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March 31, 2006
Happy days are here again in Silicon Valley
Let's hope this doesn't jinx them, but Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, the two co-founders of popular photo-sharing service Flickr, are on the cover of Newsweek just weeks after being profiled in USA Today. Regular readers of the Fortune Business Innovation Insider blog will realize that a good number of the graphics and images on this blog are actually from Flickr: along with the rest of the Internet community, we've realized that the Flickr site is really an incredible resource. Newsweek, in fact, calls Flickr "the poster child on how a well-executed Net effort can make big changes in people's habits."
Anyway, the Newsweek article basically outlines all the characteristics of "Living Web" companies like MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and del.icio.us, and ties it all back to the tremendous success of Internet superstars like Google and Craigslist. What emerges is a business roadmap for the next generation of Internet start-ups:
(1) Harness the amazing collective intelligence of crowds
(2) Tap into the user-generated content zeitgeist
(3) Open up your APIs and make your boundaries as porous as possible
(4) Realize that it's all about "community" and not "audience"
Flickr, as you might guess, has been able to do all of this well:
"One of Yahoo's recent purchases still stands as the paragon of companies hoping to accelerate into Living Web stardom. That's Flickr, the photo-sharing site created by Vancouver philosophy major Butterfield and dot-com vet Fake. At its first release two years ago, Flickr is in some ways the ultimate user-centric site—its customers even helped shape the direction of the company as it moved from an online game to an instant-messaging service with pictures to what it is now—a way for people to upload their photos and share them with the entire community of users. This small shift from previous online photo sites, which stored your pictures in the hope that you'd order prints, changed everything. What was once the digital equivalent of a shoe box became a vibrant community built around photos and a vast collaborative effort to produce an infinite scrapbook. [...]
Flickr was a good business, too, as many users chose to pay the $25-a-year fee for unlimited photo storage and relief from advertising on the site. But that's not why Yahoo bought it for an estimated $35 million. "With less than 10 people on the payroll, they had millions of users generating content, millions of users organizing that content for them, tens of thousands of users distributing that across the Internet, and thousands of people not on the payroll actually building the thing," says Yahoo exec Bradley Horowitz. "That's a neat trick. If we could do that same thing with Yahoo, and take our half-billion user base and achieve the same kind of effect, we knew we were on to something."
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March 31 Innovation Linkage, A.M. edition
Apple's April Fool's Day surprise? [Life Science Nexus blog]
The San Francisco Chronicle merges with Salon.com and Craigslist [San Francisco Chronicle]
Tom Peters visits the Wisconsin Innovation Network [Tom Peters! blog]
The future of innovation journalism [Google Video]
Forget crop circles, how about iPods? [Google Earth Blog]
Cable companies gang up on poor TiVo [CNET News.com]
What your new house will look like after the real estate bubble pops [We Make Money Not Art]
A 30-second innovation commercial from Siemens USA [Google Video]
The 10 weirdest keyboards of all time [fosfor gadgets]
[image: The War Against Work by Glennz]
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When it comes to intelligence, brain size doesn't matter
The conventional wisdom that brighter kids have bigger brains than their peers may not be true. At least, that's the conclusion of a new study from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and McGill University, which studied the size and development of the cerebral cortex in over 300 children. Scientific American sums up the results of the findings:
"The pattern of brain growth during development may figure more importantly than overall brain size when it comes to intelligence, according to a new study. Scientists have found that the smartest kids start off with a relatively thin cerebral cortex -- the outer layer of the brain associated with thought and other higher order functions -- that thickens rapidly by age 12 before undergoing the same general diminishment as that of their peers of average intelligence.
"Brainy children are not cleverer solely by virtue of having more or less gray matter at any one age," says Judith Rapoport of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda. "Rather, IQ is related to the dynamics of cortex maturation."
[image: Washington Post]
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Nathan Myhrvold: Inventors have rights, too!
In Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO and the current CEO of Intellectual Ventures, lays out the case for supporting MercExchange in its Supreme Court legal battle with eBay. (PDF available here) According to Myhrvold, big tech companies like eBay (and Microsoft) are "out to squash the rights of inventors" and tend to play fast and loose when it comes to the U.S. patent system. As a result, the Supreme Court must consider an important question, the resolution of which will reverberate through a number of different industries: "Does an inventor also need to create and sell a product to enjoy the full rights of the patent system?"
As Myhrvold tells it, the battle between MercExchange and eBay reflects the competing aims of different industries. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies tend to support the rights of MercExchange, while tech companies side with eBay and the reason for this is simple: different industries use patents in different ways, and patents are not a big part of the business model for tech companies. To cover up their disregard for the patent system, tech companies claim that the patents of challengers are "low quality" or they warn of the escalating pace of patent litigation. If all else fails, they raise the ever-present threat of "patent trolls" abusing the system. At the bottom of it, says Myhrvold, these companies just don't want to admit that they often infringe on the patents of others. Not only that, but they also don't want to pay them.
In the conclusion of the Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Myhrvold argues for the rights of inventors:
The patent system exists to give economic incentive to create inventions - not products. After all, profit is the incentive to create and sell products. In order to have a level playing field, inventors must have a full set of rights, regardless of whether they are big or little, or whether they make products or just invent. Those rights are what give them the incentive to work long and hard on new ideas that may not work. A lot of big innovative companies agree with this - companies like DuPont, GE, Qualcomm and 3M, as well as the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, have filed amicus briefs in support of MercExchange and equal rights for all inventors.
Weakening patent laws, whether in the Supreme Court or Congress, is no more than a government bailout of the infringement problems big tech companies deliberately made for themselves. America needs to have future generations of inventions and technology. We can't mortgage our future by taking away the rights and incentives of our inventors."
Tags: patent inventor Myhrvold MercExchange eBay
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March 30, 2006
10 Rules for Innovators
On the Talentism blog, Jeff Hunter has posted a list of his Top 10 Rules for Innovators, along with a short description of each of these rules. It's an interesting look at what's needed during the innovation process. Some of the findings might surprise you. For example, have you thought about including a "bad cop" as well as an opinionated critic on your innovation team? Do you have the guts to change a product even when customer focus groups seem to love it as it is?
(1) Innovation starts with "And"
(2) Not Just Smart, But Always Focused
(3) Make Sure You Have the "No But" Critic in the Room
(4) Build Crappy Prototypes Fast
(5) Don't Listen To Customers, Watch Them
(6) If It's Right, Change It
(7) Sell it Like you Play It
(8) Iterate 'Till You Drop
(9) Appoint One Person Bad Cop and Follow Their Command
(10) Innovation Is About Learning, not Genius
In describing Point #4, Jeff explains the importance of building "crappy prototypes":
"Your job as a team is to decide what prototype you are going to make and how to make it as crappy as possible. Prototype? Don't you mean descriptive document? No. Hell no. The last thing you want to do is constrain your idea by the limitation of your vocabulary and neuro-linguistic pathways. You want to covert raw energy into form, and only a prototype can do that. This is one of the reasons that ongoing advances in software technology are so exciting: the gap between vision and use is shrinking. Same with hardware (3D printers) and biotech (simulation and modeling). And what about the "crappy" part? Perfectionism has no place in innovation. Innovation is like hoping you'll find a gold coin at the bottom of a pile of manure - you don't know whether it's worth the dig until you are covered in the stuff. You quite literally want to guard against getting the prototype right. You want to get it usable, as fast as possible (there is usually a tactile or sense-driven aspect to "usable" at this stage of the game - touch it, see it, smell it, etc.)"
Tags: innovation methodology
[image: Omni Technologies]
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The next 100 years in science...
As part of a series of seminars sponsored by the Long Now Foundation, a number of innovative thought leaders (including Jared Diamond, Clay Shirky and Bruce Sterling) have shared their vision of the future. On March 10th, Kevin Kelly (one of the co-founders of Wired magazine) offered his views on "The Next 100 Years of Science", explaining long-term trends in the development of the scientific method. Some of the ideas are simply mind-boggling and, truth be told, a bit daunting ("zillionics"? "combinatorial sweeps"?). Thankfully, Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation has provided a brief overview:
1) There will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years.
2) This will be a century of biology.
3) Computers will keep leading to new ways of science.
4) New ways of knowing will emerge.
5) Science will create new levels of meaning.
As Kelly points out in his talk, entirely new concepts of learning and meaning will evolve over the next 100 years (point #4 above):
"Wikiscience" is leading to perpetually refined papers with a thousand authors. Distributed instrumentation and experiment, thanks to miniscule transaction cost, will yield smart-mob, hive-mind science operating "fast, cheap, & out of control." Negative results will have positive value (there is already a "Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine"). Triple-blind experiments will emerge through massive non-invasive statistical data collection--- no one, not the subjects or the experimenters, will realize an experiment was going on until later. (In the Q&A, one questioner predicted the coming of the zero-author paper, generated wholly by computers.)
Overall, Kelly cites at least 14 different advances in the scientific method that could occur within the next 50 years, including Combinatorial Sweep Exploration, the Multiple Hypothesis Matrix, Deep Simulations and Hyper-Analysis Mapping.
[image: Dave Dorman]
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Communicating high-level concepts through comics
Ever thought of using comics as a way of communicating a complex idea to your team members? Luke Wroblewski of the Functioning Form blog points to an interesting presentation (available as a PDF here) from two members of the Yahoo! Local team who found that comics - and not video or any other medium - would be the best way of communicating the appropriate context and level of detail of an upcoming project:
"The Yahoo! Local team found themselves needing to bring their stakeholders and team around a shared vision for their product. They considered using personas, uses case, and wireframes but found each of these communication medium lacking the context and level of detail they were looking for. After considering a number of other mediums including video, they settled on depicting product concepts through comics.
After brainstorming, white-boarding, and writing up some basic use cases, the team assembled a set of comics that told a story of how the Yahoo! Local product could be used. They then presented this narrative to senior stakeholders and users to gather feedback about the product vision..."
Hey, if it's good enough for Yahoo!, it's good enough for me. If you catch me reading the funny pages at work this week, it's because I'm looking for a cool new way to communicate my ideas about innovation. After all, as Luke points out, comics seem to work. They are "very approachable and easy to digest" and a "universal medium that transcends language." Maybe that's why so many speakers at conferences throw in a Dilbert cartoon or two during their presentations...
If you're interested in learning more about comics and innovation, check out the kev/null blog, where there's more about communicating concepts through comics.
Tags: comics communication creativity
[image: Amazing Ameziane's photostream]
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Creating a "Question Culture"
Over at the Innovate on Purpose blog, Jeffrey Phillips discusses the importance of developing a "Question Culture" for any company that is serious about innovation. Companies like Disney are able to create new ideas, according to Jeffrey, in large part because they encourage their employees to ask questions and to think creatively. At other companies, though, the opposite is true:
"In most businesses, you rarely want to ask a question, especially if you don’t know the answer. Most lawyers know you should never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. Asking questions can make it appear you are unaware of the issues, don’t have the knowledge or are just out of the loop. In most businesses, none of these conditions is good for your career.
But what happens if you don’t ask questions is that stuff gets taken for granted, or we accept the first proposal placed on the table. Without questions, no one probes the idea, turns it upside down and examines the margins.
Most businesses I am aware of don’t have a Question Culture – they have an Answer Culture. That’s because we are taught very early on that we should have the answer to the problems right at hand. Getting to an answer quickly is often rewarded in business, and having a plausible answer makes it appear we are “in the know”. The problem with the Answer Culture is that ideas get the “one and done” treatment. An idea gets proposed and someone already has the answer – We’ve done that before or It won’t work here or some other answer. Rather than ask questions and expand the discussion, we seek to quickly provide an answer and move on...
What’s the culture within your firm? If you reward an Answer Culture mentality, you’ll get a lot done very quickly, but miss the subtle opportunities that require more development. Try injecting a little more Question Culture thinking, especially when considering new ideas, products or services, to give new concepts room to grow."
Tags: creativity culture question innovation
[image: "Question Mark" by Kevin OShaughnessy, via Flickr]
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March 29, 2006
Where in the world will the next big idea come from?
A big hat tip to the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, which has launched a blog companion for its Innovate America Website. The site has been asking the question "Where in the world will the next big idea come from?" for some time now, and the blog finally explains what it all means:
"The intent is to focus the reader’s attention on the increased competition we face from countries such as India, China and Japan. These countries are making significant new investments in research and education in an effort to generate new ideas, new technologies and new products in competition with the United States. But, as with any brief sentence, be it on a bumper sticker or banner headline, there is more to the story. In fact, while catchy and thought provoking, “Where in the World Will the Next Big Idea Come From?” may be the wrong question to be asking. A better question would be, “Which Country Is Best Positioned to Generate New Value, New Industries and New Jobs, Regardless of Where the New Ideas Come From?” (You see why I don’t write bumper stickers).
Whether it fits on the back of a car or not, the point is that we must focus on the totality of the innovation ecosystem, not just one piece, if America is going to maintain and grow its standard of living. We are the world’s economic superpower, not because of our entrepreneurial spirit or our thirst for knowledge and exploration or our world class universities or our open and diverse society, but because of the synergies created by having all these assets in one country."
Tags: innovation competitiveness
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March 29 innovation linkage, A.M. edition
"Best in Class" is a sucker bet [Geoff Moore]
How do I license this great idea? [Seth Godin]
Open, but not as usual [The Economist]
20 characteristics of genius [Idea Sandbox blog]
What should be the role of the Chief Innovation Officer? [Innovation Weblog]
The Bureau of Workplace Interruptions [Interruptions.org via Optical Poptitude]
The New "Grand Challenge" in IT Research & Education [Irving Wladawsky-Berger]
The world's best beer can [Gizmodo]
What to say when you want to confuse your boss [Oxymoronica.com]
[image: World Prepares for Total Solar Eclipse]
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The four types of innovation
On his From Start to End blog, Marcus Ting-A-Kee has created a nifty four-quadrant graphical representation of the four types of innovation. Using this framework, a company has four different choices: it can improve the core business, develop new capabilities, exploit strategic advantage or create revolutionary change. By understanding the trade-off between strategic scope and organizational capabilities, a company can move from one quadrant to another. In the best of all worlds, of course, a company will be able to develop a new capability while at the same time having unlimited strategic scope. That's when revolutionary change occurs (see graphic).
Tags: innovation strategy capabilities change
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Sustainable innovation teleconference
On April 3, the BTM Institute and Enamics are co-sponsoring a major teleconference organized around the theme Sustainable Innovation: How is Your Company Adapting to the Global Knowledge Economy? There appears to be an interesting mix of speakers lined up for the event - the former head of strategy at Sony, a high-ranking diplomat from Greece, the president of the PDMA, and the president of product technologies at Wipro. Anyway, according to the teleconference Website, the speakers will address a number of topics related to innovation, business strategy, and R&D:
• The future of innovation networks
• The latest global innovation trends
• How to create opportunities out of disruptive innovation
• How to make the process of innovation predictable and repeatable
• The new capabilities needed to make innovation a company-wide challenge
• Why companies that encourage creativity excel
• Fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation
• Incorporating customers in the innovation process
• Developing a new business model to create a growth engine
• Shaping an organizational structure capable of disruptive growth
Tags: BTM innovation
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March 28, 2006
Interview with a cutting-edge Danish innovator
We Make Money Not Art (link via Boing Boing) has posted a wide-ranging interview with Peder Burgaard, the Event Manager of Denmark's Innovation Lab, which organizes the annual NEXT conference on technology and innovation. For the next five months or so, Peder will be interning at the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a Palo Alto-based non-profit think tank that is mapping the future for large companies in the Silicon Valley as well as for governments and companies around the world.
After discussing the possible convergence of different technology disciplines and the pace of overall technological progress, Peder explains the blurring of the line between art, design, creativity and innovation:
"The interaction art projects at NEXT are to be seen as an emerging trend where involvement of artists and designers in the finishing touch of consumer products will increase. So the gap between pure consumer development and artist aesthetic expressions will be winding and eventually join forces. Research studies have shown that more aesthetic products have a correlated improvement on user interaction. And the ever increasing demand on technology for ease of use will have artist leading the way of innovation in the future. Perfect example of this is the iPod which has a beautiful design and just feels nice and intuitive to operate."
Tags: NEXT InnovationLab technology art
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10 innovations needed to win the War on Terror
After convening a panel of top military and national security experts, the Battelle science and technology institute in Ohio came up with a list of 10 innovations that would markedly increase the chances of a victory in the War on Terror. Although some of the innovations sound distinctly Dr. Evil-ish (what's up with the non-lethal directed energy beams?), the group of experts was quick to point out that "improved communication between Western and Muslim cultures" would also play a key role in the worldwide response to global terrorism.
Anyway, the panel identified and ranked the 10 innovations most likely to have the greatest impact on winning the war against terrorism:
(1) Forward-Looking Intelligence
(2) Biological and Chemical Sensors
(3) Non-Invasive and Non-Destructive Imaging
(4) Non-Lethal Directed Energy
(5) Comprehensive Space, Air, Land, and Sea Monitoring
(6) 21st Century Public Diplomacy
(7) Electronic Tracking of Money
(8) Distributed Forces and an Interlocking Network
(9) Encouraging Public Awareness and Self-Identification of Terrorists
(10) Technologies to Neutralize Explosive Chemicals
I'm not sure when these findings were released - a story about these terrorism-related innovations popped up on Digg recently, but it looks like the panel of military and national security experts actually met sometime in early 2004.
Tags: waronterror" terrorism" innovation"
[image: Dr. Evil]
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Steve Wozniak, innovation rock star
Over the weekend, the Boston Globe ran a fun piece about legendary Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who was in town judging a robotics competition. According to the Globe's Robert Weisman, "the Woz" has become a veritable Renaissance Man 2.0:
"The crowd surrounding Wozniak leaves little doubt that the barrel-chested designer of the original Apple computer is a rock star among high schoolers who prefer playing basketball with robots to watching basketball on television... Wozniak, icon of the hippie-techie-hacker culture that's flourished in the San Francisco Bay Area, has never been as single-mindedly focused on business as his more famous Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Though he remains Apple employee number one, Wozniak has spent most of his time in recent decades dabbling in a dizzying range of activities, from business and philanthropic ventures -- many centered on sparking students' enthusiasm for innovation -- to organizing music festivals and Segway polo tournaments."
Tags: SteveWozniak Apple innovation
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Barron's Top 30 CEOs
The cover story in this week's Barron's (sub req) takes a closer look at "The World's Most Respected CEOs":
"We're taking a cut at the CEO debate for the second straight year by identifying 30 top corporate leaders from around the world. Our list includes 20 from the U.S. and 10 from abroad. Call it a Barron's Hall of Fame. Admission to Cooperstown is based on the subjective judgment of baseball writers, and entry to our shrine reflects the assessment of Barron's editors and reporters.... We looked at profit growth during a CEO's tenure and stock price gains. We also assessed less tangible factors, like leadership strength and industry stature. We sought CEOs who've made a difference to their organizations and who would be missed by investors if they departed..."
So, without further ado, the Top 20 U.S. CEOs (in alphabetical order):
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway
Kenneth Chenault, American Express
George David, United Technologies
Lew Frankfort, Coach
Richard Fuld, Lehman Brothers
Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric
Steven Jobs, Apple Computer
Richard Kovacevich, Wells Fargo
A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble
Arthur Levinson, Genentech
John Mackey, Whole Foods
Raymond Mason, Legg Mason
Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial
Anne Mulcahy, Xerox
Steven Reinemund, Pepsico
Glenn Renwick, Progressive
Steven Roth, Vornado Realty
Bob Simpson, XTO Energy
James Sinegal, Costco Wholesale
Robert Toll, Toll Brothers
Hmm... it's an interesting list filled with big-name CEOs from big-name companies, but it's curious that the only technology CEO who made the list was Apple's Steve Jobs. What happened to Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft?
Tags: Barrons CEO management
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The debut of Michael Eisner's new show on CNBC
Earlier in the year, we pointed out that former Disney CEO Michael Eisner would be hosting a new TV show on CNBC that would be broadly based around the theme of business innovation. Anyway, the debut of the bimonthly one-hour show ("Conversations with Michael Eisner") is tonight, with viewings at 9pm and midnight. The inaugural show will include interviews with Martha Stewart and Sony chief Sir Howard Stringer, as well as a brief chat with Disney technologist Bran Ferren that sounds a bit, well, spooky:
"It was the Ferren segment, more so than the Stewart or Stringer ones, that freaked me out a little — particularly when Ferren, who has a very long beard and apparently only wears this one cargo jacket, described a creepy near-future in which "database access will be built into human beings" so that we'll be popping pills encoded to clean out our arteries and Googling ex-girlfriends while appearing to wait in line at the bank. "I guarantee you that within 25 years," Ferren says, "kids will terrify and torture their parents, rather than by getting a piercing or a tattoo, by getting a net job, and they'll just be wired all the time."
If you're interested, the LA Times has a great (i.e. honest) review of the show, calling it "mogul-wonky" and the segment with Martha Stewart "impossibly chirpy." As for Eisner himself, he's "impatient and interruptive and cheerfully bullying."
Tags: MichaelEisner MarthaStewart CNBC
[image: MSNBC]
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March 27, 2006
What the world will look like in the year 2050
No, you do not need to adjust your monitor. It's just a picture of the world as you've never seen it before... The image is from Worldmapper (via Infosthetics), which has produced more than 50 morphed maps of the world that reflect underlying statistical data (e.g. imports & exports, tourism, immigration, population, etc.). In this case, it's a map of projected total population density in the year 2050:
"By 2050 it is estimated that the earth's human population will be 9.07 billion. 62% of the people will live in Africa, Southern Asia and Eastern Asia - numerically this is the same as if all the world's current population lived just in these regions. In addition another 3000,000,000,000 will be spread accross the rest of the world."
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The latest in management consulting jargon
Every now and then, the Wall Street Journal does a "data dump" of the latest investing buzzwords or the hottest management consulting jargon. The print edition of today's Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link available) has a column by Carol Hymowitz discussing the latest buzzwords in Corporate America, most of which have been invented or promoted by consultants. In terms of innovation and creativity, it looks like "knowledge acquisition" is the new phrase du jour, replacing "the war for talent." Also making the list:
(1) Delayering (it sounds much nicer than 'downsizing' or even 'rightsizing')
(2) Skills development
(3) Unsiloing (a very awkward term derived from silo, a noun)
(4) Execution (the good kind...)
(5) Network optimization
(6) Process flow analysis
(7) Volume-sensitive business
(8) Limited downside
(9) SOX (nothing to do with Boston or Chicago...)
and, of course, (10) Web 2.0
Tags: buzzword consultant knowledgeacquisition
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"A marketplace to harvest collective genius"
In Sunday's New York Times, William C. Taylor (co-founder and founding editor of Fast Company magazine) examines why corporations are increasingly embracing new idea-sharing networks as a way to spur innovation. In some cases, these idea networks are self-contained internal units used to propagate ideas to the executive suite; in other cases, they are far-reaching idea networks such as InnoCentive that promise breakthrough discoveries by tapping into nontraditional sources outside the corporate walls. At the heart of these new idea-sharing communities, though, is one central idea: the most brilliant insights tend to come from people other than senior management. Taylor explains:
"Most companies operate under the assumption that big ideas come from a few big brains: the inspired founder, the eccentric inventor, the visionary boss. But there's a fine line between individual genius and know-it-all arrogance. What happens when rivals become so numerous, when technologies move so quickly, that no corporate honcho can think of everything? Then it's time to invent a less top-down approach to innovation, to make it everybody's business to come up with great ideas."
This bottoms-up, grassroots-style of innovation is already being championed by many within the technology sector, primarily as a result of the success of the Linux open source software movement. According to Tim O'Reilly, the founder and chief executive of tech publisher O'Reilly Media, "creativity is no longer about which companies have the most visionary executives, but who has the most compelling architecture of participation. That is, which companies make it easy, interesting and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems and improve products?"
Tags: innovation ideas opensource creativity
[image: New York Times]
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What makes FedEx so innovative?
In order to understand what makes FedEx so innovative, FORTUNE's senior editor at large Geoff Colvin recently interviewed FedEx CIO Rob Carter in front of a live audience at the Time Warner Center. (The video interview is part of FORTUNE's C-Suite Strategies interview series.) As the company's chief information officer, Rob Carter is responsible for the computer and communication systems that keep FedEx running - that's 39 worldwide hubs, 677 airplanes, 90,000 vehicles, and more than 200,000 employees delivering six million packages a day in 220 countries. To support the innovation needs of this organization, Carter also manages a $1 billion annual technology budget. In the middle part of the interview, Carter explains how FedEx stays one step ahead of rivals such as UPS:
"I think it's easier to copy than it is to innovate. There's no question about that. So when we launch something new, they're [UPS] hot on our heels. That's why we simply have to keep moving. We have a philosophy -- it came out in the Marine Corps -- from the early days, that says, "Move, communicate, and shoot." That's one of our strategies.
And in that order, by the way. It's not "Shoot, communicate, and stand still." So we move, communicate, and shoot, and it's a very important thing. We have an innovation team that does nothing but look for new opportunities to come out of the gate with something that'll be a whack on the side of the head to them."
Tags: FedEx GeoffColvin RobCarter
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What NASCAR pit crews can teach you about innovation
The Wall Street Journal ran a great story ("Racing to Improve") on Friday that nicely illustrated the benefits of thinking about your business from a completely new perspective. In this case, United Airlines ground crew employees attended a North Carolina school for NASCAR pit crews (i.e. Pit Crew U) in order to learn about teamwork, speed and efficiency. Think of it as a hands-on team-building exercise that forces employees to think outside the box. One day, you're loading and unloading airplanes, the next day you're removing lug nuts from a high-performance race car.
So why is United Airlines sending its ground crew employees to Pit Instruction & Training school?
"They aren't about to turn airport runways into race tracks. But UAL Corp.'s United hopes some training in the split-second practices of NASCAR pit crews will help Ms. Rivera and her colleagues slash the time that United's 455 jetliners spend on the ground. Less time on the ground equals more time aloft. That means more daily flights without having to buy new planes and - the airline hopes - more revenue.
The pit-crew experience is intended to reinforce the importance of such things as teamwork, preparedness, and safety. It's one small but important way United is trying to become more efficient after emerging from three years of bankruptcy court protection last month."
Tags: PitCrewU NASCAR United innovation
[image: NASCAR]
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