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Great readings this week

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10 Open Innovation Questions for SME’s by Stefan Lindegaard

As a follow-up to my slightly provocative blog post, Why Open Innovation is Not for Small Companies, I have begun looking further into the interesting topic on how small companies can innovate with others

How Ideas Take Flight Fred Sheahan

I love this video lecture from Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner. Within it, Jennifer Aaker (Twitter: @aaker) explores the importance of happiness, meaning, and story in successful and powerful social media campaigns. I highly recommend spending an hour of your time on this topic; it’s immensely applicable to any business, education, and nonprofit organization with a need to leverage activism and outreach in a networked world.

 

The Path to Outcome-Driven Innovation by Bryan Mahoney

Innovation does not often come along on its own. As Hemingway might have said, there is no one rule to innovating. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling through rock and blasting it out with charges.

 

Which Ideas Are the Good Ones? By Tim Kastelle

The New York Times has just published The 10th Annual Year in Ideas. As part of this, they asked Tyler Cowen to comment on the previous reviews. He noted this quote from the introduction to the piece:

 

Who’s Really Innovative? By Gary Hamel

If you were compiling a list of the world’s most innovative companies, which businesses would top your list? No one would be surprised if you picked Google, Apple or Amazon, but what about Wal-Mart? (Huh?) Or PG&E (a utility, for crying out loud)? Surely there must be some mistake! Or how ’bout the Chinese data equipment maker Huawei (umm, who are they)? While a few of these companies might not have made it onto your top 10 list, all of them were featured in Fast Company’s 2010 ranking of innovation all-stars.

 

Leadership vs Management: Tale of the tape by Jorge Barba

After seeing Scott Berkun’s post on innovation vs usability in numbers, I decided to do my own search on Google’s Ngram Viewer and compared four words: innovation, creativity, management and leadership. Graph below or click through to page:

 

Innovation-Inspiring Prizes by Andrea Meyer

Point: Use open innovation challenges and prizes to inspire solutions, participation and collaboration from employees, partners and customers

 

What’s remarkable about innovation by Jeffrey Phillips

Like many of you I participate in the social media world.  That world has opened up new relationships and new sources of information for me that were completely unexpected.  I’ve learned a lot from individuals on Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin, and I’ve become a real believer in the use of social media to support innovation.

 

In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm by David Segal via Ralph-Ohr

Last month, in a small room on the fifth floor of a high-rise building in San Mateo, Calif., three men sat around a table, thinking. The place was wallpapered with Post-it notes, in a riot of colors, plus column after column of index cards pinned to foam boards. Some of the cards had phrases like “space maximizers” or “stuff trackers” written on them.

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Great readings this week

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Beware of Facts & Innovation by Deb Mills-Scofield

Facts & Data.  At Bell Labs we used to say, “How much did you pay for that data?”  Most market research projects – for strategic planning and innovation (my passions), or even incremental product development focus on getting the facts.  Ok, here’s one for you:

 

It Is Hard To Decide Between Getting The “Best” And Getting “Enough”. Muji Thinks “Enough” Is The New “Best”. By Idris Mootee

I am not a superfan of Muji but I am very impressed with their last three years of repositioning or finetuning of the brand and after spending 15 mins in one of their stores in Tokyo I can see why they are doing well. The concept is exporting well to the US too.

Five Ways To Get Smarter On Open Innovation by Stefan Lindegaard

I believe the best way to get smarter and acquire new knowledge on innovation is through articles and blog posts rather than reading books. It is just my experience that it works better both in terms of value and time spent.

 

Asshole Bosses and You: A Cartoon By Team Synchronicity at North Carolina State by Bob Sutton

I just got an email from Scott Bolin, an MBA student at North Carolina State, who worked with his team of fellow MBA’s,  James Wall, My Le, and Bikram Jit Singh, create a funny and well-crafted cartoon called Asshole Bosses and You. 

Cultivating Diversity: a New Way to Network by Mike Brown

Jon Lovitz did a routine on Saturday Night Live about how to be more successful. The answer to success was always the catch phrase, “Get to know me!” Looking back on my first year of leaving the corporate world for entrepreneurship in the world of strategy and innovation, the success we’ve had has been linked

 

Want Your Customers To Talk Sizzle Or Steak? By Wim Rampen

Customers have jobs to do. And so do Companies. In essence the trick is to align and focus the company’s activities to maximize support to Customers to get their jobs done. From the unpredictable Customer’s decision journey through each stage of the life-cycle. And make money as a result of it.

 

The Magic of Intuition at Work by Alex Pattakos via Ralph-Ohr

 

Sometimes we wish that we had the magical powers of the lovable witch Samantha Stephens in the situation comedy Bewitched; at the time (1960s and 1970s) it was the highest rated television series ever for the ABC network.

Balance innovation and continuous improvement by Jorge Barba

All of us know that if you we want to make sweeping changes, we need to innovate. If done incrementally (in small improvements), it won’t attract much attention. FedEx became a success story as they changed people’s expectations (absolutely, positively overnight) of delivery services, delivered on their promise and charged a premium for it.  However, innovation projects are never “complete”.

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Great readings this week!

Enjoy this readings!

 

Innovate By Hacking Capabilities by Saul Kaplan

Capabilities are the amino acids of innovation.  They are the building blocks that enable value delivery.  Innovation is a better way to deliver value and is often the result of repurposing existing capabilities.

 

Harnessing Ignorance to Spark Creativity by Bob Sutton via Ralph-Ohr

I just got an email from a writer who was checking to see if I had argued — in a talk long ago — that true innovations come from people who ignore customers.

Passion and Wisdom by John Hagel

Passion and wisdom. Youth and age.  Most of us would say that these are two ends of the spectrum.  Many say that one can either be passionate or wise, but not both.  Passion typically prevails in one’s youth while wisdom gains prominence with age and experience.

 

The Opposition Strategy by Jorge Barba

One great way to stand out and differentiate is to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. An opposition strategy is usually the result of challenging long held assumptions of how things are done, this is the domain of us ‘crazies’ who question authority.

 

The Role of Strategy by Tim Kastelle

There is a terrific quote in Creative Disruption by Simon Waldman about strategy. It is from Markus Reckling, the Managing Director of Corporate Development for Deutsche Post – here’s the quote plus Waldman’s interpretation:

 

This Is Your Brain on Metaphors by ROBERT SAPOLSKY via Riita Raesmaa

Despite rumors to the contrary, there are many ways in which the human brain isn’t all that fancy. Let’s compare it to the nervous system of a fruit fly. Both are made up of cells, of course, with neurons playing particularly important roles.

Great Advice on Open Innovation from Intuit by Stefan Lindegaard

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog post, From Archer to Magnet: A Good Goal for Open Innovation, which was based on a recent meeting with Jan Bosch, VP of Open Innovation at Intuit.

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Making Room for Reflection Is a Strategic Imperative by Umair Haque via @ralph_ohr

Business is, above all, busy. And maybe it’s too busy.

Let’s face it. Most of us spend most of our time chasing the immediate reward, the short-run “objective,” the near-term “goal — in short, the expedient and the convenient.

Innovation – Doing the Impossible with No Resources by Jeffrey Phillips

During this most recent downturn, but similarly to other downturns, at least while I’ve been in the workforce, is the concept of “doing more with less” – that is, wringing more output or benefits out of the same, or often even less, inputs and resources

Currency of 21st Century Business? Connections by Deb Mills-Scofield

Sitting behind me at BIF-6 was this nice, unassuming guy.  We struck up a conversation.  As a result, a wonderful friendship has developed (which is easy to do at BIF). This guy was Michael Lee Stallard.

The Mindset and Key Skills Needed for Successful Innovation by Stefan Lindegaard

In my talks, I like to get into discussions on why we need to update our mindset and key skills in order to become successful at innovation. Below, I have given a couple of reasons as well as some suggestions on the key skills we need to develop.

Is Innovation Expensive? By Paul Sloane

How can companies afford to allocate scarce resources to innovation in these unprecedented times. When every extraneous expenditure is cut back to preserve cash flow how can it be justified to lavish money on

 

The Innovation Matrix: People or Tools? By Tim Kastelle

I had lunch last week with some managers from a company that is trying to improve their innovation performance. They kept asking me what tools should they be using to do this? Is there software that will help, or a process, or some other tool? I had to explain that there are a lot of tools available, but that first you have to figure out your innovation strengths and weaknesses.

The Two Dimensions of Market Orientation by Ralph Christian Ohr

Recently, I was reading an interesting HBR article, named: “Meeting the Apple Game of Customer Perception” by Ndubuisi Ekekwe.

The key paragraphs for me were:

How Are You Smart for Innovation Era? By Ellen Weber

The new innovation era builds on different talents – those overlooked by exclusive practices that limit  wealth for grabbers at the top.

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Great readings this week

 

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 Why Open Innovation is Not for Small Companies  by Stefan Lindegaard

It is difficult to find good cases on how smaller companies have engaged with open innovation. It is also difficult to give strong advice on how such companies should engage with open innovation.

Open Innovation’s Challenge: Letting Go Is Hard To Do by Joel West

Open-source software provides an important example of how companies can leverage external sources of innovation. In practice, however, big high-tech companies often have a difficult time collaborating and sharing control.

Staying Innovative While Growing by Tim Kastelle

Google Australia lost two key people over the past couple of weeks – Lars Rasmussen, one of the developers of Google Maps and Google Wave, and Kate Vale, their first employee in Australia. It seems like the main motivation in both cases was the possibly premature death of Wave, but Vale made some comments that are instructive:

by Ralph-Christian Ohr

About one year ago, I started engaging in discussions on ‘innovation’ via Twitter. As a physicist, used to work in product/innovation management for technology-based companies, my understanding of innovation was: creating value for the customer by leveraging technology development.

 

 Is innovation a matter of will? By Jorge Barba

Most of the discussion around innovation revolves around strategies, tactics and the abilities organizations need to develop to do so, but not much is said about an organizations starting point: purpose.

Using design thinking to improve a homelessness service by

Peter Gadsdon

The Housing Option Centre in Lewisham is the council’s front facing service providing support and advice for people dealing with homelessness across the borough. The service works alongside SHIP which works specifically with homelessness amongst single people. In both cases, we are dealing with customers in difficult high stress situations who either have nowhere to live or are worried that they might become homeless.

160yr old “start-up” by Deborah Mills-Scofield

160yr old privately family held old-line industry packaging company innovates their business model, management’s role, the value chain and becomes a recognized market leader and cool place to work.

What can media companies learn from “open innovation”? by Rob O’Regan

The practice of “open innovation” involves using a variety of resources – customers, competitors, partners,  employees or even (gasp) academics – to divine new ways to grow your business, particularly through the licensing or use of technology.

Thinking About Open Design by Roland Harwood and David Simoes-Brown

 ”Open-source software is one thing, but would you fly in an open-source aircraft?”

This question was posed late last year at a gathering of senior design professionals in London. It was couched as a counterargument to the rise of open design and such companies as 99 designs and Quirky that offer low-cost, crowd-sourced design

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Great readings this week!

 

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Designing for the Future Customer With Foresight Thinking by Bernhard Schindlholzer

Many organizations make the common mistake of designing a future product or service for today’s user. The user today will not be the same user you want to target in two or three product cycles.

Innovators Go It Alone by Ndubuisi Ekekwe Via @ariegoldshlager 

For a long time, Ford, Chrysler, and GM followed the same strategy: they built big gas-guzzlers. Asian competitors attacked that model, took market share, and transformed the U.S. automobile industry.

 

Collaboration and Co-creation: Incentives Are Important by Gaurav Bhalla Via @ralph_ohr

Customer collaboration and co-creation rests on a few key assumptions; that customers are passionate about the collaboration objective(s), and are willing and able to offer their time and creativity.

 

Open Innovation and Open Source: What They Share and How They Differ by Stefan Lindegaard

Based on the positive feedback from this webcast, we followed up with a conversation with regular opensource.com contributor Chris Grams and myself on the ways open source and open innovation are different and the things they share.

Relational Knowledge – We discover what we know in our relations by Daniel Durrant

Might our knowledge increase as we extend our relations further through structured learning networks? Relational knowledge transcends my brain and your brain, I can tell you that much. It is the relational space of reflection that I believe will take us to the next level: greater challenges, greater opportunities

Open Innovation Measurement – Part 3: Mass Customization by Volker Bilgram

Research on mass customization has examined the value accrued by co-creation in a stage of the value chain very close to commercialization.

Northrop Grumman, Eastman Chemical: Where to Innovate in this Economy by Andrea Meyer

Story: At Invention Machine’s Power to Innovate user conference, Jim Belfiore, Senior Director of Client Innovation and Practices, posed the question of where to innovate in this economy. Numerous presenters provided varied and surprising answers about where they find innovation and innovation-related opportunities.

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Great readings and videos this week

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Does Your Culture Support Innovation? By  Holly Green

There’s a lot of people talking about innovation these days, myself included.

The good news is that business leaders seem to be sitting up and taking notice of this important subject. The bad news is that once a topic becomes popular in the media, people have a tendency to see it as the next “management flavor of the month.” In other words, they perceive it as a quick fix solution rather than a long-term change in the way they do business.

Innovation: It’s All About Relationships by Deb Mills-Scofield

I spoke with John Bartolone, Director of Open Innovation for Unilever ‘s Skin & Hair Care division the other day. Unilever is known for brands like Lipton, Slim-Fast, Ben & Jerry’s, Dove, Pond’s Lifebuoy and Axe (any of us with teenage boys knows this one!).

 

How Do You Know When to Jump? By Tim Kastelle

We keep hearing that the whole point of strategy is build a sustainable competitive advantage. This makes some sense, up to a point. The problem though is that the skills and routines that help us build one can also constrain us, and prevent us from responding to a changing environment.

 

5 Ways To Improve Your Innovation Pipeline by Rowen Gibson via @ralph_ohr

How healthy is your company’s innovation pipeline? Is it already operating at peak performance, helping you pump out a torrent of new growth opportunities across product, market, and industry spaces? Or would it be fairer to say that there is still room for improvement?

How to change people’s behavior by tweaking the environment by Jorge Barba

The interesting discussion we had about innovation being a matter of age brought up a lot of insights, one in particular was that to breed innovation an environment is more important than the age of the innovator.

Five Types of People That Kill Innovation by Stefan Lindegaard

Who are the people that kill innovation in corporate organizations? Here is my take on five types. Let me know what you think and what you can you add.

The 5 BEST Personal Growth Videos EVER by FinerMinds Team

One-Minute Life…Enthusiasm Unleashed

 

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Last week – Great readings

 

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Respecting the Box  by Matthew E. May  via @ralph_ohr

You hear it all the time: think outside the box. You hear it to the point that it’s lost its meaning. And I’m okay with that, because I don’t think it’s the right guidance anyway, at least not all the time.

The increasing worldwide demand for innovation  by Jeffrey Phillips

I’ve just finished an innovation workshop in Kuala Lumpur.  The energy and enthusiasm for innovation from firms that attended is really impressive.  We had attendees from Malaysia and Thailand, as well as from Sudan. 

Management Innovation is Radical by Deb Mills-Scofield

Steve Denning begins his book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century with a quote from John Hagel,  John Seely Brown and Lang Davison ‘s 2009 Shift Index to lay the foundation of the problem we face:

 

Design Thinking for Social Innovation: A Conversation with IDEO’s Sally Madsen by Jess Sand

As the private sector beings to embrace the possibility that social innovation can lead to a robust bottom line, companies face the very real challenge of figuring out what these efforts might actually look like on the ground

Radical Proposal for Knowledge to Drive Innovation by Ellen Weber

In past, valid knowledge equaled the sum of what people viewed, discovered, or learned. That changes radically in an innovation era, where a new concept of knowledge is needed to open doors of discovery and stoke curiosity for novelty and invention. Business information requires more evidence of knowledge in action for inventions and for reconfigured approaches that replace rigid routines.  These differences require a radical new lens, and unique approaches to problem solving.

Is “Normal” Real or an Elusive Social Construct? By Donna Flagg

I’ve heard it a million times and it drives me nuts. “Donna, you’re not normal.” I heard it in school, I hear it at work and I hear it in my personal life all the time too. But what does that mean?

Creative stretching by Jorge Barba

One of the challenges of proposing and then implementing new ideas is the resistance that comes from the success that a business already has. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it right? Wrong!

Rethinking Design Thinking – Paul Pangaro – PICNIC ’10

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Great readings this week!

A lot of wisdom and inspiration

 Innovation – do you WANT to win? Well, do you? By Boris Pluskowski

“Authentic” is undoubtedly one of most echoed words in the Social World nowadays – applied especially liberally when explaining to companies the means by which they should be conveying themselves to the broader world in order to be heard.

The Wal-Mart Disease by Adam Hartung

Have you noticed how many of America’s leading companies have done nothing for shareholders lately?  Or for that matter, a lot longer than just lately.  Of course General Motors wiped out its shareholders.  As did Chrysler and Circuit City.  The DJIA and S&P both struggle to return to levels of the past decade, as many of the largest companies seem unable to generate investor value.

 

Micro-Volunteering – Innovation At Its Finest by Deb Mills-Scofield

You know all that time you spend waiting?  In line, at school, the doctor’s office, soccer practices, the bus or train? Well, what if you could use that time to do something great for someone else?  That’s the premise of The Extraordinaries , a crowdsourced micro-volunteering company started by three 20-somethings, Jacob Colker, Ben Rigby and Sundeep Ahuja.  Jacob told their story at last month’s BIF-6 conference (which is still causing a buzz).  And this has to be one of the coolest innovations I’ve seen in years.

Jack Welch on Management by Kathie Thomas

Following Bill McDermott, the former Chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE), Jack Welch shared his thoughts on everything from leadership to the Obama Administration in an energetic question and answer session.

Deciding On Your Big Strategic Innovation Move? Don’t Forget One Small Detail: How Do You Make Money? By Idris Mootee

Technology-based companies typically make one common mistake: They get too caught up in technological innovation, particularly developing new technologies, or get too obsessed with the next killer technology and thinks the world evolves around their latest invention

Welcome to the first broadcast of Core77′s Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club by Shaggy

Our first speaker Mark Tieszen has spent 7 years as a professional Telemark skier. Mark’s transition from athlete to designer gives him a unique perspective on the relationship between the designer and user in the process of developing athletic equipment.

ARM President Sees ‘Three Phases’ Of Tablets by Elizabeth Woyke via @Brioneja

Tudor Brown, the President of ARM Holdings–the world’s leading supplier of semiconductor intellectual property–thinks tablets will be a big deal. He also believes they are far from meeting their full potential.

Innovation Lessons From Bees by Saul Kaplan

We can learn a lot about innovation by observing the social behavior of honeybees.  Who hasn’t been riveted by devastating stories of colony collapse? 

Have a good Weekend!