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January 26, 2007
Getting more buy-in for new ideas and innovations
On January 30, bestselling author Laurence Haughton will be leading a free online workshop called "More Buy-In for New Ideas and Innovations." During the presentation, Laurence will help business leaders arrive at a strategy to overcome resistance to change and improve follow-through rates within the organization:
"Most executives underestimate their company’s resistance to change. That’s a big reason why half of all new initiatives fail… managers don’t start with a plan to get enough buy-in. In this presentation, Laurence Haughton explains a simple but surprisingly powerful strategy for getting more people pitching in and following through. The key learning points include: (1) How to get your new ideas off to a great start (2) Who should be invited on and who you must keep away from your change team (3) The tactic that will stop bureaucrats before they kill your momentum."
Registration is free (and relatively painless) by clicking here. The online event takes place at 12:00pm ET. Anyway, I attended Larry's previous online presentation "Art of the Follow Through" last February and am looking forward to this one as well. You can also read a short summary of that event on the Business Innovation Insider. Let's have lunch with Larry!
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Google to business: Why can't you be as innovative as us?
Speaking in Boston at the Mass Technology Leadership Council’s annual meeting, the general manager of Google's enterprise business unit lamented the "crisis in IT" and the inability of large enterprises to innovate quickly:
Google’s Dave Girouard said the “insane complexity” of technology is leading companies to spend 75% to 80% of IT budgets simply maintaining the systems they have already. Besides a shortage of money, Girouard notes CIOs face strict regulations and an impending brain drain with many IT officials approaching retirement.
“The way Google built what is on the order of a $10 billion business in eight years was through some pretty amazing innovation,” said Girouard, who is also a vice president at Google. “CIOs in particular are really in a difficult situation, and innovation isn’t something they can spend the majority of their waking hours talking about. The information technology business as it pertains to large businesses has become a lot of maintenance.”
One answer to the innovation dilemma, according to the Google exec, is to outsource all non-core IT functions: "A lot of things that people think of as core IT functions need to disappear into the ether so that the IT organization can properly focus on the value-added [activities]." Companies can also embrace emerging business models, such as software-as-a-service, that will make them more nimble.
[image: Muscular Google]
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January 25, 2007
20 innovative gadgets from the Consumer Electronics Show
Scientific American has put together a photo slide show of the 20 most innovative gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: "This year's Consumer Electronics Show included plenty that was new, significant, or just plain bizarre -- we selected the best of it for our multimediatastic gallery of what CES had to offer." Highlights included a new 102-inch big-screen TV, the Wi-Fi Spy Robot, an ambient technology umbrella, and something called the R2D2 DVD Projector (if you're not a Star Wars fan, don't even ask...).
[image: Wi-Fi Spy Robot]
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What happened to all the celebrities at the World Economic Forum?
In years past, the World Economic Forum in Davos has turned into a place to see and be seen for A-list Hollywood celebrities as well as high-wattage political superstars. However, as the New York Times points out in its coverage from Davos, the likes of Brangelina are nowhere to be found this year. Moreover, important government officials from the U.S. and Europe seem to have bailed on the event as well, citing a range of scheduling conflicts:
The World Economic Forum convenes its annual conference here Wednesday with the theme “Shaping the Global Agenda: The Shifting Power Equation.” To judge by the names on the guest list — and those not on it — the phrase aptly reflects the turnout at this high-altitude huddle.
Missing are Davos regulars like Bill Clinton, as well as marquee names from the Bush administration, which is sending only its trade negotiator, a deputy secretary of the Treasury, and a few other officials. On the list is Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung of Vietnam, newest member of the club of rising world economies, as well as Chad Hurley, the head of YouTube, the Internet site that allows anyone to post a video on the Web.
“The power shift is twofold,” said Klaus Schwab, the Swiss organizer who has managed to keep Davos a hot ticket for three decades by latching onto the latest political and business trends. “Power is shifting from the center to the periphery, and from the top to the bottom.”
Mr. Schwab insists there will be no shortage of familiar names at this Alpine ski resort, with 24 heads of state or government, 85 cabinet ministers and more than 800 corporate chiefs. But the sense of flux in the United States, Europe and elsewhere is hard to miss in the program."
At least California governor-celebrity Arnold Schwarzenegger has an ironclad alibi for not attending the event - he broke his leg while skiing and respectfully declined an invitation, saying that he is not up for a trip to the Swiss Alps.
[image: Bill Gates, Tony Blair and Bono]
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January 24, 2007
President Bush's favorite innovator
Near the conclusion of President Bush's State of the Union speech last night, he turned the spotlight on some courageous and innovative Americans who were making a difference in everyday American life. One of them was Julie Aigner-Clark, the innovator behind the line of Baby Einstein learning tools. According to President Bush, Julie represents "the great enterprising spirit of America." At the time she launched her company, she was a homemaker and middle school teacher who basically tapped into her life savings to create products for infants. Here's a quick blurb below:
"The Baby Einstein Company is the award-winning creator of the infant developmental media category and the best selling brand of videos specifically designed for babies and toddlers. Our videos, DVDs, Discovery Cards, books, audio CDs, puppets, toys, and infant products expose your little ones to the world around them through the use of real world objects, music, art, language, science, poetry and nature. Created by a mom and designed specifically for infants and toddlers, our products provide fun and stimulating ways for parents and caregivers to interact and enrich their children’s lives.
Baby Einstein knows that babies are naturally curious. Therefore, all of our products are designed to encourage discovery and inspire new ways for parents and little ones to interact. What makes Baby Einstein products unlike any other is that they are created from a baby's point-of-view and incorporate a unique combination of real world objects, music, art, language, science, poetry, and nature — providing parents an opportunity to expose little ones to the world around them in playful and enriching ways. This simple principle is the foundation for The Baby Einstein Company and its products."
Actually, the Baby Einstein company looks pretty cool, but at least one blogger over at The Huffington Post seems a bit miffed that Bush chose someone like Julie Aigner-Clark, who ended up making a fortune by selling her start-up business to Disney: "I was hoping you'd have something like an attempt to remind the country that what binds us together as American vastly outnumbers that which separates us. Instead you gave us the lady from Baby Einstein who sold out to Disney."
Um, maybe it was Laura's decision to invite Julie?
[image: Julie Aigner-Clark of Baby Einstein]
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42 mysteries of the universe explained in layman's terms
With the help of experts from nearly every scientific discipline, Wired magazine tackles the 42 mysteries of the universe that have bedeviled scientists and theologians since the beginning of time. OK, OK, maybe that's overstating things a bit. But the questions are rather fascinating: Why do we sleep? What is at the center of the Earth? Is time an illusion? What happened to the Neanderthals? What is the universe made of?
Below, Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, weighs in with an answer to the question: How does the human brain produce consciousness?
"...Scientific theories on consciousness are all over the map. Antonio Damasio, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the University of Southern California who studies brain-damaged patients, speculates that self-awareness evolved in humans as a regulatory mechanism, a way for the brain to understand what is going on with the body. He calls “the coming of the sense of self into the world of the mental” a “turning point in the long history of life.” Caltech’s Christof Koch, who studies vision as the starting point for mind, believes that people have specific “consciousness neurons.” And Bernard Baars of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego suggests that consciousness is a controlling gateway to unconscious mechanisms such as working memory, word meanings, visual memory, and learning.
Some philosophers still argue that consciousness is too subjective to explain, or that it is the irreducible result of matter organized in a specific way. That philosophic black-boxing is probably more nostalgic than scientific, a clinging to the idea of a spirit or soul. Without that, after all, we’re just organisms - more complex, but no less predictable, than dung beetles. But scientists live to reduce the seemingly irreducible, and sentimentality is off-limits in the lab. Understanding consciousness means finding the biophysical mechanisms that generate it. Somewhere behind your eyes, that meat becomes the mind."
[image: The mystery of consciousness, from Ed Roth on Flickr]
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Envelope-free ATM machines at Wells Fargo that are smarter than you are
Within the financial services industry, Wells Fargo is getting ready to switch the format of its ATM machines so that they no longer require envelopes. According to Wells Fargo, envelopes are no longer needed to make deposits at 400 of its ATMs in California. By year end, an additional 825 Wells Fargo cash machines will be upgraded with envelope-free technology. Eventually, 6,750 ATMs in 23 states across the U.S. will be converted to a no-envelope format:
"With the new technology, you don't need to spend time writing on an envelope or keying in a deposit amount. You just insert your money into a slot and the machine sorts, counts and verifies it," said Jonathan Velline, head of Wells Fargo's ATM Banking division. "Our Envelope-Free ATMs also converts paper checks into a digital image which then appears on the ATM screen and receipt, so you know your check was received. You can't get this in the traditional envelope world."
Apparently, you can stick up to 30 bills or 10 checks into the ATM machine at one time, and it will recognize all of them, plus provide you with a digital image of the items received. Moreover, you get instant access to the cash. Hmmm. Try doing that with a typical vending machine, which can't even recognize when one corner of a $1 bill has been slightly folded and bent.
[image: Wells Fargo ATM]
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January 23, 2007
Eight ideas and business concepts that have shaped the trajectory of innovation
Walter Derzko of the Smart Economy blog shares the eight ideas and business concepts that have influenced and informed his conception of innovation:
(1) Kepner Tregoe's Executive Problem Analysis and Decision Making methodology;
(2) Edward de Bono's concept of Lateral Thinking, and concept mapping applied to strategic thinking, business development and business models;
(3) Management Oversight and Risk Tree (MORT) methodologies;
(4) Aultshuller's TRIZ methodology;
(5) Marshal McLuhan's tetrad model;
(6) Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM);
(7) The idea of smart technologies;
(8) Karl Weik's concepts of sensemaking
[image: Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats]
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From Russia, With R&D Innovation
Hewlett-Packard announced plans to open up a new R&D facility in Russia that will employ dozens of researchers and focus on inventing ways to manage and mine digital data. The decision to set up a new innovation hub in St. Petersburg is part of a worldwide trend toward the global distribution of innovation work:
"The Russia center will be HP's seventh R&D center around the world operated under the umbrella of HP Labs, the Palo Alto-based company's central research organization. HP Labs was founded more than 40 years ago and has claimed breakthroughs in areas as diverse as pocket calculators, semiconductor devices, thermal ink jet printing and nanotechnology. Its other facilities are in China, India, the United Kingdom, Israel and Japan.
HP declined to say how much it was spending on the new facility, which will be located in the company's existing sales facility in St. Petersburg. Beth Keer, director of the company's Information Services and Process Innovation Lab, will initially oversee the project as acting director while searching for a full-time director and research staff. Keer said the new facility will allow HP to tap into a pool of Russian scientists with a rigorous academic background and help local customers solve region-specific problems arising from fast-growing industries including oil and gas exploration, telecommunications and banking."
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January 22, 2007
January 22 innovation linkage
Hot corporations know how to swing [USA Today]
You are what you expect [New York Times Magazine]
A Tower of Babel for the technology world [BoingBoing]
Bats In Flight Reveal Unexpected Aerodynamics [Science Daily]
China is now #2 in R&D spending [Motley Fool]
55 Pics from the Intel IT Innovation Center [Tiny Screenfuls]
Brazilian prostitutes on the fashion catwalk [Reuters]
A review of the Design Life Now show at the Cooper-Hewitt [Core 77]
A free online comic adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 [1984 comic]
[video: Kiefer Sutherland in Japanese "24" commercial]
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T-Shaped thought is the key to innovation
It looks like Tom Kelley's most recent book, The Ten Faces of Innovation, is generating a lot of debate amongst policy makers and executives in South Korea. One of the terms found in the book, "T-Shaped Thinker," has now joined the business lexicon mainstream. Eager to explain why Korean companies have failed to create anything as innovative as the Apple iPod or the Motorola RAZR, the LG Economic Research Institute has concluded that Korean companies simply lack "T-shaped thinkers," or those who have skills and knowledge that are both deep and broad:
"The LG institute yesterday made the point while stressing that one of the most important tasks for domestic companies is to create mega hit products like iPod or RAZR. "To create innovate products, we have to secure insights not only into the products and but also into their business opportunities by having an observant and empathetic view of the world... Only T-shaped people, who have well rounded personalities and broad interests, can obtain such viewpoints. Sophisticated engineers who do not understand the market and customers will never devise items, which have a shot at becoming a grand slam..."
"In Korea, just engineers are responsible for creating products. They can make good products, which sell pretty well. But that is not enough at all. We need trend-defining merchandise that makes our competitors invalid, just as iPod or RAZR did. Towards these ends, we need more T-shaped people than narrow-sighted engineers. Local firms have to change their recruitment policy."
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