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March 24, 2006

March 24 innovation linkage

A secret plan by McKinsey consultants to infiltrate Google? [Gautam Ghosh]
Why is innovation such a hot topic? [Irving Wladawsky-Berger]
Post-Cluetrain: the pinko marketing manifesto [Horse Pig Cow]
Manufacturing myopia [Strategy + Business, sub req]
"A Whole New Mind" author Dan Pink inspires a rap song [Tom Peters blog]
Disruptive jet travel [Clayton Christensen's Innoblog]
Multitasking makes us stupid? [Creating Passionate Users]
A concert and film performance where data is the star [Information Aesthetics]

[image: Alejandro Xul Solar, Ciudá y abismos]

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10 emerging technologies you should know about

The MIT Technology Review has published a comprehensive review of 10 emerging technologies that are being used to, among other things, detect cancer, cure schizophrenia, avoid wireless traffic jams, and create a safer Internet. If you want to get up to speed on biotech and nanotech, this is a good place to start. Of the 10 technologies profiled, at least six have a strong "biotech" or "nanotech" flavor to them: epigenetics; nuclear reprogramming (this is not what it sounds like - it refers to embryonic stem cells); diffusion tensor imaging; comparative interactomics; nanobiomechanics; and nanomedicine.

As an aside, it looks like the MIT Technology Review website has undergone a bit of a re-design since I last visited. If you check out the top of the page, technologies are now grouped into four major "channels": infotech; nanotech; biotech; and something called "biztech" - a fact that perhaps explains why there's such a heavy weighting toward nano- and bio- in the magazine's review of 10 hot new emerging technologies. I'm not sure exactly what "biztech" refers to - there appears to be a hodgepodge of articles about high-tech weaponry; software patents; and NASA. Anybody else have a handle on what "biztech" means? I assumed it meant something like "high tech for business," but I guess I'm wrong.

UPDATE: The direct link to Technology Review's "Emerging Technologies Report" can be found here.

Tags: technology MIT innovation nanotech biotech

[image: MIT Technology Review]

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When people take intellectual property too seriously

Mother Jones has an amusing feature this month called Intellectual Property Run Amok, which lists examples of extreme steps that people and corporations have gone to in order to protect their intellectual property. Here are a few highlights (or lowlights, if you prefer):

* IN 1982, Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti told Congress that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.”

* AMONG THE 16,000 people thus far sued for sharing music files was a 65-year-old woman who, though she didn’t own downloading software, was accused of sharing 2,000 songs, including Trick Daddy’s “I’m a Thug.” She was sued for up to $150,000 per song.

* TO PREVENT PIRACY of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a Montreal cineplex monitored audiences with metal detectors and night-vision goggles and checked popcornfor video cameras.

* NINETY-ONE pending trademarks bear Donald Trump’s name, including “Donald J. Trump the Fragrance” and “Trump’s Golden Lager.” He failed to trademark the phrase “You're fired.”

* A FRENCH DIRECTOR had to pay $1,300 after a character in his film whistled the communist anthem, “The Internationale,” without permission.

* MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’s estate charges academic authors $50 for each sentence of the “I Have a Dream” speech that they reprint.

Oh, and if you squint really close, you can see in the attached graphic (from Headcase Design) that a flying panda is attacking a bikini-clad wrestler. Apparently, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) forced the World Wrestling Federation (alas, also WWF) to change its name to World Wrestling Entertainment in an effort to keep the public from mixing up pandas and wrestlers.

Tags: intellectualproperty IP

[image: Mother Jones]

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Technology Innovation Awards 2006

The Wall Street Journal is now accepting nominees for its Technology Innovation Awards 2006:

"In today's competitive business environment, it's more important than ever to discover and nurture new ideas. That's why The Wall Street Journal's three global editions are presenting the Technology Innovation Awards. We're looking for technological breakthroughs in such areas as medicine, software, hardware, the Internet, wireless and broadcasting. Innovations can be in the form of new products, patents, inventions or services."

As the Wall Street Journal explains, these need to be breakthrough, disruptive innovations: "Innovations should break with conventional processes and should go beyond marginal improvements in existing products and services. An innovation does not have to be commercially viable..." Last year's top three winners were: 454 Life Sciences (low-cost gene sequencing); Ecology Coatings (environmentally friendly coatings); and Alien Technology (manufacturing process that reduces cost of RFID tags).

Anyway, if you think your business has what it takes, the deadline for entries is Friday, June 9.

Tags: technology innovation WallStreetJournal

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The Innovation Strategies Summit

Chuck Frey of the Innovation Weblog recently alerted his readers about the Innovation Strategies Summit taking place May 10-11 at the Indian Lakes Resort, Chicago, Illinois. The event, which is sponsored by The Strategy Institute, will feature a number of speakers from FORTUNE 500 companies, such as Ron Volpe (Director Customer Supply Chain, Kraft); Pamela Rogers (Director, Global Customer Excellence & Innovation, Whirlpool); and Becky Walter (Director of Innovation Design & Testing, Kimberly-Clark). At the event, participants will learn how to:

* Source blockbuster product ideas and fill an idea pipeline
* Harness their company's in-house talent to drive growth and profitability
* Use market research to generate the consumer insight needed to drive innovation

Tags: innovation strategy

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March 23, 2006

Everybody loves a nasty troll

The hyper-critical op-ed piece in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal about the current state of the U.S. patent system (see blog post below) obviously didn't sit so well with some of the other writers at the newspaper. The next day, Alan Murray wrote a long piece on page A2 of the paper defending "patent trolls," warning that "the war on patent trolls may be the wrong battle." According to Murray, "patent trolls are getting a bad rap." As proof, he points out that a number of companies that you might not expect to support "patent trolls" actually support them:

"A look at friend-of-the-court briefs filed in the eBay case (eBay v. MercExchange LLC) shows that troll-bashers, while riding high on the current fears of BlackBerry addicts, remain a minority in the world of business. Filing briefs supporting eBay are Yahoo, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle and - no surprise here - BlackBerry maker Research in Motion.

Weighing in on the "troll" side are all the brand-name pharmaceutical companies, the entire biotechnology industry, as well as General Electric, 3M, P&G and DuPont. At a time when the U.S. advantage in global trade is its intellectual property, weakening patent protection, these companies all argue, would be a big mistake."

According to Murray, the problem is not "bad companies" (i.e. patent trolls) - the problem is "bad patents." Murray explains: "These days, too many are granted, too often for "inventions" that seem to the initiated to be as obvious as air..." In addition to pointing out ways to improve the U.S. patent system ("beef up the USPTO"), Murray offers a tasty little informational morsel: "Nearly one-third of the $612 million Research In Motion paid NTP ended up in the hands of NTP's law firm, Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP..." (as an aside: what a great name for a law firm: Wiley Rein = Wily Reign? It's almost as amusing as Weil Gotshal & Manges = "We'll Getcha and Mangle Ya")

Tags: patents patenttroll innovation

[image: "Un Troll" by z'Oliv via Flickr]

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The U.S. patent system is broken?

That's the opinion of Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner, co-authors of Innovation and its Discontents, who published a highly-critical Wall Street Journal op-ed piece on Tuesday about the current state of the U.S. patent system. According to the two professors (Jaffe is an economics professor at Brandeis, while Lerner is a finance professor at Harvard B-school), the United States patent system "has become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress..." Look no further than the ridiculous case involving Research in Motion and the Blackberry, in which a "patent troll" was able to squeeze more than $600 million out of RIM. In the op-ed piece, Adam and Josh weigh in with a warning about the structural problems within the current U.S. patent system:

"We believe that the problems with the patent system are systemic and fundamental, the result of two congressional changes to the patent system. At the time, they were described as administrative and procedural rather than substantive; but taken together they have resulted in the most profound changes in U.S. patent policy and practice since 1836. One set of changes has made it easier to enforce patents, easier to get large financial rewards from such enforcement, and harder for those accused of infringing patents to challenge the patents' validity; another set of changes has made patents much easier to get. The combination has created a perfect storm: a complex and intensifying combination of factors that increasingly makes the patent system a hindrance rather than a spur to innovation."

According to the two professors, there are two upcoming patent law cases that should be watched carefully: eBay v MercExchange LLC ("the most far-reaching examination of patent law in many years") and LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories ("can you actually patent the laws of nature?").

Tags: patent patentsystem innovation

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Belgian creativity at work: C-Mine

The Putting People First blog points to a new initiative in Belgium known as C-Mine that will attempt to transform a former mining area into a bustling center of design and creativity:

"Like the North-East in England and Zollverein, Essen in Germany, the Belgian former mining area of Genk is using creativity and design as tools to transform the area in an innovative, sustainable and qualitative way and to generate new approaches to education, culture, economic development and recreation. The initiative, which is called "C-Mine", includes:

* educational activities aimed at innovative concept and product development
* cultural projects that connect the socio-cultural context with the arts
* new specialized support services to help the development of a regional creative economy
* the development of a recreational and "experience" destination that combines its historical mining heritage with new creative and design activities"

Anyway, it looks like things are already starting to happen. In May, the city of Genk will roll out a new marketing initiative called "Vision on Creation", which will highlight the creative potential of the regional economy. The organizers of C-Mine are also preparing a design forum with the assistance of the Zollverein-based design initiative Red Dot. The Putting People First blog also links to a PowerPoint presentation (Dutch only, sorry) that outlines the "creative vision" for Genk.

Overall, it's an exciting idea that a former gritty industrial area can be transformed into a center of innovation and creativity. It would be like waking up one day and finding out that all the hipsters of Williamsburg had replaced their trucker hats with mining hats and decamped, en masse, to the mining towns of West Virginia.

Technorati: creativity design Belgium mining

[image: Joe Miner on Flickr]

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March 22, 2006

Moore's Law for razor blades

Everybody knows about Moore's Law for the semiconductor industry (i.e. the observation that computer chips double in power every 18 months or so), but did you know that there's a version of Moore's Law for the razor blade industry as well? Gizmodo points to a hilarious Economist piece that predicts we'll be shaving ourselves with 14 (!) blades by the year 2100:

"Those of you who did a spit-take when Gillette announced their five blade Fusion razor last year because you remembered The Onion predicting it would happen from the year before, you should appreciate that someone at The Economist not only wondered whether or not there was a Moore’s Law for razor blades but actually worked on the graph you see to the left. If the (admittedly few) five data points we have hold, we should be shaving ourselves with fourteen blades by the 2100... We’d be impressed except that by 2100 we expect hair removal to be taken care of automagically by nanobots as we shower. Who wants blades when you can have teeny tiny robots?"

Tags: innovation MooresLaw razorblades

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Innovative solutions for the world's water supplies: Gary White interview

In recognition of World Water Day 2006, meet one of the innovators who is helping to address the problem of unsafe and unsustainable water supplies throughout the developing world. In this special interview for the FORTUNE Business Innovation Insider, Peter Klaus talks with Gary White, Executive Director and Co-founder of WaterPartners International, who shares his insights on how the organization is working on innovative new solutions for the world's water supplies.

In Third World locations such as Guatemala and Honduras, Gary witnessed first-hand the dangerous consequences of unsafe water supplies on the local population. As a result, he has committed his professional career and invested himself personally to finding the best avenue for addressing global water needs. Gary's response has ranged from conducting academic research to working alongside people in the developing world as they constructed water supply systems. At WaterPartners International, he is working on developing the most cost-effective and sustainable way to help people meet their own water supply needs.

Peter Klaus: As the Executive Director of WaterPartners, why did you start the organization and how does it differ from other water projects?

Gary White: The start of the organization was driven by two key realities: (1) people in the US were oblivious to the global water crisis and (2) many projects that were constructed were going into disrepair. WaterPartners is different because early on we took a hard look at why projects fail and built into our approach best practices that are associated with sustainability.

Working exclusively through local partners, requiring community leadership in projects, addressing sanitation and hygiene education are some of the key elements of our work. Integrating these in a way to catalyze great projects set us apart when we first started in 1990. With many of these now widely accepted by many organizations as minimum standards, we now are pushing forward with new innovations, like WaterCredit. We are different because we don’t see our role as simply sinking one more well in one more village, but also finding ways to multiply our efforts by playing a leading role in the international water supply space.

Peter Klaus: What types of programs has WaterPartners implemented to help communities solve their own water supply problems in a sustainable fashion?

Gary White: The key to the WaterPartners’ approach is involving the community. All WaterPartners projects are designed to be community-empowering, with local water committees overseeing construction and ongoing maintenance of the projects. Since the people who benefit have a real stake in the outcome, it helps to ensure that the projects are sustainable over the long term and won’t fall into disrepair.

Also, all of our projects have a health education component, which is vital because many of the people in the project areas lack a good understanding of sanitary practices. And finally, our most recent innovation is the WaterCredit Initiative, which brings a micro-finance approach to water for the first time. By offering small loans where credit is virtually unknown, we give people a vital tool for addressing their water needs.

Peter Klaus: Can you outline the most innovative features of the WaterCredit Initiative that you mentioned?

Gary White: While the concept of microfinance has been around for awhile, it has typically been tied to income-generating activities. The innovation of WaterCredit is in the application of the concept to an entirely new sector and demonstrating that the world’s poor can participate in meeting their own water needs. By providing small loans at reasonable rates from a revolving fund to people who have no access to credit, WaterCredit can greatly accelerate the pace of development.

Given the choice between waiting for years for a grant that may never come or taking out a small loan and getting water now, the decision is rather obvious. While this approach won’t work for the poorest of the poor, the very low default rate on repayment of the loans is bearing out the fact that a large percentage of the world’s poor are very willing to pay within their means for something as vital as clean water.

Tags: WorldWaterDay innovation water

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Become smarter and more creative in just seven days

What if it were possible to become smarter and more creative within a week, at minimal expense and with little or no real effort? That would be the Holy Grail of innovation - similar to losing 20 pounds in a week for the weight loss industry. According to The Observer (U.K.), it's possible to become smarter within a week using a number of simple brainpower-boosting exercises:

"It is not an intelligence-boosting formula likely to impress an Oxbridge don: watching Countdown, playing Sudoku, remembering telephone numbers and taking a shower with your eyes closed. Yet doing 'brain exercises' such as these can make us all up to 40 per cent cleverer within seven days, according to research by a BBC programme this week. The tests conducted for Get Smarter in a Week appear to bear out the growing belief among scientists that making simple changes to our lifestyle can lead to significant improvements in how well our brains function.

The programme found that a combination of techniques based on healthy eating, physical activity, sound sleep and stimulating your mind through solving puzzles and remembering lists makes people sharper, more confident and better at making decisions. The usefulness of such methods will be tested on 100 volunteers from around the UK in an experiment that will get two hours of prime time television on BBC1..."

Here are just some of the things you can do to boost the ol' IQ:

(1) Brush your teeth with your 'wrong' hand and take a shower with your eyes closed.
(2) Do the crossword or Sudoku puzzle in your Sunday paper and take a brisk walk.
(3) Have oily fish for dinner, and either cycle, walk or take the bus into work.
(4) Select unfamiliar words from the dictionary and work them into conversations.
(5) Go to yoga, Pilates or a meditation class, and talk to someone you don't know.
(6) Take a different route to work; watch Countdown or Brainteaser.
(7) Avoid caffeine or alcohol; memorize your shopping list.

Tags: creativity brain innovation getsmarterinaweek

[image: zeroonewzr via Flickr]

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March 21, 2006

50 trends for 2050

A big hat tip to the Putting People First blog for pointing out that the Foresight & Innovation team at Arup (a global design and engineering firm founded more than 60 years ago) has come up with a set of 50 flash cards which identify some of the leading trends affecting the future of the world:

"These "drivers of change" are arranged and presented within societal, technical, economic, environmental and political domains, with each two-sided card depicting one driver. As well as vibrant visual record of research, these cards can be used as a tool for discussion groups, as personal prompts for workshop events or as a 'thought for the week'... In keeping with Arup's holistic approach to problem-solving, the design of these cards aims to encourage deeper consideration of the forces driving global change and the role that all of us can play in creating a more sustainable future. The cards have been published by the Spanish architecture and design publishing house, Editorial Gustavo Gili."

As a side note: Just this month, Arup worked with a team of other designers to create the vision for the world's first-ever double helix bridge in Singapore.

Tags: trends future Arup 2050

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Patty Seybold: How to capture deep customer knowledge

On her Outside Innovation blog, well-known author and consultant Patty Seybold discusses how to capture deep customer knowledge and involve more customers in the innovation process. According to Patty, companies are becoming increasingly sophisticated about ways to capture customers’ deep domain knowledge. In the process of studying customers in their natural habitats, it's possible to find out what they want and need and understand how they interact with each other and their products. One approach that has become popular in the past five years is known as corporate ethnography:

"As I’ve been researching innovative companies that are taking an “outside in” approach, I’ve found a number that have done a great job of ethnography -- really walking in their customers’ shoes. When it’s done well, this ethnography isn’t something that’s done by a market research organization. It’s something that product developers and designers and product managers and marketing executives and e-business executives get personally engaged in. You don’t do it once. You do it continuously."

Patty cites a few examples of companies taking the lead in ethnographic research techniques, including office supply mega-store Staples, peer-to-peer lending exchange Zopa and Koko Fitness. Based on the success of these traditional forms of ethnographic research, it appears that other, more sophisticated forms of ethnographic research are already "springing up to complement or perhaps even replace some of these in situ observational techniques." For example, LEGO has already illustrated the possibilities of tapping into the natural creativity of customer communities which form and coalesce around popular products. As Patty explains, other corporations are also experimenting with other forms of ethnographic research for online communities:

"I’ve also been studying the use of online communities for ethnographic research in less organic situations. Unilever, Hallmark, Charles Schwab, and a number of other companies, have gained enormous insights, actual product ideas, and lots of marketing/positioning help from ongoing online communities of customers who were explicitly recruited to give the company insights into their lifestyles and needs."

Tags: outsideinnovation deepcustomerknowledge ethnography

[image: Experience Research]

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What dirty snowcones can teach you about innovation

The comedy group Improv Everywhere recently went to Aspen, Colorado where they coordinated a series of public hijinks, such as this "free snowcone" stunt:

On our first night in town, Agent Kula and I noticed several masses of dirty snow in the downtown area. It was a pretty disgusting site, and we figured we should do our part to get rid of it. The next morning we purchased a whiteboard and a large supply of plastic cups. Within minutes, our "Free Snowcones" promotion was underway. I served as the sole salesperson and barker, announcing, "Free Snowcones made of 100% pure Aspen snow! Tastes just like the mountains!" We had three flavors for sale: Vanilla, Chocolate, and Swirl. Most folks politely declined our free offer. Some claimed to be on diets. Others informed us our product wasn't "edible". Believe it or not, we actually had a few sales. A couple of customers even took bites of our snowcones.

Amidst all this comedy, I think there's a business lesson in there somewhere (and it's not: "If you go to Aspen, don't buy snowcones from strangers!") Here's one idea... Maybe the "dirty snowcone" stunt by Improv Everywhere raises the question of whether it is more important to have an innovative product or an innovative marketing campaign to support that product. Take, for example, Coors beer. Doesn't Coors basically use the same "dirty snowcone" shtick to sell beer, along the lines of "100% cold-filtered, Rocky Mountain goodness, brewed with the world's most natural ingredients. Tastes just like the mountains!" In order to sell kegs and kegs of Coors beer, then, is it more important to have a good-tasting beer or a slick marketing campaign? The same argument can be extended to any innovative product offering. Is it more important to have a truly innovative product - or a slick marketing campaign to convince users that they really need the product?

Tags: innovation marketing

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"That's an imaginary vegetable created from clay," said the CEO

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal article on nurturing innovation ("Turn Your Company Into an Artist Colony"), one of the artist colonies mentioned was the Innovation Institute, a creativity training ground for business executives that is loosely affiliated with the McColl Center for Visual Art:

"Others are experimenting near the intersection of art and business. In a renovated Gothic church in Charlotte, North Carolina, local executives spend six days spread over three months learning to "unleash their own creative core" at the Innovation Institute, an offshoot of the McColl Center for Visual Art, an artist colony. Participants mix with artists and make art projects, such as an imaginary vegetable from clay. "Creativity is innate in all of us, says Suzanne Fetscher, the center's president. But many people "lose the confidence and skill" to be creative for lack of use."

Anyway, I tracked down the Innovation Institute on the Web, and indeed, it is housed in a cool-looking Gothic church. Not only that, but the home page of the Institute's Web site looks like it is dripping giant globs of paint all over that Gothic Church. The institution refers to itself as a "creative crucible," and there are pictures of several Gothic archways and monastic-looking hallways. If you're from a certain Ivy League institution, the archways would be great for an arch sing, but I'm not so sure a golf-playing oil executive from Texas would feel quite as welcome at the Innovation Institute.

Anyway, click here for the NPR interview with Suzanne Fetscher (the president of the institute), the business school dean from Wake Forest, and an artist (I couldn't quite catch the name, but apparently it's someone who's been exhibiting widely). Interestingly, Wake Forest's B-school is really trying to position itself as a creativity and innovation training ground for America's future executives, so the relative proximity of the Innovation Institute makes it a nice fit for executive education courses.

Tags: innovation artistcolony InnovationInstitute

[image: Innovation Institute at McColl]

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March 20, 2006

March 20 innovation linkage

At SXSW, Jory Des Jardins explains "the secret" [Jory Des Jardins]
Interview with Shoba Purushothaman of The NewsMarket [Venture Voice podcast]
Tag clouds on t-shirts [SnapShirts.com]
Blue Ocean Strategy at LG [Creating Blue Oceans]
Do less work, become more innovative [FORTUNE]
A Berlin hotel where every room is a work of art [JackCheng.com]

[image: Propeller Island City Lodge in Berlin]

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Turn your company into an artist colony

Today's Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link available) has a fascinating feature piece on how some companies are attempting to nurture worker innovation by replicating the success of the MacDowell Colony, the nation's oldest and most famous artist colony. MacDowell has been home to Aaron Copland, Alice Walker, Thornton Wilder, Leonard Bernstein and James Baldwin, so it knows a thing or two about innovation and creativity. By understanding how poets, painters and writers tap into creativity, business professionals are hoping to learn new approaches to solving existing business problems. While turning a company into an artist colony may not be possible - at MacDowell, colonists work in 32 isolated cabins with panoramic views of nature and dine out of wooden picnic baskets that silently appear each day - it does look like there is a long-term trend toward cultivating creativity within corporations. This might take the form of unconventional work environments and greater exchange of ideas across disciplines during "odd-hour encounters."

In one example cited by the Wall Street Journal, a maker of specialized printing machinery assembled a team of engineers, software programmers and marketers and simulated the working conditions of an artist colony, hoping to come up with a new label application machine. This approach could become a model for future innovation, says Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class: "Managers typically tap only a small portion of workers' creative capabilities. Successful companies increasingly will look more like an artist colony or inventor's laboratory than the office of today."

Tags: creativity innovation artistcolony

[image: The MacDowell Colony postcard by Lisa Dahl]

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Innovation: "Made in China"

We've been sounding the alarm bells on this one for awhile: China is really stepping up its emphasis on innovation, unveiling further details of its plans to boost spending on science and technology by 20% this year. Without a doubt, the Chinese government is making it a top priority to enhance the country's innovation capability, seeking in the process to overcome the stigma of the "Made in China" label. Innovation is more than just a slogan - it's a path to economic prosperity and growth for Chinese manufacturers: "A Chinese DVD player exporter can make only 1 dollar from each machine priced at 32 dollars, while 20 dollars goes to the foreign patent owners. That's 60 percent of the total value. And according to the Minister of Commerce, Bo Xilai, China must export 100 million shoes or 800 million shirts in exchange for the value of one Boeing aircraft."

At a recent seminar in Beijing, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz expained the significance of China's new innovation strategy:

"The 11th Five Year plan makes an important step forward. It's a major change, that is, it seeks to establish a basis of what it calls independent innovation. In the past, China has been basically borrowing ideas, trying to close the gap. What it recognizes that enormous amount of the rents that exist in the world associate with knowledge rents, the returns to the control of knowledge. So if China's income is going to be raised, it has to create a basis of independent innovation."

Tags: China innovation JosephStiglitz

[image: "Man Overboard" by hornbuckle]

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Deconstructing the slogan "Think Outside the Box"

Here's some fresh thinking on a tired subject. Jeffrey Phillips of the Innovate on Purpose blog breaks down the phrase "Think Outside the Box" into its component parts (think, outside and box) to see whether this hackneyed business slogan still has any value for organizations. For example, here's how Jeffrey Phillips describes the box:

"To me, the box is the metaphor for all the cultural and managerial overhead about your business. Incremental innovations often happen as the next "turn of the screw" so to speak, and can happen within that box. Disruptive innovations often destroy the box at the same time, so most people can't see or won't see the disruptive innovation. To be truly innovative, you've got to find ways to change the culture or at least make people feel they can rethink not only the products and the processes, but the culture as well."

Tags: thinkoutsidethebox consultant innovation

[image: FRS Consultants]

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Business innovation from Copenhagen

Since Denmark is consistently ranked as one of the most innovative nations in the world, it might be interesting to check out the goings-on at the "Don't Stop" business innovation conference that took place in Copenhagen last week. (Fleetwood Mac fans, no doubt, will also appreciate the fact that the tagline for the event was "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" ). Anyway, the weblog sponsored by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies provides extensive photos and Mp3 files for download, as well as quick summaries of some of the presentations -- including a very compelling presentation called "Welcome to the World of Karl Marx." Speakers included John Grant (a brand strategy consultant), Arie de Geus (former head of Shell Oil's planning unit), Carsten Beck and Klaus Morgensen of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, and Adam Morgan (author of Eating the Big Fish).

Tags: Copenhagen future innovation

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