrudes through the skin of the patient’s belly. It has a 40% infection rate. But, the solution is this experimental wireless power system could reduce infections in patients with implanted heart pumps. More details .. Implants could be powered by blood sugar Likewise, after the heart implants,…

• 

  PBJ Breaktime!

• The Latest Operating System Technology Developments

  Visiting Writer

  23 Jan 2012 | 11:27 pm

  Signs are pointing to the release of the Apple software iOS 5 in the next few weeks. Updating to the latest software is often the best option for a company because it allows them to utilise the latest features and implement developments which keep them in line with the competition and, importantly, with their customers. This article will consider the importance of engaging in new software developments for companies hoping to stay on top in this competitive market. Windows 8 The latest version of the windows operating system has been out for some time in beta form and is already in wide use…

• How Can You Do Promotion and Branding With Mobile Marketing and SEO

  Visiting Writer

  21 Jan 2012 | 10:37 pm

  Mobile devices are the most up and coming technology avenue available to online marketers. So the question is – how do you promote your brand with mobile marketing? Ring the Changes Mobile devices are used in an explicitly social way, so the new market is even more focused on social media streams than it used to be. Article submissions might as well be a thing of the past. The future is good, solid social media marketing, gaining influence in the right quarters and allying your brand with powerful figures in social circles apposite to who you are and what you do.  The Mobile App A mobile…

• Volkswagen Manufacturer Will Ignite Customers with Latest Technologies

  Visiting Writer

  14 Jan 2012 | 9:00 pm

  Volkswagen has stepped up to the plate in offering consumers the latest technologies available. The car manufacturer has conducted numerous prototype test drives, technical seminars and more.  Volkswagen has kept families in mind as well as the environment. The following are some of the new technologies that Volkswagen is expected to provide consumers in the near future: 1.      Family Tech What family while traveling has never heard the question of “Are we there yet?” Children have been asking this question since the beginning of time while traveling. Volkswagen hears the suffering…

• Fun Android Coffee Apps for Your Phone

  Visiting Writer

  13 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  With all of the talk about iPhones and Apple, Android users keep wondering “When’s it our turn?” well, for all of the Android coffee drinkers, NOW is your turn. The iPhone is known for its multiple apps, and its loyal customer base. Now, Android is offering up some cute new apps, and coffee drinkers everywhere are going to enjoy these new apps. Perfect Coffee Home brewers rejoice! No longer will laptops need to be drug into the kitchen to look up helpful hints for brewing a great cup of coffee. The Perfect Coffee app allows Android users the ability to brew great coffee without all…

• Online Gift Card Exchanges Offer Consumers Option to Sell Unwanted Gift Cards for Cash

  Visiting Writer

  13 Jan 2012 | 12:11 am

  Spurred on by the success of Black Friday as a shopping holiday, corporations in recent years have taken it upon themselves to amend the holiday calendar with the addition of events bearing catchy names like Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, and Gift Card Weekend, which took place Jan 6 – 8 and gave consumers who received gift cards from participating retailers this holiday season discounts on redemption. While we all realize that these events are merely designed to drive sales, they can also be an opportunity to save for those of us planning to buy anyway. Ok, but what if you’re…

• 

  spruancegroup.com

• A look at Super Bowl ticket prices throughout the years

  Patrick Lefler

  26 Jan 2012 | 5:30 am

  With next week's Super Bowl only ten days away, it is turning out to be one of the most expensive sporting events of all time. According to data from SeatGeek, a website that tracks prices for Super Bowl tickets on the secondary market at sites like StubHub, eBay and the NFL’s Official Ticket Exchange, Super Bowl XLVI has become downright expensive (even by today's standards)--average resale ticket prices for this year’s game exceed $3,100. Here's a nostagic look at the face value ticket prices throughout the years. And if you think that the $10 ticket price for the initial…

• Dynamic pricing and the $135 cab fare

  Patrick Lefler

  18 Jan 2012 | 5:30 am

  I missed this when it came out last week, but Nick Bilton of the New York Times wrote an interesting article on how dynamic pricing—a pricing model where the price rises or falls based on real-time changes in demand—affected users of Uber – the service that allows people to order livery cabs through a smartphone application. Dynamic pricing, long hated (but accepted) by most airline customers for the past two decades is now becoming more common in our everyday lives. And judging by the reaction by Uber’s customers, it still has a long way to go until it is viewed in a…

• Why is this camera priced at $6995?

  Patrick Lefler

  11 Jan 2012 | 5:30 am

  Why is this camera priced at $6995? Because it’s a Leica. In the evolving digital photography industry where premium brands like Nikon and Canon have been forced to discount their high-end cameras in order to survive, Leica stands out. The Leica M9’s $6995 price—and that’s for just the body—is multiples higher than comparable products from both Nikon and Canon. The product description (taken from a real Leica ad) is revealing in that it only highlights a few features; camera type, resolution, CCD size, LCD size, shutter description and color availability. Similar…

• Lessons learned from Verizon's $2 convenience fee fiasco

  Patrick Lefler

  4 Jan 2012 | 5:30 am

  Verizon’s botched $2 “convenience fee” price hike for customers who pay cellphone bills over the phone or on the Internet should serve as the poster child for bad execution of a price hike strategy. Last Thursday’s announcement by Verizon Wireless regarding its intent to charge the fee starting January 15th was immediately lambasted by customers and consumer groups alike. Even the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took notice and issued a statement that, "On behalf of American consumers, we're concerned about Verizon's actions and are looking into the matter."…

• SpruanceQuarterly Fall 2011 has hit the press!

  Patrick Lefler

  22 Dec 2011 | 5:30 am

  The Fall 2011 edition of SpruanceQuarterly has finally hit the press (in the nick of time since winter just arrived). Three articles pertaining to pricing, innovation and leadership. And to our of our loyal readers, we wish you a joyous holiday season and a healthy and prosperous 2012! Pat Lefler & The Spruance Group Price wars are an unwinnable gamble In 1992, American Airline initiated one of the most destructive price wars of all time. Price cuts led to more retaliatory price cuts by industry players. In a short three-month span, US airline companies collectively lost over $1.5…

• 

  Thinking Tech | SmartPlanet

• Does driving make you fat? (infographic)

  Tuan C. Nguyen

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  Data shows that throughout the heavy traffic regions of the U.S., people tended to be heavier.

• Military drone with no human control

  Christie Nicholson

  26 Jan 2012 | 5:03 pm

  The Navy is testing a new unmanned drone that may make lethal decisions based solely on mathematics and sensors.

• Was Steve Jobs the greatest innovator of all time?

  Tuan C. Nguyen

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:14 am

  A recent survey found that one out of four teenagers and young adults consider Steve Jobs the top innovator.

• Video: Solar storm erupts, worried earthlings scramble

  Tuan C. Nguyen

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:25 am

  The biggest solar storm in seven years is reportedly already causing a bit of an air traffic mess.

• NASA video shows global warming is real

  Tuan C. Nguyen

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:09 am

  Since the year 2000, we've experienced nine of the 10 warmest years on record -- and it's about to get even hotter.

• 

  Front End of Innovation Blog

• Video Sneak Peek: FEI Design Track, Smart Design's Sean O'Connor

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:41 am

  Design within the FEI process is helping organizations unlock their innovation potential. Today more than ever, design is working to increase operational efficiencies, improve processes and deliver superior products and services into the marketplace. Design is enabling companies to create better and more meaningful experiences which delivers a competitive edge. Get a sneak peek of what's in store in this preview video from the chair of the Design Track, Smart Design's Sean O'Connor below: Want to see all of the entire sessions? Join Smart Design and hundreds of of leading innovation and…

• Innovation Best Practices from Google, Credit Suisse, IBM, Volkswagen, Nestle, Nokia, BMW and more

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:40 am

  The Front End of Innovation 2012 brings you the cross-industry insights on the topics you need to master to drive profitable innovation in your organization, including: Disruptive Innovation, Integrating Design at the Front End, Reverse Innovation, Megatrends and Technology, Making Innovation Repeatable, Social Media, Sustainability, Open Innovation, and Innovation Management. A Sampling of the 50+ Corporate Case Studies at FEI include:  • IBM The Socially Synergistic Enterprise: Balancing Innovation and External Collaboration to Improve Innovation • Credit Suisse Service Innovation:…

• The top 8 reasons I can’t seem to get anyone else at my company to embrace innovation

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:50 am

  Maybe this rings a bell for you:You want to launch an innovation program at your company but you can’t get any support. I talk all day to people who are interested in innovation.They know in their hearts that embracing innovation is the only way their organizations will flourish.They know the only way their company can compete in the difficult economic climate we face is to adopt an innovative approach.These people I talk to fall in love with the idea of collaborative ideation; assembling all of their smart people while they share ideas and other information of interest.They yearn to allow…

• Special 2012 Alumni-Only Curriculum for Past Front End of Innovation Attendees

  22 Jan 2012 | 11:33 am

  Why should you return to FEI this year? Each year, the Front End of Innovation celebrates the power of collective intelligence by creating an environment that empowers innovators to have the confidence to contribute meaningfully.  No other event exists that attacks present and future challenges through content rich conservations and collaboration. We know you have limited budgets to attend events each year, and want to be respectful of your time and investment. That’s why there are there Are No Repeat Performances. While other events repurpose content and speakers, we ensure fresh new…

• BMW, Adidas, Nestle Discuss Importance of Design at the Front End of Innovation

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:24 am

  Attention Design Industry!  Design is invited to take a prominent seat at the innovation table.   The Front End of Innovation EMEA now includes a 2-day track dedicated to Uniting Design at the Front End.   Design applied to the Front End of Innovation is acting as a therapeutic lens across disparate functions within the organization.  This ultimately leads to a more successful innovation pipeline. If you are responsible for industrial design, product design, user experience design, or design thinking at your organization, this program is designed specifically for…

• 

  Innovation Leadership Network

• Two Great Innovation Misquotes

  Tim

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:36 pm

  Tweet There are two popular quotes that often get used when discussing innovation that were never actually said or written by the people to whom they are attributed. Despite the fact that they are fake quotes, there are still things that we can learn from them. The first common quote is attributed to Henry Ford: If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. This quote usually comes up when people are discussing focus groups, or design-driven innovation. However, there’s no evidence that Ford ever said or wrote it. Even though it’s not a real quote, it…

• Please Reinvent the Wheel

  Tim

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:39 pm

  Tweet How often have you heard someone say something like “No need to reinvent the wheel”? It’s such a common phrase we don’t even think twice when we hear it. The thing is, a lot of the time there is a huge need to reinvent the wheel. If we didn’t reinvent the wheel on a regular basis, we’d be driving using cars, bicycles, wheelchairs, shopping trolleys, vacuum cleaners, and an almost infinite number of other things using wheels that look like this: That wouldn’t be so good. If we never reinvented the wheel, we wouldn’t have things like the…

• Three Signs of Business Model Innovation Opportunities

  Tim

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:40 pm

  Tweet How can you tell when there is an opportunity for business model innovation? Recent events in higher education might give us a good indication. There are a few issues in university education these days. The main one is that education is information based, and over the past 20 years we have seen nearly every single business model based on control of scarce information get disrupted. This has played out dramatically in the U.S.A. recently with the battle over SOPA/PIPA. There are three signs that the business model for higher education provides real innovation opportunities right now.

• Innovation Mistake: Thinking Tools Will Fix Your Problem

  Tim

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:51 am

  Tweet I had lunch a while back with two executives from an organisation that the Business School does a fair bit work with. They wanted to improve innovation and that’s what triggered our meeting. We talked for a couple of hours about what was happening in their organisation. We talked about innovation as a process, the different forms of innovation, incremental versus radical – all the big topics. It seemed like we were making some progress towards figuring out how we might be able to work together. Then at the very end of the lunch, the one that’s actually in charge of…

• Tools Should Be Invisible

  Tim

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:58 am

  Tweet What is the most common mistake that I see when people try to implement management tools or frameworks? By far the most common is mistaking using the tool for getting the outcome you are looking for. I have been doing some consulting work recently where we are using the Business Model Canvas to develop a strategy for an engineering group inside a large organisation. Read my previous post about this for a full description of the project. Today I want to focus on one particular part – the four ideal models that we built, and a tool that we used to conceptualise the models. There are…

• 

  Creative Mind Institute Blog

• A speech given by David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.) at the 2005...

  18 Jan 2012 | 5:23 pm

  A speech given by David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.) at the 2005 Kenyon College commencement ceremony. Great wit and powerful essay on what to think about

• How The Brain Rewires Itself

  17 Jan 2012 | 4:10 pm

  How The Brain Rewires Itself :

• Mind bending electro-classical video: Rob Dougan: Clubbed to...

  16 Jan 2012 | 7:49 pm

  Mind bending electro-classical video: Rob Dougan: Clubbed to Death

• One man’s game changing inspiration from a flight upgrade:...

  30 Dec 2011 | 9:52 am

  One man’s game changing inspiration from a flight upgrade: ultra-hip & affordable hotel rooms designed by aircraft cabin architects complete & Yobots the world’s only robotic luggage concierge

• A beautiful typographical rant by Stephen Frye

  28 Dec 2011 | 9:57 am

  A beautiful typographical rant by Stephen Frye

• 

  The Jazz of Innovation

• The top 8 reasons I can’t seem to get anyone else at my company to embrace innovation

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:59 am

  By Ron Shulkin Maybe this rings a bell for you: You want to launch an innovation program at your company but you can’t get any support. I talk all day to people who are interested in innovation. They know in their hearts that embracing innovation is the only way their organizations will flourish. They know the only way their company can compete in the difficult economic climate we face is to adopt an innovative approach. These people I talk to fall in love with the idea of collaborative ideation; assembling all of their smart people while they share ideas and other information of…

• Why? What If? Why Not? Challenge the norm.

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:15 am

  By Peter Verschuere I’ve always been determined not to lose my creative side, because it's my belief that innovation cannot persist without creativity. If you loose your creativity, you stop to be innovative. Yesterday I've been watching Josh Linkner's keynote on creativity, and I'd like to share it with you because it induces positive vibes and contains some strong and valuable messages: Never cave to your detractors. Sometimes you have to let go in order to seize greatness. Aim for the future. Pursue the unconventional path. Put passion first! (the money will follow). Josh…

• Thoughts on how we collaborate to surface the very best ideas

  17 Jan 2012 | 2:56 am

  By Ron Shulkin Here are some thoughts on contributor’s perceptions when involved in crowd sourcing and collaborations… It is an accepted fact at this point: tapping into the “wisdom of the crowd” or “crowd sourcing” is a great way to get to a reliable set of truths. By asking lots of people what they think about any given challenge, the group, acting as a holistic unit, will generally push the best idea forward. A promoted idea will most often yield the best financial return, offer the best way to answer the challenge at hand and, ultimately point to the…

• Due Diligence on your Idea Management Software Decision

  13 Dec 2011 | 2:45 am

  By Ron Shulkin If you’re about to spend your 2011 on a decision to buy an idea management system, here’s some last minute due diligence questions to ask your software vendor (and yourself) before putting yourself out there with a risk. Enterprise software decisions are always a risk. The good news is that a successful decision can bolster a career. First off, stop thinking of it as an idea management system. Start thinking of it as an Innovation Ecosystem.The new environment is not just to run contests; it’s to assemble all of your smart people in one place in order to…

• The idea management social network

  21 Nov 2011 | 8:42 am

  By Ron Shulkin You may not know it yet, but you want an idea management social network in your organization. If you don’t have one, you may only get an electronic suggestion box, which is really no better than a static list of ideas. And that’s not going to do anyone any good. Idea management social networks need to be transparent, democratic and dynamic. And they ARE social networks (click “Like” if you agree :-) The idea management social network is transparent. There is no anonymity. We’re all responsible for our own actions. This might be painful at first…

• 

  15inno

• Open Innovation in Italy – As Bad as It Gets?

  Stefan Lindegaard

  28 Jan 2012 | 2:43 am

  First, I have to confess that I am a bit skeptical towards Italian business and innovation capabilities beyond high-end clothing and accessories due to several disappointments in the past. It does not help when I look into Telecom Italia and their initiatives on (open) innovation. My first encounter was @NextInnovation, a Twitter account for Next Open Innovation, an open innovation initiative by Telecom Italia. I like to see corporate Twitter accounts and especially when they focus on innovation. Unfortunately, there has been no updates on @NextInnovation since Nov 18 despite the account has…

• Can Asia Beat the Western World on Innovation?

  Stefan Lindegaard

  21 Jan 2012 | 12:03 pm

  My recent blog post, Are Asians Capable of Innovation?, generated lots of comments on my blog and on various LinkedIn groups. A recent comment from Rudolf Kutina went like this (slightly edited): “What you see today is “Just follow the money” strategy, but in 10 years Asians well beat us on innovation and in 20 years they will teach us innovation methodologies. The main reason is that Asians today are managed to be multi-disciplined, while we just try to dive deeper in just one direction. Thus in the long term view our ability to innovate is really limited BY TIME.” As I spend…

• Social Media and Personal / Team Branding for Innovators

  Stefan Lindegaard

  18 Jan 2012 | 2:21 pm

  In my humble opinion, the use of social media and personal branding techniques is a low-hanging fruit for corporate innovators and entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, there is not yet much activity on this. Why do I believe that the use of social media and personal / team branding techniques is important for innovators? Because more than ever, corporate innovators and entrepreneurs need to build strong brands not only around their offerings, but also around their own capabilities. This is important as companies compete to build the strongest innovation ecosystems in order to get better innovation to…

• 5 Ways to Get Better Innovation With Less Money

  Stefan Lindegaard

  17 Jan 2012 | 5:07 am

  A few years back, many companies would simply try to buy their way to innovation success by hiring more people and starting more projects as they were given more money. Things have changed. Corporate innovation units have let go of people and they have scaled down on projects (size as well as number) because they are given less money. This raises a big question. How can we get better innovation with less money? Let’s have a discussion on this. I can start out with five suggestions that can help upgrade the innovation engine without spending too much money. The key is to focus on the most…

• Innovation Update – two jobs, a conference and a book

  Stefan Lindegaard

  16 Jan 2012 | 1:50 pm

  Here you get some updates on the innovation front. Lego and NineSigma have two attractive job openings. They are international jobs based in Denmark. You can read further here: • Senior Manager, Open Innovation at Lego • Senior Sales and Business Development Manager at NineSigma In their 6th year, The Front End of Innovation Europe conference in Zurich on Feb 27-29 continues to be a great place to be inspired on innovation. This year, I look forward to hearing Alexander Osterwalder on business model innovation and lots of corporate speakers. Check this link and get a 20 % discount with…

• 

  I Geek for Creativity

• Creative Response to an Interruption (on YouTube)

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:36 pm

    Instead of an over reaction, why not a creative reaction?  @TweetRightBrain Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• Mindful Curiosity from Where You Stand – Brain Leaders and Learners

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:20 pm

  via brainleadersandlearners.com A curious brain explores discovers invents experiences imagines wonders dreams develops does and enjoys. Is your brain curious? @TweetRightBrain Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• Creativity on Ice (on YouTube)

  21 Jan 2012 | 11:39 pm

  via youtube.com Harbin is one of the coldest cities in China. With a little creativity, it now attracts lots of tourists. Creativity can make the bad, better; and the good, best. @TweetRightBrain Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• The value of quality ideas (on Vimeo)

  21 Jan 2012 | 11:35 pm

  via vimeo.com Good ideas are everywhere. Catch one rather than criticize it. @TweetRightBrain Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• Barack Obama Singing Born This Way by Lady Gaga

  19 Jan 2012 | 3:59 pm

    Good editing is also good creativity.  @TweetRightBrain Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• 

  Technovation Entrepreneur Journal

• EO Charlotte Hosts Lunch Event Featuring Hugh McColl

  Technovation Entrepreneur Journal

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:42 am

  EO Charlotte members Roger Hendrick (l) and Charles Knox (r) with Hugh McColl (c). (Charlotte, N.C.) EO Charlotte, a chapter of the globally recognized Entrepreneurs’ Organization, recently treated members and sponsors to a lunch event at Ruth’s Chris SouthPark featuring candid conversation with banking history-maker and entrepreneur, Hugh McColl. More than 50 chapter members enjoyed great food as they posed a host of diverse questions to Mr. McColl. The setting created a very comfortable atmosphere for EO Charlotte’s business owners to quiz Mr. McColl and glean valuable information…

• Capstone Turbine Receives 1.2MW Order

  Technovation Entrepreneur Journal

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:10 pm

  (Chatsworth, Calif.) Capstone Turbine Corporation (Nasdaq:CPST), the world’s leading clean-technology manufacturer of microturbine energy systems, has received an order for a C1000 and C200 for use at a large Nigerian pharmaceutical company. The order comes on the heels of a meeting with a delegation of the Nigerian government and business leaders led by the United States Ambassador to Nigeria on December 14th to discuss how expanding the number of Capstone microturbines in Nigeria can grow the country’s economy. “The meeting was a big success as indicated by this…

• Cannabis Science Updates Photographs from 3rd Cancer Patient

  Technovation Entrepreneur Journal

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:02 pm

  (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Cannabis Science, Inc. (OTCBB: CBIS.OB) a pioneering U.S. biotech company developing pharmaceutical cannabis (marijuana) products, is pleased to announce new remarkable photographic updates of the 3rd cancer patient, with treatment-resistant squamous cell carcinoma on his head. Cannabis Science has been working with a number of self-medicated skin cancer patients, who are using cannabis-based extracts. Today Cannabis Science receives the latest photographs for the 3rd self-administering cancer patient, mentioned in the previous news release dated, January 11, 2012.

• New Mustard Tree Verifier™ Process System 1000 Brings Radical Change to In-Process Materials Testing

  Technovation Entrepreneur Journal

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:53 am

  (Research Triangle Park, N.C.) Mustard Tree Instruments®, continuing to lead the way in developing innovative solutions to evolving manufacturing challenges, has added to its game-changing toolset for pharmaceutical and chemical applications.  Agile, sensitive chemical identification and composition testing of raw and blended materials can now be done online with the brand-new Verifier Process System 1000 (VPS-1000). Tough and powerful, yet about the size of laptop, the VPS-1000 is specifically designed to fit in the most compact processing locations for real-time testing of liquids,…

• Bioheart Partners With Stemlogix to Offer Products to the Veterinary Market

  Technovation Entrepreneur Journal

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:48 am

  (Sunrise, Fla.) Bioheart, Inc. (BHRT.OB), a company focused on developing stem cell therapies for heart disease announced that they have entered into an agreement with Stemlogix, LLC, a veterinary regenerative medicine company, to provide additional cellular products and services to the veterinary market. Under the agreement, the companies will offer culture expanded bone marrow and adipose stem cells for use in animals with degenerative diseases or acute injuries. In addition, veterinary patients will have the option to bank their stem cells for future use. Bioheart’s president and…

• 

  desai.com

• Example of Innovation using Crowdsourcing in Biology

  Jatin DeSai

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:29 am

  Cathal Garvey’s home laboratory in Cork, Ireland, is filled with makeshift equipment. His incubator for bacteria is an old Styrofoam shipping box with a heating mat and thermometer that he has modified into a thermostat. He uses a pressure cooker to sterilize instead of an autoclave. Some instruments are fashioned from coffee cans. One of the movement’s rallying points is Genspace, a nonprofit laboratory in Brooklyn that is open to members of the public, regardless of scientific background. Since it opened in 2010, on the seventh floor of an old bank building, similar labs have…

• Medical Robots are coming

  Jatin DeSai

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:42 am

  RAVENS have a bad reputation. Medieval monks, who liked to give names to everything (even things that did not need them), came up with “an unkindness” as the collective noun for these corvids. Blake Hannaford and his colleagues at the University of Washington, in Seattle, however, hope to change the impression engendered by the word. They are about to release a flock of medical robots with wing-like arms, called Ravens, in the hope of stimulating innovation in the nascent field of robotic surgery. Robot-assisted surgery today is dominated by the da Vinci Surgical System, a device…

• YouTube Invests $100 Million In Original Programming

  Jatin DeSai

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:37 am

  Google's YouTube plans to invest $100 million in professional production companies producing YouTube-only content beginning this month. Premiering Monday, Young Hollywood takes place on the ninth floor of the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. The show's creators will produce programming for viewing on mobile devices, computers and Internet-connected TVs. YouTube VP of Global Content Robert Kyncl announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) the first wave of YouTube channels from artists like CSI creator Anthony Zuiker and Deepak Chopra. Within a few years, online video will contribute…

• A Geek’s Guide to China’s Silicon Valley

  Jatin DeSai

  9 Jan 2012 | 11:12 am

  Twenty years ago, Zhongguancun was but farming fields and small houses, far from the city center of Beijing. The ‘cun’ at the end of Zhongguancun literally means “village.” As with much else in China, the change has come lightening fast. High-tech companies in China (credit: TechCrunch) Today, Zhongguancun is China’s closest equivalent to Silicon Valley. It’s host to electronics super malls, research centers, publicly-listed tech giants, and hundreds of startups. During my walk to work between twenty-story office towers, it’s hard to imagine this land…

• Get your workers to embrace social innovation

  Jatin DeSai

  4 Jan 2012 | 10:08 am

  The McKinsey Institute published the results of their fifth annual survey on how organizations use social technologies, it surveyed 4,200 executives to understand the developments and progress throughout the years and benefits of these social technology applications. They are being deployed for the purpose of process enhancements and operations. Secondly they’re being used to find new growth opportunities. Surprisingly, a large percentage of organizations did not maintain the benefits of using social technologies that they had achieved earlier. Companies use social technologies to drive…

• 

  The Extra Piece of Chicken

• Tide Rolls On

  admin

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:43 am

  Tide has been an iconic, trusted brand for 60 years. Now, the power of the brand has lent itself to a new chain of franchises and a brilliant new way for Procter & Gamble to expand the Tide name. Tide Dry Cleaners illustrates the power of a brand and its ability to expand into new channels. Its the same Tide you’ve trusted at home now blended with the service of a neighborhood dry cleaners. Not only do they make your clothes brighter, as their website puts it, they now make your day brighter. How can your brand promise extend in to new channels?

• Murder She Wrote

  admin

  21 Dec 2011 | 12:26 pm

  Consumer’s know when you’re selling them. Putting things on sale, making a direct attack on your competitor; consumers are getting tired of the same old approach and it doesn’t create a true relationship with the consumer. How can you take selling to a different level and really engage your consumer? Instead of a typical jewelry sale, Stephen Webster created an in-store experience. With a Murder She Wrote theme Stephen Webster got people in to the store through an event with the primary purpose being engagement. There was the appearance of foul play (a gentleman with a stiletto wound to…

• Krackie Kreme!

  admin

  13 Dec 2011 | 9:08 am

  Krispy Kreme is of course known for their doughnuts and if I told you they sprinkled a little crack in them, you couldn’t argue with me—because they are SO delicious – well – They don’t. They are also known for their decor which was standardized in the 1960s. Their green roof and red-glazed brick exterior are iconic but the centerpiece of each store is the large viewing window which reveals doughnuts in production.   As consumers watch the doughnuts travel along an overhead conveyor belt, they become a part of the doughnut-making experience. It becomes more than a…

• Holly Jolly All Year Round

  admin

  29 Nov 2011 | 6:34 am

  Consumers are keeping a closer eye on their finances this year as we head in to the holiday season.  They will do anything for deals these days and that doesn’t necessarily mean waiting until Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) to purchase all those presents. Holiday shopping is now a year round online endeavor for a lot of people. According to Google over 1/3 of consumers started their e-holiday shopping in May. Free shipping and prompt delivery services are helping consumers feel more confident about online purchases. It also helps consumer buy immediately instead of waiting in line and…

• I Got a Need for Speed

  admin

  23 Nov 2011 | 8:51 am

  A lot is getting thrown at today’s consumer – new products, constant messaging and new promotions. How can you break through the clutter? Consumers are looking for products and experiences that mean more and push their personal boundaries and expectations. Apple pushed consumer boundaries with expression-enabling in our tech devices. Pull-In engages consumers in the process of picking out underwear. And the Mario Andretti Racing Experience offers consumers an experience they’ll never forget and maybe more than that, a memory they thought they’d never experience. Companies that…

• 

  Paul4innovating's Blog

• Innovation jobs-to-be-done

  paul4innovating

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:23 am

  I tend to not like offering up checklists as blog posts, you know those one hundred and one ideas for this or that, although I have to admit I like collecting them as a kick-starting resource. Today I decided to change my mind, Why? Well I think those of us involved in innovation need to keep reminding ourselves to not just work on the days problem that is in front of us but to ‘move along’ all the others, so this is my innovation jobs-to-be-done list that clients and consultants need to work upon. Also these do build towards a possible Chief  Innovation Officer’s agenda…

• Those disruptive moments when you simply need to let go

  paul4innovating

  23 Jan 2012 | 5:45 am

  Emotional attachment prompts some incredibly strong bonds, a host of clear affections and different reactions when it comes to our favourite brands or products. When something suddenly ‘disrupts’ this, it triggers a set of mixed emotions that shakes you and stirs up different feelings that take some time to re-order in your mind. I try to seek understanding and then simply have to let go, even when they so often staring you in the face. Sometimes you still don’t want to finally let go until you are ‘hit’ by such a disruptive event. The recent Kodak moment is one of those One of…

• Shoring up the fragile innovation system, call GE

  paul4innovating

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Well, the World Economic forum’s annual meeting is beckoning later this month. During the period of 25th to 29th January the WEF attempts to engage business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.( http://www.weforum.org/) Just released on 18th January is the GE Global Innovation Barometer with its results of its second annual review on innovation. Here is the source site to check out and explore your own needs : http://www.ge.com/innovationbarometer/ The aim of the release is to use this and have this available for the meeting in…

• A Business Model Canvas Set to Explode

  paul4innovating

  13 Jan 2012 | 9:16 am

  I’d just finished a workshop on Business Model Canvas about gaining clarity in large organizations, when suddenly the flood gates seem to have opened up a day or so later, for me to see beyond and piece more of it together in my mind. After swirling around in this maelstrom of articles, tweets, new publishing, advanced announcements I had to gain some high ground to recover my breath and think a little more. Catching my breath, here is my clarity take and prediction for the BMC. Ignoring lots of early warning signs Maybe I should have seen this coming earlier but sometimes you hear a…

• For whom the bell tolls

  paul4innovating

  9 Jan 2012 | 10:35 am

  I read two short articles over this weekend. One was entitled “Avoiding Innovation’s Terrible Toll” written by Spencer E Ante, published in the Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/zJ9IIT ) and the other by Jeffrey Phillips “When executives talk about innovation, watch out” in his innovate on purpose blog here (http://bit.ly/wpaqWu) I felt the heavy sound of the bells tolling away coming through both articles and it reminded me of For Whom the Bell Tolls a famous novel by Ernest Hemingway. The first was the sad demises of Kodak If you have not seen the day of Revolution in a small…

• 

  affinnova.com

• The Yin and Yang of Research Gamification

  Tamara Barber

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:17 pm

  Bernie Malinoff of Element54 presented on the “Yin and Yang of Gamification” at yesterday’s NetGain 6.0. Here’s a recap:  Most online surveys are boring. Survey grids are toxic for consumers and addictive for researchers. The first step, according to Bernie, is accepting that we have a problem! In the era of the market research technology space race, there are a lot of shiny new technology toys that are tempting to use. But, says Bernie, it's one thing to embrace new technology; it's another to know how and when to use it.  For example, just because you can…

• Recommendations for Effective & Ethical Passive Data Management

  Jeffrey Henning

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:36 am

  Here are opening statements from a discussion on research ethics and privacy at Online Research Methods in London this morning. (Quotes should be considered paraphrases.) Arno Hummerston of Nurago: “Two main things that worry me: the first one is cookie legislation. I’m flabbergasted with how little people seem to be taking cookie legislation seriously, and I don’t see or hear anything about it, especially in the research industry. I did a straw poll in my company and got a resounding silence on the impact for research. Its unbelievable to me that people aren’t…

• Building and Managing Compelling Online Communities

  Jeffrey Henning

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:03 am

  Paul Child of Join the Dots presented an EasyJet case study at the Online Research Methods conference this morning in London. He began by quoting Claude Debussey: “Music is the space between the notes.” Similarly, a community is much more than the topics or questions you ask.  Communities of course are more than just asking questions: there’s deduction, observation and projection. For EasyJet, communities are part of a larger landscape of research. Join the Dots works with other agencies used by EasyJet to make connections between community insights and other data: CRM…

• Using Biometrics in Market Research

  Tamara Barber

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  Indivar (Indy) Kushari of Ipsos ASI presented “The Lizard Made You Do It! Uncovering Our Response To Ads Using Biometrics” at NetGain 6.0. Here’s a recap: The lizard brain references our primitive brain, where our emotions live. Everything we do depends on the emotions that a stimulus generates. The difference between emotion and reason, according to neurologist Donald B. Caine: “emotion leads to action, while reason leads to conclusions.” Ninety five percent of brain processing occurs below conscious awareness, and what we say in terms of how we feel about a…

• Riding the Change Wave: Architecting Research for the Future

  Tamara Barber

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:34 am

  Lenny Murphy of GreenBook kicked off today’s 6th Annual MRIA NetGain Conference, with his view of the future of market research. Here’s a recap: From the book Leading Edge Market Research, published by Simon Chadwick and Ian Lewis, the new role of market research will have four parts: Consult, Synthesize, Tell a Story, Take a Stand. Currently, says Lenny, companies don't see this happening in the industry, citing insights leaders at leaders at PepsiCo, P&G, Coca-Cola, and Millward Brown. Along with new technologies and the demand for cheaper, faster, better results, the…

• 

  The 90% Rule Network

• The trail of clown-faced shopping bags

  John Paulo cardoso

  16 Jan 2012 | 9:07 am

  As a young boy and a new comer to Canada living south of Mirvish Village, I remember following the trail of shoppers coming down Markham Street with their clown faced shopping bags, and was lead to the ultimate Toronto shopping experience – Honest Ed’s. Honest Ed’s featured value priced products and merchandize in a kitschy and nostalgic circus theme with a huge sign encompassing an entire city block made up of about 23,000 light bulbs and catchy slogans such as, “Come in and get lost!” and “Only the floors are crooked!” The inside of the store reminds us of a time before the…

• Examples that show innovation can be easy

  Ken Tencer

  5 Jan 2012 | 10:25 am

  Originally published as a Special to Globe and Mail Update, January 4, 2012 Image from a Shreddies campaign in 2008 When I ask business owners and managers about innovation, many of them talk about ideas they have percolating but they have never pursued. They’re too busy fighting front-burner issues to think about anything new. But if innovation is going to be a source of new products and revenues, I have three words for you, from one of the world’s most innovative companies: Just Do It. t’s as simple as that. Innovation is about bringing ideas to market rather than letting them…

• Make yourself obsolete, or someone else will

  Ken Tencer

  7 Dec 2011 | 2:00 pm

  by Ken Tencer Originally published as a Special to Globe and Mail Update, Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2011 With Dyson’s new bladeless fans, generation of kids will be denied the chance to stick pencils through screens to see what happens when they touch fast-spinning blades. For any other reason, you have to love the British-based company because its innovations are so obvious yet so breakthrough. Safe, bladeless fans that move air without all the rumbling and rattling. Technology patterned after jet engines. Dual-cyclonic vacuums that suck up more dirt, more efficiently. Airport hand driers that…

• Innovation Insight: You Don’t Have To Be an Inventor to Be an Innovator

  Ken Tencer

  1 Dec 2011 | 12:19 pm

  One of a series by Ken Tencer, Spyder Works CEO Many people confuse the words innovator and inventor; they can be synonymous, but they don’t have to be. Some of the world’s most successful and well known innovators aren’t inventors at all; they are masters of the art of taking an idea or concept and making it better. Often, they are able to make good ideas into the best ideas of all time. Take Steve Jobs, for example. Famous author, Malcom Gladwell, has dubbed him, “The Tweaker” in a recent article he wrote for The New Yorker. Jobs was a masterful innovator because he was able…

• Innovation Insight: If I Wanted to Be a Lawyer, I Would’ve Gone to Law School

  Ken Tencer

  21 Nov 2011 | 6:28 am

  One of a series by Ken Tencer, Spyder Works CEO Once every quarter, I receive a beautiful invitation from my company’s law firm to attend a seminar to learn some important new fact about changes in the law. I never go. Once every quarter, I receive a beautiful invitation from my accounting firm to learn something new about sales, marketing or motivation. I almost never miss it. I applaud both firms’ efforts to engage their clients, but in this world of information overload, it’s more important than ever to engage in meaningful conversation with your customers. Service providers add…

• 

  Conquering Innovation Fatigue: Helping Inventors, Entrepreneurs and Leaders Find Innovation Success

• Innovation Through Crowdsourcing: Congratulations to “All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.”

  Jeff Lindsay

  18 Jan 2012 | 7:37 pm

  Contests can be one of the most interesting innovation tools. With the right challenge and incentives, creative groups from across the world can help invent and innovate rapidly. The creativity of crowds fueled by a content was just demonstrated in the Shredder Challenge contest that was launched October 2011 by the U.S. government’s DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). DARPA wanted to know what could be achieved with computer tools in reassembling shredded documents to recover the originals. Since many different approaches were possible, this was an excellent…

• Chinese Auto Innovation Rolling Westward

  Jeff Lindsay

  15 Jan 2012 | 10:14 pm

  The impact of innovation in China is often not obvious to the West, even when many gadgets like the iPhone draw upon innovations from China and Taiwan that make many Western products possible. Not many Chinese brands have spread outside the borders of China, leading some observers to question the significance of Chinese innovation in full-fledged products and not just components or manufacturing methods. China is just beginning to learn how to develop brands that will succeed in the West. The apparent dearth of brand-based innovation from China should change in the coming decade. Some of the…

• First, Align All the Lawyers

  Jeff Lindsay

  3 Jan 2012 | 7:41 pm

  Many companies seeking innovation overlook their own internal barriers to innovation success. One of the biggest barriers can be their own attorneys. Lawyers are needed for many aspects of innovation, such as drafting the agreements with partners in open innovation and protecting IP with patents, trademarks, and other intellectual assets. The skill of a good lawyer who understands the business and its needs will often make the difference between success and disaster. But frequently non-lawyers fail to recognize how broad the spectrum of lawyer quality is and how non-standardized and diverse…

• Another Invisible Chinese Company: Lenovo

  Jeff Lindsay

  8 Dec 2011 | 1:47 am

  Following up on the mind-numbing failure of Thompson-Reuters to include ANY Chinese or Taiwanese company on their list of the 100 Top Global Innovators, let me mention one more that should be there: Lenovo. This Chinese multinational company had 402 US patents granted from 2005 to 2010, well above the numbers obtained by some other companies on the TR list supposedly based on patent activity. They have international scope and are now the world’s 2nd largest maker of personal computers. Annual sales are over $20 billion. This puts them above many of the less-known companies on the TR…

• It’s Worse Than I Thought: Update on Invisible Innovation in China and Taiwan

  Jeff Lindsay

  23 Nov 2011 | 10:24 pm

  In my recent post, “Invisible Innovation: The Blindness of the West to China’s Innovation Story,” I lamented the failure of the Thompson Reuters list of 100 top global innovators to include anything from China (and Taiwan). In that post, I erred in stating that Foxconn’s 700+ US patents in the 2005-2010 time period for the TR study was greater than some of the companies that made the list. The error is that I should also have added Foxconn’s patent company to the search. By searching for “Hon Hai Precision” or Foxconn, I now see that we’re dealing…

• 

  Game Changer

• 3 cognitive limits we must overcome to think differently

  Jorge

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:13 pm

  Expertise is the enemy of innovation right? Yes, but even experts can think differently. And there’s much to learn from them on how they are able to overcome their ‘know-it-all’ tendencies. Indeed, research into expertise and expert performance explains how great strategists use mental frames to break cognitive barriers that prevent others from seeing new options. It is not just that experts know more about the problem—in fact they often know less—but they think differently. They restructure, reorganize, and refine their representation of knowledge so as to more…

• Why creating new categories is so successful

  Jorge

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:02 am

  Creating a new category. The Holy Grail of Innovation. The Holy Grail of entrepreneurs. It’s when you can create a new category that you command the skies. Think of the iPad. Is it a new category? It is. But not because people think it is, but because Apple defined it as such. Experts characterized the iPad as a tablet, but customers did not. That’s all that matters. Other examples of category creation exist. For example Gatorade created the sports drink category. Chrysler created the minivan. Toyota created the Prius. Each had a good amount of time before any competitor entered…

• Innovation posts of the week: The Genius behind “Genius Lunches”

  Jorge

  22 Jan 2012 | 4:59 am

  Flipping Orthodoxies: Overcoming Insidious Obstacles to Innovation – Monitor The Surprising Benefits of Solitude – HBR What is the definition of “innovation”? by @ovoinnovation How Apple Disrupts Markets and then Goes on to Dominate by @timkastelle and @digitaltonto Why Is Diversity Vital For Innovation? – Forbes The genius behind “Genius Lunches” – Salon Related Posts Innovation posts of the week: Unpredictability is the new consistency Innovation posts of the week: 10 common innovation blunders Innovation posts of the week: What is a culture…

• How are you over-delivering?

  Jorge

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:02 pm

  It’s a well known principle: Under promise. Over-deliver. But it’s far from common to see it actually applied. I have a client who just expanded it’s business to Tijuana. They are in 3 other states within Mexico and they’ve grown quite fast for a young company (4 years old). But their expansion to Tijuana has yet to pay off. And it’s getting dicey as customers have been leaving. They brought me in to investigate why and develop ways to turn this around. I’ve spent the last month or so practically living their business. Experiencing what they and how they do…

• This week’s innovation posts worthy of your attention: Do innovation Consultants Kill Innovation?

  Jorge

  15 Jan 2012 | 5:31 am

  Great Products Are Nice. But Great Businesses Add Services To Them – FastCoDesign Don’t Relax Constraints, Embrace Them -  Forbes Don’t Think Different, Think About Different Things – HBR Multiple Use of the Business Model Canvas by @paul4innovating Four Ways You Can Be More Innovative by @timkastelle Should Innovation be “professionalized” by @ovoinnovation   Related Posts Innovation posts worthy of your attention this week: Innovation is Impossible Innovation posts of the week: 5 types of people that kill innovation Innovation posts of the week: #1…

• 

  Innovation Leadership Network

• Two Great Innovation Misquotes

  Tim

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:36 pm

  Tweet There are two popular quotes that often get used when discussing innovation that were never actually said or written by the people to whom they are attributed. Despite the fact that they are fake quotes, there are still things that we can learn from them. The first common quote is attributed to Henry Ford: If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. This quote usually comes up when people are discussing focus groups, or design-driven innovation. However, there’s no evidence that Ford ever said or wrote it. Even though it’s not a real quote, it…

• Please Reinvent the Wheel

  Tim

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:39 pm

  Tweet How often have you heard someone say something like “No need to reinvent the wheel”? It’s such a common phrase we don’t even think twice when we hear it. The thing is, a lot of the time there is a huge need to reinvent the wheel. If we didn’t reinvent the wheel on a regular basis, we’d be driving using cars, bicycles, wheelchairs, shopping trolleys, vacuum cleaners, and an almost infinite number of other things using wheels that look like this: That wouldn’t be so good. If we never reinvented the wheel, we wouldn’t have things like the…

• Three Signs of Business Model Innovation Opportunities

  Tim

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:40 pm

  Tweet How can you tell when there is an opportunity for business model innovation? Recent events in higher education might give us a good indication. There are a few issues in university education these days. The main one is that education is information based, and over the past 20 years we have seen nearly every single business model based on control of scarce information get disrupted. This has played out dramatically in the U.S.A. recently with the battle over SOPA/PIPA. There are three signs that the business model for higher education provides real innovation opportunities right now.

• Innovation Mistake: Thinking Tools Will Fix Your Problem

  Tim

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:51 am

  Tweet I had lunch a while back with two executives from an organisation that the Business School does a fair bit work with. They wanted to improve innovation and that’s what triggered our meeting. We talked for a couple of hours about what was happening in their organisation. We talked about innovation as a process, the different forms of innovation, incremental versus radical – all the big topics. It seemed like we were making some progress towards figuring out how we might be able to work together. Then at the very end of the lunch, the one that’s actually in charge of…

• Tools Should Be Invisible

  Tim

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:58 am

  Tweet What is the most common mistake that I see when people try to implement management tools or frameworks? By far the most common is mistaking using the tool for getting the outcome you are looking for. I have been doing some consulting work recently where we are using the Business Model Canvas to develop a strategy for an engineering group inside a large organisation. Read my previous post about this for a full description of the project. Today I want to focus on one particular part – the four ideal models that we built, and a tool that we used to conceptualise the models. There are…

• 

  URENIO Watch

• Green Traffic Management

  George Martinidis

  26 Jan 2012 | 5:57 am

  “THE ISSUE” (Traffic Health Environment Intelligent Solutions Sustaining Urban Economies) is a new EU-funded project that aims to deliver green traffic management systems in European cities and towns. The implementation of this project brings together research clusters from five... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit URENIO website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• ICF top Seven Intelligent Communities of 2012

  Margarita Angelidou

  19 Jan 2012 | 1:55 am

  The Intelligent Community Forum just named its 2012 Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the year in Honolulu, Hawaii. The ICF’s Top Seven are communities that provide a model of economic and social development in the 21st Century using information and communications technology to power growth,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit URENIO website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• The Top 10 Smart Cities On The Planet

  Margarita Angelidou

  18 Jan 2012 | 3:59 am

  Boyd Cohen, LEED AP, climate strategist, presents a ranking of the world’s smartest cities, from New York to Hong Kong. Pundits and industry insiders expect smart cities to become a sizable market, with projections of nearly $40 billion spent on smart-cities technologies by 2016. And real estate... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit URENIO website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Call for Papers: Smart Applications for Smart Cities

  Nicos Komninos

  16 Jan 2012 | 12:38 pm

  The Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research is planning a special issue on Smart Applications for Smart Cities: New Approaches to Innovation. The aim of the issue is to gather original papers on truly smart cities, driven by bottom up initiatives of citizens and... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit URENIO website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Workshop on Intelligent Transportation Systems

  George Martinidis

  14 Jan 2012 | 3:58 pm

  An ICT workshop on the intelligent governance of large urban system was held recently in Dubai, by EPFL Middle East, a unit of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. This was the first in a series of planned workshops on the topic, and it provided an overview of the management and governance of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit URENIO website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 

  Innovation Management » Doug Collins

• Applying Collaborative Innovation to Design Thinking

  Doug Collins

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:35 am

  “Innovate or die” becomes the order of the day. People in response seek ways to innovate. Of late, many have embraced the practice of collaborative innovation, with its application of social media to sourcing crowds and ideas, and design thinking, with its structured approach to vetting hypotheses about new business opportunities. Having arrived in the organization by different routes, they exist as potential complements. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores ways to combine the practices to their mutual benefit.

• Sourcing Crowds for Out of the Box Ideas

  Doug Collins

  10 Jan 2012 | 10:24 am

  People who practice collaborative innovation at times seek out of the box ideas for a given challenge. In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins applies work from Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman by way of offering insights on selecting crowds that can achieve novelty.

• Engaging Collaborative Innovation’s Losers

  Doug Collins

  27 Dec 2011 | 2:00 am

  Change benefits some more than others. The practice of collaborative innovation, which by design offers transformative change, is no different. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins advises campaign teams on engaging people who find themselves on the losing end of the practice. Ignoring their concerns jeopardizes the initiative.

• Moving from the Front to the Back End of Innovation: Idea Evaluation

  Doug Collins

  13 Dec 2011 | 7:01 am

  People who practice collaborative innovation learn how to craft a series of engagements where participants can see the whole—the whole problem and the whole set of potential solutions—in order to reach a shared understanding of the way forward. In articulating the way forward, idea by idea, the group commits to a larger strategic intent. In this article, I describe a way in which practitioners can craft an engagement in which participants can reach a shared understanding of which ideas to pursue from the front to the back end of innovation.

• Bringing Your Balanced Scorecard Alive with Collaborative Innovation

  Doug Collins

  29 Nov 2011 | 7:07 am

  Robert Kaplan and David Norton popularized the Balanced Scorecard twenty years ago. Its simple, visual framework helps organizations depict linked sets of goals that define strategy. Today, with new mindsets, practices, and technologies, people have more opportunities to engage in helping their organizations envision the future. The scorecard, however, can at times seem like an Easter Island statue, offering mute, impenetrable witness to firm performance. In this article Doug Collins explores opportunities for people to bring alive the scorecard by applying the practice of collaborative…

• 

  Linda Bernardi - DISRUPT | INNOVATE | LEAD

• Easy to Be a “NaySayer and a Skeptic”, Right?

  Kimberly

  25 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  Image credit: Dilbert.com “ …Innovate? You must be kidding. My company does not allow us to ‘just innovate’.” “I am closely watched here to do what I was hired to do and that is it.” “We don’t have a culture of innovation here . Inspired? No. This is my job, not my hobby, so of [...]

• The Iron Lady: Have things really changed?

  Kimberly

  23 Jan 2012 | 1:00 am

  Dear readers in the US and Europe (specially the UK), for the next few moments please let’s not worry about what our political views may be about Margaret Thatcher, whether we like or dislike her or if we agreed then or now with her politics, but let’s look at Margaret as a female. In the [...]

• Seriously, Where Are the Women Keynote Speakers?

  Kimberly

  9 Jan 2012 | 12:44 pm

  Happy Twenty Twelve everyone. What a great year 2012 is shaping up to be. For me the most distinguishing element is the huge amount of positive energy I am feeling from everyone around me, combined with a sense of massive optimism…. Energy is boundless right now. However, I am still amazed every time I look [...]

• Year in Reflection

  Kimberly

  21 Dec 2011 | 12:00 am

  Dear fellow readers and bloggers, what an insane year 2011 has been. Ever year has highs and lows and highlights. But this year has been a bit different. In a course of a year, countries have ousted monarchs and leaders and social transparency is growing by leaps and bounds. But 2011 has also been a [...]

• The Democratization of Leadership

  Kimberly

  19 Dec 2011 | 2:00 am

  I have rarely been as excited as I am this very moment about all the changes taking place in corporations and enterprises of all sizes around the world. By that I mean the “ Democratization of Leadership”. What inspired me to write ProVoke was to provoke my readers globally about the fact that disruption is [...]

• 

  Daily Disruption

• GoPro Welcomes Olympic and X Games Multi-Gold Medalist, Shaun White to Snow Team

  info@dailydisruption.com (Daily Disruption)

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:32 pm

    Daily Disruption News Desk | @dailydisrupt | January 27th, 2012 GoPro, maker of the world’s most versatile cameras and producer of some of today’s most engaging sports programming,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Spark Capital Announces Promotion of Mo Koyfman to General Partner

  info@dailydisruption.com (Daily Disruption)

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:16 pm

    Daily Disruption News Desk | @dailydisrupt | January 27th, 2012 Spark Capital (http://www.sparkcapital.com/) today announced the promotion of Mo Koyfman to general partner. Koyfman,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Microsoft Imagine Cup Grants Awarded to Students to Help Create Businesses and Nonprofits Aimed at Global Change

  info@dailydisruption.com (Daily Disruption)

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:18 pm

    Daily Disruption News Desk | @dailydisrupt | January 27th, 2012 At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting today in Davos, Switzerland, Microsoft Corp. announced the winners of the... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Dan Latendre’s IGLOO Software Raises $5 Million in Series B Funding

  info@dailydisruption.com (Daily Disruption)

  27 Jan 2012 | 12:20 pm

    Daily Disruption News Desk | @dailydisrupt | January 27th, 2012 IGLOO Software, a leading provider of social business softwarein the cloud, has announced that it has received $5... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• MacWorld | iWorld Update: Mobile App Developer i4software™ Aims To Reinvent The Video Camera

  info@dailydisruption.com (Daily Disruption)

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:14 am

    Daily Disruption News Desk | @dailydisrupt | January 27th, 2012 Mobile app developer i4software™ has potentially reinvented the Video Camera—This all-in-one application allows users... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]