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January 12, 2007
Google. Enron. Google. Enron.
Well, the latest issue of FORTUNE magazine finally hit newsstands yesterday, featuring Google as The Best Company in America to Work For. Maybe it's my growing skepticism about GOOG at $500 a share and my unbridled jealousy about Google employees getting free meals, free spa treatments and free doctor visits on location at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley, but here's a preposterously scary question to mull over during the weekend: Is Google the new Enron? Now, I'm not insinuating that there's any kind of financial shenanigans going on at Google, only that the valuation numbers at Google just are not adding up the way they once did.
As much as I love Google and wish the company all the best as it attempts to march past $500 per share, does it strike anyone that Google bears a striking resemblance to Enron in several key areas: a stratospheric stock price that nobody really questions; constant adulation by the media, consulting firms and Wall Street analysts for "innovation"; and the all-important front cover of Fortune factor. (At one point, FORTUNE named Enron as the "most innovative company in America" for six straight years!)
Anyway, the cover of FORTUNE magazine features a group of thin, wealthy and casually-dressed Google employees whooping it up and having fun, together with the headline: Google is the New #1. Just like Enron, Google has been touted as America's most innovative company year in and year out. Enron claimed to be an oil & gas company, but was really a big-time financial derivatives company. Google claims to be an Internet company, but is increasingly becoming a big-time advertising and media company.
OK, OK, maybe I'm overplaying this issue. (It's tough to be a contrarian these days!) But, ask yourself, when was the last time you actually clicked on one of those annoying text ads or bought anything from Google?
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January 12 innovation linkage
"Inside the Innovation Elite" webinar series [Innovation Weblog]
A periodic table of visualization methods [Visual Literacy]
GM resurrects the electric car [Wired News]
The California innovation agenda [Mercury News]
5 Keys to Improving Innovation Success [Heads Up! on Innovation]
Sweet-and-sour postage stamps from China [Ananova]
The science of procrastination [CNET News.com]
Is this the company of the future? [Fast Company]
Flesh and Blood Avatars [We Make Money Not Art]
[image: AirScooter Prepares for Lift-Off]
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The new Canadian spy coins
Apparently, the U.S. Defense Department is growing increasingly concerned about Canadian coins embedded with tiny RFID transmitter devices that could be used to conduct double top-secret espionage operations against the U.S. In fact, the government has even sent out warnings to its defense contractors about the sinister Canadian spy coins:
"The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada. Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins. The U.S. report doesn't suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn't describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them. Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon's classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine."
Of course, the U.S. doesn't actually believe that our respectable neighbors to the North have anything to do with these spy coins. Instead, all clues seem to point to China, Russia or France - experts claim that all of them "actively run espionage operations inside Canada with enough sophistication to produce such technology." The idea of Canadians spying on Americans: "Unthinkable." At least, that's the official word from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
[image: The Spy Who Came In From the Canadian Cold]
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Understanding Hewlett-Packard's innovation culture
Kevin Desouza, a faculty member at the University of Washington, recently visited HP Labs in Palo Alto, California in order to better understand the company's innovation processes. As Desouza points out, "the single most important enabler of innovation at HP is their history and culture of innovation. From the days of Hewlett and Packard, HP is a company that recognized the value of innovation throughout the organization. HP focuses on all aspects of innovation: product and service innovation; innovation in business models; cultural and organizational innovation."
In a wrap-up of his HP Labs tour on the Leveraging Ideas for Organizational Innovation blog, Desouza also provides an overview of the innovation portfolio approach, examines the role of collaboration within the innovation process, and explains the importance of having mature stage-gate processes to screen ideas and innovations.
[image: HP's first product]
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January 11, 2007
Don Dodge: Big companies can innovate, too!
On the Next Big Thing blog, Microsoft's Don Dodge explains how big companies can innovate. Innovation doesn't happen unless an organization radically re-thinks both its engineering and sales operations. As Don points out, the IBM PC, the Apple Mac, and Microsoft's Xbox were all radical, disruptive products that were built by skunk works teams far from corporate headquarters:
"IBM, Apple, and Microsoft did exactly this when they developed the PC, Mac, and Xbox. They set up a new group at a separate facility that was totally focused on one thing. They had an executive sponsor with total authority and adequate budget to make it happen.
IBM set up the Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida...far away from corporate headquarters in New York. Apple did a similar thing for the Mac group, and Microsoft for the Xbox team. It seems obvious now but at the time this was revolutionary thinking, and in some cases it still is...
The IBM PC was totally disruptive to the main stream computer business. The Apple Mac was a huge gamble at the time, and it threatened Apple's main revenue source...the Apple III. The Xbox was a radical departure for Microsoft, branching out into hardware development and consumer games.
In the process, Don explains why innovative ideas are usually killed off in large organizations, analyzes the Google "20% Time" rule, and discusses the type of sales force needed to sell an unproven product that usually doesn't work as advertised:
"Lets face it, most V1.0 products from startups have lots of bugs and lack many features. I call this "missionary selling" where the sales person is part evangelist, part technical visionary, and part technical support person. The startup sales people face a million obstacles and disappointments but they just keep on going with a smile on their face. They go for the big deals with high risk...but somehow they make it happen.
Put yourself in their shoes - If you were a salesperson at a huge company with a $1 million sales quota and a small defined territory what would you do? Would you sell the well known reliable product to existing customers, or would you take the time to get trained on the new, complicated, unproven product, and try to sell it into new markets? Pretty simple choice. This is why new disruptive products from big companies usually fail when they hit the market."
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Jim Carroll: Ten Great Words of Innovators
Innovation guru and futurist Jim Carroll shares insights into the Ten Great Words of Innovators:
(1) Observe. Take the time to look for the key trends that will impact your organization and the industry in which you compete.
(2) Think. Analyze your observations: spend more time learning from what you see happening around you.
(3) Change. In a time of rapid change, you can’t expect to get by with what has worked in the past – you must be willing to do things differently.
(4) Dare. Have you lost your ability to take risks?
(5) Banish. Get rid of the words and phrases that steer you into inaction and indecision.
(6) Try. How many of your people have lost their ability to adapt to changing circumstances because they’ve lost their confidence?
(7) Empower. In a world of rapid change, you can’t expect that rigidly defined rules will be the appropriate response to changing circumstances.
(8) Question. Go forward with a different viewpoint by challenging assumptions and eliminating habit.
(9) Grow. Stop focusing on cutting costs – build the business instead.
(10) Do. Renew your sense of purpose, and restore your enthusiasm for the future by taking action.
Also, be sure to watch Jim's two-minute video clip that starts off with a call-to-action of "We don't need more MBAs..." It's a "best of" highlight reel of these 10 words.
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Why African innovation matters
Under the radar of many foreign policy experts, China has been quietly consolidating its grip on the African continent, viewing it as a rich source of minerals and raw materials and a dumping ground for cheap products. Unlike the West, which usually attaches strings to its foreign aid packages, China is not at all hesitant about extending aid to crumbling dictatorships and impoverished states, as long as they have unfettered access to the raw materials that are fueling the Chinese economic miracle. So, how does innovation fit into all of this?
Well, on a national level, if African nations fail to innovate, they could very easily fall under the yoke of their neo-colonial Chinese masters. (see picture) Anyway, I recently read about a "grand tour of Africa" by Chinese foreign officials on Yahoo! News, and it made me realize that maybe we're thinking about China all wrong. Maybe the West is not so central to the development of China after all:
"China paid for the marble and tile parliament building soaring above the crumbling homes of this former Portuguese colony, and is also promising a dam and a military hospital — all with none of the political strings Western donors might attach. Intent on cementing ties across Africa, China is active even in impoverished Guinea-Bissau, a small nation with little industry, no oil and few exports. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing ended a two-day visit here Thursday, part of a tour that includes Chad, Benin, Central African Republic, Eritrea and Mozambique. Li arrived from Equatorial Guinea, Africa's third-largest oil producer, where he agreed to forgive about $75 million in debt.
Some nations on Li's itinerary are sources of the raw materials China's booming economy craves. Countries like Guinea-Bissau may not have much to offer today, but could in years to come. In courting them, China has turned on its head the Western aid formula that has tied public works projects to progress in good governance. "China is not like the World Bank, they don't attach all these conditions on the money," said Edmundo Vaz, a former adviser to the Guinea-Bissau Finance Ministry who now runs a bank. "The West makes us wait, but we're a poor country — we don't have time wait," he said."
As the article points out, "Africa has become a crucial part of China's growth strategy." Trade between Africa and China has grown fourfold since 2001, topping $45 billion in the first 10 months of 2006. At a summit attended by 35 African heads of state in Beijing last fall, Chinese entrepreneurs signed deals worth $1.9 billion with African governments and firms.
Interestingly, TED Global plans an innovation-themed conference in Tanzania this June: TEDGLOBAL "Africa: the next chapter". In addition, there are several blogs that focus on innovation from an African perspective, such as the Timbuktu Chronicles and Africa Unchained. (Thanks, Emeka)
[image: Chinese manager and African laborer]
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January 10, 2007
Harvard Business School's 25 most popular articles
Over at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, there's a list of the 25 most popular articles on the site over the past year. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the must-read articles for aspiring executives and consultants involved traditional management topics such as globalization, negotiation strategy and managing IT. However, five of the Top 25 articles (all of which were covered by the Business Innovation Insider in 2006) involved innovation or entrepreneurship:
#11: The Accidental Innovator. "Many important innovations are the byproduct of accidents—the key is to be prepared for the unexpected. Professor Robert D. Austin discusses his research and practical implications on the concept of accidental innovation."
#12: How Kayak Users Built a New Industry. "Customers have produced some of the most important innovations in industries ranging from oil refining to scientific instruments. But how do user innovations take place? How do they get to market?"
#15: Report from China: The New Entrepreneurs. "When a delegation of Harvard Business School faculty visited Chinese entrepreneurs, they came away with something unexpected: the start of what could be a fundamental rethinking of how entrepreneurship works."
#23: Open Source Science as a New Model for Innovation. "Borrowing a practice that is common in the open source software community, HBS professor Karim R. Lakhani and colleagues decided to see how "broadcasting" might work among scientists trying to solve scientific problems."
#25: Lessons Not Learned About Innovation. Why have decades of executives fumbled innovation? One reason: Existing corporate structures, controls, and incentives do work against out-of-the-box thinking. Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter... discusses her research into the classic traps of innovation and how to avoid them."
[image: Harvard B-School]
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Is innovation possible in every market and product category?
Innovation is the hot topic of the day in the business world, and it seems that nearly every company in nearly every industry is at least paying lip service to the importance of innovation. But have some market niches and product categories reached the end of innovation?
The other day, I happened to stumble across a consulting report on the Food Navigator website, which discussed innovation within the $3 billion "sandwich spread" market category. The idea of talking about mayo, ketchup and mustard may seem a bit, well, banal, but the example really highlights the difficulty of innovation within such a narrowly-defined market niche. What do you do when ketchup, mustard and mayo control a combined 99% of the market category? What company in its right mind would spend millions of dollars on R&D to find a disruptive sandwich spread category to rival the Big Three of ketchup, mustard and mayo? Anyway, here's the excerpt from the consulting report:
"Lack of innovation and consumer demand for healthier products has resulted in a stagnant US market for once popular sandwich spreads such as ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise, according to a new report. Published by Packaged Facts, the report reveals the sandwich spread market remains stuck at $3 billion, and is likely to continue struggling... In 2005, mayonnaise dominated the market with a share of 59%, followed by ketchup and mustard with shares of 25% and 16% respectively. And although the sandwich spread market declined by 2% as compared to 2004, all three categories have more or less maintained their respective market shares.
According to the report, there have only been 36 new product introductions in the category between June 2005 and June 2006 - most of which were launched by smaller players in the market – and this resulted in “little hope” of driving substantial market growth. However, touting the health benefits of some sandwich spreads specifically formulated to meet the needs of health-conscious consumers, such as lycopene-rich ketchup and low-fat mayonnaise, have helped to stave off further market decline. Similarly upscale, gourmet, and organic versions of the popular spreads have helped to renew interest in the market as well."
According to the report, big name-brand American companies are desperate to boost sales of sandwich spreads. (Back in the day, we called 'em condiments) They are experimenting with ‘healthier-for-you' spreads, ethnic-inspired spreads and alcohol-infused spreads. (Memo to self: Go to the supermarket and buy some of these alcohol-infused condiments!)
What do you think? Have we reached the end of innovation in the "sandwich spread" market category? (Actually, this is a bit of a trick question, since I think the "sandwich spread" category is entirely too narrow a market niche. These companies need to develop a Blue Ocean Strategy and re-define their market category entirely. Otherwise, they will be stuck trying to make incremental improvements that will have very little impact on the overall market category.)
[image: The double-fisted Mr. Hot Dog with ketchup and mustard]
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Apple kicks off 2007 with innovative iPhone
The iPhone was one of the most intensely followed unconfirmed products in Apple's history. When Apple finally announced the launch of the new iPhone - to be available exclusively through Cingular Wireless in June - the company confirmed its reputation as one of the most innovative companies in the world:
With characteristic showmanship, Steven Jobs introduced Apple’s long-awaited entry into the cellphone world Tuesday, pronouncing it an achievement on a par with the Macintosh and the iPod.The creation, the iPhone, priced at $499 or $599, will not be for everyone. It will be available with a single carrier, Cingular Wireless, at midyear. Its essential functions — music player, camera, Web browser and e-mail tool as well as phone — have become commonplace in hand-held devices.
But it was the ability to fuse those elements with a raft of innovations and Apple’s distinctive design sense that had the crowd here buzzing. Apple’s goal, Mr. Jobs said, was to translate the Macintosh computer’s ease of operation into the phone realm. “We want to make it so easy to use that everyone can use it,” he said. And he was clearly betting on translating Apple’s success with the iPod music player to a hot category of multifunction devices.
Not surprisingly, the company's stock price went crazy in the hours following the announcement. On January 9 alone, the stock gained nearly 8% on bullish expectations about innovation-fueled growth at Apple. On a related note, shares of traditional cellphone makers slumped on the news that Apple planned to enter the cellphone market.
Anyway, TechMeme provides links to some of the most comprehensive coverage of what the new iPhone is - and what it is not. Practically anybody who is anybody in the tech world is weighing in with their opinions about the new iPhone - some are focusing on design, some on the inner technological workings of the iPhone, and some on what the iPhone will mean for the other product offerings at Apple.
[image: New York Times]
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Innovative Job Title of the Week: Yeowoman
In an op-ed piece this week in the Wall Street Journal ("Skirt Steak"), Quentin Lotts commented on the hiring of the first-ever female Beefeater:
"The appointment of 38-year-old Moira Campbell as a "Member of the Sovereign Body Guard of the Yeomen Guard Extraordinary" - otherwise known as the Beefeaters of old London town - has been reported around the world. Since their foundation over half a millennium ago, the Beefeaters have been exclusively male. Moira Campbell, in other words, is about to become the first "yeowoman", even if she won't be called that."
Interestingly, the only official qualification needed to become a Beefeater is a minimum of 22 years in the British armed forces - there is nothing in the rules about gender. (Meaning that the 38-year-old Miss Campbell has been in the army since age 16?)
ASIDE: Quentin Lotts also points out that the correct name of a female Beefeater is "Beefeaterene." From an American perspective, of course, one might have expected "Beefeaterette." Ah, those crafty Brits.
[image: Beefeaters]
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January 9, 2007
Has Sony regained its innovation mojo?
Let's face it, Sony has really dropped the ball lately when it comes to innovation. Initial reports from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas have been promising, though, as Destructoid (live blogging the show) points out. Sony has been inundated with innovation awards for its consumer electronics gadgetry:
"Not only was the SIXAXIS awarded by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Sony itself received the "Technology and Engineering Emmy Award"... In addition to this, Sony has also picked up the "CES Best of Innovations Award" for 2007, a "Sound and Vision's Editor's Choice Award" and "Digital Innovation Award" from the Digital Entertainment Group and a "20 Most Innovative Products Award" from PC World."
[image: Sir Howard Stringer delivering the keynote address at CES 2006]
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A review of the "Design Life Now" event in NYC
Reveries Magazine points to a review by Roberta Smith of the New York Times of the ongoing "Design Life Now" triennial exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City. The exhibition showcases 87 different American designers from a wide range of design disciplines:
"The displays here range from genius to schlock, delightful to dispiriting. They cover life-extending innovations, completely frivolous reiterations of received ideas … and more varieties of recycling than you can easily count. Fashion, building materials, furniture, toys, theatrical sets, jewelry and textiles, medical and military hardware, all qualify as design according to this exhibition.
In the fourth gallery on the main floor, for example, you will encounter the intimidating fruits of designs as applied by the military-corporate complex, such as the X-43A research plane. Also on display are pop-up tent frames designed by Hoberman Associates and a model of the Mother and Child Medical Center now being built in Ipuli, Tanzania. Another gallery features quality of life designs, ranging from the business class section of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner to LifePort’s organ transport systems. Upstairs, one gallery includes a wall of clay models for the animated characters of various Pixar movies, as well as limited-edition ‘art toys’ from Kidrobot.
Some designs mix fun-and-games with more essential things. Howtoons is a comic book that teaches kids scientific principles by showing them, among other things, how to make their own toys. Hunter Hoffman’s ‘Snow World‘ puts Pixar-like animation to use in a virtual video game that relieves the pain of burn victims. The exhibit is meant to raise the question, “what’s design?” The answer, says Roberta Smith, is that “design permeates every aspect of contemporary life.”
Anyway, the exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt runs through July 29, so if you plan to be in New York sometime in the spring or summer, it's definitely worth checking out. (Although, truth be told, the $12 admission fee seems a bit steep. I've always felt that museum admission fees should be lower than the cost of a movie ticket. Even in Manhattan, it's possible to see a movie for less than 10 bucks.)
[image: Design Life Now at the Cooper-Hewitt]
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The 100 greatest theorems of all time
At a mathematics conference in July 1999, Paul and Jack Abad presented their list of "The Hundred Greatest Theorems" of all time. Their ranking was based on the following criteria: "The place the theorem holds in the literature, the quality of the proof, and the unexpectedness of the result." Perusing the list, it's humbling to be reminded of how much of a (mathematical) debt we owe to the ancient Greeks. Five of the Top 25 theorems of all time are more than 2,500 years old:
(1) The Irrationality of the Square Root of 2 [Pythagoras and his school, 500 B.C.]
(4) Pythagorean Theorem [Pythagoras and his school, 500 B.C.]
(9) The Area of a Circle [Archimedes, 225 B.C.]
(11) The Infinitude of Primes [Euclid, 300 B.C.]
(23) Formula for Pythagorean Triples [Euclid, 300 B.C.]
[image: Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins in {Proof}]
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January 8, 2007
Predictions of the future never seem to come true
Already tired of all those predictions people are making at the start of 2007? Don't worry - most of them probably will never come true. At least, that's the opinion of Cynthia Crossen in the Wall Street Journal (free feature), who explains that even the smartest people throughout history have been unable to predict the future: "If you are tempted to make predictions about the future at this time of year, consider keeping them to yourselves. History can so easily make a fool of you."
Among the silliest predictions cited by Cynthia in the Wall Street Journal:
(1) In 1911, Richard Lucas of the Royal College of Surgeons in England predicted that some day human beings in the future would become one-toed. "The small toes are being used less and less as time goes on, while the great toe is developing in an astonishing manner."
(2) In 1929, a New York City haberdasher, John David, predicted that "the well-dressed man of 2020 will wear shorts for every occasion except formal events."
(3) In 1942, the associate editor of Better Homes and Gardens predicted that the housewife of the future would know how to repair radios, irons, lamps, washing machines and cars.
(4) In 1925, Harvey W. Corbett of the American Institute of Architects said, "Fifty years hence automobile traffic will have entirely disappeared from the surface thoroughfares of New York City, and people will be shot through tubes like merchandise."
(5) In 1943, the research director of the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp. predicted that hybrid auto-airplanes "will fly through the air and then fold their wings like a housefly and run along the road."
(6) In 1914, Sir Henry Blake, a British government official, predicted the rise of the noiseless city, where rubber would replace brick, stone and asphalt as street paving.
(7) In 1911, an English clergyman, William Henry Fitchett, suggested that war would become an historical oddity: "There will, in the near future, be a revolt, both of the reason and the conscience of the civilized world, from the state of armed peace which at present prevails, with its ever-multiplying fleets of Dreadnoughts and its universal training for war. The appliances for war have grown to such a scale that war itself will be recognized as impossible."
[image: Futuristic City on Flickr]
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Forget Katie Couric, check out these TV news avatars
A group of computer science grad students at Northwestern University have found a way to deliver automated news clips via digitally-enhanced avatars:
"News at Seven gives you the news you want, the way you want it. Each day, News at Seven automatically generates a virtual newscast pulled from stories, images, videos and blogs all linked by a common news topic. News at Seven presents news, point/counterpoint, opinion, celebrity gossip and the occasional foray into the world of 3D gaming. News at Seven isn't just the future, it's the future of the future."
As a brief item in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal pointed out, in the coming months, users will be able to enter their preferences to create a customized personal newscast based on topics that interest them, with an avatar and background of their choice. Perhaps not surprisingly, Boing Boing has called the site a "mind-blowing automated news-video project." (Anyway, when I checked out the site over the weekend, I was able to watch a brief YouTube video of the day's news -- it just so happened to be a brief clip about some bad-behaving Brazilian supermodel)
[image: "Alex" from News at Seven]
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We'll all be cyborgs someday
According to a British professor of cybernetics, one day it will become commonplace for most people to be implanted with computer microchips:
In "Casino Royale," the latest James Bond movie, Bond is implanted with a microchip that allows headquarters to track his whereabouts and monitor his vital signs. If a British cybernetics expert is right, the day will come when most people are implanted with chips — and the real-life chips will do a lot more than Bond's does.
Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, has firsthand knowledge. In 1998, he had a chip surgically inserted into his left arm, becoming, he thinks, the first human ever implanted with a computer chip.Since then, he's had a more sophisticated chip connected directly to his nervous system. He is still working toward his grandest experiment: having a chip implanted in his brain. "I want to become a cyborg," he said with an infectious grin. "I can see the advantages."
Apparently, the idea of having microchips implanted in parts of the body is not so half-baked after all. Patrons of the Baja Beach Clubs in Barcelona, Spain, and Rotterdam, Netherlands, can have a microchip injected into their arms to get access to VIP lounges and pay for drinks without waiting in line.
[image: Cyborg]
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