« December 10, 2006 - December 16, 2006 | Main | December 24, 2006 - December 30, 2006 »
December 22, 2006
Have yourself an innovative little Christmas
[image: Christmas lights from Ian Wilson on Flickr]
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December 21, 2006
How to wrap an iPod with hundred dollar bills
As BIG Images points out, why not give your employees a unique holiday present: iPod Shuffles wrapped in Origami boxes made of $100 bills. Shown above is a step-by-step collage of a Second Generation iPod Shuffle getting wrapped in two $100 bill origami boxes made by Jon Beebe.
(This assumes, of course, that the $100 bills at your office are not being used by your employees for more nefarious purposes that involve Bolivian Marching Powder.)
[image: BIG Images]
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The best in Indian innovation 2006
In Bangalore, IT industry association Nasscom showcased the best in Indian innovation for 2006, with a focus on those companies that are driving business model and process innovation within the Indian IT industry. The ten companies nominated are eligible to win one of the Nasscom innovation awards that will be presented early next year in Mumbai:
"Ten homegrown companies including Elitecore Technologies, IttiamSystems, MIEL e-security, Monsoon Multimedia, Newgen Software, Pandora Networks, Strand Life sciences, Image analyzer, and MNCs HP Labs and Intel Technology, which are working on Indian market-specific products have been shortlisted for the awards. Around 160 companies took part in the innovation face-off this year of which ten have been chosen."
More proof, perhaps, that India is turning into an innovation powerhouse that is creating and nurturing the types of companies that are capable of taking on the likes of Intel and Hewlett-Packard.
[image: Kiran Karnik, President of NASSCOM]
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Nine must-have military technologies
No matter how badly the war in Iraq goes, there will always be those Pentagon hawks who are clamoring for the latest and greatest in military hardware weaponry. (If only we had enough of those cool weapons the Israelis and Russians have, we'd neutralize all those pesky Iraqi insurgents once and for all!). SciFi Blog has the details about nine must-have military technologies that would make the perfect stocking stuffers for the five-star army general on your shopping list: the SmartShirt, the Powered Exoskeleton, Liquid Body Armor, the Micro SpyPlane, the GT Max Mini Helicopter, the Sonic Bandage, the Gryphon Flying Wings and the Swiss Military Pen.
If I were a Pentagon war planner, I'd request a huge shipment of the Cornershot ("Shooting's right around the corner") weapons. They'd be perfect for dealing with the demands of urban warfare in places like Iraq and Afghanistan:
"Being able to shoot around a corner without the need to jump out into the line of fire Rambo-style seems like a no-brainer, so the Israelis have developed the Cornershot. While the barrel pivots to the left or right as needed, the operator can still see what they're aiming at on a small video screen. Certainly, this would be a terrific tool for cops dealing with potential ambushes, although the thought of something like this in the hands of criminals is pretty frightening. Let's just hope it can't pivot all the way around to 180º."
Memo to self: If Hollywood can dust off Sylvester Stallone for yet another Rocky movie ("Rocky Balboa: The return of the 60-year-old heavyweight champ"), why not bring Stallone back for another Rambo flick -- "Rambo: Iraqi Inferno".
[image: Cornershot]
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December 20, 2006
Flock and Flow: How to recognize innovation before it's too late
In a round-up of the best books about creativity and innovation for the holiday gift-giving season, PSFK points to a new book from Grant McCracken called Flock and Flow:
"Is it possible any longer to "read" markets fast enough to respond to them? A world of discrete parts is now one interconnected web of ceaseless calculation and response. Marketing has become a thing of speed and turbulence, with all the players moving simultaneously.
For marketing guru Grant McCracken, the key to success in this dynamic new marketplace is to find a way to slow the world down. And McCracken believes he has the solution. It begins with understanding the mechanics at work today. He says, "Complexity has a theory. Commotion has a pattern. Dynamism has a system. We can continue to live by damage control, or we can change the way we play the game." To survive our own world of collision and speed, marketers need to see the world as "flocks and flows."
In this exciting new book, McCracken deploys "complex adaptive theory" to track the movement of trends and new groupings of consumers. He shows how to monitor new trends, whether and when to introduce new brands and brand extensions, how to speak to niche markets, and how to avoid costly mistakes. McCracken’s sage and witty advice could not come at a better time. His book will be a valuable aid for anyone trying to keep up with marketplace changes in our rapidly evolving world."
It sounds like a fascinating book topic. Every organization needs to learn how to recognize innovation trends before it's too late. I haven't had time to review the book, but judging by the quality of Grant's blog, I'm sure it's an interesting and thought-provoking read.
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Philips, Microsoft bring the Ambilight experience to online movie previews
Philips and Microsoft have partnered to bring Philips’ proprietary ambient backlighting technology to previews of coming film attractions like Night at the Museum and Children of Men. On the MSN movies page, you can now watch movie previews in full Ambilight:
"The web portal is teaming with Philips, the maker of the Ambilight technology which surrounds a flat-screen set with a halo color directly related to the on-screen content. Philips' Ambilight LCD and Plasma sets are now the centerpiece of a TV ad campaign starring the cartoon character, "The Incredible Hulk."
The Ambilight HD movie trailers are available for steaming on the home page of MSN Entertainment. The site attempts to recreate the Ambilight experience by providing a similar surrounding color on the frame of the window displaying the trailer. "The Ambilight feature on MSN Movies offers a rich and immersive online trailer viewing, creating a unique mini-cinematic experience," says Scott Levitan, Philips' senior vice president of marketing and sales. "Coupled with High-Definition picture quality, this first ever offering of online movie trailers in Ambilight heightens the impact of the scenes, drawing viewers to films in a way that has never been seen before."
Think about how Dolby Laboratories has forever changed the movie-going experience with its audio innovations. As Jim Cramer recently pointed out on "Mad Money", Dolby is "everywhere these days... They are the Microsoft of the new digital experience!" Dolby sound is even in video games these days!
If enhancing the audio experience at the movies was the first step, then enhancing the video experience is the next step. Look for more companies to come up with ways to enhance the "high-definition" viewing experience.
[images: Philips Ambilight via Gizmodo]
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Chaucer + Hip-Hop = Lit-Hop
First, there was the Medici Effect. Now, there's the Chaucer Effect. As Yahoo! News points out, a 27-year-old rapper with a master's in medieval and Renaissance English literature has found creative inspiration in Chaucer:
"The lights dim, the music pumps — a steady beat that can be felt in the bones — and Baba Brinkman struts and bounces around the stage, belting out his rhymes about hard living, violence, sex and the secrets to true love. He gets his inspiration not from growing up in the 'hood, but from the musings of a 14th-century English poet.
"Ready to kill with their jagged-edged daggers drawn/The three aggravated braggarts staggered up the lawn/And without dragging on while the story is told/Beneath the tree they found a bag filled with glorious gold," Brinkman raps in a seamless cadence, updating Geoffrey Chaucer to hip hop."
Anyway, on Baba Brinkman's website, you can check out rap versions of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" as Quicktime audio clips. Apparently, he's been playing to sold-out houses on Ivy League campuses and other liberal arts universities on the East Coast.
[image: The Rap Canterbury Tales]
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December 19, 2006
December 19 innovation linkage
Booz Allen Hamilton's Global Innovation 1000 [Strategy + Business]
Grooming Next-Generation Leaders [HBS Working Knowledge]
Innovation vs. Corporate Culture cartoon [Scott Adams]
Wharton's global forecast for 2007 [Knowledge @ Wharton]
Should you fire the creative enfant terrible? [Bob Sutton]
Embracing the naive prospect [Seth Godin]
Second Life Gets a Tabloid [PSFK]
Quebec unveils $1.2 billion innovation strategy [LabCanada.com]
[video: "Volume" at the Victoria and Albert Museum]
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Nine things Thomas Edison never actually invented
If you're a fan of both historical revisionism and innovation, this might be a fun item to check out... Jawad Shuaib of Shuzak.com has posted a comprehensive list of nine inventions for which Thomas Alva Edison absolutely, positively should not be given credit. In fact, according to Shuaib, "Thomas Edison himself did not invent major breakthroughs. He often took credit for the ideas and inventions of others and most of his patents were little more than improvements on already existing products. He was an astute businessman, and as such, had greater impact on innovating existing products than inventing new ones." Apparently, the following nine items had already been invented or patented by the time Thomas Edison "discovered" them:
(1) The Electric Bulb or Incandescent Lamp ("Thomas Edison neither invented the light bulb, nor held the first patent to the modern design of the light bulb. In reality, light bulbs used as electric lights existed 50 years prior to Thomas Edison's 1879 patent date");
(2) The electric chair;
(3) The movie camera;
(4) The power generator;
(5) X-ray photographs;
(6) The storage battery;
(7) The record player ("Thomas Edison did not invent the record player. Rather, he invented the phonograph, which was intended for making recordings. The phonograph was first marketed as a dictation machine and only later modified for use in musical devices. The ability to record sounds had been invented much before Edison's phonograph.");
(8) Wax paper;
(9) The telegraph.
[image: Thomas Edison and the phonograph]
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The Best of Design in 2006
The International Herald Tribune has posted a wide-ranging review of the best in design for 2006. Among the highlights:
(1) The World Economic Forum in Davos made "design" part of its strategic agenda for the first time;
(2) Architects experimented with new types of emergency housing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina;
(3) The designers working on the $100-laptop project for the One Laptop per Child nonprofit foundation produced their first models of the X0-1;
(4) A group of Guatemalan politicians, academics and industrialists enlisted the help of Canadian graphic designer Bruce Mau in the ¡GuateAmala! campaign, to encourage their compatriots to be more optimistic about the future after decades of civil war and human rights abuse;
(5) Black finally replaced silver as the "default color" for digital and electronic products (e.g. Apple's iPod Hi-Fi and the glossy black Apple MacBook);
(6) Rapid prototyping technologies, originally used in the automotive and aerospace industries, became part of the mainstream (e.g. the Sketch furniture made by Swedish design group Front);
There's also a lot to look forward to in 2007:
"Take Apple's long-rumored iPhone; and the Great Journeys series of Penguin paperbacks designed by David Pearson. Or Microsoft's Multimouse, which will enable more children in poorly resourced schools to use the same computer, and Spore, the ambitious game devised by Will Wright as his follow-up to The Sims. And next summer the XO- 1 laptop will be shipped to schools throughout the developing world, albeit with a price tag closer to $150, than $100, for the first year or so."
[image: Sketch Furniture by Front (Sweden)]
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Jack Welch: South Korea needs to be more innovative
The Korean media is reporting on comments made by former GE chairman Jack Welch, who criticized the role that innovation plays in the South Korean economy:
"Former General Electric Chairman Jack Welch advised South Korea to boost its technological creativity, saying no innovative product, such as Apple’s iPod, is currently produced by South Korea. In a videoconference hosted by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy on December 15, Welch said South Korea should raise its competitiveness through innovation, as the era of speedy production development and efficiency is gone, he said.
South Korean companies only put their focus on adding new functions after importing innovative products, while they make few inventions of their own, Welch said. In the United States, young entrepreneurs have presented a variety of innovative ideas, he said. To boost creativity, Welch urged companies to set up a rational system of rewards in which "more incentives go to people who have creative ideas or make innovative products."
Which all sounds great until you consider that South Korea is one of the most technologically advanced nations on the planet and boasts a number of world-class tech companies that are hardly laggards when it comes to innovation (Hynix Semiconductor, Samsung and LG). The country has a broadband penetration rate of close to 100% and is emerging as a hub of innovation in robotics. Plus, South Korea is currently building a high-tech utopia known as New Songdo City.
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InnoCentive launches a nonprofit innovation network
According to the Boston Business Journal, open innovation pioneer InnoCentive is partnering with The Rockefeller Foundation to launch a "nonprofit" section of the company's website:
"InnoCentive, an Andover, Massachusetts company that specializes in matching scientists with corporate clients to solve research and development problems, said the website presence is designed to put InnoCentive's "open innovation model" in the foreground.
"It is difficult for us to give a specific dollar amount in terms of what type of funding we're talking about," said Peter Costiglio, director of communications for The Rockefeller Foundation based in New York City. "What we want to do is have problem seekers matched with problem solvers. This is a platform to enable that to happen." The foundation will screen the problem seeker and pay for that company to register on the Web site. If a problem solver is matched with the seeker, Costiglio said the foundation would fund the award for the problem that's solved, provided that it is solved satisfactorily."
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December 18, 2006
TIME Magazine's Person of the Year: YOU!
After naming YouTube as the "invention of the year" a few weeks ago, TIME Magazine has named "You" as the Person of the Year:
"[2006] is a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. [...]
We didn't just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.
America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.
Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?
The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you."
[image: TIME]
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Culture, not necessity, is the mother of innovation
On the Build Your Own Business blog, Linda Ford points out that culture, not necessity, is the mother of innovation:
"Necessity once was thought to be the mother of invention. Why? Because it makes us want to innovate - or actually, need to innovate. However, most of us are already motivated. As workers in the Age of Ideas, we love to innovate, right? What we need is an environment where innovation comes naturally, where there are no unnatural blocks to our urge to create.
Organizationally speaking, our environment is the organization's culture - an all-pervasive force that shapes our individual expectations, actions, interpretations and responses to events. There are certain mandates in the culture that make it more natural for members of the organization to innovate..."
With that in mind, Linda highlights the three simple mandates that can help you create an environment that supports innovation:
(1) Get caught with your assumptions down (i.e. be able to differentiate between facts, opinions, assumptions and unknowns);
(2) Think outside in;
(3) Have no "know" boundaries ("You already know that you can't be the expert at everything. Technology is too complex and moves too fast to make that possible. Whatever your position, whatever your field there are likely folks on your team who can add to your expertise").
[image: Linda Ford]
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The Hummer O2 concept vehicle
Over on the Sharkride blog, Matthew Jaunich points to an environmentally-friendly Hummer concept vehicle:
"The Hummer O2, an environmentally friendly vehicle with algae-filled body panels that transform harmful CO2 into pure oxygen, took home the top prize on Thursday in the Los Angeles Auto Show Design Challenge. The two-dimensional rendering of a 2015 blue-sky concept is the brainchild of GM Advanced Design. Contestants were charged with creating a vehicle that addresses environmental sustainability.
"The Hummer O2 epitomizes that ethos of the true Southern California outdoors enthusiast with rugged capability, a 'tread lightly' contact system and construction methods promoting safety, accessibility and reusability," said Frank Saucedo, director of GM Advanced Design in California. "Most vehicles in L.A. spend 95 percent of their time outdoors subjected to sunlight, so why couldn't a vehicle give back?"
The design features four modular fuel cells that run hydraulic motors built into each wheel; a phototropic body shell that produces pure oxygen throughout the life of the vehicle; shape-shifting Active Tread tires; and 100% post-consumer materials (including an aluminum frame). Mad props to the design team at GM for coming up with such a cool design! (Is it just me, or does the new Hummer look like a cross between something from the movie "Mad Max" and one of those machines that picks up golf balls at driving ranges?)
[image: Edmunds.com]
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The Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday tree lights
If you got into the whole Intelligent Design vs. Biological Evolution debate about a year ago, you'll enjoy this: the Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday lights. If you check out the extensive, photo-filled feature about the creation and display of the Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday lights, you can see the Noodle-tastic lights hovering over a neighbor's lawn. Apparently, the holiday display was created from a bunch of garden-variety resources:
"The eyes blink back and forth from red to green. It looks pretty cool. I tried to be as noodletomically correct as possible. In order to make more noodle ends where there weren't rope terminations, I used electrical tape to block out the light. Ingredients: 63 feet of lighted rope, a few hundred cable ties, a string of 140 mini-lights, and two spools of 9 gauge wire and some smaller wire."
[image: BSAlert.com]
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The social and cultural backdrop for national innovation
In a discussion of whether or not Switzerland is an innovative nation, the Topics from 192 Countries blog includes a great quote from the 1949 film noir The Third Man, starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime:
"Under the Borgias, Italy had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and all they produced was the cuckoo clock."
Which, of course, begs the following question: To what extent is a backdrop of upheaval and discord a prerequisite for innovation and creativity? The answer might be: It depends. The U.S., for example, seems to function quite well with a backdrop of democracy, peace, and stable financial markets. Other nations (and I'm thinking of Russia specifically) seem to demand something entirely different in exchange for their Bulgakovs, Solzhenitsyns and Pasternaks.
[image: The 3rd Man movie poster]
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