Jan 9, 2011 | Innovation, Leadership, Social Media
Ideo is an ideas factory, its stock in trade is ideas and the resulting products, that others commercialise. As such, it has been a lab or case study in how to innovate as they have grown. As a small business, they all knew each other, collaboration happened as a part of the DNA of the place, but growth and geographic spread made it increasingly difficult, so they set out to use themselves as the lab for themselves, evolving what they have called the “Tube” in which they mash up all the collaboration tools enabled by web 2.0 into a form that works for them.
Then, god bless them, they put it out there in the spirit of transparency and the collaborative energy that can be created, for us all to learn from.
Jan 5, 2011 | Change, Innovation
The “green revolution” may be denied by many, failing in the Parliament, and not engaging consumers as their utilities bills increase, but it is happening around us anyway.
The world is greening, despite the best efforts of many to avoid the issues. Because there is a dollar in it, businesses are recognising that the future will be different to the past, and are looking for ways to innovate and find opportunities to build new business models.
This list of the green initiatives of 2010 should make us all think, and perhaps conclude that in the challenges the planet faces in managing our consumption of non recurring resources, there are enormous opportunities for innovation, and change that will enhance the quality of life of those who follow us.
To this list we could easily add the impact of the current floods in Queensland on the world price of coal, and the knock-on impacts of that on utility bills of consumers and business. Given the role QLD plays in world coal supply, there will be some re-evaluation of scenarios in many boardrooms, and I would be surprised if the attraction of alternative energy sources, including nuclear was not considerably enhanced.
Jan 3, 2011 | Collaboration, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
The Microsoft business model has resisted all efforts to introduce open innovation practices into its markets, and many would argue, has stunted its growth and innovative potential as a result.
How rapidly things can change, even when you resist from a position of strength.
Microsoft introduced “Kinect” in the US just before Christmas, with the objective of wresting back some of the gamer/activity market into its X-Box offering which has suffered at the hands of the Wii. At the heart of Kinect is a chip with advanced capabilities, and very quickly hackers have found how to add open source access those capabilities, and are starting to explore applications that would not have occurred to Microsoft, or would have cost too much to pursue.
U-Tube is being used extensively to communicate the astonishing stuff being done, this one being the use of the Kinect chip extracted from a Kinect device bought for $150, to create 3-D images.
The message in all this is simply that open source innovation that engages the crowd outside the boundaries of your ability to harness IP is the exploding as the driver of innovation.
IP is almost unprotectable nowadays, the management task is now a question in two parts,
- “How do we create the conditions for the development of Intellectual Capital around our “patch”? ,
- ” How do we evolve our business model and monetarise it?
Dec 16, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing
This formula is a pretty widely used one, and it can hold true both for a corporation, and an individual. At the intersection, where individuals are employees, it is doubly true, as failure can impact not just on the corporate coffers, but on the individuals prospects for advancement when the corporate culture frowns on failure.
However, the formula disregards the simple fact that many successful product innovations have the breath of life given to them for purposes other than what made them ultimately successful.
Consider that the oil industry was built originally on the use of kerosene as a lighting fuel during the 18oo’s, petrol was a valueless by-product until the internal combustion engine came along to make use of it, Velcro was developed so US astronauts would have a way of stopping things floating away in space flight.
There are thousands of examples, all pay little heed to the formula, as it is really hard to imagine all the uses for something new before the “crowd” gets their hands on it and exercises their ingenuity, so many products fail in their stated objective, only to succeed elsewhere.
Dec 13, 2010 | Innovation
A bit over a year ago, I conducted a “brainstorming” session designed to stir the creative juices amongst marketers and engineers in a fairly specialised manufacturing company. We did all the usual stuff, breakouts, whiteboards, butcher-paper, mixed in with some deliberately provocative questions and several guests who came in a gave a contrarian view of their world. All was captured electronically for reference, recall, and follow up as the initiated ideas were filtered and turned into projects.
A couple of weeks ago, we conducted a more formal follow up in another brainstorm about the value and progress of the initial effort, and it was clear that whilst it was pretty good, the “buzz” of the initial workshop had been compromised, the corporate culture of conservative engineering, personnel KPI’s and cost management had overwhelmed the creative energy of the initial effort. We toyed with ideas about how we might address this challenge, and decided to put a big whiteboard with fishbone diagrams of all the identified projects, along with post-it notes and pens in a walkway area between the factory floor and the offices, a point of continuous traffic by all personnel, and encourage all to add their 2 cents worth at any time. Seemed like a pretty good idea, and the first couple of weeks have been encouraging.
Yesterday, this link to “ideapaint” was sent to me, same idea, but it is like comparing a V-Dub to a Ferrari!
Nov 25, 2010 | Customers, Innovation, Leadership, Management
Innovation programs always throw up the word “adjacency” and it has lots of interpretations, depending on who is doing the talking. So here is my two bobs worth.
Measure each of the following parameters on a 1-5 scale, (or 1-10 for a more nuanced outcome) 1 being the same as current, 5 being completely different, requiring new processes and infrastructure. Have a debate about the scores, collect more data, seek council of those with a different perspective, as it is generally a qualitative score rather than one that can be easily quantified.
- Channels to market
- Current sales force knowledge and relationships in the adjacent market
- Behavior of potential customers, the factors that drive their business model
- Existing potential customer relationships and the barriers to entry/exit in the market
- The nature of the competitive environment. (A “Porter” type analysis often assists here)
- The strength of your value proposition
