Vote Now - Innovation Insight Contest

In honor of the impact that Twitter has in democratizing information, Blogging Innovation is awarding a copy of the only business book I know of with a green cover - "Rethink" by Ric Merrifield - and a quick winner's profile on this blog, to the winner of the innovation insight contest.

Vote for your favorite innovation insight before 23:59 GMT on June 30th via one of the two following channels:

1. Twitter - Send an @reply on Twitter with the # of the entry you are voting for and @innovate AND #i140 in the body of the tweet


• This will allow everyone to see the votes


2. Blog Comment - Vote below as a comment - include the # of the entry in your vote

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I will announce five (5) finalists on July 1st on this blog, complete with links to their Twitter accounts.

I will announce the ONE (1) winner on July 2nd via my profile on Twitter and on this blog with a quick profile of the winner, their winning entry, and a link to their web site.

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Please vote by # for one these 30 entries (in no particular order):

1. The sovereignty of your #innovation is often more valuable than its content. - @jsbelfiore


2. "90% of what we learn comes AFTER we launch a new product." - Eric Feng, CTO of Hulu - @veget


3. The key to successful #innovation is learning to channel your inner wise-ass. - @jsbelfiore


4. Do Better Today - What You Did Yesterday. - @pehodk


5. #Innovation is a mirror, which reflects your thought processes. If you see nothing, you're a vampire. - @jsbelfiore


6. Genius in innovation is the clever reapplication of the "obvious" in a non-obvious manner or area - @jmccolgin


7. Solutions come & go based on current technology; but underlying needs of audience transcend time and lead to meaningful solutions - @adamdole


8. Innovation doesn't just fall into your lap - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


9. Ideas have to be consciously designed - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


10. The application of a technology follows the generation of an idea, not visa versa - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


11. Innovation is the intersection of what's possible, viable and desirable. - @ddetlefsen


12. Innovation requires commitment. What is commitment? A chicken is "interested" in breakfast. The pig is "committed" to it. - @ddetlefsen


13. Innovation is change that adds value. In math: I=Magnitude of Change*(addition of good features + removal of bad features) - @ddetlefsen


14. Innovation does not just happen for free or by magic - it's a game you can choose to win - @simontevans


15. Make innovation happen by instilling fear - why? Because chasing an oppt is an option; running away from danger is a must - @bpluskowski


16. Innovation is the process of uncovering problems for which people need solutions, and then developing a valuable and accessible solution. - i360 Insight


17. "Nothing can withstand sustained thinking" ~ Voltaire - @tomludwicki


18. Innovation is like loosing weight. Everyone wants & talks about it, knows its benefits, but most won't work for it. - @ddetlefsen


19. Aligning Business models with market expectations and Challenge the Market with Rapid Demonstrator development - @stefaanvermael


20. Research is the transformation of money into knowledge - Innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money! - @Lerou


21. Insight in a Marketing-driven company is hindsight, while Insight in Innovation-driven company is foresight. - @Lerou


22. Implementing best practice is replicating yesterday; innovation is designing tomorrow. - @paulsloane


23. I do not know who discovered water but I am sure it was not a fish. We cannot perceive that in which we are immersed. - @paulsloane


24. Organizations that have a high % of people initiating innovative solutions 2 social problems are far more likely to thrive. - @DennisHoenig


25. Will not innovate with a scam, will not innovate sending spam. will not innovate if workers cram, will not innovate Sam I am - @chris_townsend_


26. Innovation and creativity seem to peak where the ripples spreading outward from knowledge networks intersect. - @geniusnet


27. Creativity = the contxn b/w 2 seemingly random objects. Innovation = creating market value from two seemingly random objects. - @adamdole


28. Question all rules. 1900 Olympics only 15 women took part. It was feared if she ran too fast her uterus would fall out. - @Journeywoman


29. Humankind's evolution: Stone Age-> Feudal Age-> Industrial Age-> Information Age-> Knowledge Age-> Awareness Age - @CrazyColombian


30. Everything big started small. - @ryantracey

If you're not on Twitter, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed to find out who the five finalists and the one winner will be.

I look forward to announcing the five innovation insight contest finalists!


Join the lively innovation discussion on the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn:


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Importance of Recognition to Innovation Success

Interview - Adrian Gostick of "The Carrot Principle"

I had the opportunity to interview Adrian Gostick, one of the co-authors of "The Carrot Principle" about the importance of recognition to successful innovation efforts.

Because innovation comes most often from engaged employees, recognition is key to moving employees from marking time to making innovation.

My book review of "The Carrot Principle" can be found here.

Here is the text from the interview:

1. Do you feel that companies should incentivize innovation?

Absolutely. We studied 200,000-people for The Carrot Principle, and a simple truth we found in that data is that people do more of that which is rewarded. If you want great customer service, you find, reward and publicize people who go above and beyond in serving your customers. If you want innovative products, service and solutions, you reward that behavior. It's a no-brainer, but rare is the organization that actually puts this in place in a formal way.


2. How do you recommend that companies think about incentivizing innovation?

Xcel Energy is a great example. This energy company in the West has 10,000 employees. They tried the old suggestion boxes, which got stuffed with gum wrappers and suggestions such as "why don't you pay me more." Instead, they used recognition to drive great ideas. The year we studied the program, they saw 7,500 ideas come into the recognition-based innovation program, and more than two thirds were implemented for a $17 million savings to the organization. They recognized every idea that came in with a very small token. If the idea was accepted, it received a slightly larger recognition award. But if the idea was implemented and saved the company money, the innovation received a third, much more substantial recognition award (from a selection of merchandise awards), that was commensurate with the achievement. So they used recognition three times on great ideas, and the results speak for themselves.


3. What do you recommend that companies keep in mind when recognizing innovation achievements?

Don't make things too complicated. A lot of recognition has to be approved by a committee and takes months. Give idea generators instant thanks. Next, make sure the awards are equal in value to the accomplishment. We've seen organizations where every idea gets a gift certificate to Dairy Queen (seriously). So the guy who comes up with the innovation that makes the company a hundred grand in new revenue gets the same reward as the person who cleaned out the supply cabinet. This happens all the time. Finally, make sure you are publicly recognizing your innovators. Many managers keep recognition in the shadows because they are afraid of jealousies on the team. Nothing could be more dangerous. Employees know who the innovators are on the team, and if you fail to recognize them you fail to show what we consider "excellence" around here. And you will eventually stop getting good ideas from your stars.


4. Anything you would like to say on the topic of recognition and innovation?

Be frequent in your praise as people are developing ideas. Keep letting them know their efforts are appreciated in specific ways. But when they achieve, make sure they get a reward. We praise effort, but we reward results. Get that right, and you'll keep innovating on your team.


As a special bonus, here is a video of Chester Elton (the other co-author) giving the highlights of "The Carrot Principle" (click on the box if you get a black box):





What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Book Review and Innovation Summary - "The Carrot Principle"

A couple of weeks ago I received "The Carrot Principle" by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton in the mail. Now you might be thinking - What does a book for managers about recognition have to do with innovation?

Well, as I like to say:

"Innovation is a gift. What are you doing to encourage employees to give it?"

Innovation comes from employees that value belonging to the organization, and that are satisfied and engaged in their roles with the organization. One of the main ways that you can create a workforce willing to gift both sustaining innovations and breakthrough innovations to the organization is by adequately recognizing employees for what they contribute to the organization. Innovation is so difficult for most organizations because most managers neglect to provide sufficient recognition to their employees.

"The Carrot Principle" is a well-written book about how the best managers use recognition to engage employees, boost retention, and accelerate performance. The thinking in the book is backed by two extensive research projects that serve not only to substantiate the authors' points, but also to illustrate them.

The book focuses on showing how a manager that improves their recognition skills can actually increase their perceived performance on the basic four areas of leadership:

• Goal Setting


• Communication


• Trust


• Accountability

When managers focus on improving their recognition skills and focus on improving their skills in these four areas, they can move employees higher up in this Maslow-esque pyramid towards creating a self-actualized workforce. The top of the pyramid is where the gift of innovation occurs.


Managers move employees there by focusing on mastery of the building blocks of recognition:

• Day-to-day recognition


• Frequent, specific, timely


• Above-and-beyond recognition


• Value, impact, personal


• Career recognition


• Celebration events

Recognition done well helps to build employee satisfaction and engagement. The top three predictors of employee engagement are:

1. Opportunity and well-being


2. Trust


3. Pride in the organizational symbol

Recognition done well helps to increase your performance with employees on these three predictors and thus your chances for employee engagement.

To help managers prime their recognition pump, the book provides a chapter with 125 recognition ideas.

But of course, managers have to sustain their recognition efforts for their effects to hold. The reward?

Managers will be seen as:

• Better goal setters


• Better communicators


• More trustworthy


• Able to hold people accountable

... and of course if managers can increase employee engagement, then the organization will better be able to innovate.

And after all, isn't creating a more innovative organization what it is really all about anyways?


My interview with "The Carrot Principle" co-author Adrian Gostick can be found here.


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Innovation in Education

Teaching Moves Beyond the Classroom

Somewhat surprisingly, and despite huge advances in technology and communications, very little has changed in the way we teach - either in formal educational settings or in the world of work.

Whereas the ways we learn and access knowledge in our day-to-day lives are almost entirely informal, the vast majority of teaching is still done in classrooms and lecture halls. We learn through examples, trial and error and discussing ideas - with everyone acquiring knowledge at their own pace and in formats that suit them. We teach through one-size-fits-all curriculum and 60 minute classes where sharing is akin to cheating.

The good news is that this is starting to change - albeit slowly - as educators and trainers are increasingly experimenting with new technologies.


Making Use of Social Media Tools

Social media would appear to lend itself neatly to education - social learning if you will. From YouTube videos (see below) to classroom wikis, educators are starting to see the value in cooperation via social networking tools. The tool of the day, Twitter, has found some particularly interesting uses. Dallas history professor, Monica Rankin, has been experimenting with using Twitter in the classroom - using a weekly hashtag to track comments, questions and feedback posted by students during class. As she noted in her blog:

• "Most educators would agree that large classes set in the auditorium-style classrooms limit teaching options to lecture, lecture, and more lecture. And most educators would also agree that this is not the most effective way to teach. I wanted to find a way to incorporate more student-centered learning techniques and involve the students more fully into the material."

(Further reading: Twitter in the Classroom).


Online Video Creates a Global Classroom

The idea of openly sharing course content via video first gained notoriety with MIT's 'open courseware' model. The idea is simple, and it's spreading. Academic Earth provides access to video lectures from some of the world's top professors at Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. The Open Educational Resources Hub brings together free to use teaching resources suitable for primary, secondary and post-secondary educators - all freely submitted by other educators. Even Britain's grandly named Royal Society provides free webcasts of their events and lectures.


Gaming Gets Serious

Nintendo's series of 'brain training' games are the consumer-incarnation of the growing serious games industry. Companies and organisations like the Serious Games Institute are championing the use of virtual reality simulations, RPGs and even simple PlayStation and Wii style games to help deliver everything from literacy and numeracy training to health and safety modules.

PSPs (Playstation Portables) in particular have been growing in popularity with some educators due to their portability and multiple functionality - which allows for both display and capture of multimedia content. A once failing school in England recently saw huge improvements across the board after introducing games like Thrillville (which challenges players to run a themepark) into the business studies curriculum and encouraging history students to use the PSP to record classes for later study and view historical documents in detail.

(Further reading: Futurelab's article on PSPs in education).


Mobile Learning Comes Into Its Own

In a similar vein, as mobile phones become more like tiny laptops (and more powerful than many), their use in education and training is ever more prevalent. A quick stroll through the iPhone app store reveals simple educational tools like FlashMath which helps teach arithmetic to elementary school level. At a recent elearning conference, British Army Major, Roy Evans discussed how iPods were being trialled in action in Afganistan as an alternative to printed language flash cards. The only negative feedback was that soldiers didn't need the Army issued iPods, they had their own.

Of course there have always been pioneers making innovative use of technology in education but as the Net Generation come of age, they are bringing with them a new way of working, and learning. The beginnings of a groundswell of change in how we teach perhaps?


About the Author

Mark Nagurski writes about innovative new business ideas at iddictive.com and elearning in the public sector at elearninglounge.com

140char Innovation Insight Contest

In honor of the impact that Twitter has in democratizing information, I'd like to give everyone a chance to win a copy of the only business book I know of with a green cover - "Rethink" by Ric Merrifield.

The rules for entering the contest are simple. Send us your favorite innovation insight in 140 characters or less* via one of the two following channels:

1. Twitter - Send your favorite innovation insight as a tweet on Twitter with @innovate AND #i140 in the body of the tweet


• This will allow everyone to see all of the innovation insights submitted on Twitter by doing a search for #i140


2. Blog Comment - Post your innovation insight below as a comment in 124 characters or less


• This is to level the playing field for people who post a comment vs. a Twitter tweet

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@reply and comment voting from 00:00 GMT to 23:59 GMT on June 30th will decide the finalists.

I will announce five (5) finalists on July 1st on this blog, complete with links to their Twitter accounts.

I will announce the ONE (1) winner on July 2nd via my profile on Twitter and on this blog with a quick profile of the winner, their winning entry, and a link to their web site.

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Here are the entries so far (in no particular order):

1. The sovereignty of your #innovation is often more valuable than its content. - @jsbelfiore


2. "90% of what we learn comes AFTER we launch a new product." - Eric Feng, CTO of Hulu - @veget


3. The key to successful #innovation is learning to channel your inner wise-ass. - @jsbelfiore


4. Do Better Today - What You Did Yesterday. - @pehodk


5. #Innovation is a mirror, which reflects your thought processes. If you see nothing, you're a vampire. - @jsbelfiore


6. Genius in innovation is the clever reapplication of the "obvious" in a non-obvious manner or area - @jmccolgin


7. Solutions come & go based on current technology; but underlying needs of audience transcend time and lead to meaningful solutions - @adamdole


8. Innovation doesn't just fall into your lap - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


9. Ideas have to be consciously designed - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


10. The application of a technology follows the generation of an idea, not visa versa - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


11. Innovation is the intersection of what's possible, viable and desirable. - @ddetlefsen


12. Innovation requires commitment. What is commitment? A chicken is "interested" in breakfast. The pig is "committed" to it. - @ddetlefsen


13. Innovation is change that adds value. In math: I=Magnitude of Change*(addition of good features + removal of bad features) - @ddetlefsen


14. Innovation does not just happen for free or by magic - it's a game you can choose to win - @simontevans


15. Make innovation happen by instilling fear - why? Because chasing an oppt is an option; running away from danger is a must - @bpluskowski


16. Innovation is the process of uncovering problems for which people need solutions, and then developing a valuable and accessible solution. - i360 Insight


17. "Nothing can withstand sustained thinking" ~ Voltaire - @tomludwicki


18. Innovation is like loosing weight. Everyone wants & talks about it, knows its benefits, but most won't work for it. - @ddetlefsen


19. Aligning Business models with market expectations and Challenge the Market with Rapid Demonstrator development - @stefaanvermael


20. Research is the transformation of money into knowledge - Innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money! - @Lerou


21. Insight in a Marketing-driven company is hindsight, while Insight in Innovation-driven company is foresight. - @Lerou


22. Implementing best practice is replicating yesterday; innovation is designing tomorrow. - @paulsloane


23. I do not know who discovered water but I am sure it was not a fish. We cannot perceive that in which we are immersed. - @paulsloane


24. Organizations that have a high % of people initiating innovative solutions 2 social problems are far more likely to thrive. - @DennisHoenig


25. Will not innovate with a scam, will not innovate sending spam. will not innovate if workers cram, will not innovate Sam I am - @chris_townsend_


26. Innovation and creativity seem to peak where the ripples spreading outward from knowledge networks intersect. - @geniusnet


27. Creativity = the contxn b/w 2 seemingly random objects. Innovation = creating market value from two seemingly random objects. - @adamdole


28. Question all rules. 1900 Olympics only 15 women took part. It was feared if she ran too fast her uterus would fall out. - @Journeywoman


29. Humankind's evolution: Stone Age-> Feudal Age-> Industrial Age-> Information Age-> Knowledge Age-> Awareness Age - @CrazyColombian


30. Everything big started small. - @ryantracey

And some of my own to help stimulate thinking (@innovate):

• "Innovation is a gift. What are you doing to ensure employees want to give it?"


• "An innovation leader's job isn't to provide the answers but to provoke the thinking that gets you there."


• Knowledge Management is more about "How do I?" while Innovation is more about "Why don't we?"


• "We must create clarity in innovation strategy, goals, and participation for a continuous innovation culture to be created."

I look forward to seeing your favorite innovation insights!


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Interview with Retired President X

I had lunch yesterday with the recently-retired president of a multi-billion dollar company and we had a great conversation about innovation, leadership, and culture. He enjoys his private life so I won't be naming any names, but I will share some of the key insights and advice for innovators that came out of the conversation.

1. Don't be afraid to pay people well. When people aren't busy worrying about money, they can focus on how to get more money into the business instead of trying to figure out how to get more money out of the business for themselves. Removing money from the equation also increases the chances that employees will bring their best ideas to the business instead of leaving to create a startup based on them.



2. If you are an innovator and want to develop your idea within the company you are working for (whether it is an incremental innovation or a radical innovation), try to take it to someone who can say yes. There are far too many people in organizations that are trained to say no, and far too few who are equipped to say yes. Unfortunately, most organizations reinforce the importance of saying no, without empowering enough managers to say yes.



3. Run as flat an organization as possible is crucial to innovation. Flatter organizations have fewer people in the middle to say no, and flatter organizations require managers to push more decisions to the edges of the organization. Pushing decisions to the edge of an organization tends to result in better decisions. The farther removed you are from all of the factors in decisions, the less succcessful you will be in making them correctly.



4. Echoing former Halliburton CEO John Gibson's thoughts - people brought in to help re-make the organization will ultimately be defeated by the processes and culture of the organization. Organizational change must occur from within and will generally occur quite slowly.



5. Big ideas should be separated from the main organization into a new organization funded by the board of directors and reporting directly to them. They should also be staffed with employees from outside the main organization as well (except maybe Finance to enable consistent reporting). When you try and keep these potential radical innovations within the main organization, inevitably conflicts of interest will emerge between funding the idea and funding other transitory short-term leadership priorities.



6. Upper management doesn't generally know the best ways to effectively improve individual components of the organization. One approach to maximizing incremental innovation and improvement possibilities is to give the employees (not management) of a factory, a business unit, etc. a pile of money to use to improve the organization. You will be surprised how quickly employees can self-organize to determine the best uses for the money, how good they will be in selecting the best improvements to fund, and how fast stories about such an effort will spread to other parts of the organization.



7. When people have an idea, they often just jump in and start developing the idea (even those ideas that others have had before), often reinventing the wheel and repeating many of the mistakes of those who have gone before them. To reduce waste and to accelerate success, consider having people submit a short research paper on the area of innovation they plan to pursue (to show that they have researched those that have gone before them). At the same time, somehow we have to find a better way of capturing the learnings from failed efforts for those undertaking new projects to learn from.

Finally, President X expressed that he would encourage anyone about to rise to the top job to take a break before assuming the top job to refresh, reflect, and to bring renewed energy and insights into the job. Whether or not you are in the top job or several levels down, I think there are some interesting insights to ponder here.


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Conferences 3.0

To get the latest thinking and network with their peers, managers used to jump on a plane and go to an industry trade show or conference. Now with the Internet and Social Networks, managers can do a lot of the same things right from their desk. Conferences and trade shows are facing disruption from blogs, webinars, and social media. The economic downturn hasn't helped matters as companies have slashed education and travel budgets.

To survive, conferences will have to harness the power of the very tools that are threatening to kill them. This means the logistics requirements and characteristics of conference events are changing. In today's digital world, conferences have the ability to spill beyond the four walls of the event and grow their platform at the same time.

TED, with good reason, is widely considered the leader when it comes to utilizing digital media into their approach to events (including their wide distribution of recorded video content from their events). Outside of TED, of the different approaches to integrating digital and social media into conferences that I've seen, HSM Americas has the most innovative approach.

HSM Americas really seems to understand the important role that digital and social media can play in not only augmenting the experience for attendees, but also in expanding public awareness of the event and increasing the desire of non-attendees to attend the next event in person.

I had the opportunity to sit down with George Levy and Becky Gee of HSM Americas to discuss the Bloggers Hub concept from the World Innovation Forum and asked them the following five questions:

1. How did HSM Americas decide to do the Bloggers Hub at the World Innovation Forum?


• We wanted to expand the wisdom being shared by the speakers beyond the four walls, to expand the reach and impact to those that would like to come to the live event, but for whatever reason were unable to.



2. What were the key challenges to executing the Bloggers Hub concept?


• The greatest challenge was building a process - inventing as we went. The selection of the bloggers was particularly challenging.
  We had to look at what the make up of the group might be, where the Bloggers Hub would sit in the event space, and other big questions.



3. Do you feel that HSM Americas got a positive return on investment on the effort?


• This was a very good play, both from an exposure standpoint but also from a satisfaction standpoint (sponsors and bloggers). The value that attendees received from the event went beyond the timing of the event - "Continues after the curtain goes down."



4. Do you plan on repeating the Bloggers Hub concept?


• Yes, we will do it for the World Business Forum, although the organization will be more complicated because the conference will have more topics (more difficult to select the bloggers).



5. What were the biggest learnings for next time?


• We think that there are opportunities to better integrate the activities in the Bloggers Hub with what is happening on the stage. We will have to identify ways to expand the learning and interaction during and after the event.

The take-aways from my experiences and the conversation with HSM Americas, was that to put on a truly excellent conference today that is capable of extending beyond the four walls of the event, you should consider doing the following:

1. Create a selection process for inclusion of the digital press into your press strategy. Organize your digital press corps in advance of the event and arm them with digital media, speaker bios, discount codes, etc. so they can help build awareness for the event.


2. Make sure there are plenty of power plugins, WiFi, and suitable work surfaces


3. Build one community for the press and another for attendees on LinkedIn, Ning, or another social network in advance of the event so they can start familiarizing themselves with each other. Use these communities to also solicit feedback from both groups to help the speakers evolve their talks to be as interesting as possible for attendees.


4. Organize a face-to-face social event for all of the press you have invited to attend


5. Publish a list of web sites covering the event in advance so people know where to find videos, articles, and podcasts from the event (both before and after)


6. Create a Twitter strategy and a Twitter hashtag and begin using it in advance of the event. Announce the Twitter hashtag at the beginning of every event session, and display the Twitter feed on your event web site during the event, in public areas at the event and on the big screen during event breaks


7. Encourage mixing between attendees and the press. This will enrich the coverage of the event.


8. Consider working with the speaker to provide course-changing input based on audience sentiment from Twitter, but DO NOT put up a live Twitter feed up behind the speaker or let the speaker monitor the Twitter feed during the event - Too Distracting!

Can conference organizers avoid sharing the fate of COMDEX? Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure - leveraging digital and social media are the only ways to avoid being disrupted by them.


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Innovation Through Design Thinking

Here is another video from Tim Brown of IDEO, this one is "Innovation Through Design Thinking" from a visit to MIT (skip ahead three minutes if you're pressed for time):





According to IDEO, Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation.

This video highlights how companies use design thinking in their businesses, from Motorola thinking about strategy to P&G thinking about moving into new markets to Microsoft thinking about the application of new technology.

I've always believed that:

Innovation = Invention + Insights

It was good to see Tim reinforce this core belief when he says "Insights are the fuel for innovation."

Some of the key things to consider when looking to use design thinking as an approach to innovation:

1. Analogous situations (example: hospital operating teams versus pit crews)


2. Insights come from the extreme users (example: working with kids on cooking tool project)


3. Getting out there to look, listen, try


4. Building to think - prototyping for thinking and learning not as an outcome of what you've done


5. Using storytelling to develop and express ideas


6. Design thinking is not just about methodology, it is just as much about culture

Finally I'd like to leave you with one thought from the video:

"Many great ideas fail not because they were not great ideas, but because they could not navigate the politics and processes of the organization."


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

My View on Crowdsourcing Published on BusinessWeek.com

Helen Walters, Business Week's Editor for Innovation and Design, recently gathered opinions on crowdsourcing, via Twitter.

I replied with a quote via email and Business Week published it recently with a dozen others. Here's mine:


You can find the whole slide show here.

"The future of crowdsourcing will be as an integrated and required part of the front end of innovation. Its role, however, will be limited in order to protect brand perception and competitive differentiation. Crowdsourcing will serve as an input into the innovation process that must be filtered by internal resources and built upon as necessary. The most forward-thinking organizations will invite the wisest of the crowd to participate in this idea refinement side by side with internal resources."


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Tim Brown - Powerful Link Between Creativity and Play

I came across this great video from Tim Brown of IDEO about creativity and play that I thought I would share with you:





It is interesting as you watch the video to think about what narrowing behaviors you've taken on as an adult, and to think about how you might step outside them to achieve greater creativity.

As I was watching the video, I found myself wondering why design is not part of the core curriculum for students growing up and going through elementary school and high school.

I know there are movements out there to merge b-school and d-school thinking, but it's a lot more work to get people to unlearn old behaviors and learn new ones. How much more efficient and enjoyable would our society be if we all thought like designers?

What do you think?

Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate Conference Wrapup

I just returned from a great experience at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations in New York City. Hosting the conference at the United Nations seemed appropriate given that it was a gathering of people who are trying to change the world. The percentage of people representing non-profits and social capitalist organizations was much higher than I expected, and it made for fascinating discussions. The conference was hosted in a gigantic conference room at the United Nations where UN delegates recently discussed the current economic crisis and debated potential solutions.

The conference was a combination of keynotes, panel discussions, and group breakouts where the groups debated one particular topic and brought their collective reactions back to the bigger group. There was a high level of interaction between participants during the various breaks and meals - with the public, the private, and the charitable all coming together for some interesting conversations and debates.

I had the opportunity to record the following video interviews to share with you:

• Dean Kamen - Founder of DEKA Research and FIRST


• Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin - Innocentive Founder and CEO


• Charlie Brown - Executive Director of Ashoka's Changemakers


• Neil Blakesley - VP, Strategy Marketing and Propositions for BT Americas

I have also published a collection of blog articles that highlight the top insights from the various sessions:

• Peter Diamandis and Matt Bross


• Keith Ferrazzi and Don Tapscott


• Tool #1: Open Collaboration


• Tool #2: Incentivized Competition


• Healthcare Industry Applications


• Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn


• Creating an Innovation Culture in Your Company


• Global Development and Partnerships

Here is a video from the Xprize Foundation from the conference to give you a quick inside look into what the conference was like:




I thought that incentive2innovate was a great conference and that the Xprize Foundation organizers put on a fantastic event in a historic location. But, I'm not sure how they can put on another compelling event next year without expanding the focus of the conference. Given the large number of social enterprises, charities, and NGO's at the conference this year, that might be one direction to go - "Innovation for the Greater Good." For people interested in this topic, I encourage you to download and read my white paper "Charitable Innovation - Disrupting for Good."


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Global Development & Partnerships

The final panel on the second day at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations was on global development and partnerships. The panel was moderated by Michael Green (Co-Author "Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World"):

Andreas Widmer, Co-Founder, S.E.VEN (Social Equity Venture) Fund
Amir Dossal, Executive Director, United Nations Office for Partnerships
Charlie Brown, Executive Director, Ashoka Changemakers
Carol Armistead Grigsby, Deputy Director, Office of Development Partners (ODP), US Agency for International Development (USAID)



Rather than trying to recount the discussion, I thought I would present the Top Insights from the panel:

1. "Innovation requires the use of appropriate technology for your target markets (whether corporate or non-profit)." - Andreas Widmer


2. "When a non-profit is looking to run a contest, it shouldn't be focused solely on the ideas or the solutions, but on the total impact." - Charlie Brown


3. Ashoka's Changemakers seeks to act as an accelerator for external foundations who provide sponsorship for its challenges.


4. "There are lots of social efforts going on and sometimes it can feel overwhelming but you have to get involved." - Charlie Brown


5. USAID plans to launch "innovation springs" similar to the "innovation jams" at IBM.

What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Creating an Innovation Culture

The second panel on the second day at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations was on creating an innovation culture in your organization. The panel was moderated by Dwayne Spradlin, CEO, InnoCentive:

Neil Blakesley, VP, Strategy Marketing & Propositions, BT Americas
Marthin de Beer, SVP, Emerging Technologies Group, Cisco
John Gibson, CEO, Paradigm
Judy Estrin, Author, "Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy"



Rather than trying to recount the discussion, I thought I would present the Top Insights from the panel and the breakout session outcomes:

1. Thee most accurate lifeline on Who Wants to be a Millionaire is ask the audience, but most people use it first instead of saving it for later. The point is that even when people are presented with data or intrinsicly know something, they don't always modify behavior to their best strategic advantage.


2. "The shift in thinking behind Open Innovation is that companies don't have to originate the research to profit from it." - Dwayne Spradlin


3. "Culture eats strategy for lunch" - Dwayne Spradlin - For companies to be successful in Open Innovation a cultural transformation will be necessary.


4. 10 yrs ago Ford was #1 in R&D spend on planet, now they are 67th. R&D doesn't necessarily equal innovation.


5. "You must have assets & attributes in your organization, make the necessary structural changes, and secure the commitment of the organization to innovate successfully." -Neil Blakesley


6. Cisco's Innovation Model - Build, Buy, Partner, Collaborate - You must open up and be excellent at collaboration to innovate in today's world.


7. "If you don't already have innovation in your organizational DNA then you must do a lot of heavy lifting to get there." - Marthin de Beer


8. "Go to market is much more difficult than coming up with the idea (only 10% of great ideas make it)." - Marthin de Beer


9. "Sarbanes Oxley and the short-term profit focus of the markets have forced organizations to have managers at the helm instead of leaders who can drive the original vision forward." - John Gibson


10. "I brought in a clean slate of managers to turn the organization around, but ended up with the same culture at the end. The processes in a company drive most of the culture, you have to change them to change the culture." - John Gibson


11. "If you have the 'capacity for change' then you will have an environment in which real innovation can happen." - Judy Estrin


12. "Challenges motivate innovation - threats kill innovation" - Judy Estrin


13. "What is an innovation ecosystem? - You need right balance between research, development, application, & behavioral change capability." - Judy Estrin


14. "You should do the ratio between people that report/talk about the business versus people focused on innovation. The results will surprise you." - Neil Blakesley


15. "Companies need a culture of Internal Innovation to complement a culture of Open Innovation. Swinging too far towards Open Innovation could prevent you from attracting the talent you need for Internal Innovation." - Judy Estrin

What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn

Day two at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations featured a keynote by Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn.

Reid Hoffman took the stage and began by speaking about how individiduals are now small businesses, before moving on to discuss how the venture capital industry started in Boston but has been eclipsed by Silicon Valley. Proliferation of open networks in the valley are the reason. Collaboration has driven the success of Silicon Valley, not just physical proximity - other locales have been more controlling of information.

Reid talked about how often entrepreneurs don't want to tell anyone about their idea. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur with a great idea, then identify the right people to talk with about your "secret" idea and spill the beans. You will get lots of useful feedback more often than competition. Fail fast!

On the topic of social networks, Reid Hoffman talked about how 2/3 of his network thought he was crazy when he pitched LinkedIn, but he persisted anyways. Reid doesn't think that LinkedIn and Facebook compete today, and that Twitter and Facebook aren't directly competitive either - Twitter does universal sharing and Facebook does limited sharing. One of the best quotes of the talk was:

"MySpace is the bar. Facebook is the backyard BBQ. LinkedIn is the office."


Reid Hoffman's final major point was that we still penalize people for failure when we need to let people say - "No I learned and now I'm ready to play again."


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Healthcare Industry Applications

The first panel on the second day at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations was on applying incentive prizes and open collaboration in the healthcare industry. The panel was moderated by Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Chairman & CEO, X PRIZE Foundation:

Eric Eisenstadt, Ph.D., Deputy Vice President for Research, J. Craig Venter Institute
Lisa Latts, M.D., Vice President, Clinical Excellence, WellPoint, Inc.
Yury Rozenman, Head of Strategy and Marketing, Healthcare & Life Sciences, BT Global Services
Dean Kamen, President, DEKA Research & Development Corporation



Rather than trying to recount the discussion, I thought I would present the Top Insights from the part of the panel and the breakout session outcomes that I was able to catch:

1. Interesting idea for healthcare - Connecting people to earn health points that would allow people and communities to compete on health.


2. Creating collaborative competition - Group 6 would like to encourage health insurers to compete for a prize for wellness improvements.


3. Group 7 would like to create a smart, immersive environment that people can use to educate themselves and to connect with other people facing the same procedure (pre-operation).


4. Group 10 focused on how you change people's behavior and changing the whole system around desired outcomes to support behavior change.


5. Persistence, compliance, and adherence are key in healthcare.

What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Tool #2: Incentivized Competition

The second panel at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations was on incentivized competition. The panel was moderated by Matthew Bishop (Chief Business Writer/US Business Editor, The Economist; Co-Author "Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World"):

Paul Jansen, Partner, McKinsey & Company
Jonathan Bays, Social Sector Consultant, McKinsey & Company
Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Chairman & CEO, X PRIZE Foundation
Alpheus Bingham, Ph.D., Founder and Board Member, InnoCentive
Anthony J. Tether, Ph.D., Former Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)



Rather than trying to recount the discussion, I thought I would present the Top Insights from the panel:

1. McKinsey did a study of whether or not prizes work in philanthropy. They found that prizes are a unique & powerful tool to drive innovation. Prizes have been used for a long time - including the Orteig Prize that rewarded Lindbergh for his transatlantic flight with $25,000. Download the study as PDF


2. The growth rate in available prizes is running at 14% a year. Almost half has come from foundations or non-profits established between 1995 and now. The majority of prizes used to be for the arts and now they are for the sciences.


3. Prizes can employ as many as seven different mechanisms to achieve their goals. Here are seven ways that prizes deliver change:


1. Identify Excellence


2. Focus a Community


3. Influence Public Perception


4. Identify and Mobilize New Talent


5. Strengthen Community


6. Educate and Improve Skills


7. Mobilize Capital


4. Successful "Solvers" often are very distant from the solution. This a good reason to create interdisciplinary teams to seek solutions.


5. Achievement of a prize helps to transform what the broader population believes is possible. A hidden but powerful benefit!


6. There are six major prize types


1. Participation


2. Exemplar


3. Network


4. Exposition


5. Point Solution


6. Market Stimulation


7. The new healthcare Xprize could help transform healthcare from reactive medicine to proactive, personalized medicine.


8. We create stories around the Aha! moments that result in success, ignoring the unsuccessful attempts that helped drive that Aha! moment. We should celebrate the role of failures in successes.


9. "Money is not the reason for kids not getting into science. We haven't been giving them interesting, difficult challenges to inspire them." - Anthony Tether


10. The key to Open Innovation is defining the problem and then identifying the crucial barriers that need to be overcome to solve it.


11. DARPA Grand Challenge competitors were actually more interested in the trophy than the millions of dollars. When doing an innovation prize, it is important to understand what the motivation is of your potential competitors - money is not the only draw.


12. If there is not a sustainable community that will continue beyond prize achievement, then the prize may not succeed.


13. "Entities that underinvest in execution of the prize to offer a larger prize, will often be underwhelmed by the results." - Paul Jansen


14. Informational power is widely distributed, financial power is concentrated - both can be used to drive innovation - powerful together.

What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Tool #1: Open Collaboration

The first panel at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations was on open collaboration. The panel was moderated by Don Tapscott (Author, "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything" and "Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing the World"):

Arianna Huffington, Author, Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief, Huffington Post
Rob McEwen, Founder, Goldcorp, and CEO/Chairman, US Gold
Marthin de Beer, SVP, Emerging Technologies Group, Cisco
Filippo Passerini, Chief Information & Global Services Officer, Procter & Gamble
Karim R. Lakhani, Assistant Professor, Richard Hodgson Fellow, Harvard Business School


Rather than trying to recount the discussion, I thought I would present the Top Insights from the part of the panel I was able to catch:

1. "People who know how to network effectively with other organizations will win as innovation becomes more open" - Filippo Passerini of P&G


2. "A lot of the Solvers want to signal to the community that they are very qualified people (even if they don't win). Open innovation also provides an outlet for collaboration that Solvers are potentially not getting in their current organization." - Karim Lakhani of HBS


3. The key to incenting innovation is how you define the problem and whether or not you encourage collaboration in launching the challenge.


4. "You have to identify the win-win in open innovation and remember that though it is a new business model, it still requires the same major components." - Filippo Passerini


5. "You have to build upon the contributions from open innovation and be open to failure." - Karim Lakhani of HBS

What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Keith Ferrazzi and Don Tapscott

After the welcome speeches concluded, Keith Ferrazzi came out and tried to get people to loosen up and get ready to take risks and collaborate for the greater good during the conference. Keith made several key points including the fact that you can't have innovation unless you have the ability to take social risk.

Keith Ferrazzi talked to the audience about how telling a story is emotional transportation to a place where someone actually cares. He then began to tell a story about his upbringing and being the poorest kid in the best school and how that influenced his life. He linked that to how real innovation requires people to let their guards down, take risks, and care about their teams.

Keith had the audience do two interaction exercises by turning to their neighbors and asking each other "What are you passionate about?" and "What holds you back?" He did this to force people to think about it and to express it.

Don Tapscott, author of "Wikinomics", "Growing up Digital", and "Grown up Digital" took the stage after Keith Ferrazzi. Don started by talking about technology and interconnectedness. Don talked about how the door to his hotel room probably has an IP address, before moving onto a story about a friend who's fence talks to his sprinkler because if a burglar jumps the fence, the sprinkler is the first line of defense.

Don's next topic was the exploration of how generations impact society, and how the digital generation just elected their first President of the United States - Barack Obama. The defining characteristic of the Digital Generation is that they grew up bathed in bits. They turn on their PC when they get home instead of their television. Spending time online instead of watching television changes the way people think and the way their brains function.

From there Don moved on to talk about how the Digital Generation is probably the first generation where kids occupy the position of expert on a subject in the household. He also made the point that just because today's kids don't read the newspaper, it doesn't mean they are not current on the news. The Digital Generation tends to triangulate its news using 60-70 rss feeds instead of picking up a dead tree. Plus, The Daily Show is only funny if you know what is going on in the news.

Don Tapscott talked about how the Net Generation will be characterized by innovation, and how your organization shouldn't have a web site, but instead it should create a self-organizing, vibrant community. Self-organization has been around since human history, but what used to happen over months or centuries now happens over days or weeks. Obama used a platform for self-organization to get elected, but now he is also using it as a platform to govern.

According to Don we are in the era of mass collaboration. So why in this era of self-organization isn't everyone an independent contractor? Well, the costs of search and collaboration are still one reason. As a result, organizations will still be better served by having employees for some time. They will however turn increasingly to open innovation. What is going to be one of the keys for organizations as they move to open innovation?

Well, if you're going to be naked, fitness is no longer optional - Moving to open innovation means being innovationally fit. Idea Connection and Innocentive are just a couple of the companies out there helping to facilitate open innovation.

Don Tapscott closed by talking about how organizations are going to have to adapt to the new generations and to the new realities. He spoke about how education is in trouble, and how the smartest kids try to get an 'A' without going to lecture. With so many existing institutions facing paradigm shifts, will new leaders emerge with new ideas to successfully lead the transformation?


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Peter Diamandis and Matt Bross

Dr. Peter Diamandis, Chairman/CEO of Xprize Foundation kicked off the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations with the promise that incentivized innovation and open innovation would be the focus for the two days of the conference.

Incentivized innovation is not just about winning the prize, but about driving innovation beyond the goal of the contest - beyond the attainment of that goal to create tangible benefits for society.

Dr. Diamandis talked about how the teams spent $100+ million competing to win the original $10 million Xprize, and about how over $1 billion has been invested in the private space industry (thanks in part to the $10 million Xprize). They then showed an Xprize video.

Matt Bross, CEO of BT Innovate took the stage and talked about how commercial success and corporate social responsibility are no longer in conflict. He then went on talk about how it is difficult for us as a people to grasp that the 10x improvements that are occurring now, and how these improvements actually increase the sphere of innovation possibilities. Matt Bross likes to call what is going on now an "Innovation Big Bang."

BT invests $1 Billion in R&D and used to spend that internally, but now they are looking beyond the boundaries of their own payroll. At the same time, BT has added internal incentives of up to GBP 30,000 to unleash hundreds of million of dollars of cost reductions and product ideas from their employees.

Matt Bross then closed by talking about how when we look at the reality of most people in the world, it is far different from what most of us would think - 70% of the world's population can't read. If innovation can come from anywhere, how much innovation potential are we losing out on if 70% of the world can't read?

NOTE: I'm not sure about these numbers - a quick Bing search showed figures of around 1 Billion adults (~26%), but the point is still valid no matter what.


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Video Interview with Charlie Brown of Ashoka's Changemakers

I had the opportunity to interview Charlie Brown of Ashoka's Changemakers at the incentive2innovate conference this week at the United Nations in New York City. You can see the video interview here:





Ashoka's Changemakers is a community of action where people can collaborate on solutions. The community provides the platform for people to attack projects one idea at a time as they attempt to solve the world's most pressing social problems.

The goal of the community is to create a community of people willing to share solutions that have value as is or that can be built upon to create leverage beyond the benefits created by the original contributor.

Community members talk about issues, share stories, mentor, advise, and encourage each other in group forums. Ashoka's Changemakers also partner with other foundations to offer challenges to the community.

Their mantra is "Everyone is a Changemaker."


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Video Interview with Dean Kamen of DEKA Research

I had the privilege of interviewing Dean Kamen of DEKA Research and FIRST fame at the incentive2innovate conference this week at the United Nations in New York City. You can find the video of our conversation here:





I was pleasantly surprised that Dean Kamen draws the same distinction between invention and innovation that I do. We had a great conversation about the challenges of taking a technological invention and overcoming cultural resistance to achieve a true innovation. Dean Kamen spoke about how really important technology inventions take twenty years or longer to be accepted by society.

We also spoke about the importance of efforts like FIRST and of making math and science fun and mysterious for kids, and about how the pace of technological invention is speeding up but potentially the ability and willingness of people to absorb it is slowing down.


Please check out the video and let me know what you think.


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Video Interview with BT Americas' Neil Blakesley

I had the opportunity to interview Neil Blakesley of BT Americas at the incentive2innovate conference this week at the United Nations in New York City. You can see the video interview here:



Here are the questions I asked him:

1. What do you see as the most exciting innovation in telecommunications to reach businesses in the next 12-18 months?


2. What have been some of the greatest successes that BT has had outside of the UK and how did innovation play a role?


3. What do you feel is unique about BT's approach to collaboration and innovation?


4. Do you feel that incentives have a real impact in stimulating innovation?

The biggest takeaway for me was that even if you design the greatest approach to internal or external open innovation ever seen by mankind, it will still be important to try and keep it fresh for people so that participation can be sustained.


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Video Interview with InnoCentive Founder and CEO

I had the opportunity to interview InnoCentive founder Dr. Alpheus Bingham, PdD and InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin at the incentive2innovate conference this week at the United Nations in New York City. You can see the video interview here:





Here are the questions I asked them:

1. In your view - What are the greatest strengths of the open innovation movement?


2. Do you feel that open innovation will face its own s-curve of declining interest and decreasing submission quality over time?


3. Where do you think the greatest opportunities lie for open innovation in the future?

Open innovation is a fascinating topic, and it will be interesting to see whether or not companies are able to adapt to expanding innovation beyond their own payroll. Doing so will require companies to master a new competency, and potentially organizations that do not adapt to the new potential of partnering to innovate will be disrupted by new entrants who do.


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Creativity versus Literacy

I came across this video of Sir Ken Robinson speaking about how schools kill creativity.

He contends that more emphasis should be placed on teaching creativity in schools, and that teaching creativity should be as important as teaching literacy.



Here are some of his other key thoughts and insights:

The great thing about children is that if they don't know, at least they'll have a go - "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original." - Sir Ken Robinson

Unfortunately, by the time we become adults, most of us lose this capacity.

"We don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or we are educated out of it." - Sir Ken Robinson

We are educating people out of their creative capacities.

Every society has the same heirarchy of educational subjects:

1. Mathematics and Languages


2. Humanities


3. Arts


• Art and Music


• Drama and Dance

As children grow up we start to educate them from the waist up, then just their heads, and then we focus slightly to one side. Meaning that the most successful people produced by this system end up being university professors who live in their heads and view their bodies as transport systems for their heads.

The public education system was created during the industrial revolution and primarily serves to educate the workforce and to serve as a protracted process of university entrance.

The consequence is that many brilliant, talented, creative people are left feeling that they are not.

At the same time we are going through a period of academic inflation - the jobs that used to require a bachelor's degree now require a master's and those that used to require a master's now require a PhD.

We need to think about intelligence differently. Intelligence is dynamic, interactive, and inter-disciplinary.

"Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value." - Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson has collected a lot of this thinking into a book called The Element.


What do you think?


Braden (@innovate on Twitter)

Laser Focus and The Perfect Client

Laser Focus

If law enforcement officers were business people, they would never struggle with questions like, "Who is my Perfect Client?" or, "Will I run out of customers if I focus on a select niche?" They would just know with confidence who they're after. Take this extreme example from my past.

It was early January of 1993 when Officer Harlan Graham of the Iowa State Patrol pulled me over north of Decorah, IA. Having wrecked my car the week before and now traveling seven miles over the limit, I was an easy target.

As I sat in the squad car and the officer wrote up a collection of what he assured me would amount to nothing more than warning tickets, lights began to flash and an eerie whine sounded from a box on the dash. So I did what I do: I began asking questions. "What's that?"

"That's my radar," came the quick reply, "and the whine tells me a car is approaching." Sure enough, just then, a car emerged from the heavy mist, doing the precise 55 miles posted as the speed limit.

"Let me show you," Officer Graham then said, throwing the cruiser into drive and pulling onto the highway. With that, we were unexpectedly on patrol, with him explaining the finer points of how the radar worked.

Just then, a van approached at 63 miles an hour, 8 miles over the limit. Time for another question. "Tell me, how do you make the decision between giving a warning and an actual ticket?"

"I always give tickets starting at 8 miles over." Then, suddenly, and with what I would swear was a hint of ornery in his voice, "Oh... you want him??" And with that, Officer Graham reached down, flipped a switch and the dense fog began to flicker a brilliant white and red. I think I nearly swallowed my tongue as I realized we were pulling a u-turn in the highway to take down the van and give the hapless driver a ticket.

My point is simple. Harlan had ruthless criteria for what "clients" he was after. Furthermore, he had absolutely zero fear he would ever run out of clients. (Yes, I asked.) After meeting Harlan, it seems absurd to think any officer is ever wandering the streets with any less resolute internal guidance. Taken in the context of a law enforcement officer, the question of whether or not getting focused is valuable seems instantly and recognizably obvious.

Yet business people do struggle with questions of focus and their implications every day. Focus can feel limiting instead of empowering. The fear and confusion is natural, but let me be the first to assure you that if it seems absurd to imagine Harlan without focus, it should be no different for you in your business. Getting focused on your best possible clients, finding more of them, and executing a sound plan to win them over is your best plan for dynamic business growth.

The Perfect Client

Imagine you could buy a police laser gun you could point at the head of a potential client and it would instantly tell you whether they were a match for you. What dials and settings would your laser gun have? Put another way, what is the profile of the typical client you want and is most worth winning?

Where are they located? Within your city, your state, your region? Or further away? What size is their company, typically, and what is their budget for your product or service? Moreover, how much of your competitor's service or product are they typically using when you find them? Perhaps most importantly, put yourself in their shoes: what is their actual motivator for considering your product or service. That is, what pain do they feel that you solve?

Finally, a question too few think to ask themselves. Would your radar gun tell you how well the client pays their bills? Reliable payment is a prerequisite to be a "Perfect Client," right? Yet many businesses end up acting as banks because clients don't pay.

When I go through this exercise with my clients, I like to ask how they came up with their answers. In particular, I like to make sure the answers hold true when I look at only the most profitable clients for the past year.

The point here is to ask what it would look like if you took your knowledge about your clients a level beyond however good it may be right now, as well as if you were even more proactive about choosing the clients that you find and do business with rather than settling for what business comes through the door.

Finding Them

You've formulated a good picture of your ideal client base. Now let's get specific.

How many of your Perfect Clients are out there? What are their names? Who are the contact people you need to call? In sessions, people are often shocked as I wait for actual answers to these questions. Yes - actual numbers, names, and lists.

If you're looking for some tools to get you started, one of the best places to head is your public library to make friends with the people behind the research desk. They may have library-only access to paid resources like ReferenceUSA and Dun & Bradstreet business searches, as well as databases that will connect you to business associations in any industry you're working with. For call contact information, also try online sites like Jigsaw.com or ProspectsDaily.com.

Again, the goal is to determine how many Perfect Clients really exist within our territory. Think why this is important. Often, people don't get focused because they're afraid "focusing" somehow equals "limiting my business" and that means "I'm shooting myself in the foot. Or head." By taking the time to find out just how many clients in our territory match our criteria, not only are we performing a valuable safety step of validating our market focus, but often the result is a surprising realization of just how much business is out there.

Now go get it.

Your Plan of Action

Winning business means going and actually solving the pain of those clients you just identified. How are you going to do it? Will it mean letters, calls, visits, or something else?

Be more specific with your plan than feels natural at first. I don't like hearing things like, "We're going to divide up the list and have the sales people call" - that's not a plan. Try this: "Bob is going to assign each salesperson 20 names by the end of today. They have until Friday to call through their list. Their goal is to set four appointments for within the next two weeks. We'll know call campaign results by close of business Friday." THAT'S a good start to a plan.

The point isn't really what you plan to do but that you plan to do something and that you do it with precision and intention. Our consistent theme here has been intention, purpose, and proactive actions make the difference.

Everybody Needs a Laser Gun

The Perfect Client concept sounds simple, and it is, but it is amazingly powerful. Taken to its fullest extent, it really is the laser gun for your business, driving you to the level of proactive, focused action you need in order to get ahead.

---

Dustin Walling is Principal of Dustin Walling Associates, a Seattle-based management consulting firm providing strategy and operational consulting. For article topics, questions, or comments, Dustin can be reached at http://www.DustinWalling.com.

All material Copyright 2007-2008, Wallingford Specialties, Inc. and Dustin Walling Associates, unless otherwise noted. All Rights Reserved.

Charitable Innovation - Disrupting for Good

The operational model for charities in this country is an ideal candidate for disruptive innovation. It strikes me as odd that charities, the organizations that really have the least to spend on marketing, spend such inordinate amounts of money and time on marketing to raise money. Does spending lots of money on fundraising actually work?

Let's stop for a moment and look at how AIP defines acceptable charity performance:

• Spending 60% or more of a charity's budget on programs, and spending $35 or less to raise $100 in public support

Groups included on AIP's Top-Rated list generally spend 75% or more of their budgets on programs, and spend $25 or less to raise $100 in public support.

Unfortunately, many charities don't even meet the acceptable charity performance definition:

• "It is sad that cancer charities, one of the most serious and popular giving categories, perform so poorly - half of the cancer charities that AIP rates in this Charity Rating Guide receive a D or F grade and only 37% receive an A or B."

If we look across charity organizations as a whole, it is not a stretch to imagine that the aggregate reality is probably somewhere around spending 50% or less of their budgets on programs, and spending $50 or more to raise $100 in public support.

What greater positive benefit could we have on society as business innovators than to help create a disruptive business model for charities? What if we could stand the traditional, and hugely inefficient, model of list rental, telemarketing, direct mail, and list saturation on its head and instead imagine something different?

There has to be a better business model that we could collectively create as a gift to society that would increase the percentage of charitable revenue that actually goes towards the charities' intended missions. If we created a new best practice that could be adopted across the industry, think about the impact we could have (equivalent of up to a doubling of monies raised).

I think we can distill the disruptive possibilities down to the following five key principles:

1. Give consumers a way to offset negative side effects with a positive action


2. Link fundraising efforts more closely to the benefit delivered


3. Reduce fundraising friction


4. Maximize existing communication channels to highlight benefits that others provide


5. Improve Efficiency

Please download and read the white paper to look at the disruptive possibilities and charitable innovation opportunities each one presents.


And, if you would like to help evolve the ideas in the white paper, please post a comment with your thoughts, additions, or refinements, or join our Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn and contribute to the discussion there.


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Live Coverage from incentive2innovate

Hello all,

Next week I will be attending the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations in New York City (June 8-9, 2009) and live blogging and tweeting. The star-studded roster of speakers will include:

- Peter Diamandis - X PRIZE Foundation
- Reid Hoffman - LinkedIn
- Dean Kamen - DEKA R&D Corporation
- Arianna Huffington - Huffington Post
- Marthin de Beer - Cisco Emerging Technologies Group (ETG)
- Matt Bross - BT Innovate
- Judy Estrin - JLABS, LLC
- Don Tapscott - Author "Wikinomics"


I will also have my video camera and hope to record some video segments for my blog.

If you'd like to be interviewed on camera at the World Innovation Forum about the innovation efforts at your company, please contact me. If you live in the UK, I am especially interested in interviewing you for potential Survival of the Fastest segments.


Or if you'd just like to meet-up at the event, then please also contact me.


You can track the conference proceedings by:

1. Following me on Twitter


2. Watching the #i2i hashtag during the event (ideally with TweetGrid or TweetChat or Twitter Search)


3. Subscribing by RSS or E-Mail to this blog for the latest articles

Stay tuned!


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Definition - What is Innovation?

Innovation has been defined many ways by many different people.

In January 2009, innovation was defined forty different ways in under 140 characters for a Twitter contest.

These of course aren't the only possible definitions for innovation, but here is a video of my innovation definition (along with an example):





"Innovation transforms useful seeds of invention into solutions valued above every existing alternative." - Braden Kelley


What is your innovation definition?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Twitter in the Classroom

During Clayton Christensen's talk at the World Innovation Forum about innovation in education and healthcare, Dr. Christensen made a point about how technology will move more of education out of the classroom and onto the Internet.

He was mostly speaking about augmenting home schooling, but also about school leavers earning their equivalency online, and online advanced placement courses for kids at schools who might not have the resources to provide these courses.

This sparked some humorous debate amongst those in the Bloggers Hub at the World Innovation forum about the possibility of teaching kids 140 characters at a time via Twitter.

Well, teachers are not exactly doing that, but they have been using Twitter in the classroom since at least January 2008.

At the University of Texas at Dallas, History Professor, Monica Rankin has been using hashtags for classroom discussion in the hopes that it would lead to increased student involvement. Here is a video made by film students at the university about the experiment:





Meanwhile, the University of Minnesota has been partnering with Roosevelt High School to integrate Twitter and other social media tools into the curriculum to successfully increase student engagement. Here is a video that the University of Minnesota put together about their experiment:





Out here in Seattle, National Public Radio (NPR) recently did a segment on how a local private school is using Twitter to facilitate improved communications between students and parents about what is going on in the classroom. As a parent, this is probably my favorite example of using Twitter in the classroom. You can hear the four minute audio story here and see examples of The Meridian School's classroom tweets above.

For teachers considering the use of Twitter in the classroom, you should also check out this blog article on thirteen ways to use Twitter in academia.

So, does Twitter have a place in the classroom?


I think so. What do you think?


Braden (@innovate on Twitter)