« October 29, 2006 - November 4, 2006 | Main | November 12, 2006 - November 18, 2006 »
November 10, 2006
Paul Kwiecinski of Face the Music: Singing the Innovation Blues
In the weeks leading up to the FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City on November 29-30, the Business Innovation Insider is pleased to present a regular series of thought pieces with innovative thinkers in business and academia. At the FORTUNE Innovation Forum, Paul Kwiecinski, the Managing Partner of Face the Music, will be leading a workshop that will engage participants in writing, singing and performing original blues songs about life in today's business environment. Building on his experiences at Face The Music, Paul Kwiecinski will help forward-thinking individuals go beyond their "business blues" in order to refocus their energies on a compelling, collective vision of the future. In this Business Innovation Insider exclusive Q&A, Paul Kwiecinski shares his thoughts and insights about the process of business innovation:
Q: When it comes to innovation, what advantages/disadvantages do you feel small businesses have compared to their larger competitors?
Paul Kwiecinski: Small businesses have several advantages in innovation. One big advantage is a matter of physics - the inertia and mass of a large corporation makes it much more difficult to maneuver and change course. Small businesses are like cigarette boats, while the large ones are like tankers. Small businesses can respond to market changes and opportunities much more quickly. As in the Internet revolution, small businesses led the charge and defined how the Web was going to work.
The entrepreneurial spirit of small businesses is also innovative by nature. There is an action and response cycle that is fast-paced and adaptable. I’ve seen many long-term planning projects in corporations be scrapped because they were obsolete before they were completed. The small business approach of seeing an opportunity and forming an intention and approach around it, and getting into action is much more effective in today’s business environment.
In pharmaceuticals, most of the new drugs are coming from the small companies and being bought by the giants, while the big companies’ pipelines of internally developed molecules is sparse, despite the enormous resources available to them.
Flexibility, speed to respond, adaptability, networked resources, and a streamlined decision making process are key.
Q: As a small business, how does being closer to your customers and partners enable you to innovate either smarter or faster?
Paul Kwiecinski: Many of our existing offerings and products came from our customers; from having a dialog about what they are experiencing, and working together on approaches and solutions. Some just came from them saying: “Could you do…? It’s immediate and just-in-time information and response.
With our partners, it has been important to make and take time to be together in an unstructured way to make new and disparate connections and see various threads running through the issues and opportunities in front of us.
Q: What is your favorite small business innovation story?
Paul Kwiecinski: Maybe my own. We took a team-building exercise (writing blues songs) that was spontaneously delivered at an event in Paris in 1998, recognized that it might have great potential and developed a separate business that has operated prosperously for seven years. There was a moment of inspiration in doing it originally, and then a separate moment of inspiration by another partner to say, “Wait a minute, a lot of people could benefit from this.”
Q: What are the challenges in scaling a small-scale innovation into a large-scale innovation?
Paul Kwiecinski: There are three challenges: (1) To continue innovating, not to bog the idea down in large-scale mechanics (2) Coming to market quickly while the idea is timely and fresh and (3) Establishing good connection and communication between initiators, implementers and users.
Posted by dominic at 11:49 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
|
Google: I feel the need for speed
Almost everywhere you look these days, companies are touting the importance of "speed" or "velocity" or anything that sounds incredibly fast and responsive. At the Web 2.0 Summit, Marissa Mayer of Google explained why speed is so important for a company like Google that thrives on innovation. Anyway, Influx Insights has posted a great summary of Mayer's talk, which offers a few insights into the current thinking at Google. The basic idea is that Internet users want their content as quickly as possible, and for that, they are willing to give up both quality and quantity:
"Marissa Mayer of Google gave a short, but extremely smart talk at Web 2.0 conference about the most significant thing that the company has learned in its short history. The answer was speed and this was an insight that came from consumer research experiments in search page design, where Google was looking to understand the optimal number of search results on a page.
In the test, they discovered that those in the control group with 10 results stayed longer than those who asked 30 results. Marisa wondered why? People asked for more, but they didn't like what they got, so they left. Were they giving them too much? When they dug further into the data, they uncovered the problem; the control group's search, which displayed 10 results, took .4 of a second vs. those getting 30 results, took .9.
This was the moment that Google discovered the power of speed."
[image: Marissa Mayer at Web 2.0 Summit, via dfarber]
Posted by dominic at 7:21 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Digital technology and the urban environment
As part of a series of reports from the Venice Biennale, We Make Money Not Art has put together a great collection of photos and highlights from the MIT SENSEable City project inside the Italian Pavilion of the Biennale. The MIT project contains a number of exhibits loosely organized around the theme of the impact of digital technology on the urban environment:
"A revolution seems to be on the way. Some compare it to the dawn of the Internet era. Others refer to it as one of the most profound changes in the way we will live since the emergence of the 20th century modernist city. What is this dramatic change? First, we are seeing a proliferation of portable devices and wireless connectivity. Cell phones, laptops - and also RFID tags and other miniaturized transmitters - are becoming common and increasingly linked. Technology, now dispersed throughout the built environment, is blanketing our cities with interconnected digital bits.
Second, powerful data-handling software, such as GIS and other custom made applications, allows us to transform large amounts of data into meaningful information. We can easily assemble, manipulate and attach this information to geographic locations, thus generating new perspectives on the city. The combined effect of these changes is monumental. The way we describe, understand, and live in cities - along with the tools we use to design and alter their physical structure - is being radically transformed."
The MIT exhibits include Real Time Rome ("an information visualization system that combines different datasets in a single interface to reveal the rhythm of the Italian capital in real time"), the Zaragoza Digital Mile, and SANDscape.
[image: MIT SENSEable City]
Posted by dominic at 6:57 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Seth Godin: the chicken or the egg problem
Any new product or service ultimately faces some version of the "chicken-or-the-egg" problem - getting users to embrace a product or service when nobody else is using it. For example, Microsoft is facing a version of the problem with the introduction of its new Zune music player, which allows users to share music through Wi-Fi networks. (If nobody else has a Zune, how will a buyer of a new Zune be able to share music?) The classic chicken-or-the-egg problem, of course, is the trendy nightclub problem: "No cool person wants to go to a nightclub unless they know that a lot of cool people will be there. But of course, cool people don't want to go unless they know that the other cool people are coming." As marketing guru Seth Godin points out, "The only reason people want to use it is that other people are already using it! In other words, no one wants to go first."
For any innovator, it means being able to accept the risk of failure:
"There are countless innovations that would make our world a better place (and would make you a wealthy marketer). The problem with almost all of them is that getting from here to there is almost impossible. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but it does mean you should count on failing. Sure, every once in a while an eBay happens. But for every business that solves the chicken/egg problem, there are thousands that fail...
In almost every case I can think of, the problem isn't solved by fixing a big industry. It's just too hard to get all the big players to change at once. Instead, the problem is solved in a tiny industry (college admissions a hundred years ago) and then the industry grows around it."
[image: Chicken or the egg?]
Posted by dominic at 6:36 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Unlocking innovation in North Dakota
It's not often that there's innovation news coming out of North Dakota. With that in mind, here are the highlights of a new program called "Innovate North Dakota," a new statewide economic development initiative designed to help entrepreneurs turn business ideas into functional businesses in cities such as Bismarck and Fargo:
During a press conference held Thursday at Minot State University, [North Dakota Commerce Commissioner] Shane Goettle explained that Innovate ND is an intensive, six-month program that will provide direct assistance to people who have business ideas for North Dakota people. “This is a call to all innovators. We invite anyone with a business idea – big or small – to enroll in Innovate ND and get help developing that idea into a business plan and ultimately, we hope, into a viable new North Dakota business,” Goettle said.
Goettle further explained that the purpose of the program is to offer a hands-on approach to provide direct assistance to keep people in North Dakota and nurture their ideas. “North Dakota’s future growth depends to a large degree on our ability to grow businesses and our economy from within,” Goettle said. “Innovate ND is a way to cultivate the budding entrepreneurs among us.”
[image: North Dakota Commerce Commissioner Shane Goettle]
Posted by dominic at 6:00 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Japanese inventor unveils water-powered battery
According to Reuters, a Japanese inventor has created the "next generation of eco-friendly energy sources" - batteries powered by water. The batteries are made primarily of carbon-based compounds that can be activated by a single drop of water. The design of the battery means that it has uses far beyond those of a regular battery. During a disaster, for example, a single drop of water would be enough to power small, hand-held flashlights. While the battery is still in the development process, it could become a breakthrough innovation:
"Susumu Suzuki, the president of Tokyo-based building material maker TSC (Total System Conductor), has invented water-powered batteries, which have an electric current as powerful as that of a standard manganese dioxide battery. Suzuki says these batteries would be cheap to produce and can be recycled several times, making them an essential tool for the future."
In the Reuters story, there's also a two-minute video clip demonstrating the use of the water-powered battery. The batteries are cost-friendly as well as environmentally-friendly -- they may cost as little as one-tenth of what it costs to produce regular batteries.
[image: Batteries Powered By Water, via Reuters]
Posted by dominic at 5:43 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
November 9, 2006
Mark Johnson of Innosight: Innovation Q&A
Innovation consulting firm Innosight has been at the forefront of helping large, established competitors understand the impact of disruptive technologies on their industries and markets. Building on the disruptive innovation framework developed by Clayton Christensen, Innosight’s approach and proprietary tools facilitate the discovery of new, high-growth markets and the rapid creation of breakthrough products and services. With less than a month to go before the start of the FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City, Innosight co-founder and president Mark Johnson joins the Business Innovation Insider for a special Q&A on innovation. At the FORTUNE Innovation Forum, Mark Johnson will be moderating a panel discussion on Hardwiring Innovation and Creating a High-Performance Culture.
Q: Who should be responsible for innovation inside of a large corporation? Why?
Mark Johnson: It really depends. For innovations that sustain the core business, innovation responsibility should reside with the general manager who leads the unit but working closely with key people that allow different kinds of innovation to happen such as Product development for product service innovations and marketing for customer experience and channel innovations. For disruptive innovations that are intended to create whole new markets, responsibility should be separated out and a project manager who leads an autonomous should be put in charge.
Q: What is the most important thing that needs to happen before innovation inside a company can occur?
Mark Johnson: At Innosight, we believe the most important piece that needs to be in place is having a common language and a common way to frame innovation. That allows groups to collaborate in a way that allow innovation to happen given that they think about it in the same way. All too often different groups speak a different language of innovation. When that happens there’s what’s called an absorptive capacity issue – knowledge transfer which is so important for innovation to take place doesn’t happen because the fundamental language is so different between units.
Q: Is there an innovation success story within your business that you are most proud of?
Mark Johnson: As a consulting firm our success stories are with our clients. We have enjoyed working with companies to create numerous product successes which we cannot disclose given client confidentiality. Our most successful innovation stories come from the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry.
Q: Is there a formal process for tapping into the knowledge of your workforce?
Mark Johnson: We have formal processes for doing this but they’re not mechanistic. That said, we tap into the knowledge of our professional staff by having bi-weekly “brown bag” lunch meetings. We also transfer people around, working in different team compositions to transfer ideas and insights to new groups. We also have formal training events where we expect each person of our professional organization to have a teaching role at some point throughout the year. Finally, we leverage knowledge through an on-line management system, enhanced by an individual at our company who works half her time “pushing” the system out to our employees.
Q: How much do you rely on research and analysis to guide the development of new innovative services and products?
Mark Johnson: Again, this depends if we’re talking about a sustaining, in market development effort or an effort to create a new market opportunity through a disruptive approach. If it’s sustaining we help clients by often conducting a lot of market and other forms of research. If it’s disruptive into a new market, we will do some research to understand the basic “jobs” consumers might have but it’s more of an empirical effort where learning takes place by “doing”, implementing in the market. Further, typical disruptive opportunities utilize existing, often simple technologies so technical research and analysis is often minimal, although not always in these kinds of innovations.
Q: What innovative companies do you most admire?
Mark Johnson: P&G, J&J, Cisco, Toyota
Q: Does the importance of innovation to your organization vary depending on where you are in the business cycle?
Mark Johnson: It’s an important point about innovation. The time to pursue innovations that really transform the company to the next level should take place when the core business is healthy and not financially challenged. When financial challenges happen, innovation takes a hit except for those innovations that can help wring out costs or seem good routes to gain market share. Again as a consulting firm, we can only advise here and our suggestion is start before you need to in focusing on innovations that help you to create new growth.
Q: Can you innovate without having access to large amounts of capital? If so, how?
Mark Johnson: Yes, the disruptive approach is all about this kind of innovation approach. It’s about spending a little to learn a lot in the marketplace before pouring too much money into a venture. The key is to manage risk in going into new growth areas and this is best done by keeping the “experiment” well bounded with a niche, foothold market and then trying to prove a viable business model through proving profitability. By keeping the investment low clarity remains on whether the business is structured right to turn a profit
Q: How can failure lead to innovative breakthroughs in business?
Mark Johnson: Failure is really a key to breakthrough because said another way, failure means learning of which adjustments are made. On the other hand, a mistake is doing the same failure twice because learning didn’t take place. For creating new growth in new markets, outside the core of a company the only option is to fail. In fact, 90% of successful ventures make significant changes to their strategy 4 times before getting it right. So failure is part of coming up with a business breakthrough for a new market. The key to failure means learning from the market and the learning is then transferred to making adjustments to get the overall business model right.
Posted by dominic at 3:23 PM | Comments (1) | Recommend this! (4) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The Nokia 888 communicator changes shape on demand
Nokia recently unveiled a new concept phone (the Nokia 888) that changes shape on demand. The product took home first place in Nokia's Benelux design contest, thanks to a number of innovative features - such as liquid batteries, a flexible touch screen, and speech recognition - that make traditional mobile phone keys obsolete. The product even has a great tagline - "Perfect form does not exist... Form follows you." The Nokia 888 has the ability to transform how people think about mobile communication devices:
"A personal mobile communication device which lets you be free and fun. It is light, simple and carefree. You can change its form according to your needs during the day. You don't have to carry it in your pocket or on your wrist. You can carry it anywhere, in any form. You can roll it, bend it, put on your clothes like a clip. It also makes some form changes that makes it more ergonomical, i.e. when you want to talk on the phone, the body form turns into the form of the good old telephone. You can personalize these forms and record them. So it fits you the best in the way that you have chosen. Also e-motions let you send forms to other 888 users: i.e. you can send a heart shape to your girlfriend or a dancing figure to your friends to call them to the party tonight. This way you can talk without words."
The phone was designed by Tamer Nakisci for Nokia. Anyway, check out the comments on the Yanko Design site - people are calling the new phone "mindblowing," freaky," "really unbelievable" and "amazing." And, of course, there are the naysayers, who claim the phone is a "fake" (perhaps because a really annoying and really intrusive 888.com poker & casino advertisement pops up whenever you try to find out more about the Nokia 888 phone). It looks like there is a ready market for the phone if Nokia is able to move it from concept to mass-market commercial product.
[image: Nokia 888 via Yanko Design]
Posted by dominic at 7:53 AM | Comments (80) | Recommend this! (2) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Problems with the U.S. patent process
Information Week examines last month's patent spat between IBM and Amazon, viewing it as symptomatic of the broader flaws within the U.S. patent process. Critics maintain that the convoluted and murky patent process inevitably leads to a situation in which companies like IBM must apply a double standard when it comes to the protection of their intellectual property:
"Almost two years ago, IBM donated 500 software patents to the open source community, with a pledge that it would not enforce its license rights to the technologies. But the company remains fiercely protective of its vast portfolio of intellectual property, as Amazon.com learned when IBM filed a patent-infringement suit claiming the Internet retailer built its business using IBM-developed technology and processes. Welcome to the tortuous world of technology patents and intellectual property, where community-minded vendors share original ideas manifest as software code one day -- then bring the hammer down on suspected scofflaws the next."
Even IBM seems to be a bit bemused by its waffling on the intellectual property issue:
"IBM's top attorney for intellectual property rights acknowledges his company's position can seem contradictory and confusing. "We've referred to our patent policy as apparent schizophrenia," David Kappos says. Yet he maintains that "on a deeper level, our actions are consistent."
Apparently, IBM's patents include things like "storing data in an interactive network," "ordering items using an electronic catalog" and "presenting advertising in an interactive service." As The Guardian (U.K.) notes, attempting to defend these patents - all of which are fundamental to online commerce - is like imposing a hidden tax on online shopping.
[image: Thomas Edison's patent application for the light bulb]
Posted by dominic at 7:31 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The Donald Rumsfeld resignation
This was simply too good to pass up - Donald Rumsfeld's resignation summarized in a Mac OSX screenshot. Rumsfeld was a loyal warrior forced to fall on his sword to protect the emperor. [Hat tip: Boing Boing]
Posted by dominic at 7:21 AM | Comments (1) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
A factory of one's own
In the current issue of FORTUNE magazine, there's a great profile of Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, who is working on his vision of the "personal fabricator." One day, twenty years from now, you will be able to design and "print" a product from the privacy and comfort of your own home:
"Imagine a machine with the ability to manufacture anything. Now imagine that machine in your living room. What would you build first? Would you start a business? Would you ever buy anything retail again? According to MIT physicist Neil Gershenfeld, it's not too early to think about these questions, because that machine, which he calls a personal fabricator, is not so far off - or so far-fetched - as you might think. [...]
Today your all-in-one device prints, scans, faxes and copies. Tomorrow it will cut, score, etch and sew. Want a new dining room chair? You'll design it on a PC and press PRINT, and your personal fabricator will create it for you right before your eyes. Just make sure tray No. 2 has enough wood."
[image: Neil Gershenfeld]
Posted by dominic at 7:02 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Are IT workers really blue collar workers in disguise?
The Tech Zone asks a provocative question with some far-reaching consequences: "Are IT workers blue collar?" As The Tech Zone explains, if senior executives tend to view IT workers as blue-collar workers rather than white-collar workers, it might explain some of their willingness to outsource IT jobs. It might also point to a "credibility gap" when it comes to thinking about how IT can help drive the business strategy of an organization. As well, it might explain the perceived undesirability of science, math and engineering careers - who wants to complete a four-year college education if you're going to be treated like a blue collar worker by the arrogant suit in the corner office?
While we typically think of blue-collar workers as undereducated factory workers or guys and gals in construction hats, apparently some executives are already starting to think of highly-educated IT workers as just another form of blue-collar labor:
"IT people (e.g. analysts and programmers) exhibit a lot of blue collar characteristics, e.g., repetition in types of work performed, they do not dress or act like professionals, and regularly punch in and out of work with little interest in going above and beyond the call of duty. [...] Blue collar workers can perform technical tasks as well as manual tasks, such as those found in manufacturing and assembly; and although they are classified as exempt workers paid a salary, they tend to behave like hourly workers instead. Further, there are plenty of blue collar workers who were just as educated, if not more so, than a lot of the programmers and analysts on their staffs. One executive even went so far as to tell me about a couple of craftsman machinists he had with MBA degrees..."
[image: Laverne and Shirley]
Posted by dominic at 6:42 AM | Comments (3) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The future by design
On YouTube.com, there's a three-minute trailer for the film Future By Design from Academy Award-nominated director William Gazecki. In the film, renowned futurist and inventor Jacque Fresco "extrapolates from the present" to conjure up a vision of levitating trains, underwater cities, and futuristic buildings:
"Future by Design shares the life and far-reaching vision of Jacque Fresco, considered by many to be a modern day Da Vinci. Peer to Einstein and Buckminster Fuller, Jacque is a self-taught futurist who describes himself most often as a "generalist" or multi-disciplinarian -- a student of many inter-related fields. He is a prolific inventor, having spent his entire life (he is now 90 years old) conceiving of and devising inventions on various scales which entail the use of innovative technology. As a futurist, Jacque is not only a conceptualist and a theoretician, but he is also an engineer and a designer."
The film had its world premiere at the Atlanta Film Festival in June. Hopefully, a major studio will pick up and distribute this fascinating documentary to a wider audience.
Posted by dominic at 6:09 AM | Comments (1) | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
November 8, 2006
Erick Schonfeld of Business 2.0 on disruptive innovation
In the weeks leading up to the FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City on November 29-30, the Business Innovation Insider is pleased to present a regular series of thought pieces with innovative thinkers in business and academia. At the FORTUNE Innovation Forum, Business 2.0 editor-at-large Erick Schonfeld will be moderating a panel discussion that includes executives from Yahoo!, Digg.com and Microsoft on How to Bring the Next Big Thing to the Mass Market. In this Business Innovation Insider exclusive, Erick Schonfeld follows up on his Business 2.0 cover feature on disruptive innovation as he describes the primary characteristics of any disruptive technology:
"What all the disruptive companies have in common is that they are throwing orthodoxy out the window and taking a completely new approach to solve unmet consumer or market needs. Some of them are developing new disruptive technologies (like EEStor, which is developing a battery for an electric car that might rival the internal combustion engine), while others are using existing technologies to create disruptive business models (like Zopa, which is using the Internet to create a peer-to-peer banking service that is an eBay for loans). Usually a business is disruptive because it offers an alternative product to the status quo that is either better, cheaper, or more convenient.
The thing that surprised me the most in my reporting for the story is that disruptive technologies that win out in the end usually are not better than what they are competing against-at least not initially. The most successful disruptors creep up on incumbents, addressing markets they are ignoring or siphoning off customers they deem to be too unprofitable. Remember, the PC started out as a hobbyist toy. But every year it became more powerful, until now it rules the world. Today, Web-based word processors, spreadsheets, and calendars are not better than the desktop applications they are trying to replace. But they are more convenient and easier to share-and they tend to be free!
The most disruptive businesses, though, don't replace existing products. They compete against non-consumption by opening up new markets that were never before possible. Think of the airplane, the cell phone, or the Internet. Sure, some industries might get trampled by these new technologies - but only if those industries are not giving consumers what they really want. If you think about it, disruption is just another name for the age-old economic concept of creative destruction."
[top image: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid]
Posted by dominic at 3:30 PM | Comments (2) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
50% of companies unhappy with their innovation efforts
According to a new survey from Archstone Consulting, more than half of all companies are dissatisfied with the results of their innovation initiatives. That's the bad news. The good news is that nearly 75% of companies plan to increase their spending on innovation over the next few years in an effort to drive top-line revenue growth:
"The importance of innovation spending to the bottom line has been highlighted in a new survey by Archstone Consulting which found that half of the companies questioned said that between 10% and 25% of their revenues over the next three years would be driven by products and services that will be developed over the next 12 months. Yet less than 5% of these companies believe they have a highly effective innovation process and only a small number are using state of the art approaches to innovation like open networks and innovation-based metrics.
To bridge this gap, the vast majority of companies are investing significantly in consumer research as well as tapping into external resources such as formal and informal inventor networks to help them uncover new ideas, concepts, improvements and enablers. They are also calling on the services of a range of consumer research firms, brand strategy and innovation firms, management consultants, advertising agencies and brand and identity design firms."
As Archstone explains, there are two key reasons that account for the relatively poor performance of innovation initiatives thus far: (1) the failure by many companies to put a formal innovation strategy in place and (2) an inability to measure the effectiveness of innovation programs. Other reasons include "confused project sponsorship," a failure to achieve high-level buy-in from senior executives and a lack of dedicated resources. Going forward, the consulting firm advises companies to start building a culture that fosters and respects risk-taking and innovative thinking.
Posted by dominic at 1:08 PM | Comments (11) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The best in Election Night innovation
With the vast majority of election results now in and Election 2006 winding to a final close, Meg Martin of Poynter Online has done a great job of pulling together the best in election night innovation:
"Tuesday's mid-term election meant a lot of different things for voters in a lot of different places. It was an opportunity for news organizations to utilize new technologies and innovative techniques to tell stories, broad and narrow, to their communities. We were impressed by much of what we saw, so we pulled together elements of the work from all different media, in markets of varying sizes, all across the country. Beyond Election 2006, many of the tools and approaches on display over the past 24 hours hold promise for everyday coverage going forward -- up to and including Nov. 4, 2008..."
With that in mind, here are the 12 best innovations of Election 2006:
(1) Personalized Results Tracking;
(2) Citizen reporting;
(3) News at a glance (e.g. MSNBC Dashboard);
(4) Blogging the count;
(5) Equipping the voters;
(6) Streaming the vote;
(7) Continuous content, even during commercial breaks;
(8) The Graphic Traffic;
(9) Chatting the Process;
(10) Listening in;
(11) Mapping it out;
(12) Up-to-the-minute summaries of who won.
[image: Poynter Online]
Posted by dominic at 7:25 AM | Comments (2) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
A customized innovation search engine
Chuck Frey of the Innovation Tools website has put together a new Google Custom Search Engine to help innovation professionals and entrepreneurs find innovation-related information faster and easier: "This new customized search tool is designed to search only the contents of the most valuable innovation websites, helping you to find the critical information you need faster. You no longer have to wade through pages upon pages of irrelevant search results. Why not try it today?"
Anyway, here's the link from Google on how to build a customized search engine. You might also want to check out Rollyo, which offers the ability to search the content of a list of specified websites, allowing you to narrow down the results to pages from websites that you already know and trust.
Posted by dominic at 6:57 AM | Recommend this! (2) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
Jim Carroll: How to put a ripple in a flat world
As Thomas Friedman points out in his bestselling book The World is Flat, forces like globalization are forever altering the way that companies do business. So how should companies react in this hyper-connected market environment in which time to market seems to matter more than ever? Innovation expert and futurist Jim Carroll outlines nine ways to put a ripple in your flat world:
(1) Focus on the brand;
(2) Go big on quality;
(3) Get religious on "time-to-market";
(4) Go deep with market knowledge;
(5) Increase value;
(6) Focus on agility;
(7) Seek partners;
(8) Go upside down;
(9) Stay motivated.
As Carroll points out, the most important point is to focus on more than just becoming a low-cost global operator:
"Folks who have "gone flat" or who "get flat" seem quite dispirited: they have been relentlessly focused on cost, yet there is so much more to the future than becoming a low cost operator. Yet that's what innovation is all about: doing much more than simply "surviving" into a world that has gone flat, into a world in which you are thriving through innovation. Going flat is probably the first -- and baby step -- in adjusting the realities of your structure and innovation culture for the future."
[image: graphic facilitation by Brandy Agerbeck, The World is Flat]
Posted by dominic at 6:36 AM | Comments (1) | Recommend this! (2) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The tower of tomorrow
In the current issue of FORTUNE, there's a section on The Future of Design. As a special feature for this section, the magazine asked architect William McDonough, founder and principal of William McDonough & Partner, to sketch out what the Tower of Tomorrow might look like:
"When FORTUNE invited my design firm, which specializes in sustainable architecture, to share our vision of a building of the future, we decided not to guess about conditions decades or centuries away. Instead, we looked at the possibilities that exist now.
Buildings consume 40 percent of our energy and can have life spans longer than humans. Because we live, work and associate with others in buildings, they form part of the fabric of human life—and thus have an enormous effect not only on the quality of individual lives but also on the state of the earth... We have configured a structure that is not just kind to nature; it actually imitates nature. Imagine a building that makes oxygen, distills water, produces energy, changes with the seasons—and is beautiful. In effect, that building is like a tree, standing in a city that is like a forest."
[image: The Tower of Tomorrow]
Posted by dominic at 6:12 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
The best junkyard in the world
BoingBoing points to a set of photos from what just may be the best junkyard in the world: "APEX Electronics is an amazing salvage yard in Sun Valley, and Dorkbot SoCal members took a trip there this weekend. I wrote about it and took a bunch of HDR photographs of the luscious piles of hot sexy scuttled scientific equipment..."
[image: techno-detritus at APEX]
Posted by dominic at 6:02 AM | Comments (4) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
November 7, 2006
Paul Budnitz of Kidrobot: innovation and the designer toy movement
In the weeks leading up to the FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City on November 29-30, the Business Innovation Insider is pleased to present a regular series of thought pieces with innovative thinkers in business and academia. At the FORTUNE Innovation Forum, entrepreneur Paul Budnitz, the president and founder of Kidrobot, will be leading a workshop on how to line up funding for innovative new ideas. (Kidrobot is now the world’s premier creator and retailer of limited edition art toys and apparel - if you're starting work on this year's holiday wish list, you should check out the online Kidrobot store)
In this Business Innovation Insider exclusive, Paul Budnitz outlines the origin of the designer toy movement in the USA and explains how Kidrobot helped to catalyze and support this movement:
"When I started Kidrobot in early 2002, designer toys were mostly available in Japan and Hong Kong. In the USA the toys were mostly on eBay, and they were very hard to find and very expensive. I began to import these toys, but at the same time, we began to design and manufacture our own toys. I think what really popularized the movement was our willingness to work with USA artists, and to create a web site, stores, and an artist/customer community around that.
Kidrobot's toy line is essentially a collaboration between myself and the Kidrobot staff, and US designers, graffiti artists, fine artists, fashion designers, etc. What is unique about Kidrobot is the depth of that collaboration -- in general artists work with us to produce something in our style, not necessarily the other way around.
We have produced toys made with designers such as Frank Kozik, Dalek, Gary Baseman, Visionaire, Gucci, Marc Jacobs, Jil Sander, Paul Smith, Paul Pope, Mori Chax, Kenzo Minami, Cycle, Lemar & Dauley, Swizz Beatz, Wildbrain, Gorillaz, and many others.
In four years Kidrobot has grown from a web store and retailer into manufacturing and wholesale. We've also grown from toys to a full clothing line, into animation, and print. We also have designed a floor in Peter Gatien's new mega-nightclub in Toronto, and have a series of limited edition cars coming out with Volkswagen this fall."
[image: Paul Budnitz of Kidrobot]
Posted by dominic at 12:54 PM | Comments (3) | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
India may send a manned mission to the moon
It looks like India is debating the pros and cons of sending a manned mission to the moon:
"India's space scientists and technologists will hold a brain-storming session... to explore the viability of undertaking a manned mission to the moon by the end of the next decade (2020). With President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam rooting for such an adventure, about 50-60 experts from top research labs and scientific institutions will get a preview of the ambitious project conceived by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) that is planning to send an Indian astronaut into space on a indigenous space capsule by 2014."
Of course, there's a lot of work to be done in mobilizing all the necessary resources, but it looks like India is already dreaming of becoming a true technological superpower:
"A successful manned mission to moon will give India the status of a super-power with technological capability on par with the United States, Russia, European Space Agency (ESA), China (in manned mission to space), development of new types of materials and breakthrough in medicine and life sciences, communications. According to Indian Space Commission member Roddam Narasimha, who is one of the invitees for the meeting, a manned mission to moon would make India a force to reckon with and count among the select few countries in the space club."
[image: Pakistani secret UFO Research Facility]
Posted by dominic at 12:03 PM | Comments (5) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack
TIME Magazine's invention of the year
As might be expected, YouTube made it to the top of the list of TIME magazine's Best Inventions of 2006:
"In the past 12 months, thousands of ordinary people have become famous. Famous people have been embarrassed. Huge sums of money have changed hands. Lots and lots of Mentos have been dropped into Diet Coke. The rules are different now, and one website changed them: YouTube.
It's been an interesting year in technology. Nintendo invented a video game you control with a magic wand. A new kind of car traveled 3,145 miles on a single gallon of gas. A robot learned to ride a bike. Somebody came up with a nanofabric umbrella that doesn't stay wet. But only YouTube created a new way for millions of people to entertain, educate, shock, rock and grok one another on a scale we've never seen before. That's why it's Time's Invention of the Year for 2006."
As TIME.com points out, YouTube somehow "tapped into something that appears on no business plan: the lonely, pressurized, pent-up video subconscious of America." YouTube now airs more than 100 million videos, with 70,000 more added every day. In a little more than a year, the YouTube site has truly become a cultural phenomenon:
"YouTube is ultimately more interesting as a community and a culture, however, than as a cash cow. It's the fulfillment of the promise that Web 1.0 made 15 years ago. The way blogs made regular folks into journalists, YouTube makes them into celebrities. The real challenge old media face isn't protecting their precious copyrighted material. It's figuring out what to do when the rest of u