« September 17, 2006 - September 23, 2006 | Main | October 1, 2006 - October 7, 2006 »
September 29, 2006
September 29 innovation linkage
Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo interior concept [Space.com]
The state of innovation in Silicon Valley [Innovate Forum]
Can business fall in love with design? [Fast Company]
Turning in frequent flyer miles for a trip to outer space [CNN]
Innovation as a buzzword: 1987-1992 [Tom Peters]
Turning urban noise into music [We Make Money Not Art]
An extraordinary new building in SoHo [International Herald Tribune]
DuPont recognized for continuous innovation [DuPont News]
[image: Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo]
Posted by dominic at 8:03 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
|
The USA must be the world's innovator
According to Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, innovation is the key to the future for the United States:
"The U.S. may be the world's only superpower, but this is no time for the nation to rest on its laurels, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said... "If we sit back and think we're the best, we could become the France of the 21st Century,'' Romney told about 60 people at a breakfast fundraiser... Instead, the two-term Republican governor of one of the most liberal states, called for investing in education and technology to keep America on the cutting edge. "The only way to remain a superpower, to be prosperous'' in the face of increasing competition from Asian nations, "is to be the world's innovator.''
Obviously, Governor Romney is not looking to court the French-speaking vote anytime soon.
[image: Mitt Romney]
Posted by dominic at 7:26 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
When is a breakthrough really a breakthrough?
As Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal points out, the word "breakthrough" may be one of the most-hyped words in all of Silicon Valley:
"All companies, but especially those in technology, like few things better than to talk about their "breakthroughs," those great leaps forward that make products out of the formerly impossible. A search by Factiva Consulting Services found that more than 8,600 press releases have been issued over the years with "breakthrough" in the headline, a majority of them by computer and electronics companies.
IBM, incidentally, is the year's breakthrough champion, at least in terms of how often it has headlined the word in its press releases. The company has had eight headline-worthy breakthroughs since January in customer privacy, energy efficiency, speedy billing software, storage, mainframes (twice), computer networking and voice recognition.
But to what extent are we experiencing "breakthrough inflation," in which the work that an engineer would consider simply a good day in the lab becomes, in the hands of the PR department, an advance worthy of being shouted about from the rooftops?"
Sometimes, argues Gomes, a "breakthrough product" is really just "a synonym for a supremely useful product." Anyway, as might be imagined, the Gomes column kicked up quite a bit of controversy on sites like CNET, which called "breakthrough" the "hype word of all hype words" for technology companies. You can also follow along on Slashdot, where 125 comments have already been posted.
[image: Break on through to the other side]
Posted by dominic at 7:02 AM | Comments (1) | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Business Innovation Factory's innovation summit
Business Innovation Factory hosts an annual summit that brings together innovators from across the public and private sectors to share stories about creating change and driving innovation. This year's event takes place next week (October 4-5) in Providence, Rhode Island. There's a long list of impressive speakers lined up for the event, including Frans Johansson (author of The Medici Effect), Bill Taylor (co-founder of Fast Company magazine), Richard Saul Wurman (TED founder) and Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal technology journalist). The event is unique for its emphasis on "storytelling" by innovation experts and the ability to mingle with event speakers:
"The Summit format—more conversation than conference—is unique. Presenters have only fifteen minutes on stage to share personal reflections on how they created innovation or catalyzed change. Groups of storytellers are blocked around generous breaks that give participants and storytellers ample opportunity to interact. Most importantly, storytellers fully participate in the entire event as members of the audience."
Anyway, the event is already starting to generate buzz in the blogosphere. For example, a group of Corante innovation hub bloggers are planning to live-blog portions of the event next week.
Posted by dominic at 6:31 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
September 28, 2006
The Next Great Innovator
Realizing that some of the most important financial innovations of the next few years will probably derive from the teenage demographic, Royal Bank of Canada is sponsoring the Next Great Innovator Challenge for university students in Canada. The idea, it appears, is to get an early-mover advantage when it comes to new financial innovations for the consumer market while giving young students full rein to use their Web 2.0 know-how:
"This is your chance to stand out. Assemble a team of three to four university or college students and show everyone just how innovative you really are. The top five teams will each receive cash rewards and a chance to present their ideas to senior RBC executives... How will today’s teens influence the financial services industry in Canada? Describe an innovation, idea or concept that financial services should consider in light of this."
To give Canadian university students a running start, RBC has provided a list of questions to consider, encouraging teens to consider how the use of technology and new demographic trends are forever changing notions of loyalty and trust and forcing a reconsideration of the competitive landscape for financial services.
Posted by dominic at 11:45 AM | Comments (4) | Recommend this! (3) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
An interview with Gerald "SolutionMan" Haman
On the Innovation Tools website, Chuck Frey has posted an interview on innovation with Gerald "SolutionMan" Haman, an adjunct professor of innovation at Northwestern University and the developer of the Thinkubator creative space in Chicago. During the interview, "SolutionMan" tackles a number of issues, such as how to use different creativity tools and how to use the "4P Model" for designing creative workspaces. Below, Gerald explains why so many companies find it hard to implement innovation:
"After nearly 20 years of being in the innovation business, I could share a list of dozens of reasons why innovation is not implemented in organizations. I have found that if the commitment to change isn’t truly embraced on all levels the organizational impact is diluted. A key obstacle to innovation implementation is improper formulation. Organizations need to “formulate to innovate” by blending the right combination of essential innovation ingredients that fit their current culture and lay the foundation for the desired culture.
Some people in large companies view innovation as another new “flavor of the month” initiative that will be replaced by a new flavor focus next month. However, the leaders who sustain a competitive advantage realize that innovation is the most important “flavor” that will enhance the success of all aspects of a business or organization.
Some of the commonly cited reasons or excuses I hear for not implementing innovation, such as risk aversion, leadership culture, technology, environment, etc. However, one important reason is that innovation initiatives are not integrated with activities throughout the entire organization. In short, organizations need to “integrate” to innovate."
Posted by dominic at 11:36 AM | Recommend this! (2) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
A research institute at the edge of art and science
The movement toward the creative economy got another push last week when De Montfort University in the UK opened the Institute of Creative Technologies in order to bridge the gap between art and science. The opening of the institute was highlighted by a keynote presentation from Howard Rheingold:
"The Leicester-based Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT) is being supported by Microsoft and will work to bridge the divide between art and science subjects, getting the two to work together. Research projects to be carried out at the new centre will include the creation of an internet orchestra, the world's first cylindrical projection hologram animation and explorations of artificial intelligence. IOCT director Professor Andrew Hugill says the center will put De Montfort University at the forefront of research and ideas within the creative industries sector... The centre's official launch is set for the 20th September, where internet guru Howard Rheingold will give a keynote address, talking about the need for revival of open, common resources in places like the Internet."
[image: Institute of Creative Technologies]
Posted by dominic at 11:02 AM | Comments (242) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
September 27, 2006
Follow the other hand to become more innovative
Andy Cohen, a marketing consultant and professional magician who also teaches a course on marketing and branding at NYU, has written a new book on innovation that uses magic as a metaphor for understanding how companies can become more creative and innovative. The premise of Follow the Other Hand is certainly an intriguing one - that companies can become more innovative by learning to think like magicians. (As an added bonus, readers of the book will learn a few magic tricks that can be used to impress their clients and colleagues at meetings and corporate events)
Building on his experience both as a professional magician and a marketing consultant, Andy has already helped a number of FORTUNE 500 companies think differently about branding, marketing, and business strategy. Previous attendees of his "Marketing Magic" course at NYU have included employees of HSBC, American Express, Nestle and L'Oreal.
Anyway, Follow the Other Hand tells the story of how a family-owned olive oil importing business learned to become more competitive and innovative:
"Jonathan West's family-owned olive oil importing business is getting drained by competition on all sides and suffering from stale ideas and execution. But after he reluctantly visits a magician, Jonathan learns not just stage magic tricks, but business lessons that enable him to transform his operation.
By following Jonathan and his team on their journey, business people from entrepreneurs to entry-level through middle-management to CEOs will profit from these Magic Lessons, which demonstrate in a uniquely impressive and memorable way five key actionable behavior changes that will immediately help an organization or enterprise grow. And they are all fun tricks that will not only amaze one's associates, but help everyone think innovatively about their jobs.
Each lesson teaches a trick that both informs and entertains, and will mystify friends and associates. A bonus inserted card-trick wraps the lessons of Magic Lessons into an unforgettable conclusion."
For more information on the "Marketing Magic" course at NYU, click here: "Marketing Magic" is a seven-part evening class at NYU on thinking differently and generating innovative business solutions in branding, marketing and customer relationship management. The course includes case histories from GM, Nike, Starbucks and M&Ms."
Also. if you check out the Follow the Other Hand website, you can watch a commercial for the book that aired on CNBC.
Posted by dominic at 1:10 PM | Comments (27) | Recommend this! (5) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The Harvard 100
The stuffed shirts at Harvard are getting a bit, well, unstuffed, if the premiere issue of 02138 magazine is any indication. The magazine, which views itself as a Vanity Fair for Harvard grads, has published a list of the Harvard 100 - the hundred most influential alumni in the history of the nation's (ahem) second-best university:
The list took on a life of its own. We scrawled names on Post-it notes and turned them into a mosaic, 10 names wide and 10 deep, on a sliding glass door in our office. We added names and took them off. We realized that any 10 names on our door could—to misquote President Kennedy (Harvard)—make the guest list for the best dinner party since Thomas Jefferson (not Harvard) dined alone. Or for a dinner party so entertaining that the film version would have to co-star Wallace Shawn (Harvard) and André Gregory (Harvard) or so horrifying that only Edward Albee (not Harvard) could properly capture it.
We began the ranking process and quickly recognized the utter folly of our task. Only number one was a given. As if to confirm that, Warren Buffett (not Harvard) surfaced in the middle of the process to nail down the top spot for Bill Gates (Harvard, and yes, we know he didn't graduate, and no, we don't care). We debated some more. Things got a little ugly.
If you think you might have been on the list at some point, you're probably right. In the end, we had enough names for the Harvard 200 or 300. As we assembled the final list, we detected obvious trends and unexpected connections; more important, we recognized a theme. Everyone on the Harvard 100 has at least a touch of what one of our editors calls "that Robert Kennedy thing" the impulse to, in the words of Ted Kennedy, "dream things that never were and say why not."
The full list of the Harvard 100 is available only via paid subscription, but suffice it to say that the list includes more than its fair share of bold-faced names: George W. Bush, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Matt Damon and Natalie Portman. [Oh, and if you're dying to find out, the lovely Hah-vahd grad on the cover is actress Rashida Jones, daughter of Quincy Jones]
[image: 02138 magazine]
Posted by dominic at 11:45 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The Year of Innovation
Forget about the Year of the Dog or the Year of the Monkey. At global consumer goods giant Henkel, it's The Year of Innovation. In coordination with its 130th anniversary, Henkel is encouraging all of its employees to make a special effort to submit innovative ideas in every area of the company:
"2006 is not only the year in which Henkel celebrates its 130th anniversary. It is also Henkel's Year of Innovation... Innovative product ideas have always been one of the pillars of Henkel's success. Duck brand Ultimate duct tape, Dial for Men soap and body wash, Purex plus Renuzit Super Odor Neutralizer laundry detergent, got2b glued hair glue, and Loctite Indigo visible light cure adhesives -- these are just a few of the many innovations launched by the company in this year alone. Henkel is a dynamic company that thrives on continuous innovation and change. Ever since it was founded, Henkel has given high priority to research, development and technology in the service of its customers."
ASIDE: For those of you tired of the old song & dance routine, Henkel offers a section of its website dedicated to "film & song." Dunno, maybe it's a German thing, but there are a number of different versions of the "official corporate song" on the Henkel site, include an instrumental version and ones specifically tailored to different markets (e.g. a Russian version, as well as Turkish, Chinese and Japanese versions).
[image: Henkel]
Posted by dominic at 11:40 AM | Comments (1) | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
CEO latch-hook rugs
What do you give a CEO who has everything? The current issue of FORTUNE magazine includes a brief snippet about New York artist Rob Conger, who makes latch-hook rugs of famous American CEOs. While latch-hook rugs are usually thought of as "a folksy craft more commonly associated with images of puppies and clowns," there's apparently a booming market for CEO rugs. At Mixed Greens gallery in New York, the surprisingly life-like CEO rugs sell for $4,000 a pop.
[image: Sam Walton]
Posted by dominic at 11:12 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
September 26, 2006
Innovation bling-bling from the Metropolitan Opera
In an effort to attract a wider audience to its opera performances, the opening of the Metropolitan Opera's fall season in New York City included a live simulcast of "Madama Butterfly" in Times Square. Amidst a sea of neon, high-brow art competed with low-brow advertising:
"Bicyclists and passers-by stopped, seemingly mesmerized by the giant images of “Madama Butterfly” glaring through the night sky over Times Square. About 1,000 people sat on chairs behind metal barricades and red velvet ropes on Broadway. Neon advertisements for beer and the Internet competed with a tenor and a soprano singing out their passion.
The Metropolitan Opera embarked on a new era with a season-opening gala last night that dripped wealth and celebrity but also included an unprecedented dose of populism: a simulcast in Times Square, where the giant Panasonic, Nasdaq and Reuters screens beamed Puccini’s tale of love and abandonment north to a blocked-off section of Broadway."
Anyway, there's more high-tech bling on the way from the Metropolitan Opera. The company's new general manager, Peter Gelb, has already announced plans to provide opera recordings via Internet downloads and beam Met operas live into movie theaters and via satellite radio.
[image: New York Times]
Posted by dominic at 12:42 PM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
September 26 innovation linkage
What is it about street art that inspires us? [PSFK]
Cablevision awards stock options to dead people [Wall Street Journal]
Malcolm Gladwell loves The Blind Side [Gladwell.com]
Cal-Berkeley launches a series of innovation webcasts [eContent]
The secrets of the Mona Lisa smile [Reuters]
How 8 trends are radically changing work and play [CSC's Leading Edge Forum]
Robert Scoble's new videoblog about technology & innovation [ScobleShow]
A bar of Ivory soap goes nuclear [Metacafe]
[video: The Lexus LS 460 parks itself via Gizmodo]
Posted by dominic at 11:45 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Extreme innovation within the portable sanitation industry
As the Wall Street Journal reports, the billion-dollar portable sanitation industry is getting an extreme innovation facelift. Forget about those foul-smelling blue boxes, here come the luxury restroom trailers that cost as much as $5,000 for the night. Apparently, these high-end facilities include such perks as marble sinks, porcelain flush toilets and air conditioning. In some cases, these high-rent toilets also come with lush bathroom sound systems, top-of-the-line consumer electronics and even white-gloved bathroom attendants:
"For decades, renting a portable toilet has meant asking elegantly dressed guests to brave one of those unsightly plastic boxes typically associated with construction sites, recreation areas and rock concerts. But as the $1.5 billion U.S. portable-sanitation industry chases the luxury market, the port-a-potty is getting a makeover. Rental companies are rolling out upscale "restroom trailers," equipped with amenities such as marble counters, wall-to-wall carpeting, satellite radio and flat-panel TVs. Many of the high-end trailers -- which cost as much as $5,000 a night to rent -- were originally designed for use at outdoor corporate events, movie sets or pro-golf tournaments, but they are increasingly being rented for private parties, especially weddings."
[image: the luxury loo]
Posted by dominic at 11:38 AM | Recommend this! (2) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The 10 most competitive economies in the world
It looks like the U.S. has lost its title as the world's most competitive economy to Switzerland. In fact, the U.S. has slipped to #6 in the rankings, now trailing four European competitors, due in large part to concerns about the U.S. budget and trade deficits as well as fears about the stability of future U.S. economic growth. While not quite as humiliating as losing to the Europeans in golf, this should be a wake-up call for Washington. Without further ado, here's a list of the world's 10 most competitive economies, according to the World Economic Forum:
(1) Switzerland
(2) Finland
(3) Sweden
(4) Denmark
(5) Singapore
(6) USA
(7) Japan
(8) Germany
(9) Netherlands
(10) U.K.
Somewhat surprisingly, India ranks only #42 on the list and China comes in at a rather lackluster #54. In coming up with the rankings, the World Economic Forum highlighted the role of innovation for the high rankings of the Scandinavian nations and Switzerland: "Switzerland, home to companies such as Nestle SA and Novartis AG, topped the table because of its reputation for innovation, research and development and its scientific infrastructure, the forum said, adding Scandinavian economies performed well for similar reasons." We might also add, of course, that the World Economic Forum holds its annual conference each year in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
[image: World Economic Forum]
Posted by dominic at 10:44 AM | Recommend this! (2) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The European Union gears up for innovation
Finland is taking the lead role in pushing forward an innovation and competitiveness initiative for the European Union. Earlier in the year, Finland helped draw up a 10-point plan for innovation within the European Union that would include, among other things, the establishment of a European Institute of Technology (EIT) and enhanced intellectual property rights protection:
"The Competitiveness Council welcomed the Finnish Presidency's plans to prepare the way for a broad-based innovation policy strategy when it met in Brussels. The strategy will focus on the 10 points outlined in the Commission's recent communication, "Putting knowledge into practice: A broad-based innovation strategy for the EU." [...] The Commission's 10-point plan includes calls to: establish a European Institute of Technology (EIT); work towards a single and attractive labour market for researchers; strengthen research-industry links; enhance intellectual property rights protection (IPR); and develop a strategy for innovation friendly 'lead markets'. The 10-point plan includes calls for 'political leadership and decisive action' from the EU Member States and acceding countries, and calls on them to modify their economic policies and make other structural reforms so that the 10 priorities can be easily implemented."
[image: A meeting of the European Union]
Posted by dominic at 10:27 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
September 25, 2006
An innovative new MBA curriculum from Yale
Yale School of Management is experimenting with a radically new MBA curriculum that hopes to change the way students think about business. Instead of taking traditional courses in finance, marketing or accounting, Yale MBA students will be taking multidisciplinary courses that cut across functional boundaries. For example, there are first-year courses called The Innovator, The Competitor and The Customer. Anyway, here are the details of the new MBA curriculum from Yale:
"The goal of the new curriculum is to provide management education in a richer, more relevant context. Yale's new approach aligns the way management is taught with the way managers operate every day and challenges students to shape their career goals around their personal values and aspirations.
"The management profession has experienced profound change in the past few decades, but management education has not," says Joel M. Podolny, dean of the Yale School of Management. "Most business school curricula are based on a model that made sense in the past. But today, a successful manager must be able to identify and frame business problems and move across a variety of organizational, political and geographic boundaries to solve those problems. Our new curriculum teaches the integrated skills contemporary managers need."
"No executive wakes up in the morning and thinks, 'I'm going to do finance today,' so it doesn't make sense for students to sit in a finance class and learn to crunch numbers absent of any context," says Sharon Oster, the Frederick D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, who is one of a number of senior faculty who worked on developing the new curriculum and led the design of the "Competitor" course. "We are teaching them in a way that's relevant in the real world."
Posted by dominic at 7:45 AM | Comments (1) | Recommend this! (3) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Creative storytelling for scientists
Researchers in computer science and biochemistry at Virginia Tech have created a search capability they call Storytelling that will discover connections between scientific information that appears to be unrelated. For example, using a high-powered supercomputer, the Virginia Tech researchers are able to search through hundreds of thousands of scientific publications in order to develop a story that connects "start" and "end" points in completely different academic disciplines:
"The Storyteller program discovers a sequence of events or relationships to create a chain of concepts between specified start and end points. Imagine, for instance, asking for a connection from the concept “traveling in London,” to the concept “places popes are interred.” The Storyteller might postulate “the history of codes” as an intermediary and find the Da Vinci Code – if it existed.
“The stories are pieced together by analyzing large volumes of text or other data” said Naren Ramakrishnan, associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech who works with life scientists to create software for data mining and information analysis tasks arising in biology. The aim is to help scientists make connections in the complex, burgeoning world of scientific discovery. “Everyday, there are new research results reported in the literature and there are discoveries waiting to be made by exploring connections,” said Ramakrishnan.
[image: Storytelling]
Posted by dominic at 7:25 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Howard Hughes is still making his mark on innovation
Ron Winslow of the Wall Street Journal highlights how a new half-billion-dollar Virginia R&D lab backed by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is helping to advance the idea of long-term medical research. In recent years, of course, R&D labs dedicated to fundamental research (e.g. Bell Labs) have fallen by the wayside, as corporations increasingly demand immediate results and breakthrough discoveries that can be rapidly monetized. In bucking this trend, the new Janelia Farm Research Campus will tackle fundamental questions such as how the human brain works and how aging affects the human body:
"These are questions scientists will tackle at a $500 million laboratory that officially opens next month with the aim to support an increasingly orphaned mission in medicine: long-term research. Even the most ambitious government grants generally support projects of just three to five years and increasingly are for "more applied" science, says Gerald M. Rubin, director of the new lab. Corporate research typically demands even more immediate, tangible results.
Largely missing from the mix, he says, is support for scientists to follow their instincts on big, tough problems without the pressure to meet grant deadlines or hit quarterly milestones. "Real breakthroughs come from unexpected or unintended observations, where someone was smart enough to see what they had and then follow up," he adds. It took 23 years for scientists to unravel the structure of hemoglobin, a seminal achievement a half-century ago that earned a Nobel Prize. Today, Dr. Rubin argues, such an effort would be hard-pressed to find support."
Anyway, as Winslow points out in the Wall Street Journal piece, the Janelia Farm Research Campus will become the first stand-alone laboratory of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Maryland-based philanthropy that is one of the world's largest funders of basic medical research. The basic idea of Janelia is to attract the best and brightest scientists and then let them do their thing, without worries about administrative duties or any immediate expectations of a commercial payoff.
ASIDE: Just to highlight once again the role of the "superstar architect" in highlighting the significance of any major endeavor, the new lab is a dramatic, three-story 900-foot long curvilinear structure designed by renowned architect Rafael Viñoly.
[image: Howard Hughes in "The Aviator"]
Posted by dominic at 6:41 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
