Chance to win a $3,690 Front End of Innovation Ticket

You've been waiting patiently, and now the time has come...

We have one (1) $3,690 Front End of Innovation ALL ACCESS PASS up for grabs. The winner will get:

• access to all three days of the event (May 3-5, 2010)
  
• access to four additional conferences taking place simultaneously on-site
  
  • The Beyond "Open"... Summit
    
  • Eco-Innovation
    
  • The Annual VOC Summit
    
  • Service Innovation
  
  
• and more

To enter our contest and have the chance to win this ticket you must be on Facebook, but the rest is easy:

1. Head over to our new Facebook page and become a fan


2. Then answer the following question in your own words - What is the 'Front End of Innovation'?, by either:


• Clicking on the discussions tab and responding to the topic there


• Clicking on the videos tab and recording a video answer to the above question (or upload a video file)


3. Do this by midnight GMT on March 21, 2010


4. We will select and announce five (5) finalists on March 22, 2010


5. Everyone will then be able to vote for their favorite until midnight GMT on March 28, 2010


6. We will announce the one (1) winner on March 29, 2010

I will personally select the five finalists based on the clarity, passion, and potentially the humor of the entry (bonus points for video). So, pretty much anything goes, but anyone posting anything indecent or offensive will not only have it deleted but will be harrassed mercilessly by me and the rest of the community until the end of time.

The winner will be chosen from the five finalists by my tabulation of votes from you the Blogging Innovation readers across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter @replies, and blog comments here on the five finalists announcement.

There will only be one (1) winner, but for those who don't win, you still can save 20% on event registration when you use our discount code "FEI2010BRADEN".


Editors's note: The ticket for the contest is being provided by the event organizers, not Blogging Innovation, and is conveyed at their discretion not ours. Winner is responsible for paying their own travel costs to the event and any other expenses.


Don't miss an article - Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group!

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Help Wanted - Two Roles

Blogging Innovation has grown by leaps and bounds. In fact, we now serve over 400,000 pages per month to people reading the site's more than 1,000+ articles.

This month we've taken on our first monthly sponsor - Brightidea - and now we need a little help to take the site to the next level, while also making its innovation and marketing insights even more accessible. We are looking for two types of help:

1. Assistant Editor (contract role)

• Need someone to help run the site
  
• MUST be passionate about innovation
  
• Communicate with existing contributing authors
  
• Identify new potential contributing authors
  
• Select and schedule articles
  
• Social media management
  
• Might need to get up really early 7 days a week
  
• Manage the monthly 'Innovation Perspectives' feature
  
• Must have strong english grammar skills and sense of humor
  
• Must be an independent contractor (have or form your own business)
  
• This is a part-time role with a small budget
  
• Must be in Seattle/Bellevue area (or pay own way to on-board here)
  
• SEO skills would be a bonus
  
• To register your interest, contact us

2. Web Design and SEO (contract role)

• Need someone to move Blogging Innovation from Blogger.com onto a new platform without data loss or disruption of permalinks for existing 1,000+ articles
  
• Need a new site design to make our innovation and marketing insights even MORE accessible
  
• New site design must allow for multiple levels of administration so authors can submit articles and editors can approve and schedule them for publishing
  
• New site design should surface more content like a Mashable, Techcrunch, etc.
  
• New site should be easy to manage from anywhere
  
• Need this completed in 4-5 weeks
  
• Bonus: I may also need a site for my forthcoming book
  
• Register your interest (we'll email you for design mockup/approach info and price quote)

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

March 2010 Sponsor - Brightidea

Thank you to Brightidea for sponsoring Blogging Innovation for March 2010.

Brightidea is the market leader in On-Demand Innovation Management. Over 300 businesses around the world use its Software-as-a-Service suite to transform their employee, partner and customer ideas into a reality. The Brightidea platform is a flexible, scalable, and standards-based system that provides end-to-end tracking of the innovation process from concept through to realization. The company's software has been successfully deployed at: Adobe, Bosch, Cisco, Harley-Davidson, Experian, Emerson, British Telecom, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Honeywell, among others. Founded in 1999, Brightidea is closely held and headquartered in San Francisco, CA. For more information, please visit www.brightidea.com.

If you are implementing innovation management software to better manage your innovation process and deliver on your innovation strategy, I encourage you to add Brightidea to your consideration set. You really can't manage innovation successfully with e-mail or paper submissions.

And, never fear... Blogging Innovation remains committed to being a leading independent source for innovation and marketing insight articles from:

1. 20+ regular contributing authors
   
2. Quality ad hoc contributions from you - the Continuous Innovation community
   
3. The best innovation events and conferences (and exclusive discounts)
   
4. Interviews with interesting innovation personalities
   
5. Reviews of innovation books
   
6. Video interiews with innovation leaders

The funding we will now receive from our sponsors will enable the site to continue, and will allow us to invest in improving the site design.

If you would like to submit an article or are interested in being Blogging Innovation's April 2010 sponsor to help the innovation and marketing conversations continue, please contact us.


Don't miss an article - Subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

February's Top 10 Innovation and Marketing Articles

This year I thought I would experiment with a Top Ten list at the beginning of each month, profiling the ten posts from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Blogging Innovation. So, without further ado, here are February's ten most popular innovation or marketing posts:

1. Two Biggest Mistakes in Social Media - by Mike Brown


2. Radical Innovation of Meaning - Apple iPad - by Hutch Carpenter


3. Four Models for Competitive Crowdsourcing - by Hutch Carpenter


4. Aligning Social Media, Marketing and PR - by Matt Heinz


5. 56 Reasons Why Innovation Initiatives Fail - by Mitch Ditkoff


6. Bill Gates Coming out of Retirement? - by Anonymous Microsoftie


7. Reverse Innovation a Popular Trend - by Yann Cramer


8. Innovation Metric of Leading Companies - by Stefan Lindegaard


9. Are MBAs becoming irrelevant? - by Idris Mootee


10. Ideas Are Core to Enterprise 2.0 - by Hutch Carpenter

If you're not familiar with Blogging Innovation, we publish 2-3 new articles every day built around innovation and marketing insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members.

Join our Continuous Innovation group or subscribe to our RSS feed to follow along.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Blogging Innovation Adopting Monthly Sponsors

To continue our mission to bring you the very best in innovation and marketing insights, and make them even more accessible for the greater good, it's time I brought in some help. Believe it or not I do have a day job.

Don't worry, we're not going to do a pledge drive, and don't worry we are also going to remain completely neutral and independent.

We are currently running a sealed-bid auction for sponsorship of our header for March 2010. This auction ends at midnight GMT February 28, 2010 and already has a few bidders.

If your organization would like to help Blogging Innovation continue to be a great lightning rod for innovation and marketing insights, please contact us to bid in the March auction or to register your interest for a future month.

We'll be using the sponsorship income to invest in:

1. Someone who is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable part-time to administer the site and help make it more visible to people


2. Someone to create a new site design that will make the insights even more accessible

Keep up with the conversation by rss feed or by joining our LinkedIn group or Facebook page

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Entrepreneurs and Innovation

"Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe?"

by Janine de Nysschen

A good friend of mine once sat down to lunch with Stephen Covey and a group of fellow executives. During the course of the meal, one of the men commented on the unusual tablespoons, and said "Look at the backend of it." All the people at the table flipped their spoons over, but my friend - quite unintentionally - angled it up so he could look at the bottom tip of it. Laughter ensued. But Covey raised a hand and pointed out that my friend's actions suggested something interesting in his behavior: the ability to look at the world in an unexpected way. So I guess it's not surprising to hear my friend is one of the most innovative entrepreneurs I know, as well as a successful millionaire who has transformed the industry he is in.

The story reminds me of an important fact. Entrepreneurs are often at the forefront of innovation. They possess a unique set of skills that lends itself to inspired invention and driven change. Really good business solutions and radical transformations in history have one thing in common. Somewhere, someone believed that you could do something better, different or completely new. Someone challenged the status quo or saw failure as an opportunity to try again. Often, those people were entrepreneurs.

One reason is that entrepreneurs tend to see the world around them differently. As Thomas Edison said to his laboratory assistant:


"There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish somep'n!"


Innovation is most often simply a matter of having a different perspective than everyone else, and the perseverance to make it happen. For example, some of the most creative people I know had learning disabilities growing up. Forced to adapt so they could fit into a rigid school format, many developed alternative ways of making sense of the world.

Tony Buzan, father of the world-renowned creative technique of Mind Mapping, is a point in case. Tony admits he came up with mind maps because he was "doing badly at school." He was also smart enough to realize that the way people were measuring intelligence was rather limited. Quick experiment: in your mind's eye, picture the moon, the sun, the earth and a lemon. Which one is different? While you may be like most people and select lemon as the odd-one-out, Tony would point out that if you were using color as your filter, earth would be odd because it's not yellow.

Innovation is therefore inspired by understanding that there's not always only one right answer. Or realizing you may have an answer to a problem that doesn't yet exist. Did you know that the parachute was invented before powered flight? In a "fascinating facts" piece about Sir James Dyson, you'll read that his inspiration for cyclonic technology happened one day while he was vacuuming his house (in itself, fascinating!) and he realized his top-of-the-line machine was losing suction and getting clogged. Dyson refused to accept there was only one good way to build a vacuum cleaner, and the cyclonic suction, roller-ball Dyson vacuum cleaner was born.

Innovation is also about seeing an idea for what it's really worth. Think about all those stories of accidental invention. Like Wilson Greatbatch back in 1956, who was experimenting with a device he was building to record heartbeats. He grabbed the wrong resistor and connected it, and discovered that the circuit emitted a pulse. Voila, Greatbatch realized his device could be used to control heartbeat, and the pacemaker was invented.

Which brings me to a final point on inspired innovation. I believe the most profound and valuable innovation and creativity has to come from a sense of purpose or a powerful cause - it is unbounded thinking about how to make life and the world more meaningful that leads us to solve great challenges and achieve impossible objectives. Just look at how one company's mission transformed the lives of millions of people: Microsoft, with its tagline of "A PC on every desk." And behind that audacious goal, an inspired cause to find ways for people and things to achieve their greatest potential.

Innovation comes in many forms and is a tool that's wielded well by many entrepreneurs. Having a different perspective has inspired many of Apple's products - simply because Steve Jobs refused to accept that everyday things such as radios and phones and computers had to be mundane and ugly. Ergo: Apple is synonymous with easy, simple and beautiful. Sometimes the entrepreneurial way out has to be invented. Understanding that there's not always only one right answer gave us solutions like Galileo's telescope and Sir James Dyson's vacuum cleaner. Then there are the accidental innovations, like 3M's experimental polymer that turned out to be less of an adhesive and more of a sticky fix that today everyone calls a Post-It^TM note. Ultimately, there's the kind of innovation that really makes this world a better place, because it comes from a passionate sense of purpose. Like Google's search engine, motivated by the cause of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful.

Because entrepreneurs have had the courage to ask questions and take risks - wheels were invented, men learned to fly, machines were made to work more efficiently, and the world has moved forward. The spirit to invent and innovate lies at the heart of true entrepreneurship. Or, to loosely paraphrase Peter Drucker:


innovation is the specific tool that entrepreneurs use to increase their capacity to create wealth.


Don't miss a post - Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group!

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Janine de Nysschen uses purpose dynamics to create unique change strategies for difficult problems, helping CEOs and companies increase their impact and performance.

January's Top 10 Innovation Posts

This year I thought I would experiment with a Top Ten list at the beginning of each month, profiling the ten posts from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Blogging Innovation. So, without further ado, here are January's ten most popular innovation or marketing posts:

1. 10 Lessons Learned from 2009 - by Holly G. Green


2. Top 10 Innovation Articles of 2009 - by Braden Kelley


3. Microsoft - Apple - Google in Tablet Battle - by Braden Kelley


4. Three Enterprise 2.0 Themes to Watch in 2010 - by Hutch Carpenter


5. Apple Tablet Sneak Preview - by Braden Kelley


6. Apple Tablet Won't Be Runaway Success - by Braden Kelley


7. Should you be measuring ROR instead of ROI? - by Ric Merrifield


8. Presenting Twitter in Search Results - by Hutch Carpenter


9. 10 Signs That Innovation Will Fail - by Stefan Lindegaard


10. What is Design Thinking? - by Venessa Miemis

If you're not familiar with Blogging Innovation, we publish 2-3 new articles every day built around innovation and marketing insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members.

Join our Continuous Innovation group or subscribe to our RSS feed to follow along.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Top 10 Innovation Articles of 2009

by Braden Kelley

Thank you to everyone who entered our last contest of 2009 for a chance to win one of three copies of Gary Hamel's latest book "The Future of Management" ?

Lady luck has spoken and I'd like to announce the three winners of their very own copy of "The Future of Management":

1. Cathy Olofson


2. Ashish Thomas (claimed)


3. Peter Vander Auwera (claimed)

Alternate: Bill Davis

Contest Winners - Please contact me with your address so I can mail you your book.

First, let me say that it was incredibly hard to come up with this list. I've come across lots of great articles this year that I can't find anymore. Luckily a lot of the really good innovation articles end up on our site, but for sure I've missed lots of great innovation articles published this year. So, apologies in advance if you thought your favorite article should have been included. You can always include it below as a comment.

Here in no particular order are Blogging Innovation's Top Ten Innovation Articles of 2009:

• Top 10 Tips for the Innovation Leader by Paul Sloane


• Popularity Contests: Why a Company Embraces One Innovative Idea but Shuns Another from Knowledge@Wharton


• Five Ways to Create Innovation Throughout Your Life by Matt Heinz


• In Search of Innovation by John Bessant, Kathrin Moslein and Bettina Von Stamm


• Four Quadrants of Innovation by Hutch Carpenter


• 21 Great Innovation Methods by Paul Sloane


• The New, Faster Face of Innovation by Erik Brynjolfsson and Michael Schrage


• Innovation Perspectives - Ideas are Not Enough by Rowan Gibson


• Innovation through the Eyes of a Child by Braden Kelley


• Your Innovations Aren't Immortal by Scott Anthony

Are there any others you would add to the list?

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Happy Holidays from Blogging Innovation

Just a short message to wish you a happy holiday season from the team here at Blogging Innovation.

As a special gift, we've made all of our white papers and case studies registration-free for your convenience. Just click to download.

If you're not already one of the 1,650+ members of our Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn, we invite you to join the discussions and news item sharing that occurs there for the growing Blogging Innovation community.

May your season be full of time spent with happy and healthy family and friends.

All the best,

Braden

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Land of Misfit Ideas

by Jeffrey Phillips

Do you remember the annual Christmas special about the island of misfit toys, where Rudolph ends up because he doesn't "fit in" with the other reindeer? The island is full of misfit toys that weren't acceptable for one reason or another.

A recent Accenture study on innovation found that there must be a mythical land of misfit ideas. Executives who were surveyed for the innovation study said that "opportunities to exploit underdeveloped areas/markets often die because they can never find a home to nurture them." Less than 15% of the executives surveyed disagreed with this statement. In other words, organizations can generate good ideas that are relevant to specific opportunities, but fail to find business lines or leaders who will adopt and nurture those ideas. So, those ideas must end up somewhere - our land of misfit ideas.

There are several reasons why good ideas aren't adopted and nurtured. In our experience I think I'd boil it down to three predominant reasons: prioritization, ownership and fear.

By prioritization I mean that a product or service development team within a line of business typically has more work than it can effectively complete. Even a very compelling idea that is generated and has merit must find its place in the priority stack. Often it is much easier to simply slip that "great new" idea at the bottom of the stack rather than reprioritize the work, so the opportunity slips by and little is done to advance the idea.

By ownership I mean that good ideas that are generated outside of a business line are often looked at with suspicion. Even if the idea is a good one and solves a significant problem, a business unit leader may think that since his or her team didn't generate the idea, they have little stake in the idea, or the idea may cannibalize the existing products and services. So a good idea is rejected or ignored.

By fear I mean that an idea may have great value but be so radical that implementing it will create significant change. In many organizations change is feared rather than embraced, and for some reason it is better to be forced to change through the actions of a competitor (reactive) than to create change and disrupt others (proactive). Since most firms reward consistency and reaction rather than change and proactive disruption, many new ideas will never see the light of day.

Perhaps what's needed is "local" innovation in a product or service line that is safe and relatively incremental, and "global" or corporate innovation that is relatively radical and disruptive. The challenge in this regard is moving the good idea from those who don't have the responsibility to develop the concept as a product or service to those that do, unless we simply spin off new product groups or businesses based on the radical ideas, rather than trying to force them into the existing businesses.

Otherwise many of the best ideas in your organization will end up on the island of misfit ideas, waiting for someone else to come along and discover them. Then, those ideas get released and implemented with a fury on those who ignored them initially.

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Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of "Make us more Innovative", and innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com.

10 Ways to Make Innovation Accessible

When companies, non-profits, and governments create products and services that better meet customer needs, there is less waste of human capital and natural resources, and everyone wins. That's why Blogging Innovation's mission is:


"To make innovation and marketing insights accessible for the greater good."


So, how can you help Blogging Innovation achieve this mission?


It's simple. Here are a few quick and easy ways to help:

1. If you have knowledge to share, then write an article for Blogging Innovation


2. Tell your corporate, non-profit, government, and entrepreneurial colleagues about us


3. Cover an innovation or insights conference for Blogging Innovation


4. Write an article about us on your blog


5. Create a MyAlltop page and add Blogging Innovation to it from the innovation page


6. StumbleUpon or Digg some of our articles


7. Share some of our articles on facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter


8. Forward our monthly newsletter to your colleagues


9. Contact us about translating some of our articles for your non-English site


10. Contribute to the discussions and news item collections in the Continuous Innovation group

If you have any other ideas on how to bring more innovation and marketing insights to more people, and raise the baseline innovation understanding out there even higher, please contact us.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

October's Innovation Contest Winners

Thank you to everyone who entered our innovation contest for October. After much deliberation, I have chosen the three winning articles.

The three winning article authors win one of three signed copies of Bill George's latest book "7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis", and the opportunity to have their article republished here on Blogging Innovation if they so desire.

For now, here are the winners (in no particular order):

1. Innovating with Constraints - by Tim Kastelle


2. Four Things You Should Know Before You Innovate - Glenn Ross


3. Can social media take the place of marketing automation platforms? - Barrett Coakley

If you are one of the winning authors, please send me your mailing address so that I can mail you your book, and your e-mail address if you'd like me to re-publish your article here on Blogging Innovation.

We will be announcing the details of November's innovation contest soon. In November, we will have copy's of Gary Hamel's latest book "The Future of Management" to give away.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

October Innovation Contest Reminder

Have you written an innovation or marketing blog post that you are particularly proud of, or plan to write one?

Would you like the chance to share it with a larger audience and maybe even win one of three signed copies of Bill George's latest book "7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis" at the same time?

In support of our mission to make innovation and marketing insights accessible for the greater good, we are looking to publish the three best innovation or marketing blog posts submitted for this contest.

Here is how to win:

1. Select your favorite blog post highlighting an innovation or marketing insight (or write one)


2. Add the following text with the link to the bottom of your article


• I've entered this article in Blogging Innovation's October Innovation Contest - To show your support for this article, please follow the link and add a comment.


3. Send @innovate an @reply on Twitter with a link to the article so we can find it


• OR, post it as a news item in the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn with "Contest" in the title


4. We will read the articles submitted by Midnight October 30, 2009 and give the comment volume here a chance to influence of our selection of the three winners

Winning entries will be selected and announced on October 31, 2009 and published on November 1, 2009.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

October Innovation Contest

Have you written an innovation or marketing blog post that you are particularly proud of, or plan to write one?

Would you like the chance to share it with a larger audience and maybe even win one of three signed copies of Bill George's latest book "7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis" at the same time?

In support of our mission to make innovation and marketing insights accessible for the greater good, we are looking to publish the three best innovation or marketing blog posts submitted for this contest.

Here is how to win:

1. Select your favorite blog post highlighting an innovation or marketing insight (or write one)


2. Add the following text with the link to the bottom of your article


• I've entered this article in Blogging Innovation's October Innovation Contest - To show your support for this article, please follow the link and add a comment.


3. Send @innovate an @reply on Twitter with a link to the article so we can find it


• OR, post it as a news item in the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn with "Contest" in the title


4. We will read the articles submitted by Midnight October 30, 2009 and give the comment volume here a chance to influence of our selection of the three winners

Winning entries will be selected and announced on October 31, 2009 and published on November 1, 2009.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Blogging Innovation for the Amazon Kindle

Do you have an Amazon Kindle or Kindle DX?

Well, now you can receive Blogging Innovation on your Kindle, including articles from:

• Rowan Gibson
• Stephen Shapiro
• Braden Kelley
• Paul Sloane
• Matthew E May
• Kevin Roberts
• And more than 10 other authors!

Who will be the first to write a review?

Happy Kindle-ing!

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Call for September 'Innovation Perspectives'

September's opportunity to contribute your Innovation Perspectives is now here.

This monthly feature presents our loyal readers with different perspectives on a single topic all in one place - from several different authors. It gives our innovation community the opportunity to compare, contrast and discuss them in the comments here on Blogging Innovation and in the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn.

If you missed August's Innovation Perspectives, you can find them here.

Here is this month's topic for publishing the week of September 21-27, 2009:


"Where should innovation reside in an organization, and who should 'own' or manage innovation?"

• Thank you to Jeffrey Phillips for submitting this month's topic

Several contributing authors will be writing articles on this topic, but you are also welcome to submit an article by the end of September 18, 2009.

I'll publish all of the accepted articles during the week of September 21-27, 2009 for discussion.

If you would like to suggest a topic for October, please leave a comment or contact us.

We look forward to sharing September's Innovation Perspectives with you and hearing your thoughts!

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

New Feature - 'Innovation Perspectives'

Thanks to an idea/request from Jeffrey Phillips of OVO Innovation, we are starting a regular monthly feature here on Blogging Innovation called Innovation Perspectives.

The idea is to present our loyal readers with different perspectives on a single topic all in one place - from several different authors. This will give our innovation community the opportunity to compare, contrast and discuss them in the comments here on Blogging Innovation and in the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn.


This month's Innovation Perspectives topic for the week of August 17-23, 2009:

"Describe the importance of innovation strategy to the success of an organization's innovation efforts."

• Do companies need an innovation strategy?


• What role does it play?


• What are best practices in setting innovation strategy?


• How should organizations integrate their innovation strategy into their corporate strategy?

Several contributing authors will be writing articles on this topic, but you are also welcome to submit an article by the end of August 15, 2009.

I'll publish all of the accepted articles during the week of August 17-23, 2009 for discussion.

If you would like to suggest a topic for September, please leave a comment or contact us.

We look forward to sharing our innovation perspectives with you next week and hearing your thoughts!

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

The Blogging Innovation Mantra

Blogging Innovation exists for one main purpose, or mantra if you will:

"To make innovation and marketing insights accessible"

In July and August we have added more than a dozen contributing authors including: Rowan Gibson, Stephen Shapiro, Kevin Roberts, Matthew E May, Drew Boyd, Hutch Carpenter, Paul Sloane, Matt Heinz, Mike Brown, Steve McKee, Mike Myatt, Jeffrey Phillips, and Stefan Lindegaard.

Why did you open up your blog to outside authors?

To bring you more than one voice, more than one perspective on innovation and marketing, and to deliver more value to you - the readers.

At the same time, we also created a Continuous Innovation community over on LinkedIn for members to share interesting articles, innovation job postings, and to provide a place for lively innovation discussion.

Why include marketing insights on a blog about innovation?

Well, two of the key functions of marketing are to understand and communicate with customers, and it is ultimately the successful collaboration of marketers with inventors that creates innovation.

What's next for Blogging Innovation?

We are still looking for great authors who make a habit of sharing interesting innovation and marketing insights. If you have anyone to recommend (including yourself) to increase the diversity of perspectives, please contact us.

Tomorrow (August 10, 2009) we plan to announce a new monthly special feature that I hope you will find of great value (possibly as a contributor). If you're not already subscribed by RSS or e-mail, then please do so in order to get our steady stream of innovation and marketing insights.

Finally, I'd like to offer you a sincere thank you to all of you for following and contributing to Blogging Innovation!

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

BIF-5 Ticket Contest Finalists Announced

Lots of people wanted the chance to win a $1,200 ticket to the Business Innovation Factory (BIF-5) conference October 7-8, 2009 in Providence, RI, but here are the best entry submissions, the Three Finalists:

1. Creating a Bachelor of Innovation by Dr. Terrance E. Boult, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs


2. Breaking Innovation Barriers by Looking Beyond by Vyoma Kapur, Colspark LLC


3. A Nightmare on Innovation Street by Brad Barbera, KAB Business Research

Voting is now open and you can vote for your favorite entry in one of two ways:

1. Vote by adding a comment to the 1 of 3 blog posts you like best


2. Vote by sending an @reply with "I vote for #x" to @innovate on Twitter

July 31, 2009 - Voting by Twitter @reply to @innovate or by blog comments concludes at 23:59 (no anonymous votes will count)

August 1, 2009 - Grand Prize winner announced


If you're unfamiliar with this excellent event, here is a video of Jason Fried, Founder of 37Signals.com from last year's conference (BIF-4):



For those who just want to go to the conference - as a special bonus for my loyal readers I've negotiated a special $50 discount when you enter "BK110" in the payment code field on the payment options page during registration - this will get you in for $1,150. Groups of five or more can get extra discounts.

New storytellers are added each week, but so far they include:

• Don Tapscott, "Wikinomics"


• Jeff Jarvis, "What Would Google Do?", buzzmachine.com


• John Maeda, President, Rhode Island School of Design


• Jonah Lehrer, "How We Decide"


• Keith Wilmot, Global Director Insights, Ideas & Creativity, Coca Cola

I look forward to awarding one lucky winner a ticket to Business Innovation Factory (BIF-5)!
(NOTE: Travel expenses are NOT included and are the responsibility of the winner)

If you'd like to explore and discuss innovation issues further, please join our Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

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