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April 7, 2006

Boeing and the art of global collaboration

For anyone interested in how ideas like "open innovation" and "collaborative innovation" are impacting the way big FORTUNE 500 companies bring new products to market, CIO Insight has posted a great story on innovation at Boeing: New Jet, New Way of Doing Business. After decades of perfecting the art of designing and assembling an aircraft, Boeing is radically overhauling the way that it does business:

"Almost everything about the new Boeing 787 is different—from the cutting-edge materials and electronics used to build the plane, to the technology used during the design and assembly process. It is so different, in fact, that even the Boeing Co. itself—a fixture in the global economy for nearly a century—is undergoing a radical transformation as it builds this next-generation jet.

The design and production strategy employed by the $55 billion, Chicago-based aerospace giant to get the 787 built as quickly and economically as possible involves an unprecedented degree of collaboration between Boeing and its partners around the world—partners who are participating in the actual design of the plane. All of which marks a shift in the way Boeing defines itself: The company is no longer just a manufacturer, but also a high-end systems integrator."

As one Boeing official points out, "This is not merely a PowerPoint or SharePoint collaboration, or looking at two-dimensional drawings to see if a company can bid on a contract. This is big companies like the Japanese heavies, and our Russian design center, and Boeing in Everett working together. This is something that creates competitive advantage. This kind of collaboration has taken a huge amount of time out of the process. It's where the big savings are."

Without a doubt, Boeing is placing a big bet on the idea that "high-level, real-time collaboration" with its design partners can really push forward the innovation process:

"Technology is the enabler of this kind of collaboration, which involves a significant amount of product lifecycle management across multiple countries. Boeing requires all its partners on the 787 to use an application called Catia, made by Dassault, and the plane is designed at a special online site, maintained by Boeing, called the Global Collaboration Environment... Customers, including pilots and flight attendants, were asked to provide input before the design was handed off to design partners."

Tags: collaboration innovation Boeing jet

[image: Boeing 787 via CIO Insight]

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April 7 innovation linkage

Building your company's innovation portfolio [Emory Leadership blog]
The Stanford Social Innovation Showcase [The Digital Vision Program]
The "Geek Gap" [The New American]
Law firms discover innovation [The Adventure of Strategy]
Netflix and Blockbuster squabble over patents [Design Technica]
The fastest robot on two legs [We Make Money Not Art]
Snakes, planes, Hollywood and the Internet [Wired News]
The wisdom of cockroaches [Discovery Channel]
What do the icons on your PC screen do all day? [ExtremeFunnyHumor.com]

[image: Paul Taylor Dance Company, "Banquet of Vultures"]

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Picture this: GE, the healthcare innovator

In coordination with its Picture a Healthy World campaign, which was intended as a way to build buzz about its innovative healthcare solutions, GE will be celebrating World Health Day in New York City. For the past month or so, GE has been actively promoting its "Picture a Healthy Day" project, in which individuals submit photos of themselves taking part in healthy activities. On April 7, GE will use seven of the biggest digital billboards in Times Square to flash photographs submitted by people from more than 50 countries. The company will also be handing out GE-branded water bottles to thirsty New Yorkers, encouraging them to drink water each day as part of a healthy lifestyle.

Anyway, what's interesting is that GE is promoting its healthcare-related events on cool hipster Web sites like Daily Candy and Flavorpill, hoping to connect with the sort of young people who don't normally interact with GE. ClickZ News originally covered GE's innovative marketing initiative back in February, focusing on the user-generated content and viral elements of the campaign. Props to GE for using blogs and word-of-mouth marketing to get people excited about its innovative healthcare solutions.

Tags: GE healthcare innovation TimesSquare WorldHealthDay

[image: Flavorpill]

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An innovative new compensation scheme at Coke

Earlier in the week, Coca-Cola unveiled a radical new plan to link director compensation to company performance. Instead of receiving an annual fee of $125,000 ($50,000 cash and $75,000 in stock), company directors will now be given share grants each year equal in value to $175,000. The grants will be payable in cash in three years provided the company increases earnings per share by 8% each year. According to Bloomberg News, the decision to overhaul its compensation structure for directors was strongly promoted by board member Warren Buffett: "It's a good idea. I'm delighted it's happening now. It aligns director interests with shareholder interests both on the upside and the downside."

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this looks like a sweetheart deal for Buffett, already one of the world's wealthiest individuals. For one thing, his company - Berkshire Hathaway - is Coca-Cola's largest shareholder, so he's obviously interested in boosting Coke's share price for his own personal gain. What's good for Coke is good for Berkshire Hathaway, so it's not surprising that he wants to lock in 8% earnings growth each year. Secondly, he's stepping down from the Coke board on April 19 after 17 years, so the pesky little matter of whether he receives $125,000 in cash each year is moot anyway.

Anyway, according to a recent survey by Corporate Library, only 2% of the 2,000 largest public companies tie a portion of director pay to performance, so Coke is really getting out in front of this one. Corporate governance experts have thus far been upbeat about the idea: "The fact that directors might go without pay is meaningful. It shows, on the part of the directors, confidence that the company has a good future."

In my own opinion, aligning the incentives of managers and employees with those of shareholders is a great idea. But attempting to align the incentives of board directors with those of shareholders? It doesn't seem to be as effective, since directors aren't actually involved in the day-to-day functioning of the company. They're not down in the trenches. Moreover, they're already highly-compensated from another source, so any pay they receive as board directors is really just icing on the cake. Instead of dining at swanky, five-star restaurants each night with their trophy wives (or trophy husbands), they'll be dining at swanky, four-star restaurants each night. I mean, check out some of the folks on Coke's board: Barry Diller, former AmEx CEO James Robinson III, former Delta Air Lines CEO Ron Allen, former SunTrust Banks Chairman James B. Williams and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn.

Tags: Coke WarrenBuffett board compensation

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April 6, 2006

The innovative Chinese automaker

This has to be a source of consternation for any American company sharing its innovation & design expertise with business partners in China: the Wall Street Journal (link via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) reports that Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., a long-time partner of GM and Volkswagen in China, plans to go it alone and produce a luxury four-door sedan - all by itself - for the Chinese market. The new sedan will compete head-to-head with rival offerings from GM in China and there are even plans in the works to start exporting the Chinese-made and Chinese-designed car to Europe sometime in 2007:

"For years, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., a government-owned behemoth, has worked side by side with General Motors Corp. and Volkswagen AG on world-class assembly lines to build cars for the Chinese market. Now, the giant auto maker is getting ready to use the technical expertise and experience it has gained from these partnerships -- which turn out hundreds of thousands of Buicks and Chevys as well as VW Santanas and Passats a year -- to make its own high-end sedan.

Shanghai Automotive's shift from an ally of its foreign partners to a potentially dangerous rival is a sign of sweeping changes ahead for auto makers in the fast-growing China market, which has become an increasingly important source of sales and profits for U.S. and European auto companies. Prodded by Chinese economic planners, large state-run companies that have joint ventures with other foreign manufacturers, from Ford Motor Co. of the U.S. to Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp. and South Korea's Kia Motors Corp., are also moving to develop and sell more vehicles under their own brand names. The push comes amid a broader questioning of the role that foreign companies and brands should play in China's economy."

A consultant for the automobile industry rings the alarm bell: "This is a watershed in the development of the auto industry in China. The Chinese formed joint ventures for one purpose: to learn how to do it themselves one day. That day is here."

So that's what happens - a big American company sends jobs and R&D know-how overseas in the hopes of expanding global market share, and it winds up with an ungrateful partner willing to bolt at the first opportunity? For GM, already beset by gargantuan financial woes, this has to sting. If nothing else, the decision by Shanghai Automotive means that the GM board won't be able to use the "our cars don't sell in America, but we're doing real well in China" excuse anymore. In a prepared statement, GM tried to put a positive spin on the development, but we all know the company is smiling through gritted teeth: "GM understands Shanghai Automotive's desire for further growth and is confident SAIC recognizes that the success of both companies in the China market is closely linked to the success of our joint ventures."

More details about the decision by Shanghai Automotive to head off on its own can be found at CNN/Money. Details about Shanghai Automotive (not exactly a household word here in America) are also up at Wikipedia.

Tags: China auto GM ShanghaiAutomotive innovation design

[image: AutoBlog]

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April 6 innovation linkage, A.M. edition

Innovation in the boardroom [Innovaro]
Are we paying too much attention to the "early adopters" and "influencers"? [Scott Milener's Browster blog]
The inspired rants of a FORTUNE 500 executive [Anonymous VP blog]
Nike and Google take on Yahoo! and Adidas [Edge Perspectives blog]
"The Economics of Open Content" podcasts [OpenBusiness blog]
Cyclone newsgroups isobars [Information Aesthetics]
The new Fartlek management style (a satire) [Slacker Manager]
glog vs. blog [Pasta and Vinegar]
Welcome to the Webtop [Business 2.0]

[image: The Next Generation 3D Desktop]

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The 15 properties of a good conceptual model

Idiagram, which specializes in the art of visual modeling & facilitation for complex business problems, has come up with a set of 15 different properties that are shared by all good conceptual models, regardless of form or function. According to Idiagram, a good model should be:

* Salient
* Accurate
* Complete yet Parsimonious
* Perceptible
* Understandable
* Descriptive
* Emotive
* Predictive
* Falsifiable
* Inspiring ("Because people are drawn to and inspired by thoughtful design")
* Memorable
* Flexible
* Coherent
* Productive
* Useful ("All models are incomplete. All models are compromises. The model maker's art lies in making those shrewd trade-offs that will render the model most useful to the problem at hand.")

Idiagram is the brainchild of Marshall Clemens, who has a degree in photographic science and engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Given Marshall's background in art and photography, it's not suprising that the Idiagram site is chock-full of gorgeous visual models - anything from slides for PowerPoint presentations to Strategic Maps to Complexity Illustrations. Great stuff.

Tags: model design concept

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Hypersonic jets: New York to Australia in two hours

In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link available), Ann Keeton profiled the cutting-edge research that's being done on hypersonic jets. The concept is pretty cool: two-hour flights from New York to Sydney in aircrafts flying at Mach 10. That's more than 7,000 miles per hour, and nearly 10 times the speed of sound. According to Keeton, hypersonic flight is almost here as the result of revolutionary advances in new "scramjet" engine technology:

"The scramjet engine is the key to self-propelled, rather than rocket-powered, hypersonic flight, defined as a speed of Mach 5 to Mach 10, or five to ten times the speed of sound. The engine has no moving parts, with fuel combustion occurring in a supersonic rush of air through its interior. Scramjets are cheaper to fly than rocket engines because they don't require an onboard supply of oxygen. Instead, they suck it right out of the air."

Although the first research on scramjets started in 1958, the first test flight only occurred 46 years later, in 2004, when NASA flew the X-43. As might be imagined, the U.S. military is quite interested in the idea of some hypersonic applications. Take the idea of a hypersonic missile: "It could travel three times faster, or three times farther, than current missiles, giving the U.S. a big strategic advantage. If you can go 500 miles in 15 minutes, you can really reach out and touch someone."

Anyway, if you're interested in reading more about scramjets and hypersonic travel, check out the NASA Web site, which also features videoclips of the X-43.

Tags: X-43 hypersonic scramjet innovation

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April 5, 2006

How the New York Times can take on Google and win

In this week's New York Magazine, investment guru James Cramer (the controversial stock-picking genius of CNBC's Mad Money) has penned a surprisingly lucid and detailed analysis of how the New York Times Company - the Old Grey Lady - might be able to re-make itself into a digital juggernaut and take on Google in a high-stakes battle for Internet domination. The first baby step in this transformation, as Cramer points out, was the decision by the New York Times to do away with pages and pages of stock quotes in the daily Business section. (Who reads old stock quotes anyway when you can get up-to-the-second updates via cellphone or BlackBerry?) That's just the start, writes Cramer, in how the New York Times can deal with a bloated cost structure and a static circulation:

"There’s one way out of this mess for the Times. It is a bold, gutsy, and, some would say, foolish way, at least initially: The Times—here’s the irony—should go all-digital. That’s right. It should abandon newsprint and force everyone to the Web. It should make a stand against Google, using its About.com division—something with real growth, and which is actually working out despite the $410 million in debt taken down to buy the thing—to lead the way. Maybe it should even take the revolutionary step of blocking Google from accessing its content, something no one else is willing to do. Or maybe it should at least say, “This is the deal: You want our stuff, you must share much more with us than you are willing to share with others.” It is worth it to preserve value for the future, to make it so our kids don’t think, Let me go to Google for all the news that’s fit to print. Heck, in another couple of years they won’t even know that the New York Times exists as anything but private-label news source for an Internet portal.

Okay, don’t dismiss this out of hand, especially those of you who love the hard copy. The Times needn’t change overnight. But the stock-table deletion may be a fantastic template for the paper (and all papers); the Web is not just better for stock quotes, it is better for everything. Web ad rates are soaring, the growth on the Web is staggering—the only impediment to more Times on the Web is, frankly, psychological: a fear of destroying a legacy business, a fear that has no place in a world where the Times is worth only $3.7 billion and Google nearly 30 times that. The idea that cutting down huge Canadian trees and shipping giant wheels of newsprint south so it can be made into antediluvian broadsheets delivered door-to-door by expensive carriers is, alas, positively uneconomical, if not totally insane, in an era when anyone younger than 30 doesn’t want the thing in that package. The next generation wants it on PCs, they want it on Treos, they want it on iPods, for Heaven’s sake, but certainly not on newsprint."

Tags: NewYorkTimes Google JamesCramer

[image: New York Magazine]

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Meet the next spaceflight pioneer

Yesterday, Seattle newspapers were buzzing with the news that ex-Microsoftie Charles Simonyi would be taking a $20 million ride to outer space, thereby becoming the world's fifth space tourist:

"Simonyi, formerly a top researcher at Microsoft and co-founder of Intentional Software in Bellevue, has booked a seat aboard a Russian rocket for a flight to the International Space Station as early as next year. He could become the world's fifth space tourist, following American businessmen Dennis Tito and Greg Olsen and South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, who have made the trip, as well as Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto, who is preparing to take part in a space flight in September."

Spearheading the move into outer space is Virginia-based Space Adventures, which has worked closely with the Russian space agency to promote space tourism: "Space tourists pay to occupy a "taxi seat" aboard the flight as crews and vehicles are rotated every six months. They take off with a new two-person crew, spend a week at the space station orbiting 220 miles above Earth and then return with an outgoing crew. The permanent crew members of the space station are Russian and American astronauts."

Apparently, the answer to the age-old question: "What do you give a man who has everything?" is now "A ride to outer space." Simonyi is a 57-year-old billionaire who regularly consorts with the likes of Sophia Loren and Martha Stewart and has nearly unrivalled street cred in the technology business (he led some of Microsoft's teams that developed Word and Excel and has worked at Xerox PARC). He also has been active in funding Seattle arts and sciences organizations - with a few million dollars here and there, he now has his name on a building in downtown Seattle. After acquiring all the typical trappings of a wealthy, sophisticated billionaire - "a date with a supermodel" and "a building with your name on it" - Simonyi will soon have something that neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffett has...

Tags: spacetourism CharlesSimonyi SpaceAdventures

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Has Dell discovered the power of good design?

Niti Bhan, who recently launched a weekly Industry News supplement for Core 77's Design Directory, has been analyzing the likely impact of two recent transactions - the Dell/Alienware deal and the L'Oreal/BodyShop deal - on design and innovation. In a post called "Mixed Marriages", Niti explains why the two deals actually have a lot in common:

In the last couple of weeks, two major acquisitions have hit the news - Dell buying Alienware (oh I wish I'd blogged it before I left, what a scoop!) and Dame Anita Roddick's sale of The Body Shop to French cosmetics giant L'Oreal. On the face of it, lipsticks and face powder have little in common with absolutely droolworthy triple coated iridescent purple gaming machines (can you tell my geeky preference?) but the fundamental similarity between these two sales kept tickling the back of my mind. Simplistically speaking, a very strong brand with a clear identity and niche positioning has just been purchased by a global behemoth. But wait, there's more to this than just a cultural clash, high end design versus off the shelf packaging or ethics and integrity versus "masstige"... [...]

Niti acknowledges that it's easy to criticize Dell and L'Oreal for attempting to buy into the whole high-end design game without actually embracing a core belief in design, innovation and other principles:

"I had started out this post to make the statement that "Look, look at Dell trying to buy 'cool' by buying Alienware, in a desperate attempt to incorporate design, look good and step away from the commodity market" and "Look, look at L'Oreal, desperate to establish it's image amongst the ethical, eco conscious European customers as someone who cares by buying the integrity and principles of The Body Shop". I was going to sneer at these attempts to buy something they did not possess themselves."

However, after reconsidering the matter and re-reading the personal responses from the CEOs of Alienware and The Body Shop to the announced transactions, Niti thinks there might be another, more relevant takeaway lesson:

"Is there an echo in these CEO statements? The sentiment seems to be the same, the concerns about losing the unique brand qualities and the essential "DNA" of the company being unchanged the same. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, that Dell has discovered the power of good design, and that L'Oreal wants to learn how to give back to the communities in which they do business. And lets see what happens in the future and how this mixed marriages, between the upstart aliens and the establishment work out. And if they do, then wish for more such alliances."

Tags: Dell Alienware design innovation

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Bill Gates and the digital lifestyle

The current issue of FORTUNE magazine takes a snapshot look at a "day in the life" of Microsoft's Bill Gates, focusing on the high-tech tools he uses as part of his "digital lifestyle":

"If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity. The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me.

At Microsoft, e-mail is the medium of choice, more than phone calls, documents, blogs, bulletin boards, or even meetings (voicemails and faxes are actually integrated into our e-mail in-boxes). I get about 100 e-mails a day. We apply filtering to keep it to that level—e-mail comes straight to me from anyone I've ever corresponded with, anyone from Microsoft, Intel, HP, and all the other partner companies, and anyone I know. And I always see a write-up from my assistant of any other e-mail, from companies that aren't on my permission list or individuals I don't know. That way I know what people are praising us for, what they are complaining about, and what they are asking.

We're at the point now where the challenge isn't how to communicate effectively with e-mail, it's ensuring that you spend your time on the e-mail that matters most. I use tools like "in-box rules" and search folders to mark and group messages based on their content and importance."

Among the digital tools mentioned by Gates: Outlook, SharePoint (a collaboration tool), desktop search, the Tablet PC and OneNote. He also admits that there's still one remaining low-tech piece of equipment in his office that gets a lot of work: the lowly whiteboard. However, even this whiteboard has received a high-tech makeover: "The whiteboards in some Microsoft offices have the ability to capture an image and send it up to the computer, almost like a huge Tablet PC. I don't have that right now, but probably I'll get a digital whiteboard in the next year. Today, if there's something up there that's brilliant, I just get out my pen and my Tablet PC and recreate it."

Tags: BillGates Fortune digitallifestyle

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The Innovation Journalism conference kicks off at Stanford

Stay tuned to the Innovation Journalism blog for updates from the Innovation Journalism Conference taking place at Stanford over the next three days. Today's keynote speaker will be Vint Cerf, the founding father of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. In addition, the first day will feature a panel discussion of distinguished innovation editors: Harry McCracken (PC World), Joel Dreyfuss (Red Herring), Tony Perkins (ALWAYSON); Michael Kanellos (CNET News.com) and John Furrier (Podtech Networks). On April 6, Curtis Carlson of SRI International (see yesterday's interview on the Fortune innovation blog) and Almar Latour, Tech Editor of the Wall Street Journal, will talk about innovation as a discipline. Then, on April 7, the conference will highlight innovation journalism initiatives from Sweden, Finland, Germany, Pakistan, Slovenia and Spain.

Tags: innovation journalism Stanford

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April 4, 2006

April 4 innovation linkage, A.M. edition

What is your ramp-up potential? [Creating Blue Oceans]
Is video gaming the "new golf" for business execs? [TED Blog]
50 Reasons why people aren't using your Website [Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com]
Joi Ito @ SXSW 2006 video [YouTube.com]
Physically disabled Japanese to scale the Swiss Alps in a robotics suit [PhysOrg]
The future of credit cards [MAKE: Blog]
John Seely Brown on videogames and innovation [Wired Magazine]
A do-it-yourself vintage technology blog [Retro Thing]
A manifesto for networked objects [Julian Bleecker via BoingBoing]

[image: The future of credit cards]

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A time for innovators in suits to sit down with innovators in robes

After the big brouhaha over the Dubai ports deal in the U.S. and the still simmering rage over those Danish cartoons, let's show the Arab world some love. Can't we all just get along? The World Summit on Innovation & Entrepreneurship wrapped up in Oman on Monday, and it looks like innovation and entrepreneurship were two of the buzzwords being bandied about by conference participants:

"A strategy to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging nations was agreed to in a gathering of business, government and NGO leaders from around the world in a three-day meeting in Muscat, Oman that concluded today. The path outlined by the world leaders includes establishing knowledge-based business clusters, cultivating a culture of innovation among youth, facilitating access to capital, identifying best practices, eliminating red tape, empowering women and encouraging cross- culture collaboration.

The Summit, which was the first of its kind in the Middle East, aimed to develop practical solutions to address the most important issues facing emerging nations and to inspire the development of the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators. Participants included leaders such as Oman's minister of Commerce & Industry, His Excellency Maqbool bin Ali Sultan; Michael D. White, chairman of PepsiCo International; Richard Stevens, Boeing senior vice president; Jonathan Lord, Humana chief innovation officer; Stephen R. DuMont, Cisco Systems vice president and global managing director; Kenneth P. Morse, managing director of MIT's Entrepreneurship Center; Tom Stewart, editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review; and Ahmed Sheikh, editor-in-chief of Al Jazeera."

That's quite a mixer, eh? Harvard and Pepsi mashed up with Al Jazeera; Boeing, Cisco and MIT sitting down in a room with Arab sheiks. No details were released, but one of the conference organizers hinted that the next step will be "a partnership between a Fortune 100 corporation and one of the world's most populated Third World countries to test pilot what we have learned at this Summit."

Tags: MiddleEast innovation entrepreneurship

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"A veritable Willy Wonka factory of science and tech R&D"

In an interview with CNET News.com, Curt Carlson, the CEO of Menlo Park-based SRI International, describes some of the organization's latest innovation initiatives. If the next 60 years are anything like the past 60 years, it's likely that SRI will remain at the forefront of American innovation:

"Once known as Stanford Research Institute for its home at the prestigious university from 1946 to independence in 1970 -- SRI is a nonprofit that's been instrumental to the development of everyday marvels like the computer mouse, the PC, the cell phone and high-definition television. In the early 1950s, SRI even crunched the numbers to find the perfect location for Walt Disney's Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. Despite the ubiquity of those wonders, SRI is more like a silent partner engineering the future, working with government, industry and its own spinoff companies to introduce technology and scientific innovation to the public."

CNET even goes so far as to call SRI a "technologist heaven" and a "veritable Willy Wonka factory of science and technology R&D." Among the most exciting projects at SRI: a high-tech titanium alloy that costs the same as aluminum, carbon fuel cells, clean water technologies, minimally invasive robotics surgery, and new drug development technologies.

Carlson also takes a moment to preview his forthcoming book on innovation:

"The first observation about innovation is it's a process. Innovation is also a creative act, and the question is, how can you be more disciplined about it, how can you create a process that'll be much more effective in getting you from the start to the end? We've studied best practices from companies all over the world for 15 years, 20 years now actually, and every time we find somebody (with) the best practice, we would like to study them."

Tags: innovation SRI

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Five major shifts enabling innovation

On Monday morning, the BTM Institute hosted a live teleconference on the broad theme of "Sustainable Innovation." I tuned in to the first hour or so of the program, listening to presentations from Dr. Hamsa Thota, President of the Product Development Management Association; Dr. Alexander Bugaev, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Innovation Council; Umesh Ramakrishnan, the Vice Chairman of Christian & Timbers; and Mark Minevich, the Co-Chair of the BTM Institute Global Leadership Council. Probably the most interesting of these innovation presentations was the one by Hamsa Thota of the PDMA, who described the five major shifts enabling long-term, sustainable innovation:

(1) A shift in idea sourcing and management. Companies are transitioning from a traditional R&D model to an "open innovation" model (also known as "democratized innovation" and "co-innovation");

(2) A shift in idea utilization. Instead of the "lock up the old ideas and put them to rest" mentality, companies are actively looking at ways to profit from those unused ideas and IP, even if it means proactively selling them to the competition;

(3) A shift in product lifecycle management. Companies are moving from long lifecycles that are factory-centered to shorter and shorter lifecycles that involve global supply networks

(4) A shift in R&D philosophy. While notions like "value-engineering" and "lean product development" are still valuable, companies are embracing the need for more experimentation. It's OK to fail fast and fail early;

(5) A shift in the underlying business model. Companies are moving away from the "swing-for-the-fences homerun" business model to a strategic approach that supports "continuous" improvements and refinements (i.e. singles and doubles).

Tags: BTMInstitute PDMA innovation R&D businessmodel

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In Russia, a top-down innovation model

In Russia, the on-again, off-again autocratic regime of Vladimir Putin has recognized the long-term innovation potential of the nanotech industry. Earlier this week, the Russian president announced high-level support for a nanotechnology development program to be overseen by a federal body to be named later. Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko said his ministry was drafting a 10-year plan in an effort to catch up in nanotechnology, and the Russian government has already earmarked more than $400 million for nanotech funding in the 2007 budget:

"Nanotechnology is the technology of the 21st century. A country successful in its implementation will be a 21st-century leader. As of now this is Japan. The EU countries are outlining special national programs. I would not agree that we do not need a federal state program.... Coordination is necessary, but we can't do without a federal state program."

What's amazing is that every Russian official quoted for the news article kept saying "I can not imagine how to spend money without a federal state program." In the U.S., the favored model is a bottoms-up, decentralized innovation model. In Russia, the favored model is a top-down, centralized model under the personal control of some government body. Hmmm.... Let's see which nation - the U.S. or Russia - has made greater breakthroughs in the nanotechnology sphere by the year 2015.

Tags: nanotech innovation Russia Putin

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The future of work

On Sunday's edition of "60 Minutes," reporter Lesley Stahl examined the 24/7 work lifestyle in America that has been made possible through new technologies such as the BlackBerry, e-mail and the wireless Internet. As the line between work life and personal life continues to blur, Stahl asks, are American workers really becoming more productive and more innovative? The video segment included the example of office workers who stop by their cubicle every month or so (if then), and work the rest of the time at Starbucks or at home, as well as a married couple that sends instant messages to each other when they're in different rooms of the house. The favorite toy of this couple's baby? The BlackBerry, of course. Workers are working harder than ever, yet the extra freedom and mobility seems to be spurring productivity gains.

I missed the first five minutes or so of the video segment, but the definite highlight was Lesley Stahl taking a shower with a West Coast tech CEO. OK, OK it's not what you're thinking! Apparently, the CEO had installed Internet, TV and phone connections in every room of his house - and that includes the shower. Lesley didn't believe him - "Wait, you'd stop taking a shower just to check an e-mail?" - and so she tried it out for herself, talking to the guy's secretary through a shower-based speaker-phone:

"Greg Shenkman is such a workaholic that he has wired his house with Internet, telephone and television in every single room. As CEO of the global high-tech firm Exigen in San Francisco, he feels he has to be available to his customers at all hours.

"Well, you lose something. You lose some days of your kids' lives. You lose — some of those tender moments with the family," Shenkman says. When he stops working, he says he aches. "If you go on vacation, sometimes, in order to sort of relax, it takes a little bit of an effort," Shenkman says. But he always stays connected.

He's so obsessed, he has wired his shower. When Greg soaps up, he doesn't daydream — he watches the business news, checks his e-mail, and answers the phone. 60 Minutes arranged for the producer to call Shenkman, with his shower running. When the speaker phone picked up, the water was turned off automatically, and Stahl and Shenkman could talk to the producer from the shower. The electronics are waterproof — but not foolproof.

"Whoa, what happened!" Stahl said, laughing, as she got a little wet. "We forgot to turn it off," Shenkman said. "Well, I usually don't have Lesley Stahl in the shower with me. That would be an unusual occurrence for me," Shenkman added, laughing. For the record, Stahl says it was her first interview in a shower — and her last."

Anyway, you can watch a condensed three-minute clip (including the shower scene) here.

Tags: futureofwork 60minutes LesleyStahl

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April 3, 2006

Two big-time innovators join the blogosphere

June Cohen, the producer of this year's TED 2006 conference, points out that two innovators - Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Dolby - have both launched blogs within the past month. Thus far, Gladwell has only published about five entries, but he's already attracted more than 300 comments to the blog (the little dust-up with the authors of Freakonomics, of course, was a big boost). He's modest, too. Despite being one of the best-known and highly-respected thinkers on anything from business to psychology, Malcolm includes this little line in his bio: "My great claim to fame is that I'm from the town where they invented the BlackBerry." That's like Michael Jordan writing, "My great claim to fame is that I won a finger-painting contest when I was a little boy."

As for Thomas Dolby, he uses his first post to explain at length why he decided to re-enter the musical scene after an extended absence:

Why choose now to get back into music? Well, for a start it was never meant to be a 15 year hiatus. Certainly I was pretty fed up with the music business and when I left LA in 1994, I washed my hands of the whole thing. But in the back of my mind I always thought I’d get my appetite back within a couple of years. Music is the only thing I really know how to do well. I can do lots of things ok — including writing, directing flims, starting a business, computer programming, soccer, and sailing boats and boards — but I’m only world class at one thing and that’s music.

Then there’s technology. I’ve come to realize I only function well when I’m using tools that are unrefined, ill-defined, unexplored. That’s the way it was when I started making electronic music in the mid-70’s using primitive synths. The same thing happened when music videos took off in the early 80’s but nobody knew what a music video was supposed to look like. And in the 90’s, virtual reality, video games, the Web, and finally mobile phones and content caught my imagination. In each era I was drawn to a new technology and its possibilities for self-expression. When I moved to Silicon Valley, I was right in the crucible of all technology, and it was irresistable to me. During that period, I watched as technology turned itself inside out more than once.

In 2006, the new horizon for music is the Internet. And I don’t mean MP3 piracy, which is old news by now. It’s taken a long time to arrive, but I feel the true Internet music revolution is finally upon us. I’m talking about musicians having the ability to reach out to their fans and make music in close to real time, in their own back room, while never having to put themselves in hock to large corporations.

I believe we’re about to enter a fascinating new era for musicians and music fans, and I want a front row seat. So I’m putting my enterpreneurial activities behind me, and going back on the road. This is just the first step — before embarking on new songs I’m feeling a strong need to reconnect with my original music and my core fans, who (unbelievably!) have never stopped arguing about my songs and lyrics, even with the total dearth of fresh material. Certain music has the ability to become part of the fabric of your life, and it’s something you never outgrow. This tour will be a way for me, as well as the audiences, to rekindle the old excitement. Getting road-ready is a complicated process, but it’s fun as hell. I’ll be recording some of the process here on my blog. Hope you enjoy it!

Tags: innovator ThomasDolby MalcolmGladwell

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