Call for March 'Innovation Perspectives'

March'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 with the 2,300+ people in the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn.

Here is this month's topic for publishing the week of March 29-April 4, 2010:


How should firms develop the organizational structure, culture, and incentives (e.g., for teams) to encourage successful innovation?

• Thank you to Drew Boyd for submitting this month's topic


• Thank you to Brightidea for sponsoring Blogging Innovation this month. Find out more about Brightidea here.


• The submission deadline is midnight GMT on March 27, 2010

Several contributing authors will be writing articles on this topic, but you are also welcome to submit an article. The process is simple:

1. Submit your article using our contact form


2. I will e-mail you back with a request for a 1-2 sentence author byline and a photo like those on Blogging Innovation

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


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

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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.

Innovation - Have the Last Laugh

Book Review and Innovation Summary - "The Levity Effect" by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher

Innovation is hard, dirty, contentious work full of creative tension and disagreements and barriers to be overcome. All the more reason why it is important for innovation managers to not take themselves too seriously, and to know how to loosen up and allow as much fun into the process as possible. As I've said before, innovation and business success are the result of the quality of your insights and the quality of your execution.

You have to have find a way to have some fun on the bumpy road to innovation, or you will definitely fall into a pothole and stay there.

"The Levity Effect" by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher is all about why it pays to lighten up in business. It is no accident that many of the best places to work are also some of the best performing businesses. Here are a couple of quotes from the book that capture its essence:


"An increasing body of research demonstrates that when leaders lighten up and create a un workplace, there is a significant increase in the level of employee trust, creativity, and communication..."

"...fun in great companies is natural, organic... The relationship comes before the fun, which makes the fun real and acceptable."


I'd like to focus one particular quote from the book from Amy Lyman, co-founder of the Great Place to Work Institute - "Fun benefits from high trust and vice versa. Since people are trusting, they aren't afraid to make fools of themselves and take more risks. And in turn trust is reinforced and benefits from the fun experiences people have." - The reason you should think slowly and deeply about this quote is that, when it comes to innovation, risk-averse cultures find it the most difficult to innovate. So, if people in your organization don't find it safe to take risks in small ways, what makes you think they will feel safe taking the big risks that innovation often requires?

When it comes to Continuous Innovation, if it wasn't clear before, let me say that I believe that building a culture conducive and supportive of innovation is the real key to success (and the hardest thing to do). If you've already created a culture of respect and trust in your organization, then fun is the next step, and you should consider this book for your reading list.

You'll have to read the book to really understand the full importance of levity, but just to be clear, that when it comes to levity, they're not saying that as a manager that you have to be a comedian, but you do need allow yourself to be human, to connect with people, and to have a sense of humor. Ultimately, people are less creative and innovative when they are stressed, so if you as a manager can help people feel more relaxed and make the atmosphere a little less tense, and show people a little respect, then who knows what creativity might spring forth.


"Levity is the link between trust, respect, and the engagement of a workforce. It is human alchemy."


Want to hear something truly disturbing from the book that will really make you re-evaluate your life? A study referenced in the book found that preschool children laugh up to 400 times a day, while adults only manage 15. Fifteen! "No wonder kids think adults are about as fun as a box of hair."

• So, how much fun are you?
  
• How much fun is your workplace?
  
• Is your workplace conducive to innovation?

Please leave a comment and let us know. :-)


As a special bonus, here are Scott Christopher and Adrian Gostick talking on The Today Show about the book:





My interview with "The Levity Effect" author Scott Christopher can be found here.


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.

Having Fun with Innovation

Interview - Scott Christopher of "The Levity Effect"

I had the opportunity to interview Scott Christopher, co-author of "The Levity Effect" about the importance of fun in the workplace, and about how beneficial it can be. But how important is fun to innovation?

A contributing author of the bestseller "A Carrot A Day", a regular columnist for Workplace HR and Safety magazines and a distinguished consultant on recognition, Scott travels the world speaking to leadership groups at conferences, conventions, and on-site customer meetings.

Here is the text from the interview:

1. When it comes to innovation, what is the biggest challenge that you see organizations facing?

Boss-employee relationships. Look, all the truly useful, great ideas come from the workforce because they're the ones that have identified a need and can actually see themselves implementing them. An engaged employee is ten times more likely to contribute his or her time, effort and energies into innovation, but too many managers are missing the engagement boat. They simply assume that, particularly in a rough economy, a paycheck is all the incentive people need to work harder and better while still devising ways to improve the company.


2. Why is it so important that organizations teach their leaders to embrace fun more?

Thanks for asking that because it beautifully wraps up the incomplete response above. Easing the tension and pressure with levity is fundamental to getting the most from your people. Studies show that there is a direct correlation between being physically relaxed and motor skill acuity, task completion, team interaction, idea generation, creativity, and the list goes on and on. You don't have to look much further than a high school basketball coach who reminds his players to "have fun out there guys!" If they're tense and nervous, they simply won't be at their best. It's usually the team who "has nothing to lose" that ends up shooting lights out from all over the floor, while the top-ranked Bulldogs, for example, feel the pressure of all the expectations and suddenly forget how to make a simple layup or pass the ball out of bounds.

There is also just too much evidence to ignore that humor and fun at work are no longer optional, but critical to building a satisfying, engaging workplace which drives performance.


3. Why do some people fight against fun in the workplace?

Because there is a stigma associated with levity - it's inappropriate in a professional work environment. Plus, the fear that somehow everyone with a lifelong yearning to be the next Jim Carrey or worse, Don Wrickles, will suddenly rear their ugly, obnoxious heads and you'll have an office filled with offensive, discriminating jokes courtesy of a new army of Michael Scott clones. A lack of credibility is often associated with levity, which is patently erroneous. Many of the world's greatest leaders had and have wonderful senses of humor. Even Mahatma Gandhi once said, "If I didn't have a sense of humor I would have committed suicide long ago." You remember when Bob Dole lost the 1996 presidential election? His whole image was serious. His monotone delivery, his grave responses, his reputation as a wounded war veteran all shaped his image to voters. After he lost, he was on Leno and Letterman laughing at himself and displaying an uncanny and often hilarious sense of humor. Where was that during the campaign? Fear of not being taken seriously, evidently, was his reason for choosing to only display one side of his whole persona. Too bad, he might have won if people had seen the real Bob - credible, courageous, appropriately serious, experienced, AND able to laugh and joke a little.


4. What most impedes organizations from having fun?

Probably the misconception that it's going to take a lot of time and planning and that no one's going to like it anyway, so what's the point? Lightening up at work begins and ends with the individual. It's just a simple shift in your personal paradigm. Smile more, laugh more, unfurrow your brown, unclench your jaws, keep perspective and be the same person at work that you are at home or golfing or at church. Having said that, it can only help to "program" some levity into your department or team. Plan a couple of parties or an offsite outing. Celebrate birthdays. Go see a Friday movie premiere. Go bowling during lunch. There are of course a million ways to have some fun at work, but ultimately just allowing people to be themselves and laugh more and enjoy a good Youtube video now and then is the least complicated or time-consuming way to getting there.


5. Since the book was published, have you come across other organizations that have transformed their organizations to be more fun?

Absolutely. There are levity champions tucked away in cubicles and offices all across the globe and when they read the book it arms them with the validation they've been seeking to take it up the chain. And then they usually have me come in and speak to their leadership group or even the entire company to underscore the company's determination to "lighten things up around here." It's not an overnight cure, by the way. As with any organizational change, it requires time and effort. Many companies have adopted 'fun' or 'sense of humor' as one of their core values or guiding principles, which instantly legitimizes it and can speed up the transition. Levity's effect is not easily quantifiable, but the results are usually evident in things like engagement scores, employee retention, and customer satisfaction.


6. What advice to you have for managers who work in an organization that doesn't have fun?

Buy the book!... and make a personal, confidential goal to commit to the levity concepts for one year. Keep a journal or log of your efforts and what you perceive to be the results, either immediate or long term. Describe in as much detail the current state of your team to compare against later. You will likely not get through the first few months before your work is noticed and possible opportunities to broaden your goal to others become evident. By the end of the year compare and contrast your relationship with your employees, morale, productivity, and financial goals with your starting point. It may take the whole year, but you should have observed tangible, meaningful changes to keep you committed to levity's path.


7. What advice to you have for employees who work in an organization that doesn't have fun?

First, make an issue of it, but don't overdo it. At least let it be known that "gee, we don't have much fun around here." Or "we should laugh more." This may even include a comment about it to your boss in a review or even just shooting the breeze (if that's allowed.) Second, create your own fun. You can still develop and exercise your unique sense of humor and have fun on your own. You don't need permission, or at least you shouldn't, to have a smile on your face, a look of mirth in your eyes and an itchy laughter trigger finger. Re-record your voicemail greetings - put a smile on your face or make yourself laugh right before you record... people will hear levity in your voice. Make your email "voice" a little less formal, maybe subtly change a font, color, or signature. Humanize the copy some; write like you talk. Listen to your favorite comic on satellite radio or your Ipod on the way into work. Get laughing in the car and share one of the jokes with the first person you greet at work.


8. If you were to change one thing about our educational system to better prepare students to contribute in the innovation workforce of tomorrow, what would it be?

A comfy place to nap.


Be sure and check out our review of "The Levity Effect" and summary of the main innovation points here.


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.

You Might Get Your Problem Solved for Free

hypios.com has launched its first annual "A Problem to Love" promotion. hypios will pay a total of $50,000 to solvers of two of the world's most compelling problems, as determined by visitors to the site.

Teleportation? A cure for cancer? Maybe, maybe not. Candidate problems must be submitted by an employee of some form of research organization - any discipline, public or private. hypios envisions that the two "Problems to Love" will be perennially frustrating research and development (R&D) puzzles. Current unsolved problems on hypios range from the mundane (how to make biodegradable, nonpolluting batteries) to the abstract (a model for frame-dragging that is consistent with Einstein's general theory of relativity - the details of which will not be explained here).

The two top problems will be judged on structure and promise of impact, then posted on hypios for a prize totaling $50,000, giving each problem a fair chance to find a solution. One, chosen by a jury, will be worth $30,000 to the Solver; the other, selected by the public, wins the Solver $20,000 - both paid for by hypios.

The persons that posted the problems receive all intellectual property rights to Solvers' solutions, once accepted.

Is there a problem you want solved?

Enter here


Don't miss an article - signup for our rss feed or our Continous Innovation group today!

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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.

Contest Winner - The Economist's March Event

Through yesterday at midnight GMT we ran a contest for a chance to win a free ticket ($1,500 value) to The Economist's event - "Innovation Fresh Thinking For the Ideas Economy" at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley on March 23-24, 2010.

There will be a lot of great, top-flight speakers at this event, including a couple of new additions:

• Christina Romer, Chair, White House Council of Economic Advisers


• Juan Enriquez, Managing Director, Excel Venture Management

Contestants filled in the blank in the following statement on our LinkedIn or Facebook discussion:

• When it comes to innovation, I wish somebody would write about ______________.

Congratulations to the winner - Rick Smyers!

Please contact us ASAP with your e-mail address to claim your prize. Failure to do so before midnight GMT on March 4, 2010 will result in the ticket being awarded to the alternate - Melinda Lockhart!

The winner was chosen at random by my daughter, but here are my five favorite quotes:

1. "When it comes to innovation, I wish somebody would write about philanthropy." - Jenn Lew Goldstone


2. "When it comes to innovation, I wish somebody would write about how to cross the enormous bridge from creating an idea to the challenges of implementing a new idea and gaining acceptance from the people at large." - Melinda Lockhart


3. "When it comes to innovation, I wish somebody would write about vision building. Innovative ideas are no longer hard to find. However, people who can build vision are the ones creating blue oceans and making them a reality. We don't need more ideas....we need more vision builders." - Adam Dole


4. "When it comes to innovation, I wish somebody would write about the desperate need to clean up the current knowledge - of its fallacies and redundancies and help minimize the time wasted on unvalidated verbose" - Jeyaseelan J


5. "When it comes to innovation, I wish somebody would write about what it's necessary for every person start living consciously and caring for every human being. What about innovating on our way of living..." - Pedro Norte

As an added value for our loyal Blogging Innovation readers, we have negotiated a $150 discount when you register using our discount code - "BLINN" - register now.

We hope to see you there!


EDITOR'S NOTE: Winner is still responsible for all travel costs and the ticket is granted at The Economist's discretion not ours. There is only ONE (1) ticket up for grabs in this contest and it will be awarded to ONE (1) winner.


Don't miss an article - signup for our rss feed or our Continous Innovation group today!

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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.

Enter to Win a Free Ticket to The Economist's March Event

Want a chance to win a free ticket ($1,500 value) to The Economist's event - "Innovation Fresh Thinking For the Ideas Economy" at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley on March 23-24, 2010?

It's easy, here is all you need to do is fill in the blank on our LinkedIn or Facebook discussion:

1. When it comes to innovation, I wish somebody would write about ______________.


• Fill in the blank in our Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn.
  
• Fill in the blank in our brand new Facebook page (and become a fan)

Enter by midnight GMT on March 2, 2010. Winner will be announced March 3, 2010.

If you don't want to enter the contest but would like to save $150 off event registration, see the discount code at the bottom of this article.


There will be a lot of great, top-flight speakers at this event, including:

• Clayton Christensen and Michael Porter (by Video Link)
  
• Arianna Huffington - Editor in Chief, Huffington Post
  
• Tim Brown - CEO, IDEO
  
• David Kelley - Head, Stanford Design School
  
• Judy Estrin - Author, "Closing the Innovation Gap"
  
• Scott Berkun - Author, "Myths of Innovation"
  
• Roger Martin - Dean, Rotman School of Business
  
• Paul Saffo - Visiting Scholar, Stanford Media X Network
  
• Matt Mullenweg - Founder, Wordpress
  
• John Kao - Author, "Innovation Nation"

As an added value for our loyal Blogging Innovation readers, we have negotiated a $150 discount when you register using our discount code - "BLINN" - register now.

We hope to see you there!


EDITOR'S NOTE: Winner is still responsible for all travel costs and the ticket is granted at The Economist's discretion not ours. There is only ONE (1) ticket up for grabs in this contest and it will be awarded to ONE (1) winner.


Don't miss an article - signup for our rss feed or our Continous Innovation group today!

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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.

Economist - "Fresh Thinking For The Ideas Economy"

Blogging Innovation will be covering The Economist's event - "Innovation Fresh Thinking For the Ideas Economy" (see discount code below) at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley on March 23-24, 2010.

There will be a lot of great, top-flight speakers at this event, including:

• Clayton Christensen and Michael Porter (by Video Link)
  
• Arianna Huffington - Editor in Chief, Huffington Post
  
• Tim Brown - CEO, IDEO
  
• David Kelley - Head, Stanford Design School
  
• Judy Estrin - Author, "Closing the Innovation Gap"
  
• Scott Berkun - Author, "Myths of Innovation"
  
• Roger Martin - Dean, Rotman School of Business
  
• Paul Saffo - Visiting Scholar, Stanford Media X Network
  
• Matt Mullenweg - Founder, Wordpress
  
• John Kao - Author, "Innovation Nation"

As an added value for our loyal Blogging Innovation readers, we have negotiated a $150 discount when you register using our discount code - "BLINN" - register now.

We hope to see you there!

Don't miss an article - signup for our rss feed or our Continous Innovation group today!

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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.

Video Interview - Eric Liu - "Imagination First"

by Braden Kelley

I had the opportunity to interview Eric Liu, author of the new book "Imagination First" at a book event last night. I'd like to share a video interview I did with Eric before the event:



Interview - Eric Liu - Author "Imagination First" from Braden Kelley on Vimeo.


If you prefer YouTube, I've split the interview into Part 1 and Part 2 there.

Eric Liu was interviewed on stage during the event by Warren Etheredge and I'd also like to share some of the key insights from Eric's talk at the event:

• We all have the capacity for imagination, but as we grow up we are disincentivized to share it


• We need to teach kids to have respect for limits and to stretch their imaginations by giving them activities with limits and inviting them to create within those limits


• We need to be careful not to strip out the play from education


• "Play matters" - leaning forward versus leaning back


• We should practice imagination in the same way that we practice music, sports, etc.


• There are two main enemies of imagination


1. Expert Knowledge (we know it already)
   
2. Fear (of succcess, of being exposed, etc.)


• How do we sustain imagination in our little pocket of the organization and then how do we infect others with it?


• Next time something bad happens, try saying out loud "How fascinating!", then allow yourself to detach and observe as you work toward a solution instead of getting stuck in a fear loop.


• We want innovation right now, but you don't get the fruit without first planting the seed


• We need to make education speak to students' and teachers' motivations - More "what if?" and less "what is" - More project-based learning


• Out of all of the practices in the book, the most important one is "Failing Well"


• We must learn to fail better each time
  
• True with entrepreneurs
  
• True with politics


• There is an art to failing


• Failure is the real "f" word in our society

Enjoy this post? 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.

Innovation Perspectives - Trendspotting Trifecta

This is the third of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on 'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?'. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Braden Kelley

I believe this question should really be broken up because there are three VERY different (and incredibly important) pursuits intermingled here:

1. Trend spotting
   
2. Putting emerging behaviors into context for a business
   
3. Putting emerging needs into context for a business

Only at the very beginning of a business, when it is all or nothing for a small team of founders, should responsibility for these three tasks be combined. The reason responsibility for these three different pursuits should be split up is because each requires a different way of thinking, that often requires different types of people to generate the most relevant and actionable insights.

As I've written before, insights and execution are the real keys to business success, and in building any successful innovation - the insights come first. So, combining these three pursuits properly and getting the insights correct is incredibly important - otherwise you'll design, build, and distribute a solution that misses the mark with customers.

Trend spotting requires big picture thinking, a talent for separating the notable from the unimportant, the ability to see how potential trends connect together, and the vision to see the impact of this trend intersection (what megatrends might they point to, etc.).

Putting emerging behaviors into context for a business requires an incredible capacity for insightful observation, the ability to spot influential thinkers who are good at identifying and describing changing behaviors, and the skills to synthesize a collection of perspectives into a cohesive view of the future. This view of the future must of course have a strong chance of being correct.

Putting emerging needs into context for a business is incredibly difficult and requires understanding how emerging trends and behaviors will intersect with new technologies and other business capabilities to expose new customer needs. Those new needs then represent potential growth areas for businesses to enter with new solutions. The goal of course is to identify and act upon these emerging needs before the competition has the opportunity to observe these needs as expressed behaviors and actions and react.

The one skill that all three share in common however, is the ability to disconnect one's own perspective from the changing perspectives of others. Whether you as an organization choose to hire people into these roles, hire in consultants to provide this insight, or to spread the responsibilities around the organization, you must have a strategy.

Personally, I believe organizations may soon begin creating insight networks within their organizations in the same way that they currently do with innovation. This means having a central insights team at Corporate HQ with strong executive support that is responsible for managing the process, the distributed global network, its training/certification, and its outputs. This does not have to mean starting a new team - companies could incorporate these responsibilities within an existing dedicated-innovation infrastructure. So, can an insight management software industry be far behind?

And last but not least you will need to assign people to monitor trends and emerging behaviors and needs from Six Ways to Sunday:

1. Demographic and Psychographic Changes
   
2. Legal and Political Changes
   
3. Different Geographies
   
4. Different Industries
   
5. New Supplier and Technology Capabilities
   
6. New Business Capabilities and Business Models

Do you have a strategy and responsibilities in place for spotting trends and emerging needs/behaviors in your organization?

What are you waiting for?


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?' by clicking the link in this sentence.

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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.

Creating Customer Value and Conversation

by Braden Kelley

On playfool.com I came across a very interesting potential partial solution to the societal problem of drunk driving using an integrated approach, that combines an interactive game with advertising and the services of the local taxi association. And of course, the bars and clubs are happy to participate in order to reduce their risks (or maybe out of the goodness of their hearts). This is a great example of how to create customer value and conversation instead of just shouting at potential customers via traditional advertising.

So, without further ado is an interactive marketing experience not likely to be mistaken for the Wii:





Are you creating customer value and conversation with your marketing efforts?

Can you think of other interactive experiences or innovations to help combat societal ills?


Enjoy this post? 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.

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.

Study of Innovation Risks

Building upon the Boston Consulting Group innovation study, Altin Kadareja has configured a research study for his graduate thesis titled: "Quantification of Innovation Risks".

He is focused on developing a model that can identify, analyze and quantify the risk of innovation projects. This model stands besides innovation project management practices and is based on a step by step structural framework empowered by a PRA (Probabilistic Risk Assessment) analysis.

He is closing out his research this week, so please help him out by filling in a
short online survey (only 13 questions).

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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.

Cisco Announces $250,000 iPrize Competition v2.0

by Braden Kelley

Cisco has announced its second Cisco iPrize Competition. At stake is a $250,000 Grand Prize that will be awarded after eight selected finalists have the opportunity to present their innovation idea to Cisco's selection commitee using Cisco Telepresence.

The first Cisco iPrize was awarded to an idea focused on reducing the energy consumption in the electrical grid. This idea is currently undergoing development in Cisco. But the winners are back at it again and have entered an idea in Cisco iPrize v2.0.

I had the opportunity to do a video interview with Sharon Wong, Director of Business Development in Cisco's Emerging Technology Group about the competition:

Interview with Sharon Wong about Cisco iPrize from Braden Kelley on Vimeo.

In this open, global competition entrepreneurs submit proposals and collaborate to create the seed idea for Cisco's next billion-dollar business.

You have until April 30, 2010 to submit your idea. Idea submissions should fall in one of four categories:

1. The Future of Work: New solutions that accelerate and change the way we do business


2. The Connected Life: Technological inspirations that dramatically improve living conditions and disseminate culture


3. New Ways to Learn: Next-generation solutions that transform when, where, and how people learn.


4. The Future of Entertainment: New solutions that change how people play together

Below on the left you'll find a video of Marthin De Beer announcing the Cisco iPrize Competition and on the right you can watch Guido Jouret speak about some of Cisco's views on what makes a big idea:



You can submit an idea by yourself or you can work together as a team. Once ideas are submitted, iPrize community members can vote for the best ideas, and otherwise engage with the community of people who have submitted ideas. For complete rules and other information, please check out the Cisco iPrize Questions and Answers.


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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.

Innovation a Prisoner of Inductive and Deductive Logic

by Braden Kelley

I had the opportunity to attend an event hosted by the Seattle office of design firm NBBJ yesterday. The event featured Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and author of "The Design of Business" and "The Opposable Mind." I'd like to share a video interview I did with Roger before the event:

Interview - Roger Martin - Author "The Design of Business" from Braden Kelley on Vimeo.

I'd also like to share some of the key insights from Roger's talk at the event:

• People think in ways that form rules in their brains, and they are not always aware of the ways that those rules constrain them


• That which tends to get you more reliability often gets you less validity


• IQ tests have test/re-test reliability, but only 30% of life outcomes are related to IQ, 70% is attributable to other factors
  
• Emotional intelligence measures may be more valid, but not reliable


• If you insist on reliability, you can't prove in advance that your heuristic of a mystery is correct


• Innovation is a prisoner of deductive and inductive logic


• We learn to analyze quantities, but what matters more often are the qualities


• Abductive logicians welcome variance because they want to try and understand the outliers. Our modern education system beats abductive logic out of you. Are you focusing on quantities or qualities?


• We depend too much on quantities - Having more Science Technology & Math (STeM) graduates is not the way to invent the future


• Our businesses run on abstractions to help us understand the world, so new ones can be created and existing ones can be questioned


• Outliers in data can be significant sources for growth and innovation. Take the example of Intuit's QuickBooks - it was created because of the persistent existence of Quicken outliers trying to use the program to run their business instead of their personal finances.


• From the book - "It's not necessarily that some young whippersnapper's going to come up with some better idea than you. They're going to start from a different premise and they're going to come to a different conclusion that makes you irrelevant.""


• Sometimes you have to marinate on wicked problems. Instead of trying to simplify them, wade in a ways and then take a break and ruminate.


• If you live in a way that sets up your mind to determine whether things are true or false, then you can't invent the future.


• Innovation is more about combining and synthesizing existing conceptualizations and models. There are three main ways to do this:


1. Disaggregation - Target is a good example - In packaged goods, they focus on price, but in soft goods the focus on design.


2. Doubling-Down - To get the buzz of exclusivity that Cannes gets, the Toronto Film Festival pushed so hard on inclusivity that they created the buzz through the People's Choice Awards


3. Mixing - Hidden gems


• "It's not the job of the customer to invent the future."


• Quantitative and qualitative surveys force customers to make something up when they don't know how to answer


• Customers only know themselves and are happy to talk about themselves


• Interesting question - Should we be teaching intuitive thinking to science, technology and math majors? - Yes! - We should focus more energy in science on the intuitive leaps of the mind necessary to come up with interesting hypotheses.


• CEOs should see themselves as the Chief Validity Officer because of the overwhelming reliability-focus of our organizations


• Heuristics are a drug for strategy & design consultants - Often they are so busy with the heuristics that they don't take the time to push heuristics down into algorithms or to explore new mysteries

My book review of "The Design of Business" can be found here.

My previous interview with "The Design of Business" author Roger Martin can be found here.


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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 February 'Innovation Perspectives'

February'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 with the 1,980+ people in the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn.

Here is this month's topic for publishing the week of February 15-21, 2010:


Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?

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


• The submission deadline is midnight GMT on February 13, 2010

Several contributing authors will be writing articles on this topic, but you are also welcome to submit an article. The process is simple:

1. Submit your article using our contact form


2. I will e-mail you back with a request for a 1-2 sentence author byline and a photo like those on Blogging Innovation

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


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

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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.

Apple's Hidden Disruptive Innovation

by Braden Kelley

People often think that disruptive innovation happens overnight, but often it happens one step at a time. Before the iPod was an innovation, Apple had to not only launch the device, but also the iTunes Store for music, and the Microsft Windows version of iTunes. Apple also expanded the iTunes Store to include audiobooks, movies, and television, but by then it had already become a mass-adopted disruptive innovation that has changed the music industry forever.

Apple then launched the iPhone and changed the power paradigm in the mobile industry around mobile applications publishing - resulting in the App Store.

Apple is about to do it again, but nobody is writing about it.

In retrospect I believe we will look back and point to January 27, 2010 as the day that Apple changed the power paradigm of mobile data plans and subsidies in the mobile industry.

Up until now, the mobile postpaid market has been defined by mobile phones subsidized in exchange for two-year contracts (at least in the United States), and mobile data plans that also often require a two-year contract. Even when Google announced the Nexus One as an unlocked device, T-Mobile (or any other carrier) is still going to charge you the same monthly cost as someone who bought the subsidized phone. Meanwhile, The carrier partner announced for the iPad, AT&T, has two regular 3G data plans:

1. $35 per month (200MB limit)
   
2. $60 per month (5GB monthly limit)

AT&T sells two 3G data cards - free or $49 - both requiring a two-year contract. But Apple yesterday announced that AT&T will provide 3G service to iPad users WITHOUT a two-year contract (or any contract for that matter). Pay as you go data access that is actually CHEAPER than their regular 3G data plans:

1. $15 per month (250MB limit)
   
2. $30 per month (unlimited)

To my knowledge, this is the first time (at least in the United States) where a carrier has given a cheaper price for service to a customer bringing an unlocked, unsubsidized device onto their network. This is of course how it should be, but still this is a watershed moment. If other carriers adopt this model with the iPad, then eventually some carrier may start to do this with other devices, and it may open the door for a different subsidy to emerge.

If carriers finally start to acknowledge that people who bring unsubsidized devices onto their network should pay less, then it opens the door for someone like Google to start paying people to use their device. Google could leverage their ad-serving platform and Google Checkout to launch a phone that effectively gets cheaper the more and longer you use it, regardless of which carrier you use and whether you're using pre-pay or postpaid (standard monthly service).

This is the innovation that I thought Google would launch with the Nexus One, but they didn't. Can Google now lean on T-Mobile and others more now to offer differentiated pricing for owners of unsubsidized devices?

The data plans offered by AT&T for the Apple iPad may have not seemed very interesting on January 27, 2010. But, I think looking backwards we may very well see this as a defining moment for the mobile industry.

Thank you Apple.


To see what I think of the Apple iPad, please go here.

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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.