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June 9, 2006

June 9 innovation linkage, the World Cup edition

Germany re-branded as "The Land of Ideas" [Times Online]
Top 10 truths about the digital ecosystem [Geoffrey Moore]
The Blue Ocean Strategy electro re-mix [Creating Blue Oceans]
Highlights from the Design 2.0 event in San Francisco [Functioning Form]
Kissing frogs and picking horses [Innovate on Purpose]
What is your change-quotient? [Jim Carroll]
Re-learning to listen [How to Save the World]
A frozen food bistro in Hamburg [FRoSTA via The House of Innovation]
Uh-oh! The Pentagon discovers MySpace [New Scientist]
The next best thing to sliced bread [Asahi.com]

[image: German national soccer team]

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A model for evaluating the talent of an organization

In the current issue of Strategy + Business magazine, Jeffrey Joerres and Dominique Turcq share their thoughts on how to measure and manage employee contributions to corporate value. According to Jeffrey and Dominique, there are currently two major hurdles that stand in the way of companies being able to develop and deploy their talent most effectively - many managers are reluctant to categorize people, for fear of appearing elitist, and most HR departments are only able to classify individuals according to their business units or job functionality. Once companies are able to classify people horizontally across functions or business units, according to how “business critical” they are, they are in a much better position to evaluate the importance of talent to the organization.

Using the elaborate metaphor of a theatrical production, Jeffrey and Dominique come up with a model to classify an organization’s roles into four broad segments, each of which requires a significantly different talent-management approach:

(1) Creators devise and implement an organization’s distinguishing value proposition or business model;

(2) Ambassadors represent the organization’s public face and are responsible for customer experience;

(3) Craft Masters ensure the quality, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness of an organization;

(4) Drivers keep the business running. They are assembly-line operators, back-office agents, and administrative assistants.

Tags: talent management creators

[graphic: Strategy + Business magazine]

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Peter Kim of Merck shakes up the R&D business

The Wall Street Journal (link via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) recently profiled the efforts of Peter Kim, the new head of Merck Research Laboratories, to shake up the company's traditional R&D operations. In the process, Peter is drawing fire from long-time company employees for opening up the company's vaunted R&D labs to outsiders. In 1999, Merck entered into only 10 outside alliances with pharmaceutical researchers. In the three years since Peter Kim has taken over, Merck Research Labs has signed 141 deals. In 2005, the company reviewed more than 5,000 potential partnership opportunities, and it looks like Merck is slowly but surely opening its kimono to the outside world:

"For decades, Merck & Co.'s research laboratories pioneered many of the world's best-selling drugs, ranging from lifesaving vaccines to treatments for blood pressure, high cholesterol and AIDS. The company's scientists considered themselves the best in the industry -- a pride that often came across as arrogance.

These days, Merck's scientists swallow their pride under research chief Peter Kim, who spent most of his career in academia. Dr. Kim took over amid a string of drug-development failures at Merck and has made it clear he thinks the company's own labs aren't sufficient to replenish its pipeline. He says Merck needs to turn to other companies, both for new drugs and new means of discovering them. "Merck has outstanding science and scientists -- and it did when I came," says Dr. Kim. But, "in some areas, I knew that there were some scientists on the outside who were better."

Dr. Kim has hired other outsiders for top posts. Staffers have undergone training to improve their interpersonal skills when dealing with outside scientists. Some have reacted with anger to the initiatives and jumped ship... Whether Dr. Kim succeeds will not only sway the fate of an American corporate icon but also serve as a barometer of the pharmaceutical industry's struggle to stay relevant in medical research. Merck's strategy is common in the industry: Many big companies with aging blockbusters have turned to biotech firms and smaller drug makers to refill their pipelines."

Tags: Merck R&D innovation

[image: Peter Kim]

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Highlights from the Innovative Marketing event

Renee Hopkins Callahan of Idea Flow points out that a number of marketing and innovation experts are live-blogging the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference that is taking place at Columbia Business School. Over at the Fast Company Now blog, you can track the progress of the two-day event, which is being hosted by the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia.

On the first day of the event, John Hagel, co-author of The Only Sustainable Edge, led a thought-provoking discussion on the issue of attention scarcity and its impact on marketing, while Johnnie Moore led a session on consumer co-creation. It's also possible to download a 14-minute podcast from Columbia professor Bernd Schmitt, who discusses in greater detail branding and innovation in marketing, and a 21-minute podcast from Russ Klein, EVP and CMO of Burger King Corporation, who discusses the notion of "social currency."

Tags: innovation marketing Columbia

[image: Ethnodesigner via Flickr]

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A new report on consumer-driven innovation

Christine Spivey Overby of Forrester Research has released a new study called The Essentials Of Consumer-Driven Innovation. According to Christine, consumers are taking an ever-greater role in determining the innovation path of companies. As a result, innovation is shifting from a top-down to a bottom-up process:

"Internet technologies and social computing are changing the ways in which companies involve consumers in the creation of new products, services, and experiences, and Forrester calls this shift Consumer-Driven Innovation (updated from Consumer-Focused Innovation to reflect the central role that consumers play in the process). To thrive in the era of Consumer-Driven Innovation, companies need to master the tactics and tools across three disciplines: discovery, design, and deployment."

For the 13-page research report, Forrester interviewed nine vendor and user companies, including Accenture, Acxiom, Information Resources, SAP, and UGS on topics dealing with Consumer-Driven Innovation.

Tags: innovation consumer Forrester

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June 8, 2006

What can Brown do for innovation?

In its never-ending battle for market share with Fed Ex, it looks like UPS is borrowing a page from the design & innovation playbook. While its immensely popular What Can Brown Do For You? marketing campaign has been successful in reminding customers of the company's world-class logistics and supply chain, the fact remains that most people think of someone like Doug Heffernan from the long-running comedy The King of Queens when they think of the UPS deliveryperson. You know, brown shorts, brown shirt, and a bit of a bulge around the midsection.

That's all about to change. As Amy Chozick points out in today's Wall Street Journal, UPS is among a handful of companies that are using sponsorship of Olympus Fashion Week in New York to remind customers of its focus on design and innovation. (In addition to UPS, Olympus, Hershey and Kohler are sponsoring the event.) UPS now sponsors a UPS Hub at the Fashion Week show in Bryant Park, where top designers show off their innovative wares. Last year, for example, ten designers were selected to participate in UPS Delivers Fashion's Future, a platform created exclusively for up-and-coming designers, where they displayed their wares under a UPS-branded brown tent. What the designers came up with - lots of browns and neutrals in edgy fashions - looks like a real step-up from the traditional UPS uniform. If you check out the print version of today's Wall Street Journal, there are color photos of models walking the runway in super-cool UPS uniforms (knee-high boots and short shorts for the ladies, macho work boots and sleeveless shirts for the guys). A spokesperson for UPS explains why the company is sponsoring the event: "You wouldn't put UPS and fashion together. We wanted to put ourselves in a more modern light." Indeed. When you think about UPS, it's time to forget about freight forwarding, customs clearance, and all the nitty-gritty details of delivering packages on time.

What can Brown do for you? Well, if it involves supermodels and fashion shows, hey, there's probably a lot that UPS could do for me.

Tags: UPS brown design fashion

[images: The King of Queens and Olympus Fashion Week]

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June 8 innovation linkage

Portland is the most innovative city in America [Portland Business Journal]
How to build a bigger, better Silicon Valley [Guy Kawasaki]
Crows have human-like intelligence [National Geographic]
Hossein Eslambolchi's Top 10 Tech Trends to Watch [Shark Ride]
Kentucky wins nationwide innovation award [Community Press]
Promising Internet memes that never made it big [Wired News]
GE researchers figure out how to make cheap hydrogen [Popular Mechanics]
A company that touts its "leastsellers" [Vincon via Seth Godin]
Angela Merkel launches a video podcast series [We Make Money Not Art]

[image: Ambient visualization displays from the Googleplex via Yoz on Flickr]

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Fred Reichheld on the Ultimate Question

In his latest Cool Friend interview, Tom Peters talks with Fred Reichheld, Director Emeritus of Bain & Company. Throughout a distinguished career, Fred Reichheld's consulting work and research have focused on helping clients achieve superior results through improvements in customer, employee, and partner loyalty. In the June 2003 edition of Consulting magazine, Mr. Reichheld was included on the list of the world's top twenty-five consultants.

In his latest book, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth, he explores how companies can increase customer loyalty in order to drive revenue growth and create lasting value. With so much attention now being paid to customer-centric innovation and the customer co-creation process, it's interesting to hear Fred's take on the important relationship between corporations and consumers. In fact, as Fred points out, there is only one ultimate question that companies should be asking their stakeholders: "How likely is it you would recommend us to a friend?"

During the interview, Fred explains the difference between good profits and bad profits (e.g. the skyhigh costs that hotels charge customers to use the telephone) and describes how to think about the three different types of customers: the promoters, the passively satisfied and the detractors. When it comes down to it, it's a matter of understanding the size of "the army that's for you versus the army that's against you."

Tags: TomPeters FredReichheld ultimatequestion

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Xerox's new innovation center in India

Just one day after IBM announced a new $6 billion initiative to make India a core part of its global innovation strategy, Xerox unveiled its new Indian innovation center, known as XITE (Xerox Innovation & Technology Excellence). While exact details about the size and scope of the XITE investment are unknown (i.e. the total cost is likely to be far less than IBM's $6 billion), it appears that Xerox views India as an important innovation hub for the digital printing industry:

"With this new technology center, Xerox intends to give its current as well as potential customers hands-on experience of the products. Speaking on opening of the center, Vipin Tuteja, director, production systems group, Xerox India, said, "With the opening of our XITE, we want to re-enforce our commitment and leadership in the Indian digital printing industry. It will act as an enabler for quicker decision-making. We see an increase in the customized data printing, which is expected to rise further from 31% in 2003 to 49% in 2007. We aim at providing customized solutions for all market segments."

Look for more details about XITE to be announced in August during Xerox's three-day innovation tour of India, which will make stops in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Tags: India Xerox innovation

[image: The Xerox Shop via Flickr]

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June 7, 2006

Innovation brain freeze

On the Business & Technology Reinvention blog, David Daniels explains the phenomenon known as Innovation Brain Freeze:

"Brain Freeze" is the headache you sometimes get when you consume too much ice cream or cold drink too fast. I think that "Brain Freeze" can happen with innovation. For example - How many focus areas for innovation does your company have? Five, ten, twenty five? Microsoft has seventy this year...

In most organizations 70 focus areas with 3 or 4 times more in numbers of projects can cause "innovation Brain Freeze." One of the core value creating principles for all projects and initiatives I undertake is to ensure that my clients' people manage at most 4 projects at the same time. My experience is that even if a person is assigned 10 projects/initiatives, they almost always settle on the 4 or 5 that they like most. The balance of items get relegated to "I'll get to it sometime" status... What do you do if you're a smaller business without the funding to do whatever you want from an R&D perspective? How many innovation areas should you set for your organization before it gets "brain freeze"?

With that in mind, Daniels proposes a list of four steps that a company can take to narrow down its strategic focus to a reasonable number of "innovation focus areas."

Tags: innovation leadership management brainfreeze

[image: Brain Freeze cartoon]

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A new podcast series on social innovation

On his Software Only blog, angel investor and early stage venture consultant Jeff Clavier reports on a new Social Innovation Conversations podcast series sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation:

"The Center, which is part of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, seeks to build a community of people actively engaged in social innovation, and strengthen the capacity of individuals and organizations to develop innovative solutions to social problems for a more just, sustainable and healthy world. It is part of the curriculum of the Standford MBA program, and does research work on organizational aspects of non-profits.

The purpose of "Social Innovation Conversations" is to be a collaborative online platform for experts, community leaders, and scholars to share their knowledge across sectors for multi-disciplinary learning. The Center will offer conferences, faculty lectures, speaker events and expert interviews. In addition, leading professional and other academic institutions will be invited to contribute content to the channel to raise public awareness about the grand challenges of the world."

Anyway, the tagline for the social innovation podcast series is "Reinventing the world together, one conversation at a time." I took a quick look at some of the conversations available for download on the site, and it looks impressive. For example, there's Ethan Zuckerman sharing his thoughts about African Netizens, David Bornstein discussing the role of social entrepreneurs, and Alex Lindsay on the next generation of the "digital craftsman".

Tags: innovation Stanford podcast

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IBM views India as an important hub for innovation

IBM is planning to invest $6 billion in India over the next three years, as part of a broader strategy of making India a hub for global innovation. Speaking in Bangalore, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano noted that "India and other emerging economies are increasingly (becoming) an important part of IBM's global success." In the past three years, IBM has invested more than $2 billion and hired more than 30,000 people in India. Obviously, IBM buys into the whole "world is flat" argument as it makes a big bet on India's innovation potential. According to AP reports, the investment will be used to build service delivery centres in Bangalore and create a telecommunications research and innovation center for IBM's telecom clients around the world.

Tags: IBM innovation India

[photo: CBC News]

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Nicholas Carr on complementary innovation

In the latest issue of Booz Allen Hamilton's strategy + business magazine, Nicholas Carr discusses the concept of complementary innovation. Using the example of tire & rubber maker Michelin, Carr shows how an innovation in one business unit can often lead to rapid revenue growth in a completely different business unit. In this case, it was Michelin's decision to publish the Michelin Guide, which provides information on gas stations, hotels, restaurants and roadside attractions along with maps and driving tips, that encouraged motorists to drive their cars more frequently, thereby enabling the company to grow its rubber tire business more rapidly. The company successfully transitioned from the production of rubber (a basic commodity) to the production of rubber products (tires). Below, Carr further explains the notion of complementary innovation:

"Tourist guides and automobile tires are what economists today call “complements.” Simply put, complements are products that tend to be consumed together. Think of movies and popcorn, or plywood and nails, or personal computers and digital cameras. Economically, complements have an interesting symbiotic relationship. If you expand the supply or reduce the price of one product, demand for its complements tends to go up. Cut the cost of electricity, and you’ll increase sales of vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Make it easier for motorists to find a decent hotel room, and they’ll take longer trips in their cars and, in turn, replace their tires more frequently.

Innovation in complements is an important exception to the commonly heard command to “focus on the core.” Sticking to your knitting has become a popular rule for good reason, but as the Michelin brothers’ experience shows, it’s not ironclad. Although it’s important for innovation to be disciplined, focused on earning a return on investment and gaining a competitive advantage, there’s a danger in narrowing your sights too much. Most products exist in an ecosystem of complementary goods and services, each of which influences the others’ sales and prices... By studying the dynamics of your own company’s product and service ecosystem, you may discover fruitful opportunities to be creative not only in your core product but in its complements as well."

It's not just Michelin that has grasped the power of complementary innovation. As Carr explains, a number of companies - including IBM, Intel and Google - have created strategies around the basic idea of complementary innovation:

"Innovation in complements lies at the heart of Google’s strategy. Because Google makes its money by selling Internet advertising, anything that promotes people’s use of the Internet — from software applications to online auctions to telephone service — is simply a complement to its ad business. It’s in Google’s interest, therefore, to develop and give away as many of those products as possible, or at least to keep their prices low. That’s exactly what it’s been doing — and why this upstart has struck fear in the hearts of companies as diverse as eBay, Microsoft, Verizon, and Time Warner."

Anyway, the strategy + business article also includes five key questions to consider as you think about crafting a complementary innovation strategy. Also, be sure to check out Nicholas Carr's Rough Type blog for more on his ideas and musings about innovation.

Tags: innovation NicholasCarr Google Michelin

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The fundamentals of paper prototyping

The Putting People First blog points to a comprehensive book review of Carolyn Snyder’s book Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces. According to reviewer Pabini Gabriel-Petit, the book “teaches you everything you need to know to successfully do paper prototyping and offers many practical tips.” In addition to paper prototyping, the book extensively covers the basics of usability testing:

"The majority of the book’s content comprises a basic reference on usability testing. While some of the information on usability testing describes how to test paper prototypes, most of it is applicable to any type of usability testing. If you’re already an expert in usability testing, you may not find this information as useful, but Snyder has honed her approach to usability testing over her many years of experience as a usability professional and provides a wealth of practical information.”

Anyway, the book’s companion Web site contains a number of resources for paper prototypers, including PDF versions of templates, forms, checklists, handouts, and procedures from the book; links to Web sites where you can obtain the supplies you need to create paper prototypes; and an extensive list of references, including articles, papers, and books.”

Tags: prototyping innovation

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June 6, 2006

June 6 innovation linkage

Help title a book on Wikinomics [BoingBoing]
Management advice: Which 90% is crap? [Bob Sutton]
The soft skills of global managers [Harvard Management Update]
A manifesto for social innovation [Smart Mobs]
The middle ground of innovation [Innovation Weblog]
Green product design [Niti Bhan]
The search for meaning: stop counting [John Winsor]
Life is not a meritocracy [Mark Hollander]
Drinking coffee makes you more open-minded [New Scientist]

[image: Website swarms via Swarm The Dot Com]

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The Devil's Dictionary of innovation

With millions of people around the world interpreting today's date (666) as an omen of ill tidings, I thought it might be fun to take a look at Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary for some humorous definitions of terms related to innovation:

CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

OPPORTUNITY, n. A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

PLAN, v.t. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

Tags: innovation DevilsDictionary

[image: Amazon]

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Anthropologist-led innovation at Pitney Bowes

Computerworld has a great feature on how companies like IBM and Pitney Bowes are generating unique insights about the needs and wants of their users by tapping into the expertise of anthropologists. As the article points out, technologists often bring biases and assumptions to the design process, blinding them to the true needs of users. Sometimes what's needed is an outside perspective:

"Enter anthropologists, who are trained to ask questions about how people work, how they relate to others, which tools they use and which ones they don't. That kind of research allows anthropologists to see the world from users' perspectives. Although IT anthropologists are far from common, some companies and IT shops are hiring them to provide that insight, which in turn helps technologists develop applications and systems that best meet users' needs. IBM computer scientist Eser Kandogan sums up the relationship like this: A technologist can make a tool usable; an anthropologist can make sure it's used."

In one example cited by Computerworld, Pitney Bowes has hired two anthropologists to spot problems and solutions that more tradtional employees might have otherwise missed. In other words, if a client is experiencing a problem with managing the flow of its mail, documents and packages, in steps an anthropologist. In one case, a team led by anthropologist Alexendra Mack studied how small businesses handle bulk mailing. As a result of that research, Pitney Bowes is developing a software application that will help them be more efficient in that process. The innovation efforts are being led by Jim Euchner, vice president of advanced technology and chief e-business officer, who helped pioneer the use of anthropologists back in 1999. (Jim was also a speaker at the recent FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York)

This focus on anthropology and ethnography is generating interest across Corporate America. According to the former president of the American Anthropological Association, there's a growing demand for practicing anthropologists. However, as Euchner points out, IT departments need to create the kind of environment that is welcoming to an anthropologist: "An IT initiative that starts with the presumption that work is essentially something that needs to be processed, mapped, rationalized and systematized and that the people need to conform with that -- that's really not a place where an anthropologist will have a voice."

Tags: PitneyBowes innovation IT anthropology

[image: Computerworld]

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Releasing the pent-up creativity of your workers

This story gives a whole new meaning to the term "red light district." The New York Times has a fun feature on Kelly Butler, an artist and lifelong fan of "alternative lighting," who finally realized her creative ambition after years of trudging through an unfulfilling 9-to-5 factory job. She once made sandals at a factory in Nashville; now she she makes exotic lamps out of vintage lingerie. Already, she has sold more than 300 of these "Tramp Lamps" through her Web site. (That number is expected to swell after this nice bit of exposure in the New York Times). Instead of engaging in repetitive assembly-line tasks every day, Ms. Butler now spends much of her time hunting for suitable pieces of vintage lingerie and then transforming them into alternative lighting.

The point here is that workers have a lot of pent-up creativity inside. It's up to their managers to find a way to give expression to this creativity. If they don't, well, these employees just might leave their drab, 9-to-5 jobs for something else that does fulfill the creative impulse.

Tags: creativity innovation

[image: New York Times]

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Beware the innovation dream team

In the Secrets of Great Teams feature in the current issue of FORTUNE magazine, there's an interesting piece by Geoffrey Colvin on why dream teams fail. Colvin examines why so-called "dream teams" comprised of the best talent the world can buy often under-perform expectations. In sports, as in business, there's more to it than just stacking the deck with superstars. There's a real need to understand the role of lesser-heralded players and the overarching importance of creating a culture of trust and collaboration:

"If someone tells you you're being recruited onto a dream team, maybe you should run. In our team-obsessed age, the concept of the dream team has become irresistible. But it's brutally clear that they often blow up. Why? Because they're not teams. They're just bunches of people.

A look at why so many dream teams fail, and why so many of the most successful teams consist of individuals you've never heard of, yields insight into the essential nature of winning organizations. As always when the subject is the real-world behavior of human beings, the takeaway includes things we always knew - even though we rarely behave as if we do.

The most important lesson about team performance is that the basic theory of the dream team is wrong. You cannot assemble a group of stars and then sit back to watch them conquer the world. You can't even count on them to avoid embarrassment. The 2004 U.S. Olympic basketball team consisted entirely of NBA stars; it finished third and lost to Lithuania."

According to Colvin, there are five basic reasons why dream teams so often disappoint:

(1) Signing too many all-stars instead of role players;

(2) Failing to build a culture of trust;

(3) Tolerating competing agendas;

(4) Letting conflicts fester;

(5) Hiding from the real issues.

Tags: dreamteam collaboration management

[image: The USA Dream Team]

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June 5, 2006

Innovation lessons from Motorola

The current issue of FORTUNE magazine has a great segment called Secrets of Great Teams - it's a comprehensive look at a number of great business teams throughout history. In one feature, Adam Lashinsky takes a closer look at the mix of innovative engineering and fashion-forward design that went into the creation of the Motorola RAZR phone. For the project team at Motorola, the task was a daunting one: come up with the thinnest phone ever made that would be as beautifully designed as it was functional. Oh, and do this within 12 months, all while a major competitor (Nokia) is muscling away international market share from you at an unprecedented pace. As Lashinsky explains, the innovative phone was made possible only when the Motorola engineers and designers decided to break all the rules of conventional product development:

"The RAZR - a play on a code name the geeks themselves dreamed up - was hatched in colorless cubicles in exurban Libertyville, an hour's drive north of Chicago. It was a skunkworks project whose tight-knit team repeatedly flouted Motorola's own rules for developing new products. They kept the project top-secret, even from their colleagues. They used materials and techniques Motorola had never tried before. After contentious internal battles, they threw out accepted models of what a mobile telephone should look and feel like. In short, the team that created the RAZR broke the mold, and in the process rejuvenated the company."

There are also two sidebars to the print version of the article - one highlights the eight distinct innovations that went into the making of the RAZR phone (i.e. hiding the antenna in the mouthpiece at the bottom to give the phone a sleeker look) while the other sidebar offers four innovation lessons from Moto:

(1) Secrecy limits distractions. The Motorola team bypassed the wireless companies and even set up elaborate rules to make sure colleagues within the company didn't know the specifics of the new design. For example, digital pictures of the project were prohibited.

(2) Research isn't everything. Instead of "mall testing" the phone with consumer focus groups, the design team went with their own gut instincts.

(3) Niche products can have mass appeal. The phone was supposed to be a "high-priced, high-end jewel" to regain market share for Motorola. However, unexpectedly high demand for the product meant that cost of the phone plunged below the $100 mark.

(4) Missing deadlines doesn't mean failure. Sometimes getting it right takes "a whole lot more time" than expected. The Motorola team finished the project months behind schedule.

Tags: Motorola design innovation

[image: FORTUNE]

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Sun Labs and the innovation supernova

Despite a wave of recent layoffs and a painful financial restructuring program, Sun Microsystems insists that it will continue to focus on innovation at its Sun Labs R&D unit:

"The server and software company opened its doors on Friday to show off dozens of projects in development by researchers here. It focuses on applied research, or the exploration of technologies and concepts that it thinks it can develop into products in a relatively short period of time, said Bob Sproull, director of Sun Labs.

"We want to stay small and be the 'eyes and ears' of the company," Sproull said. Sun Labs is the work place of about 170 people, most of whom are based in California, and has grown fairly slowly by design since the group was founded in 1990. Sun devotes about 2% of its overall R&D budget to Sun Labs, said Greg Papadopoulos, the company's chief technology officer. That allocation is unlikely to change in the wake of layoffs and a restructuring program announced earlier this week. But the overall amount of money Sun sets aside for research and development is likely to change, he said. Sun's research and development budget during its 2005 fiscal year was $1.8 billion, down from $1.9 billion in the previous fiscal year.

Anyway, the CNET article has a brief overview of some of the great work being done at Sun, including a next-generation computing system for DARPA, a new media browser for couch potatoes, and a new social networking/video conferencing application. It's also worth checking out the Sun Labs website for a feature called Contrarian Minds. Apparently, one Sun researcher (Sara Gates) started off with a simple question - "Why Do Cars Have Brakes?" - and ended up with an innovative approach to the problem of identity management.

Tags: Sun innovation SunLabs R&D

[image: New York Times]

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Open innovation at Kraft

If you've ever had any particularly inspired ideas about products such as Kraft mac & cheese, here's your chance to shine. (Yeah, we know the new Dino shapes are cool, but let's try to push the envelope a bit) MSNBC (via the Financial Times) points to an open innovation initiative underway at Kraft, in which the company is actively soliciting ideas from consumers on innovative ways of packaging and selling food items. The open innovation initiative is apparently inspired by a similar effort at P&G:

"The effort is modelled on a similar one under way at Procter & Gamble, where chief executive A.G. Lafley wants half of the company's ideas for new products to come from outside sources. Kraft said: "P&G was gracious with its time in explaining to us their concept. We decided that we should be more aggressive at going after this ourselves." Some consumer companies believe internal research and development is not enough to maintain a competitive edge on innovation. "We are most interested in ideas that are more than a concept, in particular new products and packages that are ready to be brought to market, or can be brought to market quickly," Kraft said on its website."

Just to get the ball rolling, Kraft will officially unveil the first product to emerge from its broader "open innovation" drive: a block of Parmesan cheese encased in a disposable plastic cheese grater! The idea was, ahem, borrowed from a small grocery store in Italy. Also this week, Kraft plans to roll out its first-ever microwaveable hot dog and bun.

Tags: Kraft innovation openinnovation

[image: Kraft]

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The Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards

Just a reminder that nominations for the annual Wall Street Journal technology innovation awards are due on Friday, June 9. According to event sponsor Dow Jones, innovations should break with conventional processes and should go beyond marginal improvements in existing products and services. However, at the same time, an innovation does not have to be commercially viable. The Wall Street Journal is 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.

So what's in it for the winners? There's not actually any cash prize involved, but winners will be featured in a September issue of the Wall Street Journal and honored at an awards presentation on October 17. A number of venture capitalists will also be sniffing around the entries, so there's also a chance of landing some VC funding for a young start-up with a breakthrough technology.

Tags: WallStreetJournal innovation technology

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