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September 8, 2006
A new e-book on innovation strategies
Based on his analysis of companies commonly cited in the mainstream business media as being paragons of innovation goodness, Daniel Montaño of the User Experience + Innovation blog has just released an e-Book on Innovation Strategies. The book, which is currently available only as a 156-page PDF document, examines the innovation strategies at companies like Apple, IBM, GE, Target and Toyota:
"Rather than debate if those are really the most innovative companies in the world I decided to take a look at how each of these companies is innovating. The result is this book, where we find out some methods and strategies they are using, the kind of design awards they are winning, the type of criteria they're focusing on, where they're headed next, etc. The goal is to learn from those companies that spend thousands of dollars learning how to innovate, so others who don't have the budget can save some money and still innovate on the same tracks. Innovation is no longer just what happens in R&D, nor in the design shops, innovation is happening at every level of the organization. Every staff member can contribute to the innovation efforts."
Tags: innovation strategy tactics
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September 8 innovation linkage
Audrey Hepburn dances to AC/DC's "Back in Black" [Gap.com via PSFK]
What doctors can learn from NASCAR pit crews [TED Blog]
Philadelphia opens high-tech school of the future [Reuters]
A search engine that does the cha cha cha [MIT Innovation Club]
Mr. Innovation, meet Mr. Reality [Grassroots Innovation]
Chinese funerals and graveside strippers [Freakonomics blog]
Robots attend a wine and cheese tasting [Yahoo! Asia News]
How to defend the status quo [Seth Godin]
"Chatty George" talks himself up [BBC News]
Soviet-era computer mice, built to last [EnglishRussia.com]
[image: Philadelphia's School of the Future]
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Harvard learns how to Innovate on Purpose
Two executives from innovation consulting firm OVO - Dean Hering and Jeffrey Phillips - have published an article in the September issue of Harvard Management Update. The article (Innovate on Purpose) outlines a four-step methodology to make innovation more intentional -- and more successful.
Unfortunately, this being Harvard Business School Publishing and everything, there's no such thing as a free lunch: copies of the three-page article are being sold for $4 apiece. If you don't already receive the Harvard Management Update (or don't live within a few miles of a business school campus), it might be easier and cheaper to check out the Innovate on Purpose blog or the OVO website, which features a brief review of the Innovate on Purpose methodology.
Tags: Innovate on Purpose innovation
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Fashion Week, but without the fashion designers
What would New York Fashion Week be without the fashion designers? As the New York Times points out, the fashion industry is putting less emphasis on design and creative talent, and more emphasis on the corporate bottom line. That bodes ill for former fashion stars (or, as the Times calls them, Displaced Fashion Persons) like Tom Ford, Helmut Lang and Jil Sander, who are slowly but surely being displaced from an industry they helped to build. Companies are demanding "fashion blockbusters," and the most creative designers working today are not able to deliver them:
"As another runway season begins with New York Fashion Week tomorrow, a tide seems to have turned against designers and even perhaps against talent... Fashion has never touched more lives than it does at the moment, and by so many different means — reality television shows like “Project Runway,” Web sites and blogs, corporate sponsorships (like those that underwrite many of the shows in Bryant Park), design competitions and international trade fairs...
Yet the busyness and excitement surrounding fashion are not proof of any genius, only of a talent for seizing opportunity. In point of fact, some very gifted designers are idle, and at relatively young ages. Ms. Philo was 31 when she left Chloé last year to spend more time with her family. Other designers’ reasons are as varied as they are familiar. (Businesses were sold, financial backers disappeared.)
What feels less familiar is the lack of interest in the talent they represent — for skillful cutting, a refined color sense or for communicating emotion. These gifts, along with a strong sense of identity, are probably a designer’s most valuable assets. Yet lately they have been devalued, like an out-of-date sweater, as much by a jangling, “what do I get out of it” culture as by a greediness and mistrust that seem to exist between designers and corporate owners."
Quite simply, clothes that are designed well are not necessarily clothes that sell well, as one fashion house CEO laments, "At the end of the day, our garment must be sold. It can’t just create drama among 500 people, including you and me.”
Tags: fashion design fashion week
[image: New York Times]
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September 7, 2006
How MTV lost its creative mojo
Of late, the Wall Street Journal has been beating up on Viacom and its various media holdings. It's not hard to do, especially with the ongoing, highly-publicized spat between Sumner Redstone and Tom Cruise, the firing of CEO Tom Freston earlier this week and the growing realization that MTV Networks, the flagship cable network for the company, has lost its way. Today in the Wall Street Journal, there's a story called "Does MTV Still Rock?" that traces the slow, sad decline of MTV into a has-been network that doesn't even register on the radar of the MySpace/YouTube generation. Whereas once MTV was a poster child for the 18-to-34 demographic, it has apparently lost its creative mojo:
"MTV grew into a cultural juggernaut not just because it took risks on innovative content, but because its own culture was innovative, even subversive, say former MTV Network officials. Executives came to work late because they had been out partying with rock stars until the early hours - and that was fine because it fostered an atmosphere of creativity.
Many visitors to Viacom's 54-story Times Square headquarters are startled by the near total absence of corporate decorum. MTV Networks has no dress code and lacks many of the other regimens of corporate life. Mr. Freston (the departed CEO) believed that a relaxed atmosphere fostered creativity in his staff. As long as MTV was successful, the approach was embraced, even celebrated. But as the company grew older and larger, some former executives say it has become allergic to criticism. Management's decentralized approach has, at times, allowed problems to fester. The cadre of executives who founded the network have been reluctant to open their ranks to outsiders, institutionalized thought has crept in and management fiefdoms and silos have been created, former executives say."
[image: The day before the MTV Video Music Awards]
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LumaLive: Light-emitting textiles
At the IFA 2006 consumer electronics trade show in Berlin, Philips showcased a cool new technology known as LumaLive that enables garment makers to embed a low-power flexible array of colored LEDs into a garment's fabric. In this brief 90-second YouTube video clip, you can watch the technology live in action via LumaLive Philips t-shirts and LumaLive couches. For more on the LumaLive technology, check out PhysOrg.com and Engadget.
[video: YouTube.com]
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C.K. Prahalad's innovation sandbox
In the current issue of strategy + business magazine, management guru CK Prahalad describes in comprehensive detail how "bottom-of-the-pyramid" thinking can lead to the creation of "an impossibly low-cost, high-quality new business model." The key, as Prahalad points out, is to embrace the notion of resource constraints. Citing examples from the hospitality industry as well as the healthcare industry, Prahalad includes a long list of companies that are playing in the "innovation sandbox" to create low-cost, high-quality products and services.
In Bangalore, for example, the indiOne hotel charges $20 for a Western-style hotel room in the heart of India's Silicon Valley -- a mere one-tenth of what other hotel chains typically charge. For such a low price, you would expect to be staying in the equivalent of a cardboard box - but you'd be wrong: "The indiOne is modern; every room includes an attached bathroom, an LCD television, a wireless broadband connection, a small refrigerator, a coffeemaker, and a work area. The common areas include a pleasant cafeteria, an ATM, a business center, and a small gym." Instead of attempting to replicate "best practices," the low-cost hospitality provider is working on "next practices." At a time when luxury hotels eye 30-40% margins, the indiOne hotel chain is reporting gross margins that are close to 65%.
With that in mind, Prahalad outlines the four conditions that must be present for similar types of breakthrough innovations to occur:
(1) The innovation must result in a product or service of world-class quality;
(2) The innovation must achieve a significant price reduction — at least 90% off the cost of a comparable product or service in the West;
(3) The innovation must be scalable: It must be able to be produced, marketed, and used in many locales and circumstances;
(4) The innovation must be affordable at the bottom of the economic pyramid, reaching people with the lowest levels of income in any given society.
Obviously, this "bottom of the pyramid" thinking has taken off in India, which has more than 700 million bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers.
Tags: Prahalad business model innovation
[image: strategy + business]
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A premium athletic shoe for $14.98
Tired of paying more than $100 for athletic shoes endorsed by your favorite sports celebrity? In an article for Slate, Daniel Gross explains why New York Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury is now endorsing a line of ultra-cheap (but ultra-cool) athletic sneakers that retail for a jaw-dropping $14.98:
"Star-endorsed basketball shoes have long been one of the great rip-offs in footwear. Nike wants $130 for a pair of Zoom Kobe I sneakers and $110 for Zoom LeBron IIIs. You'll pay at least $90 for Allen Iverson's signature shoes... But now cheap is suddenly cool. New York Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury has just put his name on a line of cheap athletic wear and shoes, dubbed Starbury. Marbury's signature Starbury One basketball shoes retail for a mere $15.
Marbury isn't the first basketball player to put his name on cheaper shoes. In 2004, Shaquille O'Neal's Dunkman line of shoes retailed at Payless for $40 a pair. But what distinguishes Marbury's shoe is its extreme cheapness combined with his vow to actually use it in his professional life. "I'm going to wear the shoe on court. I'm going to wear the sneakers all season," he said in a piece that aired on National Public Radio..."
As Gross points out, the concept of a $15 premium athletic shoe might make more sense if it were developed and marketed by "a sleek, design-conscious company like Nike or a mega-retailer like Target," but this shoe is only available at the "up-and-coming cheapo apparel retailer" Steve & Barry's. The store is so cheap, in fact, that it even manages to undercut Wal-Mart with its "absurdly low prices."
Anyway, methinks that the Starbury would be retailing for more than $14.98 if the Knicks ever got around to winning a championship under Isiah Thomas and Larry Brown. Case in point: ESPN points out that Marbury is not being paid for endorsing the sneakers -- he will only be compensated based on how well they sell.
Tags: Marbury Starbury innovation basketball
[image: ESPN via AP]
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Constant innovation at Reuters
Just a reminder that the next installment of the Change Artists webcast will take place at 11:00 am on Wednesday, September 13. The webcast, which is sponsored by HP, CNN and CIO.com, features a frank discussion by two senior executives at Reuters - CEO Tom Glocer and CIO Roy Lowrance - on continuous innovation. The Change Artists webcast series is a great chance to find out how the CEOs and CIOs of today’s leading companies turn innovation and change into competitive advantage.
Anyway, there's a brief registration process that's required before receiving an invitation to the 30-minute webcast. It looks like the live interactive interview will take place in the CNN studios, so the production value should be high. Previous installments of the series have featured C-level executives from FedEx and McKesson.
Tags: Change Artists innovation Reuters
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September 6, 2006
What's good for Boeing is good for Ford
Just days after CEO Bill Ford acknowledged that Ford Motor Company was desperately searching for a new business model, the company may have found an innovation savior. After the markets closed yesterday, Bill Ford announced that he was stepping aside to make room for new CEO Alan Mulally, a longtime senior executive at Boeing who is largely credited with turning around the company's ailing commercial aircraft division. What's good for Boeing is apparently good for Ford. By bringing in an outsider with recent experience turning around a major company, Ford Motor hopes to dig its way out of a very deep ditch.
Investors were mixed, though, on the appointment of Mulally as the new CEO of Ford: "Some analysts predicted that Mr Mulally would bring more discipline to Ford, but they expressed concerns about his lack of experience in the automotive industry, and about his precise role at the carmarker." On one hand, Mulally has the credibility, product design chops and cost-cutting skills to turn around the company. On the other hand, it will be awfully hard to ramp up his knowledge of the automobile industry in a limited amount of time. With Ford posting more than $1.3 billion in losses over the first six months of 2006, there's concern that Mr. Mulally's learning curve might just not be steep enough:
"Himanshu Patel, analyst at JP Morgan, said on Wednesday that Mr. Mulally – the first outsider to serve as chief executive in Ford's 103-year history – might have difficulty making his presence felt in the near-term. Noting that details of the latest recovery plan have probably already been finalised, Mr Patel said that "longer-term changes in product cycle decisions by the new CEO could clearly take some time to yield results."
[image: Alan Mulally becomes CEO of Ford Motor Company]
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The world's first female space tourist
Space Adventures, the world's leading space tourism company, has announced that a 40-year-old Iranian-born woman, Anousheh Ansari, will become the first female space tourist to visit the International Space Station. If you follow the space tourism industry, you'll probably recognize the name - the Ansari family was the founding sponsor of the $10 million Ansari X Prize competition for private manned spaceflight back in 2004. Anousheh Ansari will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 14, along with two other crew members. For Ms. Ansari, who emigrated to the USA in 1984, the flight to the International Space Station marks the culmination of a lifelong dream: "By reaching this dream I’ve had since childhood, I hope to tangibly demonstrate to young people all over the world that there is no limit to what they can accomplish..."
Tags: Ansari space tourism innovation
[image: Anousheh Ansari]
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Boeing develops an airplane powered by hydrogen fuel cells
Boeing is developing a light aircraft prototype powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Currently, the aircraft is only capable of reaching a top speed of around 70 mph. (As can be seen in the above illustration, the aircraft looks more like a glider or unmanned drone than a 787 Dreamliner). However, if Boeing finds a way to make the hydrogen fuel cells lighter, cheaper and more powerful, the new technology could represent a radical breakthrough within the commercial aviation industry. Treehugger has the details:
"Boeing plans to launch a hydrogen fuel cell-powered light-aircraft prototype within a year... The only emissions from such a plane would be water vapor. The plane will be a small craft, and might have a top speed of only 70 miles per hour. Boeing is working with Intelligent Energy, a British fuel cell designer. “What we are designing is a demonstrator aircraft to see if it can be done,” said Boeing. “This technology is in its infancy but it has great potential.” The aircraft is based on the Diamond Dimona, an Austrian plane chosen for its light weight.
Boeing engineers in Madrid have stripped out its fuel tank, replacing it with a bottle of compressed hydrogen that will feed into a fuel cell. There, the hydrogen will be chemically combined with oxygen from the air to generate power. This will then be fed to an electric motor to turn the propeller. The system is mechanically simple. Fuel cells have no moving parts and run silently. They tend, however, to be bulky and expensive, which is why their use has never become widespread."
The Boeing project will be the first manned fuel cell-powered aircraft. Last year California-based AeroVironment flew an unmanned surveillance plane, the Global Observer, which was powered by a fuel cell.
Tags: Boeing hydrogen fuel cell airplane innovation
[image: Treehugger]
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An innovation reading list for the next four months
The 800-CEO-READ blog has assembled a list of this fall's upcoming blockbuster business titles, arranged by date of publication. While there are a number of worthy titles on the list, there are two that stood out as offering the best insights for business innovators:
(1) Mavericks at Work: Why The Most Original Minds In Business Win by Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre (William Morrow) - "Bill and Polly created business conversation in the 90's at writing Fast Company magazine. If you have missed that passion and energy, you'll love the book."
(2) Tough Choices by Carly Fiorina (Portfolio) - "This is going to be a big book. The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard tells her rise to the top and what happened when she got there."
In addition, there are upcoming books about the making of an American icon at LL Bean, the rise of "green innovation" as a key strategic issue for companies, and the "unstoppable power of leaderless organizations."
Tags: business innovation
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What the $100 suit can teach you about innovation
The era of the Brooks Brothers suit is officially over. Over the Labor Day holiday, the Wall Street Journal weekend edition featured a comprehensive field test of men's suits in an attempt to determine whether it was possible to buy a relatively cheap men's suit for $300 or less that would be comparable in look, feel and quality to that of a more expensive suit (i.e. a suit from Brooks Brothers). At one time, of course, it would have been unthinkable to buy an off-the-rack suit at a place like Target or JC Penney. Doing so would have meant wearing a badly-fitting, poorly-constructed suit and facing the risk of constant ridicule by your co-workers (the phrase "I'll be all over you like a cheap suit" comes to mind).
However, what the Wall Street Journal found was that cheap men's suits (in the sub-$300 range) are rapidly catching up in quality and appearance with those at the $700-$800 level. In some cases, in fact, the $139.98 Target Merona Premium Wool Suit might just be as good as a $695 Hart Schaffner Marx suit or a $750 Joseph Abboud suit. In a graphic provided with the article, it turns out that the Chap's suit (available for the low-low price of $275 at Kohl's) is assembled partly in China, partly in India: the jacket is put together in China, the pants in India. Reviewers seemed to love the suit, calling it "a decent suit at a good price" with a fit that is "classic and conservative."
There was one statistic in the Wall Street Journal article, though, that almost caused me to spill my coffee all over the newspaper: "In the first half of the year, the average price of a suit sold in U.S. department stores, outlet centers, specialty stores and chain stores fell to $124.13, slightly lower than in 2003." There you have it - the average American male, hopeful of climbing the career ladder or making a good first impression at a job interview, is willing to pay a grand total of $124.13 for a quality suit. What's more, if the reviewers of the Wall Street Journal article are correct (and they usually are), it's possible to do exactly that at places like Target and Kohl's.
What do you have to do to create a $100 suit? Presumably, the suits are made in places like India and China to keep down labor costs, but the quality of machine stitching rivals that of hand stitching in many cases. These suits are "classic," "conservative" and made with similar types of fabrics as those found at the upper end of the price range. It's all about understanding resource constraints. In an era of the $100 laptop, it's perhaps not too surprising that we now have the $100 suit.
Tags: innovation
[image: Anchorman Ron Burgundy]
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Social innovators who lead a purpose-driven life
San Francisco-based venture philanthropy Civic Ventures has awarded five $100,000 Purpose Prizes to nonprofit leaders who are working to solve social problems in an innovative way: "Selected from among 1,200 applicants, the winners of the "Purpose Prize" — three individuals and two pairs — are leading projects to help low-income older adults, disabled teenagers, African-American women with health problems, and children of incarcerated parents; and to promote reconciliation between Muslims and Jews."
What's interesting is that the Purpose Prizes were specifically handed out to Baby Boomer innovators (age 60+) who are helping to overturn the notion that innovation and creativity are only for the young:
The Purpose Prize was created by Civic Ventures, a think tank in San Francisco that promotes projects that tap into the expertise of people in their later years — and that dash the stereotype of older people as burdens on society. It calls the Purpose Prize cash awards "the first significant investment in this undiscovered force for the greater good," given at a time when the huge wave of baby boomers are beginning to reach traditional retirement years. "It's conventional wisdom that young people drive entrepreneurialism and innovation, but the Purpose Prize winners turn that outdated notion on its head," Marc Freedman, the founder and president of Civic Ventures, said in a statement."
The winners included W. Wilson Goode, the ex-mayor of Philadelphia. Goode, 68, has served since 2000 as director of Amachi, a nonprofit helping children with parents in jail or on parole. He has rallied pastors in black communities to encourage people in their congregations to become mentors. More than 240 programs in 48 states are now affiliated with or inspired by Amachi, and mentors have helped 30,000 children.
Tags: social innovation PurposePrizes Baby Boomer
[image: W. Wilson Goode]
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September 5, 2006
Ford Motor Company needs a new business model
With only two weeks to go until Ford Motor Company unveils the new details of its restructuring program (i.e. The Way Forward), it looks like the company is willing to consider just about any alternative under the sun. In the weeks leading up to the Labor Day weekend, rumors circulated constantly about all kinds of M&A deals involving Ford - including the possibility that Nissan's Carlos Ghosn might take over some part of the company or that the Ford family might take the company private. Now, a Bill Ford memo leaked to the press admits that the automaker is badly in need of a radically new business model:
"Ford needs a new business model in order to turn the automaker around, according to a memo addressed to staff by its Chairman and CEO Bill Ford and seen by Reuters. On Thursday, Ford said it wanted to sell its Aston Martin luxury unit to free up funds to invest in its other brands amid a sharp downturn in sales. In the memo, dated Friday, September 1 and published by the Detroit News on Saturday, Bill Ford outlined the problems facing the company and his aims to turn it around. "The business model that sustained us for decades is no longer sufficient to sustain profitability," the memo, shown to Reuters by a representative for the company, said. "We must change to a new business model that requires greater bottom-line contributions from cars and crossovers, continued leadership in pickups in North America, healthier profits from all other business units, growth in Asia, greater integration of our global operations and an evaluation of strategic alliances."
What do you think? Do you have any innovative ideas for overhauling Ford's business model and moving the dial on the company's stock price?
Tags: Ford innovation Way Forward
[image: Bill Ford via Reuters]
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A new report on service innovation
In a world where the vast majority of books and articles about business innovation focus primarily on product innovation, Virginia-based consulting firm Peer Insight has released a breakthrough new report on the emerging area of services innovation. According to Peer Insight, the post-Six Sigma era calls for new thinking about services innovation, customer experience innovation and design-led innovation. Chuck Frey of the Innovation Weblog highlights several of the findings from the report:
(1) Services follow a less well-defined development path than products;
(2) Because of this lack of a development path for services, successful innovations tend to rely on a strong guiding hand from senior management;
(3) Prototyping, which is a well-accepted way to pilot test new product ideas, has not made the transition to modeling potential new services and business models;
(4) Successful service innovations tend to be firmly rooted in customer experience design - incorporating techniques such as empathic research methods and service artifacts;
(5) Companies that use a single innovation model to deliver both incremental and high-impact innovations tend to get only incremental innovations.
Tags: services innovation
[Image: The Post Six Sigma Era]
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Katie Couric's big night
The CBS Evening News is pulling out all the stops to ensure that Katie Couric's historic debut tonight is a smashing success. Over the Labor Day weekend, intrepid reporter Matt Drudge revealed that a number of A-list celebrities and politicians have been recruited to help out with Katie's big night:
"Plans for the opening week of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric have surpassed network executives' wildest dream: Presidents Bush and Clinton, radio king Rush Limbaugh and broadcast legend Walter Cronkite have all agreed to appear, a CBS insider reveals! A top network source says scheduling of "guest editorials" are still in flux. But the addition of Rush Limbaugh to the CBS EVENING NEWS is bound to generate maximum commotion and tune-in hits. "It was Katie's idea to bring Limbaugh in," a top CBS source said on Sunday. "She is very excited he has agreed to appear." Rudy Giuliani and Bill Maher have also signed on for early editions of Couric. CBS will issue a press release on Monday confirming details of the EVENING NEWS all-star line-up..."
Anyway, it'll be interesting to watch how Katie does tonight (6:30 pm ET). As perky and charismatic as she may be, I really don't think there's much she can do to rescue a sinking ship. Even with the news scheduled to be simulcast live on the Internet (to bring in all those YouTube viewers, presumably) and plans for Katie Couric podcasts to be made available on iTunes on a regular basis, I really don't think Katie can reverse what has been a seismic change in the way that people consume news. Viewership has dropped something like 40-50% over the past five years as more people turn to the Internet for news, and the median (not mean) age of the average nightly news viewer is something like 60+. Not exactly the type of demographics that appeal to anyone except pharmaceutical companies.
Tags: Katie Couric CBS news
[image: Katie Couric]
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Microsoft TouchLight 3D Technology
As Gizmodo points out, Microsoft is working on a new 3-D touch screen technology. Already, the new technology has popped up in a number of YouTube videos and is generating a fair amount of buzz:
"Researchers over at Microsoft have developed TouchLight, a touch screen technology that combines off-the-shelf components to create a unique and interactive affair. Several different types of cameras are positioned behind a holographic projection material screen recording your movement. Approaching the screen, you then see a projection of yourself or whatever you have touching the screen. This opens up several different types of applications, not least of which is the normal touch screen activities."
Anyway, the inspiration for the new Microsoft technology was apparently the film Minority Report, which featured a similar type of touch screen application. It's not just Microsoft that is working on 3D touch screen technology. Almost 18 months ago, the Wall Street Journal covered a similar technology developed by Raytheon and immediately compared it to the scene in the film where Tom Cruise gestures with his gloved hands to sift through crime-clue data that are displayed on giant screens.
Tags: Microsoft TouchLight
[video: YouTube]
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British manufacturers: innovation is the key
According to Alan Wood, CEO of Siemens UK, investing in innovation is the way to win for British manufacturers:
"Recent evidence has given grounds for optimism that British manufacturers are adjusting to low-cost competition and global structural change, viewing it as an opportunity rather than a threat. Output is rising and many firms have their most positive prospects for some time as the world economy expands. The investment outlook - a traditional weak spot - is the most positive for almost 10 years. EEF research shows a large majority of firms have increased spending on skills, innovation and design since 2003, and more than half plan to boost spending further in the next three years. Those companies that are upping their game on innovation are delivering improved profits..."
In addition to boosting R&D spending on innovation and design, British manufacturers are also collaborating with universities, investing in skills training for their employees and developing innovative solutions for both social and environmental problems.
Tags: Siemens manufacturing British innovation
[image: BBC News]
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