February 1, 2007
Innovation in urban warfare
The global war against terror is apparently sparking a rise in the number of innovation prize competitions with a distinctly military flavor. For example, Singapore has launched an innovation prize contest to build a robot that can operate in urban warfare conditions without the assistance of satellite navigation or any kind of remote control device. Such a robot would be able to conduct search-and-destroy missions in war-torn, densely populated urban areas:
"The country's Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) is offering one million Singapore dollars ($652,000) to whoever develops a robot that completes a stipulated set of tasks – yet to be revealed – in the fastest time possible. DSTA said individuals, companies, universities and research institutes are all welcome to participate in the contest, dubbed the TechX Challenge, although foreigners must collaborate with local partners. "Operation in urban areas represents a significant challenge," DSTA chief executive Richard Lim said at the launch of the contest. "Recent military experiences in Iraq, the Middle East and other locations have clearly illustrated these challenges."
One day soon, instead of a "troop surge" in Iraq, I suppose the U.S. government will be announcing a "robot surge" in various terrorist-infested locations around the world.
[image: Black Hawk Down video game]
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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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January 25, 2007
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 19, 2007
The Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century
The National Academy of Engineering is asking the public for help in determining the grand engineering challenges of the 21st century:
"America's big names in engineering, as well as millions of Internet users around the world, are being asked to weigh in with their picks for the greatest technological challenges of the next century — a nine-month process that could give birth to new research initiatives. The project, called the "Grand Challenges for Engineering" program, is aimed at gathering up all those ideas and distilling them into a list of 20 puzzles for engineers to solve — in fields ranging from energy to communications to aerospace to advanced materials. The National Academy of Engineering, an arm of the Washington-based National Academies, is supervising the project, armed with a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation."
Over the next few months, comments and suggestions will be sorted and ranked, then reviewed by an 18-member blue-ribbon committee headed by former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry. Other members on the selection panel include Google co-founder Larry Page, genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter and millionaire inventors Dean Kamen and Ray Kurzweil. The academy will unveil the 20 top challenges in September.
[image: Grand Challenges of Engineering]
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January 9, 2007
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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January 3, 2007
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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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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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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December 12, 2006
Innovation lessons learned in 2006
Chuck Frey of the Innovation Weblog is soliciting ideas for the best innovation lessons of the year. Just submit a brief paragraph or two about lessons you've learned about innovation during 2006 -- the best response wins a copy of the Thinkertoys book from Michael Michalko (featured here on the Business Innovation Insider) as well as a companion ThinkPak card deck:
"At this time of year, many people often reflect on the past year, including their successes, failures and lessons learned. Here’s an opportunity to share what you’ve learned, and gain new insights from the experiences of other InnovationTools readers. Please respond to this question: What is the most important lesson you learned regarding innovation, creativity or brainstorming during 2006?
Anyway, final responses are due by next Monday, December 18th. (If you're having trouble thinking of what to write, Chuck graciously includes a link to the previous year's responses)
[image: "I Was Allowed In," by Dan Buczynski on Flickr]
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December 8, 2006
The Commerce Department's new innovation panel features five FORTUNE 500 CEOs
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has appointed 15 high-profile corporate executives and academics, including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Harvard economics professor Dale Jorgenson, to a new panel that will explore how U.S. innovation contributes to American economic prosperity and high living standards:
The Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy Advisory Committee will help develop ways to measure innovation so that the public and policy makers can understand better its impact on economic growth and productivity. The committee will study metrics on effectiveness of innovation in various businesses and sectors, and work to identify which data can be used to develop a broader measure of innovation’s impact on the economy.
"American innovation is important to the vitality of our economy, and it is important to understand the impact innovation has on productivity and economic growth," said Secretary Gutierrez. "Getting a better understanding of how innovation contributes to our economy will help us craft policies to continue to grow and prosper."
The five CEOs of FORTUNE 500 companies represented on the panel include Steve Ballmer (Microsoft); George Buckley (3M); Art Collins (Medtronic); Michael Eskew (UPS); and Samuel J. Palmisano (IBM).
[image: Steve Ballmer]
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December 6, 2006
Turning innovation into jobs
In Phoenix during a meeting of the National Governors Association, a 17-member blue ribbon task force comprised of national leaders in government, academia and private industry gathered to discuss how to transform innovation into jobs:
"The United States economy is creating millions of new jobs, yet the average American worker is feeling the squeeze of stagnant wages and the offshoring of entire industries. The cure? Brainpower. Innovation, more specifically.
The stakes are huge, task force members say, since the United States faces growing competition from global behemoths such as China and India. "We have an edge here but we are losing our edge," said Governor Janet Napolitano, chairwoman of the association and co-leader of the task force. "The world economy is changing. The United States economy is changing. This initiative is right at the tipping point."
[image: Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano]
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November 27, 2006
The winner of the Home Depot Innovation Award
At an award ceremony in Atlanta, Floragem won the 2006 Home Depot Product Innovation Award for the introduction and marketing of its VIVA! SunPatiens product line:
"VIVA! SunPatiens, which are bred by Sakata Seed America and grown by Ecke Ranch, were introduced exclusively in more than 1,700 Home Depot stores during spring and summer 2006. The flowers have been bred to thrive in full sun and high heat, a challenge for many impatiens. The VIVA! program is a full line of flowers, herbs and vegetables grown by the VIVA! grower network and sold exclusively to The Home Depot...
“We work hard for chances like this — to bring truly unique and new genetics to a major retailer in a proper and appropriate consumer package,” remarked Ray French , program manager at Floragem. “The Home Depot is very committed to innovative new products and product ideas. Floragem has the role of helping connect a good idea from a breeder and help turn it into something very special at retail.”
In fact, as HortiNews.com points out, Home Depot is working with Floragem to make the VIVA! program the "epicenter of new plant ideas" in the U.S. and Canadian markets. While some may think that gardening is a mature (or even declining) market, Home Depot hopes to drive growth in the product category through innovation and cutting-edge genetics.
The Chairman and CEO of Home Depot, Robert Nardelli, will be a guest speaker at the upcoming FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City.
[image: Home Depot via CanadaBlooms.com]
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November 22, 2006
A virtual press conference in the World of Warcraft
Diego Rodriguez of Metacool reports on a unique press conference being organized by Ross Mayfield in a virtual online gaming community:
"Come December 1, Ross and his company Socialtext will be holding a press conference. What makes this one special is that it will be held in World of Warcraft in the charming village of Goldshire, no, make that the blood-soaked Gurubashi Arena. The whole event should be interesting, and if you're a journalist or a blogger or someone interested in wikis and social software, you ought to be there.
According to Metacool, virtual "games" such as World of Warcraft and Second Life are "but the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding what our lives will be like in 10, 20, 30 years." Already, as Ross Mayfield points out, the big new trend is for companies like Sun and Dell to hold their press conferences in SecondLife. In addition, IBM is experimenting with building a presence in SecondLife.
[image: metacool]
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Strategies for using R&D to grow the bottom line
Orange Business Services and CXO Media (the publisher of magazines such as CIO) are teaming up to offer a special 35-minute Webcast on strategies for using R&D to grow the bottom line:
"In today's world to be a leader in industry you have to be innovative. Companies must be able to look forward at the strategy and direction of the company and know how to bring products to market faster than their competitors. Join a panel of experts and learn strategies for using R&D to grow the bottom line."
Moderated by Tom Field of CXO Media, the Webcast includes the participation of Julius Akinyemi, Director for Emerging Technologies at PepsiCo; Gabriel Sidhom, VP of Technology Development for France Telecom R&D; and Parker B. Llewellyn, the Director of Sponsor Relations and Partnerships for France Telecom R&D in Boston. In order to access the 35-minute Webcast, it is necessary to fill out some basic registration information.
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November 21, 2006
Yale University launches podcast series
It's now possible to subscribe via Apple iTunes to the new Yale University podcast series. The podcasts are already ranked #27 on Apple iTunes, thanks in part to a real smorgasbord of intellectual goodness in there and a willingness by the powers-that-be at Yale to open up one of the world's greatest universities (Boola Boola!) to the outside world. Not only are current professors at Yale University contributing to the podcast series, but a number of notable alumni (e.g. Bob Woodward Y'65) are also taking part. Consider some of the following contributors to the Yale podcast series:
(1) Barry Nalebuff (Yale School of Management): "Problem-Solving Ideas"
(2) Bob Woodward (Yale '65): "The Media's Impact on Politics"
(3) Tian Xu (Yale Professor of Genetics): "The Next State of the Human Genome"
(4) John L. Gaddis (Yale Professor of History): "The Bush Administration: Its Past and Future"
(5) Vincent Scully (Yale Professor of Art History): "The Architect Philip Johnson: His Life and Work"
If you were to attend a class at Yale, these are the types of big-name speakers who could fill just about any auditorium on campus. As an added bonus, the Office of Public Affairs at Yale University will be adding new materials on a regular basis. For example, a podcast series is already being developed by the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
[image: Harkness Tower at Yale University]
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November 17, 2006
Microsoft is looking for the winning idea
As part of a search for the most creative small business idea in the country, Microsoft has launched the ideaWins contest. The contest has been designed to spur the imagination and spirit of entrepreneurial activity that drives small business, with winners receiving $100,000 in cash and free retail space in New York City, as well as infrastructure and software to run the business for 12 months. Plus, as an added bonus, every participant in the Microsoft-sponsored contest will receive a free Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 software package. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2007.
[image: Microsoft ideaWins]
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Tech leaders gather for innovation summit
The third annual TechNet Innovation Summit took place this week on the campus of Stanford University, attracting some of the biggest names in the technology sector - including Bill Gates, Jerry Yang, and venture capitalist John Doerr. (Oh, and the Governator made a surprise appearance as well.) The four-hour event was staged as a live taping of "The Charlie Rose Show," episodes of which will appear at a later date. As the San Jose Mercury News explains, the event focused on how to compete during a period of rapid innovation and globalization:
"The third annual innovation summit, where industry leaders talked about emerging trends and government technology policy, was organized by TechNet, an advocacy group that lobbies on behalf of tech executives. Much of the discussion centered on how American companies and workers will compete in an era of rapid innovation and globalization.
"The United States has been spoiled by being a global leader for so long that there may be an adjustment," Gates told the audience of nearly 2,000, a mix of suit-and-tie executives and college students in hooded sweatshirts. "We've got to get used to the fact that our relative share of everything -- our ability to exercise unilateral decision-making, military power, and economic power -- won't be as out of line with our 5 percent share of world population as it is today.''
[image: Bill Gates chats with Charlie Rose]
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November 16, 2006
Francesco Cara of Nokia explains the concept of "organic innovation"
The Putting People First blog has provided extensive commentary and notes from the European Market Research Event in London, complete with real-time blogging updates from a number of the sessions. On Day 1 of the event, Clive Grinyer, Director of User Design at France Telecom Orange, reflected on the relationship between usability and design, while Francesco Cara, Director of Nokia Design, Insight and Innovation, explained the process of "organic innovation":
"Cara, who has a cognitive science background, provided a talk on organic innovation, where innovation is created in dialogue with the end-user, in an open, interactive way. Nokia, argues Cara, advocates a human approach to technology, with a strong emphasis on dialogue. Fast prototyping and ethnography are crucial, with the latter assuming a strategic role.
Cara provided the case study example of Skype, which is a typical example of convergence, bringing together voice telephony, instant messaging and broadband access. The ethnographic and contextual interview study, which took place in Germany and Brazil, explored who the Skype users really were and how they used the service. Some of the learnings showed that Skype should not be seen as a replacement but as an additional that has a number of quite distinct features: such as openness (the channel remains open), targeted and intimate, low virality and enriched communication."
Other speakers at the event included Flemming Ostergaard, Marketing Innovation Director at Lego, and Anne Kirah, senior design anthropologist at Microsoft’s MSN Customer Design Centre.
[image: Nokia Display]
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November 14, 2006
Innovators who stand out from the crowd
On November 16 at the Nokia Theatre in New York, American Express will present another in its popular series of "Standing Out in the Crowd" events. These OPEN Small Business Forums are dedicated to the art of marketing and how it can help transform small businesses. The event on November 16 features three successful entrepreneurs who have transformed their businesses through their unique marketing approaches: famous chef Mario Batali, maternity clothing designer Liz Lange, and the Blue Man Group. The in-person event is sold out, but you can participate over the Internet via a live webcast starting at 8:00 pm.
[Hat tip: Small Business Trends]
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November 13, 2006
Improving your innovation success rate
On November 16, the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto will present a one-day conference on tips and strategies for improving innovation success rates. The event takes place at the W New York Hotel in NYC. At the conference, seven "innovation gurus" will share their proven methods and metrics for building innovative companies:
(1) Jeneanne Rae, Co-Founder & President, Peer Insight; "Innovation Operating Models - Understanding the Migration Path to Organizational Effectiveness"
(2) Yves Béhar, Founder, fuseproject; "Creating Powerful, Emotional Brand Stories That Customers Connect To"
(3) Beth Comstock, President, Digital Media & Market Development, NBC Universal; “How GE Drives Innovation Throughout the Company”
(4) Larry Keeley, Co-Founder & President, Doblin Group; "Discovering and Understanding Your Company’s Innovation DNA"
(5) Roger Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management; “Why Businesspeople Need to Think More Like Designers”
(6) David Rockwell, Founder & CEO, Rockwell Architecture, Planning and Design; "Shaping Experiences That Last in Customers’ Memories"
(7) Sohrab Vossoughi, Founder & President, ZIBA Design; "Understanding Why Customers Do What They Do"
[image: Sohrab Vossoughi of ZIBA
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The new customer-focused innovation class at Stanford
Jeremy Gutsche of Trend Hunter offers a preview of the new Customer-Focused Innovation class at Stanford:
"I’m driven by innovation and insatiably curious, so it seems natural that I would sign up for a week of innovation school. When Stanford launched its new Customer Focused Innovation course, I signed up immediately. The course is a week long program taught at the Executive Education Center with day trips to places like the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Even more exciting is the list of celebrity professors. Tomorrow, the course kicks off with a day of strategy from Dr. Robert Burgelman, author of Strategy is Destiny."
Anyway, the application deadline for next year's course is September 14 - which leaves you plenty of time to scrape together the $8,700 needed to attend the week-long course.
[image: Stanford's Hoover Tower and Green Library]
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November 10, 2006
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]
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November 9, 2006
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.
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November 8, 2006
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.
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November 1, 2006
Five takeaway lessons from innovation conferences
In the October 2006 OVO Innovation newsletter (available as an e-mail subscription), Jeffrey Phillips of the Innovate on Purpose blog shares five takeaway lessons from the three different innovation events that he attended during the past month:
(1) If you've been doing "innovation" for a while, be kind to those just starting out. Many firms and people attending these conferences are just beginning to get their feet wet, and I think they may be swimming in the "deep end" of the pool too quickly. We need to find ways to offer a boot camp to help these folks get started quickly;
(2) Storytelling is WAAAY in. After sitting through a number of breakout sessions and listening to the presenters, those individuals that tell stories to illustrate their key points are more compelling, and the attendees seem to retain those points for a longer period of time;
(3) Ethnography is becoming very popular. I began to feel a little disconcerted that I did not have an anthropology degree. There's a lot of focus around understanding customer needs, especially unmet or unrecognized needs, and a close examination of the customer and how he or she interacts with your products or services is in order;
(4) The more mundane the industry, the more likely innovation is happening in that industry. Some of the most compelling stories were from industries like packaging, agricultural products and other verticals that would seem to be sleepy or out of touch;
(5) If you think your organization is behind the innovation curve, don't worry. There is a lot of innovation work being done across industries, but much of it is still at a business unit or product group level. Few firms have mastered an enterprise concept of innovation.
[image: Conference bloggers]
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October 31, 2006
Introducing the Blue Ocean Executive Experience
For followers of Blue Ocean Strategy, this is the "executive experience of a lifetime." As the Creating Blue Oceans website explains, the Blue Ocean Executive Experience is a unique combination of ocean adventure and serious competitive strategy that will take place in exotic locations around the world:
"The tranquil waves of the Caribbean Ocean, and the lush backdrop of Belizean beaches are poised to serve the stage for the launch of the Blue Ocean Executive Experience (BOEE). Beginning this December, and by invitation only, senior executives will join BOEE Architect Gabor George Burt for a lifetime event that is designed to stimulate the senses and foster an atmosphere of profound learning. This four-day program of adventures, exercises, beach-side lectures and discussions will allow executives to fully internalize the perspective of Blue Ocean Strategy and teach them to navigate past competitive, bloody “red oceans” into calm, uncontested “blue oceans.”
The BOEE will continue on to its next landing-place, Dubai, in the First Quarter of 2007, and further stimulating destinations around the world, thus becoming the premier platform for executive learning on the topic of Blue Ocean Strategy. And the premise of learning the mindset of BOS through the very medium of invigorating surroundings is a Blue Ocean Strategy concept in itself."
[image: The blue oceans of Belize]
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