January 16, 2007
Disruptive innovation on the ski slopes
Clayton Christensen's Innoblog points to an article in the New York Times ("Snowbound Neverland") describing a disruptive new business model for the ski resort industry being developed by Echo Mountain Park in Colorado:
"Echo is a new resort built exclusively for freestyle snowboarders and skiers. It is much smaller than traditional resorts, covering just 50 acres with a vertical drop of 600 feet, miniscule for Colorado. There are no groomed runs, no gondolas, no moguls; Echo is 100% terrain park, all jumps, rails, and half pipe. It is relatively cheap and easy to operate since there is much less need for snow coverage and maintenance and it can handle considerably higher utilization than its competitors (many more freestylers fit on a slope at a time since they tend to congregate around jumps, watching their friends and taking turns). It is more skate park on snow than downhill resort.
This approach is much more economically viable than, say, building another Vail, and it is also perfectly targeted at the fastest growing segment of the winter sports industry – the youth market. Prices are low ($35 vs. $70-plus at competing resorts), the entire park is lighted so lifts run until 9pm daily, and the mountain is a quick 30 minute drive from Denver. The cafeteria sells microwavable burritos and Red Bull, and kids crowd around video game consoles while they eat. The resort operators field user requests and suggestions online, actively adding and subtracting features according to popularity. The décor, music, and atmosphere targets the young.
Jerry Pettit, Echo’s owner, sums it up: “It’s nothing against places like Aspen, but the young people we consulted early on told us they can’t afford to pay $75 for a lift ticket or $14 for a buffalo burger…What kept coming back to us was: ‘Keep it inexpensive. Make it for us.’”
Anyway, over at Flickr, there's a cool collection of snowboarding pics by photographer Matthew Staver that were taken at the opening of the Echo Mountain snowboard park in March 2006.
[image: Snowboarding at Echo Mountain Park by Matthew Staver]
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Aloha innovation
Hawaii governor Linda Lingle announced a sweeping new innovation initiative for the state. The broad-based initiative is intended as a way to increase the state's participation in the technology-driven global economy. Among other things, the new innovation initiative includes:
* State support for a life sciences and biotech research facility and technology incubator;
* A digital media center for the development of a local film and digital media sector
* A new program to build the technical and business skills of Hawaii's artists in the music industry;
* A $100 million professionally-managed Hawaii Innovation Fund.
In addition, Hawaii will upgrade its wireless and broadband Internet services and engage in a comprehensive new digitization program. As Governor Lingle points out, innovation is now an important driver of economic competitiveness for the state:
"Hawaii's continued prosperity and ability to improve our standard of living and way of life over the long-term requires reducing our dependence on land as the chief driver of economic development. We need to focus on developing our people, recognizing that our future economic success and sustainability depends upon innovation and new ideas that will enable us to create more high-paying quality jobs that capitalize on people's skills and talents."
[image: Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle]
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January 4, 2007
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 2, 2007
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 28, 2006
Arnold Schwarzenegger: I want to pump you up on innovation
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently outlined a $95 million R&D initiative intended to keep California on the leading edge of innovation in areas such as nanotech, clean tech and biotech. The "Governor's Research and Innovation Initiative" will help create jobs while also preserving the environment. In a statement, Schwarzenegger explained that, "as a leader in developing new technologies, California will reap tremendous rewards for our economy and environment from this investment in our innovation infrastructure."
The governor's R&D initiative focuses on four primary projects:
* The Helios Project at the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is developing new energy sources, improving energy conservation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions;
* The Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of California, which plans to develop biofuels for use in transportation;
* The California Centers for Science and Innovation, which will work with private companies to conduct research in IT, biomedical and nano technology;
* The Petascale Supercomputer project, which is building the next-generation supercomputer.
[image: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the winner of the Arnold Classic]
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December 19, 2006
The Best of Design in 2006
The International Herald Tribune has posted a wide-ranging review of the best in design for 2006. Among the highlights:
(1) The World Economic Forum in Davos made "design" part of its strategic agenda for the first time;
(2) Architects experimented with new types of emergency housing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina;
(3) The designers working on the $100-laptop project for the One Laptop per Child nonprofit foundation produced their first models of the X0-1;
(4) A group of Guatemalan politicians, academics and industrialists enlisted the help of Canadian graphic designer Bruce Mau in the ¡GuateAmala! campaign, to encourage their compatriots to be more optimistic about the future after decades of civil war and human rights abuse;
(5) Black finally replaced silver as the "default color" for digital and electronic products (e.g. Apple's iPod Hi-Fi and the glossy black Apple MacBook);
(6) Rapid prototyping technologies, originally used in the automotive and aerospace industries, became part of the mainstream (e.g. the Sketch furniture made by Swedish design group Front);
There's also a lot to look forward to in 2007:
"Take Apple's long-rumored iPhone; and the Great Journeys series of Penguin paperbacks designed by David Pearson. Or Microsoft's Multimouse, which will enable more children in poorly resourced schools to use the same computer, and Spore, the ambitious game devised by Will Wright as his follow-up to The Sims. And next summer the XO- 1 laptop will be shipped to schools throughout the developing world, albeit with a price tag closer to $150, than $100, for the first year or so."
[image: Sketch Furniture by Front (Sweden)]
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InnoCentive launches a nonprofit innovation network
According to the Boston Business Journal, open innovation pioneer InnoCentive is partnering with The Rockefeller Foundation to launch a "nonprofit" section of the company's website:
"InnoCentive, an Andover, Massachusetts company that specializes in matching scientists with corporate clients to solve research and development problems, said the website presence is designed to put InnoCentive's "open innovation model" in the foreground.
"It is difficult for us to give a specific dollar amount in terms of what type of funding we're talking about," said Peter Costiglio, director of communications for The Rockefeller Foundation based in New York City. "What we want to do is have problem seekers matched with problem solvers. This is a platform to enable that to happen." The foundation will screen the problem seeker and pay for that company to register on the Web site. If a problem solver is matched with the seeker, Costiglio said the foundation would fund the award for the problem that's solved, provided that it is solved satisfactorily."
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December 15, 2006
Whole Foods branches out into wellness spas
With retailers such as Trader Joe's, Safeway and Wal-Mart branching out into natural and organic food offerings, Whole Foods is fighting back with an innovation of its own. The Austin-based supermarket chain recently launched its first wellness spa located within one of its stores in North Dallas (the really wealthy part of Dallas where the "ladies who lunch" hang out with their Hermes scarves and plan their next shopping trip to Neiman Marcus). The thinking, of course, is that people who care about what they eat will also care about their overall mental and physical well-being:
"Refresh: The Everyday Spa by Whole Foods Market is a new venture for the Austin-based supermarket chain. Housed in a 4,500-square foot space above the main floor are seven treatment rooms stocked with organic cotton sheets and towels and offering various massages, scrubs and other treatments. Massage chairs on the balcony overlooking the main grocery floor will provide a range of five- and 10-minute pick-me-ups. Spa guests who feel a bit peckish can order from the chef's spa menu (the store also has a staff dietitian who can be booked for menu planning, diet consultations and shopping guidance). The spa reception area also is stocked with Whole Foods' higher-end beauty and body-care products, including the Dr. Hauschka line, along with organic-cotton bedding and towels, and organic-fiber clothing."
Taking a big picture view, this experiment by Whole Foods is an interesting development. Judging from the spectacular success of the minute clinic concept in other retail stores, it appears that people are willing to satisfy their healthcare and wellness needs without the help of traditional healthcare providers. Speed, convenience and pricing, it appears, are powerful motivators.
[image: A massage table at Whole Foods]
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December 13, 2006
The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs creates the Bachelor of Innovation program
As much attention as innovation is attracting in the business world, it's perhaps not surprising that the world of academia is also re-thinking the importance of innovation and creativity within the curriculum. In one notable example, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs recently announced the creation of the Bachelor of Innovation™ (BI) family of degrees. After debating which elements of engineering, entrepreneurship, business and law should be blended together to form the basis of an innovation academic program, the university finalized the creation of an "Innovation Core." This core has some unique aspects to it, including the use of long-term, multi-disciplinary teams working on real projects for companies; a course in proposal preparation and responding to RFPs; and an undergraduate law course with half of it dedicated to intellectual property issues.
The Bachelor of Innovation™ program is not a degree in innovation, it's actually a family of related majors (much like a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science) with a common core supporting a mix of degrees. The university currently offers 5 BI degrees and expects to add more soon. The core of the majors is the same (e.g. BI in Business and BI in EE have exactly the same required courses), only the electives are different.
[image: The Bachelor of Innovation]
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The MBA brand that means "innovation"
According to Ronald Alsop of the Wall Street Journal, the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley is attempting to market and brand itself as the Innovation MBA. The school has launched a major new strategic branding project with the theme Leading Through Innovation:
"After months of study, the school decided to stake its identity on grooming leaders who are innovative not just in developing new technologies and products, but also in "the organization of work, strategy, services, and business models." [...]
"We also thought hard about whether we could create enough new space with the word 'innovation,'" Dr. Lyons says, because the word has been used by the business schools at the University of Pennsylvania, MIT and Carnegie Mellon University. "But we ultimately decided that Leading Through Innovation worked remarkably well in conveying who we are."
In support of this "innovation brand," the B-school is overhauling its curriculum and even changing the type of students that it admits:
"Berkeley's Haas School believes its Leading Through Innovation slogan is already well supported by its strengths in technology and entrepreneurship and by its students' creativity. But it plans to put even more substance behind its new brand. Professors and industry experts are teaching seminars on innovation, and the curriculum includes new courses on leadership, managing innovation and change, and creativity and innovation in marketing and finance. Faculty members also are writing new case studies and articles for the California Management Review about leadership and innovation.
To attract the right kind of student, the Haas School has added a new essay question to its application that asks people to tell how they have demonstrated innovation and creativity in their professional or personal lives. "We're looking for intelligent students without arrogance, who can lead and manage in a changing environment," says Dean Tom Campbell. Haas School employees are expected to think more creatively, too. The performance evaluation for staff members includes a new section measuring how innovative they have been in the past year, and Haas has established a staff award to recognize innovation."
[image: Haas School of Business]
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December 12, 2006
Smells like Crowd Spirit
This smells like crowd spirit... Trend-watching site Springwise points to the launch of the CrowdSpirit website, which promises to do for product development what blogs, citizen journalism and YouTube have done for media. In other words, open up the R&D process to the wisdom of the crowds:
"The Scottish-French venture's focus is on harnessing the power of crowds to allow inventors and adaptors to take their products to market. By involving end-users in every aspect of a product's life-cycle, CrowdSpirit aims to set off a crowdsourced manufacturing revolution.
How it works: inventors submit ideas for innovative new products and contributors submit problems for inventors to work on. Members vote, define a product's specifications, and can invest money to finance development. After a first prototype has been created, selected members test and help fine-tune in cooperation with manufacturers. Once the stage of product development has been completed, contributors continue to be involved, for example by acting as a product's ambassador and promoting it to retailers, or by providing product support, like translating instruction manuals."
To kick things off, CrowdSpirit is focused on consumer electronics at the sub-$200 price point. If all goes well, this will be followed by more expensive electronics, and other sectors. The Holy Grail, of course, would be the next Apple iPod, designed and manufactured only by the crowd. That is, if the site can convince thousands of co-creators around the globe to give up their intellectual property rights for free:
"What remains to be seen, is how customer-manufacturers will be rewarded for their efforts. CrowdSpirit clearly states that contributors give up all intellectual property rights when they submit an idea or product, or when they help define a product. As trendwatching.com points out in its briefing about the customer-made trend (a.k.a. co-creation), "as co-creators get smarter and realise how much they're worth, expect kick-backs for co-created goods and services to go up. If you don't pay a fair share, talented members of the global brain will take their business elsewhere."
In the immortal words of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, "With the lights out it's less dangerous/Here we are now/Entertain us/I feel stupid and contagious/Here we are now/Entertain us/A mulatto/An albino/A mosquito/My libido/Yea..."
[video: Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"]
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November 20, 2006
Hey Big Spender! Spend some R&D dollars on me
Booz Allen Hamilton examined R&D spending patterns at 1,000 global companies and found that less than 10% of them were deriving full value from money spent. Which leads, of course, to the inevitable question: Why do some high-tech companies get great bang for their R&D dollars while others seem to get very little?. Being a "big spender" may work on Broadway, but it is not necessarily the best way to go about innovation at America's biggest and best companies. David Gardner of Information Week explains:
"Led by chief investigator Barry Jaruzelski, a Booz Allen VP, the team sought to find the key, if any, to the attributes that lead to innovation at companies. "We tortured the data," says Jaruzelski, observing that 10,000 separate analyses were performed. "People think there are predictable black boxes out there. They think if you put money in, innovation comes out. If only it worked that way," he says. While high-tech firms with winning innovation strategies approach R&D with different tactical methods, they employ a major standard that seems to work for all: a deep understanding of customer needs, says Jaruzelski. They also used an end-to-end multifunction process in developing products, he says."
Using this methodology, Booz Allen found that Apple, eBay, Google, Research in Motion (makers of the Blackberry) and Yahoo! were among some of the "high leverage innovators." Somewhat disturbingly, Ford Motor Company was the #1 spender on R&D in 2005 - and we all know how well that has gone...
[video clip: "Hey Big Spender"]
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The Top 50 Women in business today
Today's Wall Street Journal has a special pull-out section on The Top 50 Women to Watch in 2007. At the top of the list is Melinda Gates, the co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who has emerged as "a powerful force in the new philanthropy." While the list includes a "who's who" of powerful women in business from the US, Asia and Europe, it's also missing at least four innovative women featured in a recent FORTUNE magazine article on the most powerful women in business (Arianna Huffington, Marissa Mayer of Google, Padmasree Warrior of Motorola and Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley) - as well as a handful of powerful women slated to speak at the FORTUNE Innovation Forum next week - Beth Comstock (NBC Universal), Mary Kay Haben (Kraft Foods), Cheryl Perkins (Kimberly-Clark), Amy Radin (Citigroup), Deborah A. Senior (Lexus USA) and Sophie Vandebroek (Xerox). Anyway, without further ado, here are the Top 10 women in business, according to the Wall Street Journal:
(1) Melinda Gates, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
(2) Indra Nooyi, Pepsico
(3) Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft Foods
(4) Patricia Woertz, Archer-Daniels-Midland
(5) Andrea Jung, Avon Products
(6) Neelie Kroes, European Union Commission
(7) Patricia Russo, Lucent Technologies
(8) Clara Furse, London Stock Exchange
(9) Anne Mulcahy, Xerox
(10) Meg Whitman, eBay
Anyway, kudos to all 50 women on the list. As the Wall Street Journal points out, there is a slow but steady transformation occurring within the highest ranks of America's leading corporations:
"Something new is beginning to occur. Instead of being almost exclusively concentrated in companies with large numbers of female customers, such as retail and cosmetics, women are making their mark across a broad spectrum of businesses. Whether they're already CEOs or in line to lead, women are running operations and devising strategy in virtually every industry, from heavy manufacturing, chemicals and computer technology to consumer products, fashion and media."
[images: Melinda Gates and Andrea Jung]
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Brilliant minds forecast the next 50 years of science
BoingBoing points to a fascinating feature in the New Scientist, in which more than 70 of the most brilliant scientists in the world weigh in on what the next fifty years might hold for the future of science. Contributors such as Paul Davies, Francis Collins, Benoit Mandelbrot, Jane Goodall, Susan Greenfield, Dan Dennett and Steven Weinberg touch on everything from aging and alien life to neuroscience and space technology:
"In coming decades will we: discover that we are not alone in the universe? Unravel the physiological basis for consciousness? Routinely have false memories implanted in our minds? Begin to evolve in new directions? And will physicists finally hit upon a universal theory of everything? In fact, if the revelations of the last 50 years are anything to go on - the internet and the human genome for example - we probably have not even thought up the exciting advances that lay ahead of us.
[image: Benoit Mandelbrot]
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November 17, 2006
Aerobic activity can reduce brain shrinkage
According to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois-Urbana, regular aerobic activity can reduce the typical brain shrinkage that starts to occur after age 40:
"The researchers said patients who engaged in three or more hours of aerobic exercise weekly experienced increases in their brains' volume of gray and white matter, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The team studied 59 adults, age 60 to 79, in three groups: one group that received aerobic training, one that engaged in non-aerobic stretching-and-toning training and a group that did not exercise.
The non-aerobic exercise group and the group that did not exercise did not experience any change in their brains, but "the aerobic group showed a substantial increase in brain volume," Illinois' Arthur Kramer told The Journal. "After only three months," Kramer said, "the people who exercised had the brain volumes of people three years younger." Kramer said the subjects who exercised aerobically had better working memories, better abilities to switch between mental tasks and were more adept at screening out distractions than those who did not exercise."
[image: Jamie Lee Curtis in "Perfect"]
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November 15, 2006
IBM's $100 million innovation agenda
IBM plans to spend $100 million on 10 new innovation initiatives over the next 24 months, thereby opening up its world-renowned R&D labs for collaboration with partners and customers all over the globe. IBM hopes that the decision to open up its "crown jewels" to the world will have big pay-offs later down the road:
"IBM is thinking big when it comes to solving next-generation business problems. The company said Tuesday that it will spend $100 million over the next two years creating 10 new offerings that will gird a host of advanced consumer and business products and services ranging from portable, electronic health records and blackout-proof electricity grids to 3-D virtual worlds in which consumers can play games and businesses can hold meetings and collaborate with partners.
IBM CEO Sam Palmisano unveiled the plan before a meeting of 6,000 company employees in Beijing. "We opened up our labs, said to the world, 'Here are our crown jewels, have at them,'" said Palmisano, referring to IBM's plan to partner with customers and other tech players in developing the solutions. "Collaborative innovation models require you to trust the creativity and intelligence of your employees, your clients, and other members of your innovation network," he said."
[image: IBM sign]
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November 14, 2006
The Dyson School of Design Innovation
James Dyson, the founder and owner of Dyson, the eponymous British maker of innovative household cleaning machines (e.g. vacuum cleaners), is launching a new school of design and innovation in England in 2008. Needless to say, the Dyson School of Design Innovation will be the first school of its kind in the UK. According to the school's website, it appears that the educational programs will focus on teens (ages 14-19), but will also offer coursework to adults who want to sharpen their skills. With funding from the government and support from corporations such as Rolls-Royce and Airbus, the school will attempt to produce the next generation of innovators within the UK.
As Influx Insights points out, there are at least four reasons why the launch of the new design and innovation school is a smart move for the Dyson brand:
(1) It establishes the brand as a thought leader in the world of design innovation;
(2) The company can discover and nurture new talent through this school;
(3) They can invite other design innovators to teach and build programs and can learn from them;
(4) It's permanent and enduring.
[image: Dyson School of Design Innovation]
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November 13, 2006
The making of an innovative job title
I happened to be poking through a list of the organization & management seminars offered at Columbia University when I stumbled across a great job title: Rapporteur. The job of each rapporteur, it appears, is to correspond with people interested in attending a particular seminar and then initiate debate around the topic of the seminar. The word is so interesting from a linguistic standpoint since it combines "raconteur" (someone who tells stories) with "rapport" (connections, relationships) to form a modern-sounding word like rapporteur. The word is also evocative of the more pedestrian-sounding reporter. Sharing stories and building relationships (rapporteur), it appears, is now much more important than simply telling stories (reporter).
Anyway, if you're interested, there's an interesting "Branded Utility" seminar at Columbia University tonight featuring Piers Fawkes starting at 7:00pm. (The rapporteur for the event is Doris Elizabeth Carrion)
UPDATE: Somewhat disappointingly, the word rapporteur is not a cool new word dreamed up by the folks at Columbia University in a Red Bull-fueled delirium of innovation while listening to some cool new tunes from The Raconteurs. The word dates back to the 15th century and has a much more modest meaning: "a person responsible for compiling reports and presenting them, as to a governing body." My bad.
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What comes after Web 2.0?
If Web 2.0 was all about seamlessly connecting applications over the Internet, then Web 3.0 (aka "the semantic Web") will most likely be all about adding an increased layer of meaning and intelligence to the Internet. In Sunday's New York Times, John Markoff suggests that the much-hyped Web 2.0 may already be giving way to Web 3.0:
"From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence.
Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century.
Referred to as Web 3.0, the effort is in its infancy, and the very idea has given rise to skeptics who have called it an unobtainable vision. But the underlying technologies are rapidly gaining adherents, at big companies like I.B.M. and Google as well as small ones. Their projects often center on simple, practical uses, from producing vacation recommendations to predicting the next hit song."
If the semantic web becomes a reality, look for companies to develop search engines like Swoogle ("semantic web search")...
[image: Dan Cooney's Simplicity of the Semantic Web]
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November 10, 2006
Google: I feel the need for speed
Almost everywhere you look these days, companies are touting the importance of "speed" or "velocity" or anything that sounds incredibly fast and responsive. At the Web 2.0 Summit, Marissa Mayer of Google explained why speed is so important for a company like Google that thrives on innovation. Anyway, Influx Insights has posted a great summary of Mayer's talk, which offers a few insights into the current thinking at Google. The basic idea is that Internet users want their content as quickly as possible, and for that, they are willing to give up both quality and quantity:
"Marissa Mayer of Google gave a short, but extremely smart talk at Web 2.0 conference about the most significant thing that the company has learned in its short history. The answer was speed and this was an insight that came from consumer research experiments in search page design, where Google was looking to understand the optimal number of search results on a page.
In the test, they discovered that those in the control group with 10 results stayed longer than those who asked 30 results. Marisa wondered why? People asked for more, but they didn't like what they got, so they left. Were they giving them too much? When they dug further into the data, they uncovered the problem; the control group's search, which displayed 10 results, took .4 of a second vs. those getting 30 results, took .9.
This was the moment that Google discovered the power of speed."
[image: Marissa Mayer at Web 2.0 Summit, via dfarber]
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Unlocking innovation in North Dakota
It's not often that there's innovation news coming out of North Dakota. With that in mind, here are the highlights of a new program called "Innovate North Dakota," a new statewide economic development initiative designed to help entrepreneurs turn business ideas into functional businesses in cities such as Bismarck and Fargo:
During a press conference held Thursday at Minot State University, [North Dakota Commerce Commissioner] Shane Goettle explained that Innovate ND is an intensive, six-month program that will provide direct assistance to people who have business ideas for North Dakota people. “This is a call to all innovators. We invite anyone with a business idea – big or small – to enroll in Innovate ND and get help developing that idea into a business plan and ultimately, we hope, into a viable new North Dakota business,” Goettle said.
Goettle further explained that the purpose of the program is to offer a hands-on approach to provide direct assistance to keep people in North Dakota and nurture their ideas. “North Dakota’s future growth depends to a large degree on our ability to grow businesses and our economy from within,” Goettle said. “Innovate ND is a way to cultivate the budding entrepreneurs among us.”
[image: North Dakota Commerce Commissioner Shane Goettle]
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November 9, 2006
A factory of one's own
In the current issue of FORTUNE magazine, there's a great profile of Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, who is working on his vision of the "personal fabricator." One day, twenty years from now, you will be able to design and "print" a product from the privacy and comfort of your own home:
"Imagine a machine with the ability to manufacture anything. Now imagine that machine in your living room. What would you build first? Would you start a business? Would you ever buy anything retail again? According to MIT physicist Neil Gershenfeld, it's not too early to think about these questions, because that machine, which he calls a personal fabricator, is not so far off - or so far-fetched - as you might think. [...]
Today your all-in-one device prints, scans, faxes and copies. Tomorrow it will cut, score, etch and sew. Want a new dining room chair? You'll design it on a PC and press PRINT, and your personal fabricator will create it for you right before your eyes. Just make sure tray No. 2 has enough wood."
[image: Neil Gershenfeld]
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November 8, 2006
50% of companies unhappy with their innovation efforts
According to a new survey from Archstone Consulting, more than half of all companies are dissatisfied with the results of their innovation initiatives. That's the bad news. The good news is that nearly 75% of companies plan to increase their spending on innovation over the next few years in an effort to drive top-line revenue growth:
"The importance of innovation spending to the bottom line has been highlighted in a new survey by Archstone Consulting which found that half of the companies questioned said that between 10% and 25% of their revenues over the next three years would be driven by products and services that will be developed over the next 12 months. Yet less than 5% of these companies believe they have a highly effective innovation process and only a small number are using state of the art approaches to innovation like open networks and innovation-based metrics.
To bridge this gap, the vast majority of companies are investing significantly in consumer research as well as tapping into external resources such as formal and informal inventor networks to help them uncover new ideas, concepts, improvements and enablers. They are also calling on the services of a range of consumer research firms, brand strategy and innovation firms, management consultants, advertising agencies and brand and identity design firms."
As Archstone explains, there are two key reasons that account for the relatively poor performance of innovation initiatives thus far: (1) the failure by many companies to put a formal innovation strategy in place and (2) an inability to measure the effectiveness of innovation programs. Other reasons include "confused project sponsorship," a failure to achieve high-level buy-in from senior executives and a lack of dedicated resources. Going forward, the consulting firm advises companies to start building a culture that fosters and respects risk-taking and innovative thinking.
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The best in Election Night innovation
With the vast majority of election results now in and Election 2006 winding to a final close, Meg Martin of Poynter Online has done a great job of pulling together the best in election night innovation:
"Tuesday's mid-term election meant a lot of different things for voters in a lot of different places. It was an opportunity for news organizations to utilize new technologies and innovative techniques to tell stories, broad and narrow, to their communities. We were impressed by much of what we saw, so we pulled together elements of the work from all different media, in markets of varying sizes, all across the country. Beyond Election 2006, many of the tools and approaches on display over the past 24 hours hold promise for everyday coverage going forward -- up to and including Nov. 4, 2008..."
With that in mind, here are the 12 best innovations of Election 2006:
(1) Personalized Results Tracking;
(2) Citizen reporting;
(3) News at a glance (e.g. MSNBC Dashboard);
(4) Blogging the count;
(5) Equipping the voters;
(6) Streaming the vote;
(7) Continuous content, even during commercial breaks;
(8) The Graphic Traffic;
(9) Chatting the Process;
(10) Listening in;
(11) Mapping it out;
(12) Up-to-the-minute summaries of who won.
[image: Poynter Online]
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