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July 14, 2006
At Staples, innovation starts with the consumer
Thursday's Wall Street Journal had a great story about consumer-generated innovation at office supply chain Staples. For the past three years, Staples has been sponsoring a contest called InventionQuest that pays winners $25,000 in cash prizes and up to 8% in royalties for innovative new products. In some cases, inventors can pull down tens of thousands of dollars in royalties from new inventions that have been re-branded with the Staples name. In just the past 12 months, Staples has received over 10,000 new ideas for product improvements, including a few that became best-sellers: Staples Rubber Bandits, Staples WordLock, Staples Handy Strap Stapler, and Staples TackDots. All of these retail for under $9.99, but deliver healthy margins.
As William Bulkeley of the Wall Street Journal points out, this strategy of soliciting innovative new consumer ideas has thus far been a winner:
"The contest is part of a broad effort by Staples to develop a stable of exclusive products to differentiate its own brand line from those of competitors. The strategy appears to be working: Staples-brand products, which carry a higher profit margin than other goods, accounted for 18% of Staples's $16.08 billion in revenue last year, up from 11% four years ago. CEO Ron Sargent says he expects that to rise to 20% this year."
In fact, the consumer-generated innovation initiative has been so successful over the past three years that Staples has surpassed Office Depot and OfficeMax to become the undisputed leader within the office superstore segment. At the same time, the company has boosted sales by 11% a year and earnings per share by 26% annually. Also, within the past two years, the company has set up in-house product- and packaging-design departments and filed for more than 50 patents. In fact, the store's private-label "brand" - fueled by wildly creative consumer ideas - is becoming so successful that some grocery stores are now carrying Staples brand office supply products.
Tags: innovation Staples invention
[image: Staples on Donald Trump's "The Apprentice"]
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British design is BIG
Media Bistro points to a new website from the Design Council in the UK that celebrates the importance of design to business. According to the UK Design Council, businesses that embrace design report faster growth rates, superior stock market performance, and improved performance across a number of key business metrics. In other words, design matters:
"The Design Council in the UK, a group that's committed to showing the important correlation between business and design, has just launched a big report/site to prove just that, entitled Design Fact Finder. There are all the facts and figures there, with things like "Use design in all stages of developing new products and services: businesses that did were twice as likely to see design contributing to growth by 2 to 1." It's a huge batch of data and case studies and pie charts and graphs and things. And they even explain how they reached all of their conclusion, by way of a page entitled "Detailed Research Methodology." In a field that seemingly has to justify itself to far more people than it should, even if you don't live in the UK perhaps this is the kind of thing you might want to hold onto in your back pocket the next time you're trying to talk a hesitant client into trying something new."
However, Virginia Postrel of the Dynamist blog hints that the UK Design Council might have gone a bit overboard in making its case for design: "I know just how hard it is to measure the economic value of aesthetics (or, in this case, design). To take just one common problem, in a highly competitive market investing in aesthetics may not lead to greater profits but simply allow a firm to stay in business, with the gains going to consumers. I wish there were more good social science attacking these very difficult questions. What the world does not need, however, is the sort of self-justifying junk research design advocates put out and then celebrate as though it proves anything. As a journalist, I'm not ashamed to use anecdotes, but I'm honest about what they are."
With all due respect to Ms. Postrel, I wouldn't call the Design Council website "junk research." As part of one study, for example, the Design Council found that shares in design-led businesses have outperformed the FTSE 100 [a major British stock market benchmark] by more than 200% over the past decade. While the definition of what constitutes a 'design-led business' is up for grabs, that seems like a pretty winning argument for making design a critical part of a business strategy.
Tags: design Design Council
[image: Design Council UK]
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Mark Cuban thinks the Internet is boring
According to the ever-controversial Mark Cuban, the Internet is, like, so over. In an extended blog post that's basically a reprise of the famous "IT Doesn't Matter" thesis from Nicholas Carr, Cuban downplays the importance of the Internet:
"The Internet is Boring. It's old news... The biggest compliment I can pay to the net and to all those pioneers who got it to this point is that it's boring. It works. It’s not perfect, but it works and has absolutely become a utility. We get water, electricity and now digital bits shipped to our homes. It's our choice whether to purchase any of the above, and we tend to choose all 3.
I don't get excited about enhancements made to the electrical or plumbing infrastructure and I no longer get excited about the marginal enhancements being made to our digital distribution infrastructure. We haven't seen anything new for the net itself for years..."
Anyway, Mark Cuban goes on and on, dissing just about everything about Web 2.0 ("not as exciting as going from DOS to Windows"), including broadband ("been around for years"), blogging, MySpace, Flickr, Digg, Google, and YouTube. According to Cuban, "the internet is just a utility to deliver the digital bits [digital entrepreneurs] create" and what's so exciting about utilities, anyway? Cuban concludes: "I can't wait for my daughter to ask me why people used to get so excited about the internet and I can tell her that after the first few years it made no sense to me either. The net is boring. Get over it."
I'll say this for Mr. Cuban - he has a flair for self-promotion. His "Internet is boring" post has already generated more than 65 comments and a firestorm of controversy, much like Nicholas Carr's "IT Doesn't Matter" article in Harvard Business Review.
Tags: Mark Cuban Internet
[image: Mark Cuban on stage]
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Innovation down in the Valley
Earlier in the week, photoblogger Thomas Hawk uploaded 45 photos of the San Jose area to Flickr as part of his San Jose: Capital of Silicon Valley photostream. The photos, which were part of a photoshoot for San Francisco magazine's "Best of the Bay Area" issue, included this one from the Tech Museum of Innovation. In addition, there were hot street scenes, a pic of the Knight Ridder building, and a view of the San Jose City Hall rotunda at night.
Tags: San Jose innovation techmuseum
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July 13, 2006
How management innovation happens
The summer issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review includes a number of interesting articles, including a piece on "How Management Innovation Happens" from Julian Birkinshaw, a strategy professor at London Business School, and Michael Mol, a research fellow at LBS. To understand the process of management innovation, the two LBS researchers first conducted a historical review of more than 100 management innovations that took place over 130 years. Then they studied 11 recent cases of management innovation. Compared with the process of technological innovation, they found that management innovation tends to be more "diffuse and gradual," following four classic stages of development:
"The first stage is some type of dissatisfaction with the status quo, such as a crisis or strategic threat. That stage is followed by inspiration from other sources. The third stage is the invention of the management innovation itself. While most innovators identified a precipitating event that preceded the innovation, such as a challenge from a boss or a new assignment, few recalled a distinct “eureka moment” when the innovation occurred. The fourth stage is validation, both internally and through external sources such as academics, consultants, media organizations or industry associations."
Tags: innovation management
[images: (l) Julian Birkinshaw (r) Michael Mol]
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July 13 innovation linkage
Innovation at General Electric [Financial Times]
Innovation is such an Edward de Bono thing [DNA India]
A trip down HP's memory lane [CNET News]
7 Habits of Highly Effective Junior Designers [Life Clever]
How will YouTube make money? [Mercury News]
Dan Rather considering a gig with AOL [Hollywood Reporter]
Michael Dell's plans for Alienware [TG Daily]
U.S. Army uses nanotechnology for armored vehicles [EETimes.com]
[image: The Steam-Powered Internet Machine]
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The rules of disciplined innovation
While innovation remains the single most powerful competitive weapon an organization can wield, there is also the very real risk of product failure during the innovation process. As a result, innovation requires a new discipline across the organization. A successful product may boost sales for a quarter, but long-lasting business success requires a process of innovation that is reliable and consistent. In this special guest post for the Business Innovation Insider, Sam Kogan, president & COO of product innovation consulting firm GEN3 Partners, discusses the four rules of disciplined innovation.
Sam Kogan has been involved in innovation consulting for more than 25 years and has extensive experience in scientific R&D. Before joining GEN3 in 2003, Dr. Kogan was the director of innovation consulting services at Invention Machine Corp., where he managed more than 100 projects and conducted innovation training seminars for a number of international companies. For more on Sam Kogan's insights into the innovation process, check out a series of articles that he wrote for Industry Week last year.
Without further ado, here are Sam Kogan's four rules of disciplined innovation:
Rule #1: Define and focus innovation
The most successful product innovators know that innovation isn’t an end unto itself. To identify the most promising ideas, they scrutinize what each product offers customers: How much time and cost will it save? Does it significantly improve the way customers accomplish their interests? Do customers even care about improvements in such “parameters of value?”
At GEN3 Partners, we define innovation as “significant movement along the main parameters of customer value (MPV).” In other words, innovation must deliver actual value to the customer along parameters such as cost, function, design or other criteria. The parameters of customer value are not always obvious to manufacturers, customers or (luckily for you) the competition. But once you’ve identified them, you are on your way to a successful product.
Rule #2: View innovation as an investment, not an expense
Most of us invest to secure our future, guarantee financial success and protect ourselves financially. The same principles apply to corporations. When corporations understand the need for a specific competence, they invest in it for the long term and everyone in the organization feels the need for it to succeed. This is what General Electric did under Jack Welch’s leadership when the management team recognized the strategic importance of increasing the controllability and reliability of the manufacturing process. They developed tools and methodologies like Six Sigma to guarantee their competitiveness and ensure sustainable growth. Many other companies followed their lead.
Today is a time to invest in innovation. Innovation protects organizations from the competitive pressures of globalization. It guarantees success by driving growth and competitive advantage. And in a world where the pace of change is dizzying, successful innovation is the best protection.
Too often, however, innovation is regarded as an expense that may – or may not – pay off for the organization. As a result, many companies allocate minimal resources to innovation – resources that are vulnerable to cuts when the organization faces temporary difficulties. If, instead, you view innovation as an investment, you take a long term view, build capabilities, and internalize best practices so you can maximize the return on your innovation investment while minimizing risk. For many companies, this is a dramatic, philosophical shift. It empowers companies to demand and get more from their investment. Innovation is then treated just like any other part of the organization, with predictable ROI.
Rule #3: Consistently make better innovation decisions without working longer hours or spending more
So is the answer to pour more money into R&D, creative talent and brainstorming sessions? That’s working harder, not smarter. Most innovation is caught in what I call the “product trap.” Traditionally, if you want to improve your ketchup, you call in the tomato experts. To improve the performance of a tire, you call the wheel experts.
The best innovation comes instead from breaking down the barriers across products, geographies and industries. Think beyond what the product is to what it does and how it works—to the function it performs. When you view innovation from a functional perspective, you can now draw on innovation from many disciplines. Ketchup is a thick liquid, so innovations could come from dozens of functional areas that address how liquids flow. Not sweet enough? There are hundreds of approaches to sweetening, and the best ones have not necessarily been developed in food industries. Also, just as American companies found IT talents in India, they are discovering tremendous innovation talent outside the US – in Eastern Europe or in countries like Russia. By tapping into innovation networks abroad, organizations can reduce their cost and risk.
Rule #4: Embrace disciplined innovation across the organization
When innovation relies on a single genius, the entire organization is vulnerable. The iPod is widely regarded as a great, innovative product. But what happens if Steve Jobs decides to leave Apple? The organization is at risk, in the public’s eye at the very least. To survive market and personnel changes, strong companies develop an innovation discipline that permeates the organization.
Thomas Edison is best-known for a single invention, the incandescent light bulb, yet he and his team also created a research lab at Menlo Park, New Jersey that systematically churned out innovation after innovation -- over 1,000 U.S. patents in all. America’s greatest inventor knew that innovation isn’t a single moment of creative genius. To be worthwhile, innovation must be predictable and reliable. Now there’s a bright idea.
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Asia's leading innovators
If you're interested in the future of innovation in places like China, Japan and South Korea, Red Herring Asia is sponsoring a "Meet Asia's Innovators" summit in Hong Kong in late August:
"On August 28-30, over 300 delegates will come together in Hong Kong to discover an exceptional array of entrepreneurs and leading experts from the best technology firms in Asia. Themed “Meet Asia’s Innovators”, Red Herring Asia 2006 will present the winners of the Red Herring 100 Asia award, selected by Red Herring editors from nearly 500 submissions... The program will feature high-level keynote sessions, panel discussions, corporate presentations by winners of Red Herring 100 Asia award, and insights by top-tier global venture capitalists and investors who will share their strategies and accomplishments in venture investment in Asia. Beyond networking opportunities with Asia’s most sought-after entrepreneurs, the conference provides deep insight into the Asian technology scene."
For more on the Red Herring Asia 100, be sure to watch for the August 21 issue of Red Herring.
Tags: Asia innovation China
[image: Red Herring Asia]
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July 12, 2006
Zidane: a new way to solve problems
OK, this was bound to happen after what happened in the World Cup final on Sunday... Check out this spoof video of the now-infamous Zidane headbutt being featured on YouTube.com. (Since being uploaded on Tuesday, the video has already been viewed more than 204,000 times.) If you don't know how to solve your problems at the office today, just do a Zidane.
[video: YouTube.com]
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The new Global CEO study from IBM
Now available from IBM: The Global CEO Study 2006. After filling out a brief registration form, IBM will send along a free copy of the report. I haven't received a copy yet, but it sounds enticing: "Accelerated globalization. Constant technology advances. Intensified competition. How are CEOs responding? To find out, IBM talked to 765 CEOs and thought leaders from 21 industries around the world. Learn for yourself how the men and women on top are using innovation to their advantage."
UPDATE: As soon as you fill out the registration information on the IBM site, you will be able to download a 64-page PDF document. Oh - and you'll also be able to find out the location of the image on the front cover of the report. Hint: it's in Hong Kong.
Tags: IBM innovation
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How important is "executive intelligence"?
Harvard Business School professor James Heskett points out that "executive intelligence" may be just as important as certain personality traits in the eventual success of a business leader. While many business bestsellers such as Good to Great have pointed out the need for successful business leaders to possess traits such as "humility" and "a drive for success," a new book from Justin Menkes suggests that certain types of intelligence are often more important in predicting future success:
"In his recent book, Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes proposes another set of hypotheses, among them that too much emphasis has been given to personality and style and too little to types of intelligence that enhance leadership performance. He argues that "when it comes to predicting work performance, cognitive-ability tests have been demonstrated to be approximately ten times as powerful as personality assessments. . . . Personality is not a differentiator of star talent. It is an individual's facility for clear thinking or intelligence that largely determines their leadership success." Menkes places his bets on an individual's "executive intelligence," the ability to digest, often with the help of others, large amounts of information in order to form important decisions that produce useful action with the right amount of deliberation."
Anyway, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge has opened up Heskett's provocative piece for commentary until July 27. Since the column was posted on July 5, it's already attracted 30 comments. What do you think? Should an innovative organization place more emphasis on "executive intelligence" or "personality and style" during the hiring process?
Tags: intelligence personality innovation
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The ultimate destination for a brainstorming session
In a post called Table With a View, Trendwatching site Springwise points to a Belgian restaurant that is literally suspended 164 feet above the ground with a giant crane:
"Belgian Dinner in the Sky offers event organizers a new way to make their event highly memorable: a table, with 22 seated guests, is suspended from a crane. The specially built table is surrounded by chairs of the type usually found on roller coasters, with four-point seat belts. Hoisted 50 meters (164 feet) above ground, safety is a reasonable concern.
Safely buckled up and floating mid-air, guests can enjoy a meal or meeting, with three chefs, waiters, presenters and/or entertainers standing in an open area in the centre of the table. One of the company's first events was a dinner for 22 chefs, hosted by San Pellegrino. Table, crane, logistic and security staff are available for EUR 7900 for an eight hour session, which can be organized anywhere a large crane can be placed."
Selling a thrilling edge and aerial view, this could be the next big thing for Sweet Sixteen parties and corporate brainstorming sessions. One for the events industry to look into! Just don't look down...
While it's always nice to hold a corporate brainstorming session somewhere off-site, methinks that dangling a group of 20 knowledge workers 16 stories above the ground for hours at a time may not be the best solution... Anyway, if you check out the Dinner in the Sky website, there's a cool video of how it all works.
Tags: brainstorming dinnerinthesky
[image: Springwise]
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From Russia, With Diggs
With the G8 summit taking place in St. Petersburg, Russia later this week, I thought it might be an interesting time to check out the "Russian Digg" for insights into what's hot in the Russian blogosphere. While Novosti 2.0 doesn't have quite the readership of Digg, it was still able to point me to a number of interesting, innovation-related stories:
Do I really need an iPod nano? [Pavlov and his dogs]
Nintendo gives President Bush the "Brain Age" videogame as a gift [Dmitri Kot]
A coffee cup that stirs itself [Russian Gizmodo]
A web site to help foreigners speak Chinese [Web Planet]
"To Google" is now in the dictionary [IT Novosti]
Tags: Digg innovation G8 Russia
[image: The Innovations Symposium at the G8 Summit]
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MySpace is now the #1 destination on the Web
When Rupert Murdoch shelled out $580 million for MySpace last year, I doubt even he was able to predict this: MySpace is now the #1 destination on the Internet. The Hitwise blog has posted a number of interesting graphs and charts showing how MySpace is now more popular than either Google or Yahoo! Mail. In addition, MySpace is the leading generator of Website traffic for other sites. Over the past two years, MySpace has grown at an astounding rate of 4,300%:
"For the first time, www.myspace.com has surpassed Yahoo! Mail as the most visited domain on the Internet for US Internet users. To put MySpace's growth in perspective, if we look back to July 2004 myspace.com represented only .1% of all Internet visits. This time last year myspace.com represented 1.9% of all Internet visits. With the week ending July 8, 2006 market share figure of 4.5% of all the US Internet visits, myspace.com has achieved a 4300% increase in visits over two years and 132% increase in visits since the same time last year."
Yet, if you were to ask a Fortune 500 CEO: "What's your MySpace strategy?" what do you think the answer would be?
[image: Rupert Murdoch's empire]
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July 11, 2006
Long Tail podcast with Chris Anderson
If you're looking to wrap your arms around the key points of the Long Tail theory, check out the new 15-minute podcast with Long Tail author Chris Anderson over at TCS Daily. During the conversation with TCS Daily columnist Ed Driscoll, Chris explains what the shift from mass markets to niche markets means for business organizations and gives various examples throughout history when a changing economic distribution system altered the relationship between "blockbusters" and niche products.
The Internet is the best example of the Long Tail at work, of course, but the Sears Roebuck catalog of 1896 is another great example. Once the "general store" model of economic distribution gave way to a "centralized warehouse" model of economic distribution powered by the trans-continental railroad, retailers like Sears were able to create massive catalogs of new products. While the 20th century was all about "hits" and "blockbusters," the "infinite shelf space" of the digital age means that the distribution curve is now changing to favor niche products.
The podcast is available as a download from the iTunes music store. It's worth checking out - the Long Tail book is already #24 on Amazon and has been generating a tremendous amount of buzz around the blogosphere.
Tags: long tail ChrisAnderson
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The media space-time tunnel
If you've ever wondered what it would feel like to update and manage a blog 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with live news feeds from all over the world in a smattering of different languages, this new art installation by Chinese artist Wang Du is a good start. End-to-end, the media space-time tunnel measures 35 meters:
"Chinese artist Wang Du’s first UK solo exhibition will introduce The Space-TimeTunnel, a large-scale sculptural installation which submerges the visitor into a giddying media flow. Exhibition visitors are invited to journey through a mass of newspapers and magazines combined with more than 66 TV-screens, incessantly broadcasting programmes from global television networks.
When he relocated to Paris in 1990, Wang Du was instantly startled by the intrusive presence of media images in the public sphere and their permanent meddling of reality and representation. Wang Du’s practice involves collecting media images and appropriating them into expansive sculptures. His curiosity about the media and what he terms the ‘international landscape’ – advertising hoardings, newstands overflowing with newspapers, bright multicoloured magazines and an endless flood of television – has become the main inspiration for his work. These sculptures are often overwhelming due to their immense stature and their critique on the power of mass media in contemporary society."
If you're interested, there's also a QuickTime video of the exhibit that gives you the sensation of crawling through the space-time tunnel. (Hat tip: Information Aesthetics]
Tags: innovation WangDu
[image: The Space-Time Tunnel]
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Problems with German innovation
The Just 4 Business blog points to an interesting study (“Innovations in SMEs”) recently completed by the KfW banking group in collaboration with the Centre for European Economy Research (ZEW). According to the survey, during the period between 2002 and 2004, 42% of all German small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) carried out successfully at least one innovative project. However, not all of these innovations were of high quality. Moreover, within certain industries (e.g. automobile manufacturing and medical engineering), the pace of innovation actually declined during this period. The report also pointed out that young companies were particularly unwilling to venture on the development and successful market introduction of innovative products and services. Perhaps not surprisingly (given that the study was sponsored by a bank), these problems can be linked to a lack of suitable financing options:
"The most important obstacle for innovations are financing problems. The majority of innovative SMEs (59%) financed their innovation activities from previously generated profits or current cashflows. According to the study, it is in particular very small and recently founded companies which do not dispose of the necessary internal financing potential and therefore have to refrain from innovations due to a lack of money.
In such cases, [there are] suitable sponsoring tools such as the ERP-Startfund and the ERP-Innovations programme made available by the Reconstruction Loan Corporation (KfW) as well as the High-Tech-starter fund set up jointly by the Federal Government, KfW and industry. However, there is also a need for a new kinds of impetus in order to imrove financing and general conditions of innovations, e.g. a more intensive use of intangible assets such as patents for financing purposes."
What do you think? Does innovation fail because of a lack of money? Or are there other issues responsible as well?
Tags: innovation Germany
[image: KfW Bankengruppe]
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The 10 worst technological innovations of the year
Not all innovation is good innovation. With that in mind, CNET has posted a fun photoessay feature called The 10 Worst Technologies in Q2 2006, which includes, among other things, a new videogame based on the "X-Men" movie and a new iPod/Razr hybrid:
"We love seeing great new tech, but there's also a side of us that takes delight in seeing the other end of the technological spectrum. Like with a bad movie that achieves cult status because it's just that bad, we love to hate something about these unlucky 13 products and downloadable duds from the past three months. Keep in mind, each of the items listed below has its share of redeeming qualities. But each of them also stands out for all the wrong reasons."
Tags: innovation technology
[image: "X-Men" videogame]
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July 10, 2006
How not to use your head
This requires little or no explanation - just keep your eye on the guy in the white uniform. It's an unbelievable scene from the World Cup final on Sunday: France's best player, Zinedine Zidane, throws a head butt into the chest of Italy's Marco Materazzi, resulting in a red card and Zidane's expulsion from the game. Anyway, there are many different versions of this video already floating around YouTube.com, just in case ABC decides to yank these videos from the site.
[video: YouTube.com]
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Claudia Schiffer promotes German innovation
Walking through Grand Central Terminal in New York on Friday, I stumbled across a series of bold advertisements for German innovation. What made the ads so alluring, I admit, is that they featured German supermodel Claudia Schiffer -- including one giant ad that encouraged walkers-by to pose next to a full-color picture of her. Anyway, it's all part of a new "Land of Ideas" promotion by Germany, which is looking to convince the world that it is a hotbed of innovation and creativity. I'm not quite sure what the ads were doing in the subway tunnels of Grand Central (lots of eyeballs, I presume), but maybe they'll convince a few hedge fund managers down from Connecticut to invest billions of dollars in Germany.
For more on Claudia Schiffer's role in the "Land of Ideas" promotion, check out the "Germany - Land of Ideas" website, which actually includes some cool features, such as "365 Landmarks in the Land of Ideas" and the "100 Masterminds of Tomorrow." Anyway, if Ireland can promote innovation with U2's Bono, it's perhaps not surprising that Germany opted to go with Claudia Schiffer as an innovation spokesmodel. While I'm a big fan of Claudia Schiffer (especially her early work on swimsuit innovation), I'm not so sure a blonde supermodel is the right spokesperson for innovation. Plus, I felt a bit manipulated by the ads... One of them features a presumably naked Claudia wrapped in a German flag and the tagline "Come on over to my place." Another ad features the same image and the tagline, "Invest in Germany, boys."
What do you think?
Tags: Germany Claudia Schiffer innovation land of ideas
[images: Germany: Land of Ideas]
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Attend the VIP launch party for "The Long Tail"
Interested in attending the VIP launch party for Chris Anderson's new book, The Long Tail, on July 12? Just send an email message to Chris by the close of business today: "If you're in the NYC area and would like to come, just email me (canderson@wiredmag.com) with your name and the subject line "Party!" We'll pick the winners at random from all the entries I've got by the end of the day on Monday, July 10th. I figure I'll get a couple hundred responses for a couple dozen spots, so your odds are a lot better than most lotteries." It should be fun - Chris calls the NYC event "perhaps the coolest thing I'll do all year":
"We're going to have an evening that goes from powerpoint to punk rock--something for everyone. For those who like data, bad Justin Timberlake jokes and the Futura typeface, the party will start with my talk on the Long Tail. For those who would rather rock, the evening will continue with a cool DJ party/concert featuring some of my favorite Long Tail bands and musicians, including James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem/DFA and the Brazilian Girls."
Anyway, if you're not familiar with The Long Tail thesis, check out this book review by John Cassidy in The New Yorker. Or, better yet, take a look at Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog.
Tags: Chris Anderson longtail
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Snapshots from the future
Danish futurist Peter Hesseldahl has published a new book called Snapshots From the Future, which includes 7 short stories that describe life 25 years from now. (The full text of the book, in English, is available at the website of Danfoss Universe). According to Peter, the book is "light and inviting" and has a heavy emphasis on pictures in order to keep the reader engaged. Anyway, The Institute for the Future blog has posted a concise review of the book, including a review of the 7 scenarios for the year 2030:
Your memories as a multimedia presentation. The liferecorder is an electronic gadget descending from the mobile phone, the iPod and the camcorder. It is capable of recording and storing every action, appointment or experience in your life.
Digital aura. No more fumbling with keys, mobile phones or portable computers. Use your digital aura to signal to everything and everyone.
As you wish it. Rebuild your car in ten minutes, have the colors of your nail polish change with your mood – or create your own line of furniture as if it was built from LEGO bricks.
Pharming. Future farmers grow artificial meat from the molecular level – and energy is a major cash crop. It’s hard to recognize the old country side.
Our extended nervous system. Wearing the scanner net you can sense what others feel – or you can control a robot or virtual character.
Drugged. Welcome to a future where taking drugs to perform at your best is… natural.
Robo-pet, man’s best friend. Our surroundings come alive. Toys will speak, systems will think, and we will become very emotionally attached to our robots.
Tags: future innovation Snapshots from the future Hesseldahl
[image: Emil Landgreen for Danfoss Universe]
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Europe plots an innovation strategy to take on the U.S.
In Finland, a European Union meeting on competitiveness and innovation spurred fresh talk about the proper way to go about building an innovation strategy for Europe. The consensus is that the European Union must plug the innovation gap with the United States by putting greater emphasis on market demands and the needs of users. Failure to do so could leave Europe trailing not only the U.S, but also up-and-coming innovation powers like India and China:
"The presidency's heavy emphasis on the role of market forces and competition, particularly in traditional public services, may raise hackles among some member states, but is likely to find some backing from the EU's executive Commission. "Innovation is where Europe appears to lag most behind its main competitors," the Commission said in a statement. "The EU invests about a third less in research than the United States, and the EU/U.S. innovation gap has not narrowed in recent years. Meanwhile emerging countries like China and India are fast becoming world-class centers of research and innovation," the EU executive said."
According to Reuters, Finland is taking the lead role in pushing forward European innovation. The basic idea is to move from a "supply-side" approach (i.e. specific targets for aggregate R&D spending) to a "demand-side" approach that will make European firms more sensitive to the demands of the market. Demand-side policies could include any of the following:
(1) Ensuring that regulation is not too heavy to stifle the market;
(2) Ensuring companies have an EU-wide, cheap and efficient system of patenting innovation;
(3) Using the EUs huge public services sector to generate innovation through public procurement to ensure competitive tendering, or outsourcing some services to the private sector.
(4) Closer involvement of companies in research in universities and other organizations to make it more commercially driven.
Tags: Finland EU innovation innovation gap
[image: eu2006]
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The secrets of Samsung's innovation success
At the recent APRU (Association of Pacific Rim Universities) presidents’ meeting in Sydney, the president and CEO of Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business, Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang, explained the secrets behind the global technology giant’s ability to innovate:
“People talk about risk management these days, but I think risk taking is more important... Even if one goal is accomplished, we never stop. The continued setting of new goals keeps competitors primarily focused on catching up with the existing market – Samsung’s core values lay in our ability to push the boundaries in new thinking and innovation... Samsung’s efforts to develop its human resources and attract the world’s smartest innovators, inventors and designers are fundamental to our success in creating the next technology era. Today, one smart person affects the survival of 10,000 people. The need for core human resources has never been more urgent and cannot be achieved without the help of the world’s universities..."
In the speech, Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang shared a number of interesting tidbits about Samsung's R&D efforts. For example, he offered hints about a new Fusion Technology from Samsung that would represent the convergence of IT, biotech, and nanotechnology. He also mentioned that the ultimate goal of Samsung's semiconductor business is to "match the memory density of the human brain – a huge 100 Terabyte capacity that he predicts will be reached by 2030." With those two goals in mind, approximately 15% of the R&D team at Samsung