« August 6, 2006 - August 12, 2006 | Main | August 20, 2006 - August 26, 2006 »
August 18, 2006
The Innovation Killer
Cynthia Barton Rabe, formerly an Innovation Strategist for Intel Corporation, has published a new book, The Innovation Killer, that introduces a new term into the innovation consulting space: zero-gravity thinkers. These Zero-G Thinkers are able to escape the gravitational pull of both "Expert Think" and "Group Think" to generate innovative new ideas for organizations. (The demand for these zero-gravity thinkers throughout Corporate America is so great that Cynthia opened a new innovation boutique, Zero-G LLC, in early 2006.) Anyway, her new book is divided into three primary sections - a summary of the institutional barriers preventing organizations from following through on their innovation plans, a review of what makes zero-gravity thinkers so effective within an organization, and a summary of how any organization can turn transform these zero-gravity principles into action.
According to Cynthia, a typical zero gravity thinker possesses three key characteristics: (1) psychological distance (2) Renaissance tendencies and (3) related expertise. For corporations dealing with stalled innovation initiatives or deadlocked management teams, the book suggests tapping into external zero gravity thinkers (such as those found at firms like Ziba, Brighthouse and IDEO) or, if that's not feasible, adopting a number of steps to cultivate an internal group of zero gravity thinkers who can parachute into different departments with breakthrough ideas. For a look at what a real-life zero gravity thinker might look like, check out this YouTube video of an astronaut spinning in zero gravity.
Anyway, the book is likely to appeal to two primary classes of innovation bloggers - the "creativity" types who embrace right brain thinking and the "organizational effectiveness" types who focus on the institutional barriers to innovation. There's also another, third, reason why it's worth picking up the book - it includes a number of references to the Fortune Innovation Forum! Yep, right there on the first page of the first chapter of the book is a nice reference to last year's Fortune Innovation Forum in New York City:
"Anticipation is almost palpable in New York's Lincoln Center today. To those just entering, the radiant energy inside the center's Rose Hall offers a sharp contrast to the clouds and monsoon-like rain of last night. Throngs of people bustle about with purpose, many undoubtedly readying themselves for a day they expect to invigorate and even change them. What I have stepped into is Fortune Magazine's 2005 Innovation Conference. And, perhaps, what is palpable is not anticipation, but hope."
Throughout the book, Cynthia Barton Rabe also indirectly references a few of the speakers who appeared at the Fortune Innovation Forum last year - Scott Cook of Intuit, Burt Rutan (winner of the Ansari X Prize for SpaceShipOne), and Billy Beane of the Oakland A's. Then, for good measure, there's a sidebar in Chapter 10 devoted to the East Village Opera Company, which happened to be the entertainment act for the first evening of the event.
The lesson is clear: come to this year's Fortune Innovation Forum and become a zero-gravity thinker!
Tags: innovation killer Cynthia Barton Rabe zero gravity thinker
[Video: YouTube]
Posted by dominic at 1:55 PM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
|
Mostly Mozart, Incredibly Innovative
Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Stuart Isacoff posted a great review of the new "Enlightenment" outdoor installation that is part of this summer's Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York City. The installation, which just went up this week, combines visual art, digital media, and artificial intelligence to create nothing less than an artificial intelligence encounter with Mozart's brain:
"Enlightenment" is OpenEnded Group's most ambitious venture to date. At the suggestion of Louis Langree, Mostly Mozart's music director, OpenEnded Group has deconstructed the five-themed fugue at the end of Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony - one of that composer's most complex achievements - and created an artificial intelligence program that re-assembles the fugue's complex structure from scratch.
Ten high-resolution video screens and independent sound systems, mounted in the colonnade of Avery Fisher Hall, represent 10 sections of the orchestra. The complete Mozart score, though imbedded deep in the circuitry of "Enlightenment," is kept from the individual computers that make up the installation. They get to ask only indirect questions: Are these notes likely to appear? How about these intervals? Does this passage yield the correct harmony in the context of what the other computers are producing? In response, they are told how "hot" or "cold" they are on their way to building the elements of the "Jupiter" fugue. Thus, the individual computers, which begin with random guesses, get better at figuring out the solution as they go along.
As these separate "instrumental sections" go about their tasks (a process that takes about 20 minutes), images and sounds display the program's progress. And when the journey is complete, all 10 join together to play the 30 seconds of music that encompass one of the classical era's most intricate moments - after which they erase their data and begin all over again. "Enlightenment" finds artistic expression through the journey it undergoes in searching for the blueprint of Mozart's fugue. Although the 30-second conclusion is always the same, the path to reach it never is..."
Anyway, the whole thing sounds fascinating - even for people who may not be classical music fans. The Wall Street Journal called the piece "stunningly beautiful" and the computer-generated imagery "thoroughly enticing." However, be forewarned - the review that appeared in New York Newsday (the Long Island newspaper) was not as glowing, calling the half-hour show "as exciting as watching a scholar write footnotes." The Newsday article even suggested that "the piece sounds like a group of amnesiac Juilliard students doggedly trying to play a passage of Mozart from memory."
Tags: Mozart digital media artificial intelligence innovation
[image: Enlightenment]
Posted by dominic at 12:51 PM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The once and future MIT Media Lab
According to the Boston Globe, the legendary MIT Media Lab ("a hub of the 1990s digital revolution") is reinventing itself to remain relevant for the 21st century: "A high-tech beehive with 28 faculty members and a $32 million annual budget, the lab has been shifting its focus from multimedia and technology convergence to more everyday concerns like aging and healthcare. It's also been working more closely with business 'sponsors' that fund its research and casting a wider net for new corporate backers."
Apparently, the strategic overhaul of the MIT Media Lab is linked to the departure of Nicholas Negroponte and the arrival of new director Frank Moss:
"In meetings with sponsors and a Cape Cod retreat with faculty members this summer, Moss has stressed the need for new ideas and approaches. Moss, in an interview, said he seeks to intensify the lab's concentration on technologies that address the problems of society's ``disadvantaged, disabled, and disenfranchised," from $100 laptops to digitally controlled prosthetic limbs to robotic elder care. "If we direct our research at these kind of problems, we're setting the stage for breakthroughs that apply to everybody."
Tags: MIT medialab Frank Moss
[image: MIT Media Lab]
Posted by dominic at 6:35 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
An innovation lie, and the lying liars who told it
Sharesleuth, the investigative journalism venture launched earlier this year by billionaire bad boy Mark Cuban, has already claimed its first victim: Xethanol. Apparently, Xethanol was going around telling investors that its alternative fuel solution for the ethanol market was the greatest thing since, well, the invention of cream corn. By jumping on the ethanol bandwagon and claiming to be able to turn wood chips, corn stalks and paper sludge into cheap alternative fuel, the company seemed poised for greatness. However, Xethanol's claims turned out to be nothing more than an elaborate innovation hoax:
"A Sharesleuth.com investigation found no evidence that Xethanol has produced significant quantities of ethanol from those raw materials. Combine that with Xethanol’s announcement that it’s poised to become one of the first companies to commercialize that technology – a sort of Holy Grail in the renewable-energy world – and you’ve got the type of inconsistency that Sharesleuth seeks to uncover with its stories...
At Xethanol, we discovered that the shareholders whose names appeared in the company’s SEC filings over the past year and a half included no fewer than eight current or former stock brokers who have been the subjects of disciplinary actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Association of Securities Dealers or other regulatory bodies... Sharesleuth also learned that one of Xethanol’s two conventional ethanol plants, a facility it once called its Biomass Technology Center, has been idle for more than a year and no longer has water or sewer service – two prerequisites for testing or production."
What's the takeaway lesson here? Always do your homework before investing in a company that claims to have tapped into the innovation motherlode. For example, a little digging and due diligence would have uncovered the fact that Xethanol actually spends little or nothing on R&D and has "an absence of scientists on its staff."
Tags: innovation ethanol Xethanol Sharesleuth
[image: ShareSleuth]
Posted by dominic at 6:12 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Three disruptive technologies that could change the world
Clayton Christensen's Innoblog has identified three emerging technologies with "disruptive" potential:
(1) VideoEgg - "cracking open online video";
(2) StepUp - "helping small retailers step it up online";
(3) Insectigen - "taking biopesticides upmarket"
While I'm not about to argue with Clayton Christensen about what constitutes a truly "disruptive" technology, it does seem that at least two of these so-called "disruptive" technologies are really just "sustaining" technologies. In other words, they are characterized as being "bigger, better and cheaper" rather than "breakthrough." In addition, each of these technologies actually appears to be "superior" to the existing technologies they are attempting to displace. For example, VideoEgg offers a way to upload video to a weblog that is easier and more intuitive than existing solutions. One of the fundamental ideas of The Innovator's Dilemma, I thought, was that any disruptive technology would actually be deemed to be "inferior" by the market-leading incumbents. Moreover, the technology would appeal to a less desirable customer demographic, effectively keeping the emerging technology off the radar screen of the entrenched market leaders.
Tags: disruptive technology Clayton Christensen Innovators Dilemma
Posted by dominic at 5:57 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
August 17, 2006
An innovation that makes you look more beautiful
New Scientist magazine recently profiled a new "digital beautification" algorithm that enables users to make their faces more attractive - without significantly changing their overall appearance. A digital nip here, a digital tuck there, and none of that annoying botox:
"We all know that pictures of models and celebrities are given a little digital "enhancement" before they appear on magazine covers. Well now you too could enjoy such treatment: an algorithm has been developed that morphs photographs of human faces into subtly more attractive versions of themselves. By making tiny adjustments to the distances between hundreds of different facial features, the "digital beautification" algorithm is designed to make a face more attractive in just a few minutes without significantly altering the person's appearance. The system, created by Tommer Leyvand of Tel Aviv University in Israel, could not only give magazine editors and advertisers a new photographic tool, it could also help amateur photographers touch up their digital images at home."
The new algorithmic technique appears to work: when researchers showed 40 people before and after shots of a selection of faces, 79% said the changes made the person more attractive. (As can be seen in the above photo, the changes to a person's face are relatively subtle - if you're not already a supermodel, it's unlikely you'll ever become one) The technique was presented at the SIGGRAPH conference in Boston in early August.
Tags: beauty digital innovation
[image: New Scientist]
Posted by dominic at 4:06 PM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Scott Berkun's upcoming book on innovation
Scott Berkun, the author of The Art of Project Management, is working on a new book about innovation that will be published by O'Reilly Media. Between now and the close of business on Friday, Scott is soliciting feedback and contributions for the book as part of an "open-source" online experiment. If you have something you'd like to say about innovation, be sure to complete an online survey about innovation before the end of the day on August 18th. If you have war stories to share, strongly held opinions, or ideas about book chapters, here's your chance to shine. In fact, one lucky entrant will win a $150 gift certificate to Amazon and others will have their names and companies mentioned in the book, so there's a bit of an incentive to participate:
"I’ve done nearly 20 interviews so far for my next book, and I need more. To quicken the pace I’m being innovative and going digital. If you have a good story of innovation, or have thoughts on how innovation happens, I want to hear from you... The survey is a scant 15 questions long, and should take less than 10 minutes. If you give high quality answers, odds are high I’ll want to chat with you 1-on-1 over e-mail or phone, and may use your material in the book. Get interviewed on innovation now!"
Anyway, Scott was a project manager at Microsoft for nearly 10 years, and has a wealth of experience presenting papers, organizing seminars, and teaching workshops on product design and project management, so it should be interesting to see what's included in his upcoming book about innovation. “Go Scott! Looking forward to the book!”
Tags: Scott Berkun innovation O'Reilly
Posted by dominic at 11:42 AM | Comments (189) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
August 17 innovation linkage
50 coolest websites [TIME Magazine]
10 questions with Seth Godin [Guy Kawasaki]
Patent review goes wiki [FORTUNE]
High oil prices don't scare Jet Blue [Influx Insights]
What is the future of marketing? [Edge Perspectives]
What do futurists really know? [MSNBC]
Interview with Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga [We Make Money Not Art]
The latest Apple patent filing [Mac Rumors]
What's your YouTube strategy? [San Francisco Chronicle]
An electric commuter bike that becomes a sculpture [the cool hunter]
[image: TIME]
Posted by dominic at 7:00 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
I'm just a singer in a rock 'n roll band
About two weekends ago, the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition ran a special feature on CEOs who moonlight in rock and roll bands. Then, earlier this week, PepsiCo appointed Indra Nooyi, a former member of an all-girl's rock band, as the company's new CEO. Finally, yesterday, I saw this ad for the Corporate Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp in the Wall Street Journal:
"The Corporate Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp is ideal for any company's next corporate retreat, training seminar, core training programs, convention and sales meetings. Our vision is for The Corporate Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp to be the global leader in corporate team building, motivation, training and entertainment. To offer life changing experiences to our clients and build better employees through the power of Rock 'n Roll."
Hey, I know it's only rock 'n roll but I like it, like it, yes, I do. Rock 'n roll as a catalyst for innovation! Anyway, check out some of the "camp counselors" - guys who played in real rock 'n roll bands like Guns N' Roses, Bad Company, KISS, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
[image: Jack Black in "School of Rock"]
Posted by dominic at 6:40 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
High-tech Napa Valley
In the current issue of FORTUNE magazine, there's an interesting story about high-tech wineries in Napa Valley. Apparently, there are several tools that technologically sophisticated vineyard owners - some of them former Silicon Valley execs - are using to grow superior wines:
(1) Weather stations - Wireless stations that beam precise temperature, wind, and rainfall measurements to a collection center that users check online;
(2) Sap-flow sensors - Gadgets that record actual water use in each vine instead of relying on soil moisture to make irrigation decisions;
(3) Tanknet - Software and sensors manage tank temperature and can send the winemaker a text message if anything goes awry. These tools enable winemakers to carefully regulate fermentation and aging.
Oh, and these high-tech wineries are also experimenting with different forms of alternative energy. Vineyard 29, for example, is "almost off the energy grid, producing electricity with microturbines that burn natural gas on the roof. Excess energy is then used to warm water for heating and cool it for air conditioning." One vineyard even attaches a tiny semiconductor chip to each bottle of wine - for aesthetic purposes.
Tags: vineyard winery Napa Valley innovation technology
[image: FORTUNE]
Posted by dominic at 6:25 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
August 16, 2006
"I am a Modern Man"
This 3:42 video clip of comedian George Carlin was too good to pass up. He's a modern man for the new millennium. He's been uplinked and downloaded, inputted and outsourced. He knows the downside of upgrading and the upside of downsizing. (Hat tip: Right Brain World]
[video: YouTube]
Posted by dominic at 10:07 AM | Comments (239) | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Welcome to The Cell Zone
Tired of cellphone chatter everywhere you go? Apparently, a lot of other people are too. As Springwise points out in its latest trend briefing, Salemi Industries has created a sound resistant cell phone booth. The idea is kinda retro (other than Colin Farrell, who really uses regular telephone booths anymore?), but could be a startlingly simple solution to cellphone noise pollution. Random bystanders would avoid being inundated with second-hand cellphone conversations, while the chattering classes could talk all they want - and as loud as they want - about relationships and business dealings without fear of being overheard:
"The Cell Zone, produced by Salemi Industries, can be placed in nightclubs, restaurants, libraries, on airports, train stations, at concerts, and all other places where a bit of peace and quiet is often hard to get. Booths cost USD 2,400 to 3,500. It’s a win-win: with two billion people owning cell phones, the related yapping and other noise pollution produced on a global scale already drives millions nuts, while many callers would actually prefer to have a bit of privacy, or just to be able to hear the person on the other side of the line. When placed in a commercial setting, the Cell Zone will also help keep patrons from leaving the establishment, Cell Zone’s website helpfully adds."
Anyway, the cell zone booths come in a number of funky J. Crew-type colors, like chocolate pear and summerflame.
Tags: Cell Zone innovation phone
[image: The Cell Zone]
Posted by dominic at 8:25 AM | Comments (3) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Ford Motor Company looking for women designers to create innovative new cars
According to Ford Motor Company, the secret to designing great cars that Americans want to buy is hiring more women designers. Based on proprietary Ford research, it appears that women influence 85% of all car-buying decisions and purchase 45% of all vehicles. Yet, at the same time, women remain a minority in the design workplace. In an effort to encourage more women to consider careers as auto designers, Ford has already established two different programs:
"Ford's strategy to attract more women to design includes a $10,000 donation it made to Detroit's College for Creative Studies, which used the money for scholarships for high school girls to encourage enrollment in auto-design classes. Scholarships ranged from $1,600 - the cost of the summer class - to at least $400. Ford also reaches out to girls through a high school program in the Pontiac, Mich., school district. For the past five years, Ford designers have been paired with students from seventh grade through high school to teach the basics of sketching and rendering in weekly sessions. The program attracts 30 to 35 students; 30 percent of those are girls."
So what might a car designed entirely by a team of women designers look like? One 16-year-old girl in the Ford high school scholarship program pointed out that she would like to design a car whose interior you can change to match its urban environment, whether you drive in Japan, New York or California. Other girls suggested cars that are "sleek," "lithe," "bold" and "iridescent." Anyway, at the end of the article, there's a brief sidebar highlighting four prominent women designers within the automobile industry, including Susan Lampinen, chief group lead designer at Ford, and Chelsia Lau, Ford chief designer of SUVs.
Tags: Ford innovation design women auto car
[image: Design Theory class at Detroit's College for Creative Studies]
Posted by dominic at 7:07 AM | Recommend this! (2) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
British government to consider innovation prizes
The British government is thinking about introducing prize competitions as a way to spur breakthrough innovation: "A future Conservative government may offer prizes for companies that come up with innovative answers to difficult problems - like a workable system of wave power. The prize scheme would mean reviving a former practice, which in the 18th century produced a breakthrough in global navigation by determining longitude..." The innovation prizes would become part of a broader effort by the government to "encourage more innovation in the UK, discourage the shift of highly skilled jobs to rival foreign states, and promote a positive and inspiring vision of what science can do for society." While all plans are still tentative, one idea that has been discussed is a £10 million prize for the first company or organization that can produce a workable system of generating power from waves.
Not coincidentally, the $10 million X Prize competition in the U.S. led to the creation and development of the first-ever manned commercial spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, in October 2004.
Tags: British UK innovation prize
[image: The winner of the 1714 British longitude prize competition]
Posted by dominic at 6:25 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
August 15, 2006
Innovation that's just too hot to handle
First, there were rumors of exploding Dell laptop computers at a trade show in Asia. Then, other reports quickly appeared of charred and flaming Dell laptops. Some published reports described spontaneously exploding Dells. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article outlining the hazards of exploding laptop batteries on commercial airline flights. (Link via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) As a result, Dell has taken the extraordinary step today of recalling 4.1 million notebook computer batteries made by Sony because they can burst into flames: "In rare cases, a short-circuit could cause the battery to overheat, causing a risk of smoke and/or fire," said the [Dell] spokesman, Ira Williams. "It happens in rare cases, but we opted to take this broad action immediately." And well they should. Check out this picture of the exploding Dell laptop.
[image: The Inquirer]
Posted by dominic at 11:51 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
New survey on mind mapping
Chuck Frey of the Innovation Weblog is conducting a survey about mind mapping software. While anecdotal evidence suggests that mind mapping has caught on with many business executives, little or no quantitative evidence has existed until now:
"Most executives today face an endless barrage of e-mails, phone calls and new projects, which makes it difficult for them to juggle everything. They are also required to gather, organize, analyze, synthesize and make sense of unprecedented amounts of information, deftly separating the wheat from the chaff and making fast, informed decisions.
Mind mapping software is uniquely suited to these needs, and its acceptance is steadily growing. But there’s not a lot of quantitative data available anywhere on what people are doing with it, and how it benefits them. With this survey, I am about to change that. My goal is to quantify this revolution, and broadly share the results. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey."
If you've ever experimented mind mapping software, it's worth taking a look at the online survey or Chuck's e-book on mind mapping software. Just to clarify - mind mapping has nothing to do with mapping the regions of the brain (see graphic). It is an innovative brainstorming technique that enables users to arrange ideas and their interconnections visually.
Tags: mind mind mapping mind map innovation
[image: Brain anatomy chart]
Posted by dominic at 9:16 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The most creative designer in the world
Influx Insights hints that London-based designer Thomas Heatherwick might be "the leader of a new movement of multi-disciplinary designers." Already, Heatherwick's creative design studio has worked on a wide range of projects, including those related to engineering, architecture, store design (e.g. the Longchamp store pictured here), product design, urban planning and sculpture. In short, Heatherwick is a "three-dimensional designer" for the modern age: "Thomas Heatherwick is rapidly building a reputation as THE new "Renaissance Man" of the creative-world. He doesn't appear to be limited by the "box" of a specific creative discipline. Only in his mid-30s, he already has an impressive range of projects under his belt."
Tags: Thomas Heatherwick design creativity
[image: The Longchamp store in NYC]
Posted by dominic at 6:41 AM | Recommend this! (2) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Three innovative ideas to bet the Texas ranch on
On his Blog Maverick site, billionaire bad boy Mark Cuban has generated a list of three "can't miss" business ideas:
(1) TXT messaging for 911 and hospital emergency rooms;
(2) Personalized navigation systems for cars that are iPod-compatible and DVD-ready;
(3) Door-to-door digital photography services. ("If I had no money, i would start a business going door to door with a laptop and a scanner and scanning peoples' pictures for a buck a pic for up to 10, then discount from there. Beats the h*** out of mowing lawns or shoveling snow and any kid or adult could do it.")
Tags: Mark Cuban innovation
[image: Mark Cuban on stage]
Posted by dominic at 6:15 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The world's fastest innovation
In New Zealand, there's an increasing awareness that innovation is the key to future economic growth. As Simon Hendery of the New Zealand Herald points out, "this country's economic salvation lies in exporting innovation." In a global knowledge economy, a failure to innovate means that many New Zealand companies could find themselves stuck in a commodity trap. Despite this realization, however, many investors in New Zealand are unwilling to take a chance on investing in relatively risky IT and biotech companies. In an effort to promote Kiwi innovation and improve the visibility of publicly-traded technology companies, the New Zealand Stock Exchange recently created the SciTech index of 23 companies in the biotech, industrial technology and IT sectors. Over the past 12 months, the index is up nearly 26% - a possible sign that investors are waking up to the investment potential of innovation.
The real investment opportunity in New Zealand, though, appears to be the country's film industry. In addition to the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, the critically-acclaimed indie film The World's Fastest Indian (featuring Anthony Hopkins) was also filmed in New Zealand.
Tags: New Zealand innovation
[image: The World's Fastest Indian]
Posted by dominic at 6:11 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
August 14, 2006
An Indian innovator is now the head of PepsiCo
Indra Nooyi, the newly appointed CEO of PepsiCo, is now the highest-ranking Indian-born woman in Corporate America. At PepsiCo, she has consistently been recognized as one of the future superstars of American business and one of the key drivers behind the company's strategic direction over the past 10 years. Nooyi, ranked #11 on FORTUNE's list of the most powerful women in business, joined the company in 1994 and was named CFO in 2001. In addition to being a graduate of Yale School of Management (Boola Boola!), she also played in an all-girl rock band in her youth. I guess you might call her a real corporate rock star.
Tags: innovation India PepsiCo
[image: CNN Money]
Posted by dominic at 4:01 PM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Microsoft experiments with user-generated innovation
Since it costs something on the order of $40 million to create and develop new games for the XBox gaming system, Microsoft is now reaching out to members of its gaming community with a unique opportunity for them to design their own games:
"Microsoft has made a very interesting announcement about game content creation. Starting on August 20, Microsoft is making available the tools for people to create videogames for the Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows XP-based PC, and will provide them with what’s described as “Microsoft’s next-generation platform for game development.” In addition, by joining a “creators club” for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress."
At the same time, Microsoft is partnering with a number of top-ranked universities to include XNA Game Studio Express and Xbox 360 development in their curricula. According to Microsoft, the new gaming initiative "...will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry.”
Additional coverage is available at Gamasutra, CNET News, and BBC News. What do you think? It may not create a "YouTube for video games," as Microsoft suggests, but it will certainly change the way that companies think about video game development. Any time you can transfer $40 million in development costs off the books, it seems like a game-changing development (pun intended).
Tags: innovation gaming
[image: BBC News]
Posted by dominic at 12:52 PM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The child innovator
As trend following newsletter Springwise points out, Dutch Postbank (part of the ING Group) is hoping to entice the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs to open accounts with the bank through a new "kidpreneur" marketing promotion:
"Children who open an Easy Blue account receive a briefcase containing materials for printing their own t-shirts, stickers, letterhead, flyers, and business cards. To get started, the young business person logs on to Postbank Bizznizz and decides what type of business he or she would like to run. Postbank suggests washing cars, walking dogs, household chores and mowing lawns, as well as an intriguing 'entertainment' category.
Then it's time to pick a name, create a logo using an online design wizard, print promotional material and start advertising: throwing flyers through as many neighbourhood mailboxes as possible. Once a client has been secured and the first job completed, the kidpreneur can log back on to the website to print an invoice, and have the client transfer the carwashing fee to their bank account."
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like more companies than ever before are hoping to capture the kid demographic. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but sometimes the line behind child and adult gets a little blurry: Victoria's Secret has created the "Pink" line of clothing for teenage girls, Starbucks has created a line of sweeter, frothier drinks without caffeine to appeal to kids; and now ING Group is using a slick cartoon-ish website as a way to attract banking clients before they are really bankable. To paraphrase the great management guru Snoop DO double G, "Yo, the Dutch Bizznizz is the Shiznizz. Let's bounce to this."
Tags: innovation children ING
Posted by dominic at 11:02 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
A cognitive bias against open innovation?
BoingBoing points to a Financial Times column from Duke law school professor Jamie Boyle that explains a cognitive bias we seem to have against open systems: "On their face, open networks, encyclopedias, and software projects seem unlikely, even doomed. Our intuition about closed-vs-open is often wrong..." Interestingly, Jamie suggests that recent findings from the field of behavioral economics could help us understand our built-in prejudices to open systems -- and help corporations understand their fear of open innovation. Using the conventional wisdom about open innovation, designing the World Wide Web would never have been possible:
"You have to design a global computer network. One group of scientists describes a system that is fundamentally open – open protocols and systems so anyone could connect to it and offer information or products to the world. Another group – scholars, businessmen, bureaucrats – points out the problems. Anyone could connect to it. They could do anything. There would be porn, piracy, viruses and spam. Terrorists could put up videos glorifying themselves. Your activist neighbour could compete with The New York Times in documenting the Iraq war. Better to have a well-managed system, in which official approval is required to put up a site; where only a few actions are permitted; where most of us are merely recipients of information; where spam, viruses, piracy (and innovation and anonymous speech) are impossible. Which would you have picked?"
Tags: open innovation World Wide Web
[image: Gamers at an Internet cafe]
Posted by dominic at 6:49 AM | Comments (46) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Innovation explained. On film.
In his weekly round-up of innovative products and services, Reynold D'Silva of the Snake Coffee blog points to VideoJug, a new site featuring a collection of "how to" videos from ordinary people sharing their expertise on a number of different topics, including how to make a Spanish breakfast and how to serve and drink sake. Moreover, all the videos are neatly organized into a number of different categories, including health, beauty, food, DIY, and home. Anyway, it's easy to see how a site like VideoJug might eventually pose stiff competition to the "Dummies" and "Complete Idiot's Guide" series of how-to books.
Tags: innovation videojug
[image: VideoJug]
Posted by dominic at 6:15 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
