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January 5, 2007

FORTUNE Innovation Forum interview with Brad Anderson of Best Buy

At the FORTUNE Innovation Forum last year in New York, Geoffrey Colvin of FORTUNE magazine interviewed Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, live on stage at the Time Warner Center. You can click on the links below to listen to the three parts of the interview:

Part 1 of Interview with Brad Anderson

Part 2 of Interview with Brad Anderson

Part 3 of Interview with Brad Anderson (including questions from audience)

If you'd like to follow along with a (partial) text transcript of the interview, please check out the following post on the Business Innovation Insider: Day 1, 4:45 pm: Bradbury Anderson of Best Buy.

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Innovation: It's Payback Time!

Lester Craft of Innovate Forum suggests that an innovation book (Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation) co-authored by two consultants at Boston Consulting Group could become the most important book about innovation in 2007:

"Here’s a prediction: One of the biggest business books of 2007 will feature innovation. That book, more than likely, will be the newly published Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation, by James P. Andrew and Harold L. Sirkin. Why? A couple of reasons: First, Payback is being marketed aggressively, which indicates that the publisher, Harvard Business School Press, thinks it’s worth investing in. But more important is that the book addresses one of the most troubling aspects of innovation: failure, at so many companies, to achieve an acceptable return from innovation spending.

Payback is at the cutting edge of this problem. Its authors are senior vice presidents at The Boston Consulting Group, which, not coincidentally, has been producing some of the most important research available on the business of innovation and R&D."

Anyway, it looks like a lot of big-time executives are endorsing the book, including the chairman & CEO of SAP, the vice-chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics, the VP of Corporate Strategy at Nokia, and the former CIO of P&G. (Let's just hope that the book is better than the 1999 Mel Gibson movie of the same name.)

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Wallace & Gromit teach you innovation

The UK patent office is attempting to jump-start innovation within the all-important 9-to-11 year-old demographic:

"The Patent Office has appointed Bell Design to roll out an interactive campaign to encourage innovation among primary school children. The campaign will be based around an interactive website and feature Aardman Animation characters Wallace & Gromit. It will aim to encourage children aged 9-11-years-old to think about innovation. The campaign will form part of a wider public agenda to move the UK towards an innovation-based economy."

Hey, you're never too young to start thinking about innovation! I'm guessing that some elementary school kids are probably more innovative than some of the CEOs at America's best companies. (However, no elementary school kid is more innovative than an American CEO of a FORTUNE 500 company when it comes to designing a golden parachute).

[image: Wallace & Gromit]

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January 5 innovation linkage

P&G to showcase innovation in Cincinnati [Cincinnati Business Courier]
Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia to take on Google? [BuzzFeed]
Why innovative basketballs suck [CIO Magazine]
Inside Seagate's R&D labs [Wired News]
Innovative Japanese robots [BBC News]
A Q&A with six IT rock stars [Computerworld]
Vibrating vest could send alerts to soldiers [New Scientist]
What meetings are like with Steve Jobs [Guardian Unlimited]

[image: Pop CSI: How Science Conquered TV]

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The best in futuristic stadium designs

Earlier in the week, the Wall Street Journal (link via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) analyzed the futuristic design of the new $1 billion Cowboys Stadium, comparing it favorably to some of the other innovative stadium designs in the world, like Beijing's Olympic Stadium (designed by Herzog and de Meuron) and the Allianz Arena in Munich, which The Wall Street Journal describes as "a giant luminescent quilted pillow."

Anyway, I stumbled a website called Stadiums of the NFL, where you can preview some of the new NFL stadiums in the works for cities such as Indianapolis, New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Minnesota. For more on the new-and-improved 100,000-seat Texas Stadium, check out the website of design firm HKS, Inc.

[image: The future Cowboys Stadium]

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January 4, 2007

I just want to say one word to you: Innovation

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.

Futurist and innovation guru Jim Carroll predicts that innovation will continue to be the leading business buzzword for 2007:

"2007 is the year in which most every organization and individual will begin to focus all their energies on innovation. As someone who spends a lot of time helping some of the world's largest organizations adapt to and understand the new high-velocity economy, I've long realized that there are big, creative-stumbling-blocks that have restricted the type of thinking that is necessary to "doing-things-differently."

Yet, I am encountering a new group of leaders who know that the emergence of the high-velocity economy means that they must have a a team that can constantly adapt and evolve, coming up with a regular stream of new ideas on how to better run the business, grow the business and transform the business."

With that in mind, Jim provides a list of 10 reasons why innovation is becoming an increasingly popular trend within the business world. In short, "people are discovering that if you focus on innovation, you can break away from the dull, restrictive, boring routine activities that shackle you to the past. Instead, by focusing your energies on ideas, creativity, challenging the status quo, constantly seeking how you can do things better, grow things, or transform things, you ended up having a lot more fun -- and see a lot more benefits..."

[image: Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate"]

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Five disruptive technologies to watch in 2007

David Strom of Information Week highlights five disruptive technologies that could change the face of business over the next 12 months:

"2007 will be the year when a host of hot technologies which have been percolating around the mainstream rise high on the radar screens of CIOs and IT managers. For example, radio-frequency identification, frequently viewed as a standalone tagging technology, will begin to ramp up the data loads IT centers must handle, as the tags become more pervasive. Web services, long touted as the next big thing, is poised to begin presenting workaday challenges, as managers are tasked with integrated Web-based apps into the enterprise. Mobile security is a no-brainer as a hot technology for the coming year, as far-flung workforces face newer and more troubling threats.

Most challenging may be two technologies which will begin their ascent in 2007, but may take a bit longer to assume a dominant role in the enterprise. Those would be virtualization and advanced graphics. The latter will get a big boost from the advent of Microsoft's Vista operating system."

Anyway, I'm not really convinced that these five technologies are "disruptive technologies" (at least, according to the definition originally given by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator's Dilemma), but they are, nonetheless, technologies to watch over the next 12 months.

If you read Christensen carefully, he doesn't say that a "disruptive" technology is just another cool, money-making technology. No, what he says is that a "disruptive" technology actually performs worse than the dominant technology, but that it addresses a key consumer need that is not being met by the "big boys." Moreover, this unmet consumer need is deemed to be too small and too unattractive for large, established market competitors, who essentially "pass" on the technology.

Is RFID technology, then, really a disruptive technology? The two biggest proponents of RFID technology are Wal-Mart and the U.S. Defense Department - not exactly the types of emergent upstarts with a radical new technology ready to disrupt the enterprise. The technology itself has been around for more than 10 years...

[image: RFID Journal]

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Innovative Job Title of the Week: Chief Beer Officer

As Hotel Chatter points out, Sheraton's Four Points hotel chain has been looking for a Chief Beer Officer for the past two months. This person would travel the country testing out beers at beer festivals and overseeing the hotel's new beer program, Best Brews, as a part-time gig. In addition, the Chief Beer Officer would be responsible for checking out Oktoberfest in Munich. The company has received over 5,000 applications from 31 countries for the position (which is unpaid), but has yet to fill it:

"MBAs (both Masters of Business and Beer Administration), self-proclaimed beer snobs, certified beer judges, beer journalists and hundreds who have traveled the globe in search of the world's best brews have all applied for the position. Over 50 percent of applicants have brewed their own beer and, surprisingly, five percent claim to have served as a beer mascot (which could make the interview process quite interesting!)."

If you think you have what it takes to drink beer several hours a day, here's the official website for the Chief Beer Officer.

[image: "Beerfest" poster]

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The New York Times Magazine: The Year in Ideas

One of my favorite year-end lists comes from The New York Times Magazine, which for six years has been putting together a list of the most important and influential ideas of the year every December. Even if you read an impressive number of blogs, subscribe to FORTUNE magazine and occasionally pick up the random issue of Scientific American or Popular Science, there's a good chance that you would have missed about half of the 70-75 ideas the Times comes up with each year. Anyway, here's the intro to the 6th annual Year in Ideas from New York Times Magazine:

"This month, as in the past five Decembers, the magazine looks back on the passing year from a distinctive vantage point: that of ideas. Our editors and writers have located the peaks and valleys of ingenuity - the human cognitive faculty deployed with intentions good and bad, purposes serious and silly, consequences momentous and morbid. The resulting intellectual mountain range extends across a wide territory. Now it's yours for the traversing in a compendium of 74 ideas arranged from A to Z."

Among the ideas worth checking out: empty-stomach intelligence, digital Maoism, psychological neoteny, the truth of workplace rumors, the LifeStraw, smart elevators, and my personal favorite: walk-in health care.

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January 3, 2007

January 3 Innovation Linkage

Inside eBay's Innovation Machine [CIO Insight]
The most amazing and creative ideas of 2006 [Creative Generalist]
The Entrepreneur's New Year's Resolution [Bill Reichert via Guy Kawasaki]
So, is AT&T innovative or not? [Tom Peters]
Gaming and learning [Edge Perspectives]
The future of energy innovation [Winston-Salem Journal]
MBA students visit Israel to learn about innovation [Israel 21c]
Creative calendar designs for 2007 [Information Aesthetics]

[image: The AppleMini]

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Skateboard + Segway = Sony innovation

As Barry Fox of the New Scientist points out, Sony is putting the finishing touches on a motor-powered, balance-steered skateboard that bears an uncanny (mechanical) resemblance to the operation of the Segway:

"The new board has two large wheels, one at either side of a flat platform. Each wheel is powered by a separate electric motor. The platform has four pressure sensors, one at each corner. When the rider stands upright in the middle of the board, all four sensors return the same reading and both motors are idle. When the rider leans forward slightly the front sensors start both motors running forward at the same speed; leaning to one side makes one wheel run faster to steer round a corner; leaning back runs the contraption backwards."

My guess is that Sony noticed all those youngsters whizzing around the malls with those (very annoying) Heelys during the holiday season and decided to move forward with the skateboard/Segway innovation. (The patent was filed with the USPTO on November 23) I just hope the company has learned from the fiasco surrounding the heavily-touted, but heavily disappointing, Segway.

[image: New Scientist]

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Wall Street and the Innovation Index

If you're an investor looking to juice up your portfolio returns for 2007, this may be of interest. Sanjay Dalal of the Creativity and Innovation Driving Business blog has been working on the development of an Innovation Index that tracks the stock market returns of the top innovators in North America. Over the past week, both America Movil (NYSE: AMX) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) have been added to the Innovation Index, which now comprises the Top 20 innovators in North America.

According to Sanjay, the Innovation Index has returned 119% over the last five years, once the returns of these two top innovators have been factored in. $100 invested in the Innovation Index on December 31, 2001 would have returned $219 as of December 29, 2006. By comparison, $100 invested in a basket of companies comprising the S & P 500, NASDAQ or Dow Jones Indexes would have returned considerably less. (I don't have the calculations in front of me, but according to Sanjay, this hypothetical index heavily weighted toward tech companies would have bested the S&P 500 by close to 77%).

Anyway, while this Innovation Index is obviously a tremendously useful tool for demonstrating the power of innovation, keep in mind that past performance is no indicator of future performance. (In other words, if you load up your portfolio with Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Yahoo, Research in Motion and Apple, don't be surprised if the stellar stock market returns promised by the Innovation Index are erased forever with just one bearish tech cycle.)

[image: The Innovation Index]

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January 2, 2007

Henry Chesbrough on open business models

Over at Tech Web, Henry Chesbrough lays out the case for adopting an open innovation business model:

"Effective innovation increasingly means to do so openly, using transparent business models. Implementing an open business model represents a significant cultural break from most corporate traditions. Indeed, it may even seem counterintuitive -- especially for CIOs who work diligently to protect the information resources and intellectual property of their organizations.

Until recently, innovation was a function of tapping into internal intellectual resources and nurturing the business while protecting it from outside exposure or interference. Companies have fiercely guarded their patents, trade secrets, and other intellectual property to leverage the most value from their own innovative efforts. Open innovation, by contrast, calls for companies to make much greater use of external ideas and technologies while sharing their unused ideas with others. This requires each company to open up its business model to let more external ideas and technology flow in and more internal knowledge flow out.

By adopting these models, organizations can bring innovations to market more quickly and less expensively, thereby securing a competitive advantage in an increasingly dynamic global economy. It's critical for CIOs to understand these models' disruptive implications and provide the infrastructure necessary for their companies to thrive in the new landscape."

For more on open innovation, be sure to check out Henry Chesbrough's new book, Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape, which is a follow-up to his groundbreaking book Open Innovation.

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The link between talent management and innovation

Sadagopan's Weblog on emerging technologies, trends and thoughts has named innovation as the Dominant Mantra for 2007. Citing Peter Drucker as well as a recent report from Booz Allen Hamilton on R&D spending, Sadagopan points out that "innovation would count as the most important thing that tech organizations around the world would be going after in the new year." In building the innovative enterprise, one of the most important factors is managing, recruiting and enabling the right type of human capital:

"In an age where the rules and procedures of an organization can be an obstacle to segmentation and a force for “averaging” the treatment of individuals’ roles, and in a situation where organizations need to offer very specialized services, definitely a radical new look at the way talent gets categorized, nurtured and reviewed are called for and on an ongoing basis, needs to be reviewed to provide a definitively fresh and dynamic approach. After all winning the people war is a crucial determinant of success for any organization. In most of the knowledge business, the future value of enterprises are centered on building seemingly intangible assets vs the conventional measures of capital assets. That's where good, capable people, well aligned team, well conceived strategy and top quality leadership matters..."

"The ability to recruit/mold the leaders that will be able to create the future innovations that will make enterprise more successful is a major responsibility & talent management will determine the organization’s growth as much as the overall business strategies will. This will shape organizations in a significant way and if organizations get this right along with purposeful innovation models, competitiveness increases and success would follow..."

[image: Cubicles by glennpeters on Flickr]

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The Web 2.0 companies you can't live without

Michael Arrington of the influential Tech Crunch site has put together a list of his favorite Web 2.0 companies and products of 2006. The list includes the fifteen products or services that he uses everyday and couldn't do without:

* 800-Free-411
* Amie Street
* Ask City
* Blue Dot
* Digg
* Flickr
* Flock
* Gmail
* NetNewsWire
* NetVibes
* Pandora
* Skype
* TechMeme
* WordPress
* YouTube

[image: Web 2.0, courtesy of Markus Angermeier]

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December 31, 2006

Happy New Year 2007!

A cool feature in the Wall Street Journal this weekend highlighted some of the most memorable New Year's Eve stage shows ever, including the Grateful Dead performing "Sugar Magnolia" in 1976. (The song eventually became the band's signature song to play at midnight, along the lines of "Auld Lang Syne" and "Celebration")

[video: Grateful Dead "Sugar Magnolia"]

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