2010: The Year of Innovation and Entrepreneurs in the Middle East

by Kamal Hassan

What a year it has been in the Middle East! Let's start with the good news:

• Qatar Airways completed the world's first commercial passenger flight powered by natural gas.


• The fully automated Dubai Metro became the first urban train network in the Middle East.


• And in Saudi Arabia, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology opened its doors. Called "an oasis of freedom," the university aims to fund research that will spawn economic diversity for Saudi.

2009 has truly been a year of breakthrough achievements in the Middle East. It's also been a year of disappointments. Who could imagine that the bottom would fall out of the real estate market in most of the Middle East? Or that unemployment would rise and workers without a stake in the Gulf countries would flee, leaving their debts unpaid? Or that Dubai World would need a $26 billion bailout?

Yet, as disastrous as these situations may seem, they provide an unprecedented opportunity for growth in the region... the growth of innovation and entrepreneurs. 2010 could finally be the year that start-ups and companies investing in innovative products, services, business models and management come into serious play in the Middle East. The conditions are ripe.


Cheaper Resources: The events of 2009 have made resources - office space, talented personnel, raw materials, supplies - that are often too expensive for new businesses more affordable. The Middle East will likely see an influx of entrepreneurs taking advantage of the cheaper cost of doing business. Such businesses will likely be cash-based and will be able to survive month-to-month while they develop a customer base. On the other hand, highly financially-leveraged organizations will continue to bleed money unless they have vast reserves of cash or liquid assets.


Innovation and Agility: Real innovation is not about "bigger, faster, taller, or fancier." It's about adding value for both the business and its customers. Established companies may lose sight of this as they get bogged down by misguided corporate agendas and shareholder expectations. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, have less to prove, and less to lose. For new businesses, innovation, especially during tough times, becomes a daily occurrence as they look for unique ways to attract customers and add value. Some may even have the flexibility to adopt innovative new business models that take them in a completely different direction. Such agility is, and will continue to be, a real advantage in every industry.


Access to Affordable Technology: Sloan Management Review recently reported on how affordable technology is enabling businesses to test consumer reactions to new products more quickly, easily and cost-effectively than ever before. Thus, innovations can be tested and tweaked earlier in the development process, paving the way for a more successful market launch. While the article focused on the achievements of Google and other large, established companies, the underlying argument is sound for entrepreneurs and smaller businesses, as well. The cheaper technology becomes, the more the innovation playing field is leveled between organizations of all sizes. In addition, the Internet and social networking technology is enabling collaboration and open innovation as never before. This phenomenon will no doubt continue in 2010 as entrepreneurs around the world leverage this affordable technology.


Access to Information: Businesses today must deal with the most educated consumers the world has ever seen. Buyers know exactly what they want and have a higher level of expectations (green, socially responsible, clean energy, etc.). With such informed customers, companies cannot afford to limit their employees' access to information and new knowledge. Yet this is exactly what many established organizations are doing as they slash R&D and training budgets. Newer businesses, which tend to place more value on individual contributions, know that information and knowledge is essential to growth. So, while traditional companies hunker down and wait for things to get better, innovators and entrepreneurs continue to make things better by continuously learning and adapting.


Process Innovation: During the past year, companies both large and small were forced to cut costs. As per usual, organizations that could afford to cut jobs let the heads roll and hoped it would be enough. The UAE alone saw 16 percent of workers lose their jobs in 2009, and a recent survey by Gulf Talent reports that 15 percent of employers surveyed plan to continue cutting jobs. On the flip side, smart companies - many of them led by entrepreneurs - reduced job losses by focusing on managing processes, making them more cost-effective, innovative and efficient, and on eliminating or downsizing unnecessary infrastructure. Who do you think will be better prepared to face the challenges of 2010?

(Hint: it's not the company with fewer employees trained to do one thing that may not even be value-added anymore.)


So here is a question for the Middle East.

Where will you put your money and effort next year? Should we continue to follow the U.S. model of bailing out established corporations that are overextended with large-scale risky investments? Or should we increase support for entrepreneurs, start-ups and innovators that can make a real difference and also turn a profit?

Here's also a challenge for private equity funds: I read that you have $11 billion to invest in the region next year. What will you do to make 2010 the year of innovation and entrepreneurs in the Middle East?


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Kamal Hassan is President and CEO of Innovation 360 Institute, and is responsible for leading the company's global operations and customer acquisition.

Creative Destruction In Action

by Steve McKee

This week my hometown is abuzz with the news of a pending layoff of some seven hundred public school employees - administrators, aides, and yes, teachers. The dismal economic situation finally caught up to our school district, leaving it with a $43 million shortfall and precious few options.

It's a tragic situation, but it's where we all find ourselves during this most difficult economic period in recent history. Countless private companies have had to lay off valued employees, and there's no reason we should expect government employees to be unaffected.

As painful as it is in the short term, it also spells opportunity. Those seven hundred people will now energize their interests, talents and creativity in all new ways as they explore their options. Some will even strike out on their own, leveraging the upside of 'creative destruction' to bring to the world something entirely new.

As former U.S. ambassador and author Michael Novak states:


"the distinctive, defining difference of the capitalist economy is enterprise: the habit of employing human wit to invent new goods and services, and to discover new and better ways to bring them to the broadest possible public."


Sometimes there's no way around a tragic situation such as this. But there is a way through, and I'm confident that through creativity and enterprise those affected will find it.


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Steve McKee is a BusinessWeek.com columnist, marketing consultant, and author of "When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What To Do About It." Learn more about him at www.WhenGrowthStalls.com and at http://twitter.com/whengrowthstall.

Lincoln's Daring Statement - A Blueprint for Gaining Authority

by Glen Stansberry

Abraham Lincoln walked into the heart of the Confederate Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, on April 4, 1865. Less than a day after Richmond had fallen to the Union, the President strode to the capitol building and placed his feet on Jefferson Davis' desk.

It was a gesture that rang throughout America. The Civil War was officially over, and this President was the leader of the entire country.

If there was ever an authoritative statement in America's short history, this was it. As the broken nation looked for unity and leadership, Lincoln proved he had both.

And it's a perfect example for us to see what it takes to earn authority.


Don't Play It Safe

What's interesting about Lincoln's trip is the size of his party that went into the city. He wasn't in the middle of a battalion, he was with a handful of guards and advisors. An ambush by any remaining rebel forces could have easily wiped out Lincoln's party.

It would have been easy to wait until the city was officially cleared by Union troops, but that wasn't Lincoln's style.

Think about how you can be daring. Daring says "I know what's safe... let's see if I can do the opposite." Sure, you might fail once in a while, but you'll have seen the edge.


"When one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere." - D.H. Lawrence


Don't Pay Attention to "Experts"

Lincoln's advisors told him not to go.

Guides can be helpful for gaining perspective. But sometimes you just have to listen to your gut, even if you know you won't be popular for it.

Nobody liked Lincoln during the Civil War. Presidents didn't start having approval ratings until after the 1930's, but it's widely believed that Lincoln's approval rating would have had one of the worst. And yet...

Lincoln is one of the most revered presidents of all time.

When he decided to personally walk into the city without an entire militia guarding him, you can bet nearly everyone with half a bit of sense tried to talk him out of it. But the President stuck to his resolve.

What's that voice in your ear telling you not to pursue something? Is it telling you it'll never work? It might even pass as advice...

Don't listen.


Get Out There

Above all, Lincoln went where the people were. He didn't stay home and make a speech behind the gates of the White House. He went to where the people needed him most. The newly emancipated slaves and supporters of the Union crowded the streets to thank the President as he made his way to the Capitol building.

Hit the pavement. Mix it up. Go where the people are talking and sharing. Blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook. Or, as crazy as this might sound, you might even need to meet people in real life.

There are tons of people surrounding you both online and off who need what you know. Go find them.


Don't Wait

Lincoln was keenly aware of how timing would affect his journey. Had he waited a few weeks to journey into the battered city, the moment would have already passed to do something profound.

Instead, he struck while the iron was hot.

It's easy to let things slip until later. "Tomorrow" is one of the most comforting words in the English language. But tomorrow doesn't do anything for tomorrow. Don't let the window close on whatever you're working on.


Make a Statement

Lincoln knew the power of symbolism. He knew that sitting in Davis' chair and propping his feet on Davis' desk was a powerful statement that didn't require any words. He didn't need a lengthy speech to tell the nation he was in charge.

Sometimes the most profound statements are simple gestures. Being friendly to someone. Showing grace. Doing thankless work.

Our actions speak louder than words.


Do. NOT. Conform.

Abraham Lincoln was hardly what we'd call a conformist. He didn't look, act, sound, eat or walk like a President. When long-winded orators were using thousands of words, he used ten sentences. While everyone in the Union cried for harsh treatment of the defeated Confederates, Lincoln instructed his generals to "let 'em up easy."

He's still revered as one of the most-loved Presidents because he was different and didn't conform.

So above all, don't fall into the trap that you have to do "what works" with 'proven methods'. There is no path to greatness.

In fact, the path to greatness isn't a path at all. It's a dense thicket waiting to be hacked through.


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Glen Stansberry writes at LifeDev, a blog that helps people make their ideas happen. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Video Interview - Judy Estrin - "Closing the Innovation Gap"

by Braden Kelley

I had the opportunity to interview Judy Estrin, a serial entrepreneur and author of the book "Closing the Innovation Gap" at The Economist's conference "Innovation: Fresh Thinking for the Ideas Economy". I'd like to share a video interview I did with Judy during the event:




In this video Judy and I discuss innovation ecosystems, disruptive innovation, education, and closing the innovation gap.



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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 Call for Open Government

by Janelle Noble

Open Government is everywhere. Governments at all levels, municipal, city, and federal agencies are taking dramatic steps to open the traditionally closed processes and reform their IT structures to go open source and embrace cloud computing. What is the end goal? Well, there are several. At the highest level one could say it is to use the latest technology and social web tools to provide better services to constituents while opening up channels for communication between government, its employees, and citizens to gather feedback and new ideas on pressing issues such as the budget, safety, and transportation.

In September of 2009, Tim O'Reilly (who coined the term Web 2.0 in 2004) wrote an opinion piece outlining his vision for Government, or Gov. 2.0 and stated it was more about transforming government into a technological platform. In it he references sites like Whitehouse.gov and data.gov, highlighting the difference between governments providing a purely static informational web site or a site that is a kind of 'collaboration platform' and offers web-based services that provide more value to the user.

Open Government has been championed not only by President Obama in his Directive, but also on a city level, with Mayor Newsom's Open Gov Initiative for the City and County of San Francisco which focuses on open data, open participation and open source. With the recently launched ImproveSF.org, the city is furthering its commitment to recognize and tap the valuable ideas from city employees on the city's most pressing issues, starting with the budget. The campaign, open to all city employees, has only been running for a few weeks and since launching in late February, has gathered 300 ideas, 380 comments, and over 2,000 votes.

There are many other forms of open government popping up in lesser known town and city governments across the US. And the trend is not just limited to the United States. Your Country, Your Call is an online competition looking for ideas that will create jobs and prosperity for Ireland. The brainchild of President McAleese's husband, Dr. Martin McAleese, two winners will receive 100,000 Euros each and benefit from a development fund of up to 500,000 Euros per project. The site is definitely garnering local and international attention and is being promoted through traditional mediums such as television ads as well as through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Over 35,000 visitors from dozens of countries have checked out the Your Country Your Call site since its launch a few weeks ago, with thousands voting and commenting on the over 2,000 proposals already submitted.




Ireland's Your Country Your Call TV AD

As more and more towns, cities, and federal governments opt to embrace part or all of what Open Government stands for, the platforms that power these initiatives will become more central to their overall success. Brightidea has been offering open-innovation solutions through its WebStorm, Switchboard, and Pipeline offerings for years. These truly enterprise-level platforms incorporate the best of the social web and allow governments to link individual public or private initiatives, create rollup activity reporting across multiple campaigns on a centralized admin dashboard in order to track and monitor activity at all levels. These functions could truly help expand the rollout of Gov. 2.0 as a standard technological platform (as Tim O'Reilly pointed out, one that reaches well beyond IT) which truly transforms the way people interact with government, bettering the lives of citizens all over the world.


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Janelle Noble is the Digital Marketing Manager at Brightidea and frequently contributes for Brightidea's corporate blog, Innovation at Work. Follow her on twitter @janelletnoble.

Your Smartphone Could be a Spy Phone

It can broadcast your location without your knowledge. There's no place to hide.

by Idris Mootee

I was watching Eagle Eyes last weekend, I was thinking what happened there is actually not unlikely - we're being watched every second. Forget about PC spyware, they're nothing compared with mobile phone spyware that enables call- and text-monitoring. But worst of all, mobile phone spyware allows anyone to tap into the phone remotely and activate its microphone, even when it is turned OFF.

So It doesn't matter if you have an iPhone, Blackberry or any Android phones. These spyware programs are not expensive (often free), or difficult to purchase or install. Your smartphone can also tell your location. We all need our mobile phones, so now there's no place to hide. There are several spy services out there for people who are desperate to monitor their children or employees. Companies such as Mobile Spy will help you monitor their call, mobile web browsing and text message activities. You can just log into your Mobile Spy account from any computer and see everything - including GPS locations too! Scary!

One popular spyware for mobile phones is Flexispy. It comes in four packages, with the high-end Flexispy Pro-X having features such as live-call listening, secret mobile GPS tracking, SMS message reading, phone call history, email, and the ability to secretly listen in on the phone's surroundings. The entry level product is Flexispy Bug which allows remote listening only. It turns your phone into a bug so someone else can listen to everything.

Are you safe? Probably not. A quick way to check if you phone is bugged, look for sudden drop in battery power, and then unusually billing activity with random numbers. If you for whatever reasons need to engage in a secret conversation, take the battery out of your smartphone.

As early as 1997, the National Reconnaissance Organization warned that any mobile phone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone. This is basically done by transmitting to the mobile phone a maintenance command on the control channel. This command places the mobile telephone in 'diagnostic mode'. When this is done, conversations in the immediate area of the telephone can be monitored over the voice channel. This diagnostic mode was originally designed for remote software update. Now with GPS, not only they can listen in, they can locate you within feet. So, when do they start making anti-spy software for cell phones?

Don't expect these privacy risks to go away. The reality is all governments have no desire to fix this problem or to make these products illegal. The more they can find out about you the better protected they feel. It is like 1984.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Innovating to Compete

by Drew Boyd

Innovating is a form of competitive behavior. When we innovate, we compete with someone or something. We innovate to survive. We innovate for glory. We innovate to win. Leaders of organizations need to understand and leverage this competitive aspect of innovation to embed it into the organization.

Innovating to compete occurs at many levels:

• At the national level, governments compete with other nations for trade, economic power, and global political influence.


• At the municipal level, cities compete aggressively to attract investment, firms, and employees to stimulate jobs and economic growth.


• At the industry level, competition among sectors is fierce. Industries want to attract customers, investment, talent, and favorable government treatment.


• At the company level, firms want to be more competitive by differentiating themselves in the marketplace.


• At the business unit level, franchises compete with one another for budget resources and manpower.


• At the individual level, peer rivals compete with each other for promotion and bonuses.


• At the personal level, we compete with ourselves to achieve a new "personal best" when overcoming challenges.

Here are suggestions of what leaders can do to embrace competition and drive innovation:

1. National: Governments need to create a National Innovation Policy. The policy should outline a vision, identify opportunities, create guidelines for investment, coordinate partnerships, and nurture the development of human talent. Here is an excellent example of an innovation policy from the Czech Republic. Countries that pursue these policies will thrive.


2. Municipal: Cities compete just as nations do. At the city level, government leaders can further the state of innovation by coordinating activities between firms, entrepreneurs, venture funds, and universities. Many cities spark innovation by sponsoring innovation contests.


3. Industry: To be more innovative, firms within the same industry need to band together and form trade groups to facilitate and coordinate programs that sustain the vitality of the industry. Trade groups can no longer focus just on government lobbying. They need a coordinated approach to technology transfer and scientific investment. They need to address the systemic flaws in their industry that stifle growth.


4. Firm: Companies need to train their employees how to innovate using systematic tools and processes. Firms need to "innovate on demand" and maintain a healthy flow of new projects into the pipeline. Most importantly, innovation strategy must be pursued within the context of competitive strategy.


5. Business Unit: The business unit is where innovation happens. Innovation is a team sport, and franchise leaders need to deploy teams using facilitated workshops to create new products and services. Leaders should allocate resources disproportionately to those who systematically produce new pipeline concepts...organically.


6. Individual: People succeed through innovation. An employee's value and vitality is sustained by the ability to generate novel ideas day in and day out. People need to see innovation as a skill, not a gift, that can be learned through university or corporate training programs.


7. Self: At this level, it starts with a simple question: "Am I an innovator?" Says Steve Banhegyi, "Your self image controls your level of personal innovation. Your ability to innovate rests largely on who you think you are. You are as innovative as your narrative allows you to be."

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Uncertainty of Economic Growth Remains

by Steve McKee

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) says that small business optimism grew slightly in January. Slightly. The NFIB Optimism Index currently sits at 89.3, ten points below where it was prior to the recession.

Commenting on the index, Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said:


"To absorb the over 15 million officially unemployed workers in this country... job openings and hirings must rebound dramatically. This report offers no indication that this is happening."


The NFIB's report is consistent with Decision Analyst's January Economic Index, a survey of several thousand households based on nine different economic measurements. The index remained unchanged for the third month in a row, stuck at 94, well below the 110 which signals an economic expansion. This index tends to lead the U.S. economy by up to a year, suggesting the economy will remain sluggish throughout 2010.

That's what the CEO of Unilever, one of the world's largest consumer product companies, is preparing for. Speaking of the economy, Paul Polman says:


"It's not going to just drastically change in the next 12 to 24 months. We will be in for a long and slow recovery, and that's what we're planning our business on."


Policy makers continue to point the finger at the difficulty of securing business credit. But the indexes above suggest the bigger problem is simply a lack of revenue growth, meaning employers simply don't need to hire. That sentiment is borne out by the fact that fewer than one in ten owners surveyed by the NFIB added employees in January, while more than twice as many cut jobs.

Businesses don't want to borrow money as long as economic uncertainty remains high. What we most need now is normalcy, not big ideas. Let's hope the politicians are paying attention.


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Steve McKee is a BusinessWeek.com columnist, marketing consultant, and author of "When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What To Do About It." Learn more about him at www.WhenGrowthStalls.com and at http://twitter.com/whengrowthstall.

Innovation, Invention and Entrepreneurs

by Jeffrey Phillips

After all I read on the blogs and on Twitter, and all the new innovation programs and initiatives in state and local governments, I feel the need to revisit the definitions of these key words. While innovation, invention and entrepreneurs are important and somewhat interconnected, they aren't synonyms and they have different needs, intents and purposes. Whether accidently or on purpose, we can't allow them to mean the same things.

First, the definitions:

An entrepreneur is a person who starts a new business. That's not necessarily innovative, but it can create new jobs and new wealth, so it is valuable. Sometimes, entrepreneurs create new businesses based on new ideas, either inventions or new innovations. However, a person running a McDonald's is also an entrepreneur, but not necessarily innovative.

An inventor is someone who creates a new to the world product or solution. Inventions become interesting when they create value for the inventor or consumers or the world at large. Inventors are often innovative, but innovative solutions don't have to be inventions. Many innovations are new business models, new services or new experiences that aren't necessarily "inventions".

An innovation is a new idea that is put into valuable or profitable action. An innovation can be created by an inventor who then licenses her invention to others to commercialize, or commercializes the concept herself as a small business person - in this case as an entrepreneur. An innovation can (and often is) created by a large organization to disrupt an existing market space or create an entirely new market (the iPod or Flip Video recorder are two good examples). Innovation can happen in any organization, of any size. Additionally, there's innovation in governments, in academic institutions, and in not-for-profits. We typically don't think of these organizations as entrepreneurial or as inventing new things, yet they can be innovative. Further, innovations can be new products, but can also be new service models, new business models and new customer experiences.

The reasons the distinctions are important are hopefully obvious. There are a number of state governments, as well as the federal government talking about innovation policy. Read the fine print and they are really talking about funding and sponsoring entrepreneurs and technology transfer from institutions and universities. This may have some aspect of innovation, but doesn't really consider organizations outside the start-up realm. A vast majority of disruptive and incremental innovations come from larger, commercial organizations, and these organizations can become more innovative as governments adjust tax policies, intellectual property rights and a number of other components of regulation and legislation. Yet most of the state and federal initiatives are really targeted at starting and funding new entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Interestingly, if you stop to consider the most "innovative" locations in the US (Boston, Research Triangle Park, Austin, Silicon Valley as a few) you'll note that they have all three things in common - government, education and technology are closely linked and vital to all of these cities. Innovation thrives in an interlinked, internetworked community. The same isn't necessarily true of inventions or entrepreneurs.

The overwhelming focus as well is on product innovation, yet we see consistently that business model innovation and customer experience innovation are much more compelling. After all, the icon of innovation, the iPod, is simply another MP-3 player unless iTunes is attached. It was the radical change in the business model and customer experience that made the iPod a true disrupter. Yet we don't find too much focus or government initiatives in these areas. And almost no policy or funding for the organizations that need innovation the most - governments and educational institutions and bureaucracies.

Another thing - having been a founder in a start-up, most entrepreneurs don't need or want a lot of help from an "innovation" perspective. They are betting the farm on their one great idea. For them, its all a matter of execution to bring that one idea to life, and then successfully scaling that idea. In contrast, larger organizations which have lost the passion and initiative of the entrepreneurs need a great deal of help and encouragement to innovate, since they have much to lose if a new product or service fails. In larger firms there is almost never a shortage of ideas, but a shortage of risk-taking, passion and resources to develop the new idea. Interesting that the problem the small firms have (scaling) is one the larger firms can offer, and the challenge the larger firms have (risk-taking, passion) is one the smaller firms can offer.

We need all three of these concepts work well to succeed. We need inventors to create new products and new processes, and we need entrepreneurs to disrupt existing markets and bring these new products and services to the market. We also need innovation from large existing firms, because without innovation they stagnate and die. When we talk about innovation, invention and entrepreneurs, and when we put policies in place to encourage certain types of activities or investments, we need to understand the implications and ramifications of those words and actions.


"While closely related, invention, innovation and entrepreneurs are not the same things, and should not be treated in the same fashion."

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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.

School is Out

by Kevin Roberts

It sometimes feels like I've run the full gamut of school-related experiences - from being kicked out of school at 17, to being invited back as a Governor. I frequently speak to students at universities around the world, but having an eternally curious granddaughter like Stella in my life has piqued my interest in the way primary schools approach the first few years of learning.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem we're doing our children justice in this regard. Despite being one of the richest countries on earth, America's education system is notoriously rife with difficulties. A recent in-depth report from Cambridge University on UK primary schools suggests a grim focus on state-determined curriculum and assessment is dampening childrens' appetites for learning. The researchers recommend a new approach where formal learning begins age 6 (rather than 5), and that younger children be left to learn through play. I've spoken here before about the importance (and fun!) of free-ranging play outdoors, and I think this principle remains the same in the classroom. Of course core frameworks are important - as long as they allow great teachers to inspire their young pupils to experiment, keep asking "why?", and start coming up with their own answers. Sure, sometimes they'll get it wrong. Sometimes they'll get their hands dirty. But if their curiosity is sparked, they'll develop a love and appreciation for learning as adventure that will last a lifetime.

I like the approach taken by President Obama in a recent speech to young American school children. Always big on hope and inspiration, the President pointed to where the best kind of education leads - discovery, innovation and creation. Not just retaining facts and ticking off boxes, but being able to take what you've learnt and use it to make something exciting and new that benefits everyone. His concluding questions put the future firmly in the hands of his young listeners:

"So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What
problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make?"

Fittingly, a bunch of open-ended questions best answered with imagination, not just textbooks.


Image source: http://defencedebates.wordpress.com/category/my-feedback-to-you/

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Which Countries Are Losing Their Innovation Capabilities?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I recently discovered reasons to take my innovation perspective to a national rather than a corporate level. The questions that went through my mind were like this:

• What if the behaviours of the citizens in a country determine the corporate ability to innovate?


• What if such behaviours directly hurt the corporate ability to innovate?


• A capability that is so important for the future of companies as well as countries.


• Or what if the behaviours hinder the chances of taking innovation to the next level?

The country I have in mind is my own, Denmark. I have long argued that Denmark does very well on innovation. Danes believe in flat hierarchies and that authorities and common beliefs should be challenged.

This is a good outset for innovation and we have always been pretty good at taking existing technologies or ideas, give them a little twist and then come up with new ways of using this.

This has worked very well for many years, but things are changing so fast and innovation is becoming an open and global process. Being open to new input and being tolerant towards other cultures and perspectives are keys to future success.

Personally, I travel a lot and I try hard to stay open to other cultures and perspectives. However, I might not be as open-minded as I think I am and perhaps it is even worse with many of my countrymen. I was told this by a German friend who has lived in Denmark for many years. Danes are not open and tolerant. On the contrary, Danes are viewed as being quite self-sufficient.

My German friend made me think and I now begin to see some answers to questions that have puzzled me for a while.

• Why are Danish companies not on the forefront of open innovation?


• Why do Danish media not cover open innovation better than they do?

I have always believed that Denmark has all what it takes to benefit from the shift towards open and global innovation. Could I really be so wrong? I am sad to say, but I think this is the case.

Nevertheless, I want to thank my German friend for opening my eyes and getting a new perspective on open innovation. This also raises other important questions.

• Which other countries stand to lose just as Denmark might do?


• Which countries stand to win on this?

I view countries such as France, Italy and Japan to be quite inward-focused. Will they lose out on innovation? If my perspective on this holds true, the U.S. definitely will be a winner. China? Not sure. They have a little of everything in them, but I believe they will come out as a winner as well.


Enough for now. Your thoughts?

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Removing Risk from Bold Aspirations

by Rowan Gibson

The conventional wisdom about innovation is that companies should be less risk-averse. If this means they should try to increase their share of courageous employees who are willing to stand up and fight for ideas, then I would agree. However, when we move from the individual level to the corporate level, the challenge becomes quite different. After all, do we really think companies should be taking more risks? If anything, many firms have been far too willing to make big, risky bets on ventures that ended up losing billions of dollars - GM's ill-fated EV1 project and Motorola's Iridium phone are two examples that come to mind. I would argue, therefore, that the real challenge for organizations is not how to take more risks but how to derisk bold aspirations.

One way to do that is to work from the future back. At the outset, an innovation goal might be so big and outrageous that it almost seems impossible. You need to break it down into a stepwise migration path that begins to make the impossible seem do-able. Ask yourself: What is it going to take to reach that goal? What specific kinds of knowledge, experience, and skills do we need to acquire? And how do we stage our way there by building and acquiring these competencies in a sequential manner? Search for the last few steps needed to get where you want to go, and then fold the future successively back into the present, working out a series of realistic checkpoints for tackling these challenges one at a time.

An analogy I often use is John F. Kennedy's goal to "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the decade." We may take it for granted today, but in the early 1960s that was an enormously bold aspiration which involved really huge risks. The only way for NASA to take Kennedy's ambition and make it reality was to stage the whole program in a series of mission-critical steps, working from the future backward. Through the Mercury program, followed by the Gemini program, and ultimately the Apollo program, NASA successively tested human spaceflight, earth orbiting, long-duration space missions, how weightlessness affected humans, how to dock two vehicles successfully in space, the Saturn V rocket launch vehicle, the Apollo command module (first in Earth orbit then in lunar orbit), and finally the lunar module. Along the way, they also created, tested and perfected a space suit that would allow an astronaut to get out of the pressurized landing craft and survive in the lunar environment. Only after applying all the learning from these preliminary missions did NASA launch Apollo 11, which put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon and brought them back safely back to earth, just a few months before the end of the decade.

In other words, NASA turned the "race to the moon" into a multi-stage experimentation process, de-risking it at every step, learning from the successes and failures of each experiment and consolidating the progress, all the time making the end goal less and less daunting.

It's the same approach many Olympic athletes follow when mapping out their four-year training path to a record-breaking gold medal. And it's exactly the same process you need to follow in business, when pursuing seemingly unattainable and potentially high-risk innovation goals.

Take, Toyota, one of the world's undeniable innovation champions. As Hirotaka Takeuchi, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu point out in their book "Extreme Toyota", the Japanese automobile giant has found that the way to achieve near-impossible goals is to "think deeply but take small steps" - breaking down a big goal into manageable challenges. This, for example, is how Toyota approached their hybrid motor project in the early part of this decade, eventually resulting in them stealing the show in environmentally-friendly cars.

What we learn here is that to achieve revolutionary goals, you need to take a series of evolutionary steps. That's an important way to minimize the risk associated with radical innovation.

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Rowan Gibson is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on enterprise innovation. He is co-author of the bestseller "Innovation to the Core" and a much in-demand public speaker around the globe. On Twitter he is @RowanGibson.

Inspiring Innovation

by Robert F. Brands

From small startups to world leadership organizations, innovation is a must for business to thrive and perpetuate.

How can your organization inspire innovation?

With long-term commitment to progress of the process, leaders must drive the journey from start through finish. Clearly-defined expectations towards the progress, as well as a definitive end-result are imperative elements involved. As a leader, one must inspire and drive the team. Regular meetings and dedication to touching on progress week-by-week are mandatory, and a clearly-outlined definition of the desired culture of the company helps each member of an organization understand innovative patterns, inspiring them to work together towards the success of innovation.

As a perfect and current example, the Fifth Annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Meeting attracted top CEOs and world leaders this week in New York; this year's theme heavily focusing on innovation as a top priority and driver towards worldwide economic recovery and growth. Setting the tone, President Barack Obama opened on Tuesday with a speech, mentioning:

"We need new businesses to unleash new innovations. We need new collaborations to advance prosperity."

Those words were spoken just a day following the White House's release of a white paper that outlined a national innovation strategy.

Founded as a nonprofit, nonpartisan sector of the William J. Clinton Foundation, this year's organization event held 960 guests from 84 countries. The key themes included harnessing innovation, strengthening infrastructure, building human capital, and financing an equitable future. Climate change, women's rights, and health care are some of the topics guests were to assess in brainstorming targeted and profitable ways to improve each situation.

A panel on "Approaches to Innovation" was moderated by a BusinessWeek editor, and organized by John Kao, founder of the Institute of Large Scale Innovation at consultancy Deloitte offered an "innovation boot camp" to attendees. Kao stated that Innovation is "not just creativity. It is specifically about creativity that has value."

When Inspiring Innovation, key elements in defining the desired culture within your organization and perpetuating Innovation within your organization include:

Understanding the goal and what it will take to reach it. Whether it's a new product per year or a dollar amount in sales, setting goals and knowing what it will take to reach it helps your company plan out the resources and budgets needed. Identifying key players and leaders within your organization is crucial to building your innovation team, as their roles and attitudes will trickle down and affect their teams as well, and your leaders can make or break the innovation process.

As a leader, you must create motivation and proactively push for a successful Innovation program. Leadership by example creates both material and emotional support for your team to push towards the goal. Stay simple and focused on constant communication in regards to Innovation visions. Allow for open communication to be a two-way street and knock down barriers keeping silos apart by creating teams that are cross functional amongst departments that don't usually interact. In doing so, creativity, cooperation and change will remain at an all-time high.

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Robert F. Brands is President and founder of Brands & Company, LLC. Innovation Coach Robert Brands has launched a new site - www.RobertsRulesOfInnovation.com - to complement his upcoming book.

A Look at Obama's Innovation Strategy

"History should be our guide. The United States led the world's economies in the 20th century because we led the world in innovation. Today, the competition is keener; the challenge is tougher; and that is why innovation is more important than ever. It is the key to good, new jobs for the 21st century. That's how we will ensure a high quality of life for this generation and future generations. With these investments, we're planting the seeds of progress for our country, and good-paying, private-sector jobs for the American people."

-President Barack Obama, August 5, 2009


by Bob Preston

I've never been a big fan of pyramid diagrams, mainly because I think they are trite and overused. Every time I see a PowerPoint presentation using a pyramid to represent 'strategy' I immediately lose attention for the topic, thinking to myself, here we go again. I just returned from the World Business Forum in New York City where I listened to some of the world's most powerful leaders and top thinking business gurus. Over the course of the two day event there were several highly successful presenters who had diagrams to represent their philosophies and strategies. Which shape? That's right, a pyramid.

About two weeks ago (September 2009) I heard that the Obama administration released their Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs. It peaked my interest because I write about collaboration, a fundamental requirement in the process of innovation. So I looked it up online, downloaded the document, and saved it into an electronic file to read sometime on an airplane. While flying back from New York tonight I had a chance to take a look. In a time of deep recession and jobs leaving the US workforce due to unemployment and off-shoring, I'm surprised that more noise has not been made about the plan. Perhaps the reason for lack of attention is that it was released in the midst of the health care debate? Maybe it was overlooked because of the Chicago Olympic bid? Or maybe the shadow cast by the economic recession is so great that the prospect of innovation and recovery seems far fetched?


Obama's Innovation Strategy builds on $100 billion of stimulus funds targeted to support and establish government policies as building blocks of innovation. A diagram accompanies the plan description on the first page to depict the various "building blocks." The form of the diagram? Pyramid. It didn't do a lot to peak my interest but I plowed ahead through the document anyway. Here's what I learned.


The strategy plan has three parts as follows:

1. Invest in the Building Blocks of American Innovation
2. Promote Competitive Markets that Spur Productive Entrepreneurship
3. Catalyze Breakthroughs for National Priorities

The paragraphs dedicated to these three parts read like a 'to do' list, the respective items beginning with every action oriented adjective in the book. Not that I don't appreciate the content and effort to push Americans, but it made me chuckle because of the carefully selected adjectives used to describe how the administration will jump start innovation: restore, educate, build, develop, promote, encourage, support, improve, unleash (you have to love that one), drive, harness. Really, check out 'The Pyramid' and see for yourself.



The Innovation Strategy Plan seems more like a vision for the future as opposed to a true plan. It also comes off as a justification piece for the billions of dollars in funding provided by Recovery Act - how, why, and where economic stimulus investments are being made. I find it to be an interesting topic because it is unclear to me what level of involvement the government should be playing - laissez-faire or stringent oversight. Obama's plan seeks to "strike a balance" by investing in building blocks, primarily through the economic stimulus, that only the government can provide in sectors of national importance. Ultimately the tip of the pyramid is a new level of innovation that will stimulate growth and generate quality jobs. Bring on the innovation, lose the pyramid.

For more on this topic, check out Cynthia Duval's perspective.

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Bob Preston is a blogger and frequent speaker on collaboration within the enterprise for increased productivity and innovation. He is Chief Collaboration Officer at Polycom, Inc., a leading supplier of voice, video, and telepresence collaboration solutions.

A Perspective on the American Innovation Strategy

"History should be our guide. The United States led the world's economies in the 20th century because we led the world in innovation. Today, the competition is keener; the challenge is tougher; and that is why innovation is more important than ever. It is the key to good, new jobs for the 21st century. That's how we will ensure a high quality of life for this generation and future generations. With these investments, we're planting the seeds of progress for our country, and good-paying, private-sector jobs for the American people."

-President Barack Obama, August 5, 2009


by Cynthia DuVal

Wow, the Strategy for American Innovation is such a disappointment. Here is my take or should I say rant?

Engineers, scientists, mathematicians and technologists, we love them, we are them, but they/we are only a fraction of the population that innovate. Innovation requires teams of people with interdisciplinary perspectives and basic skills in creativity, collaboration, business development, project development, marketing, aesthetics, packaging, sales, customer service, (insert your skill here)... What am I missing?

There is a social system that must function for innovations to thrive and these social systems don't need to be centered in technology, science and math. It could very well be (and is in my opinion) an innovation in cultural cognition that is the key to global economic recovery and sustainability. We won't find that innovation coming from genetics, math and technology we'll find it coming out of the humanist, aesthetic and interpretive arts and sciences that give meaning to our lives.

Highly creative, highly innovative people are everywhere, in homes, in schools, working in grocery stores, selling shoes, on the streets and some of our most creative and inventive people are living in poverty after being laid off from corporate jobs. Aren't we all user innovators in our own lives more or less?

There is no lack of creativity and innovation among citizens of all ages and professional inclinations nor is there any shortage of innovative people in other nations all around the world. The point of differentiation is not people and capabilities, it is strategic plans that are backed up by deeply informed scholarship on what innovation is, how we do it, how we teach it, how to support it and, the coordinated project plans that roll out a comprehensive strategy that as a whole will achieve humanistic and economic goals.

It's not innovation life as usual for the United States. There is a LOT going on around the world. We aren't the life blood of the new and we need to question whether we should be. We need to question if being the best and most powerful is always in our best interest, or, if being the best might not instead mean being the best collaboration facilitators in the world.

We say that innovation is the key to economic leadership but is this really true?

If so, then why are so many US innovators laid off from their jobs and so many innovation consultants unable to find work? Its one thing to say innovation is important; it is another to be committed to the people who make it happen. If I see innovation money going to the big publicly-owned corporations so that they can re-hire some of the people they have laid off so that they can increase their meager dividends to their shareholders I think I might just lose my mind. We need a very different strategy. That one hasn't worked and is not going to work now.


We need to change the conversation about innovation in America and the world. The strategy white paper is just the same old short sighted uninformed rhetoric we've been hearing for years. Those of us in the innovation trenches have experienced wasted effort, wasted innovations that just don't fit quite right into this or that program or budget. Well let's create an innovation recycling program and bring some of these gems that are hidden behind non-disclosure agreements, proprietary innovation pipelines and have been lost to layoffs out into the open and work on them in Open Innovation Think tanks dedicated to recycling wasted knowledge, insight and opportunities for the public good. This is my dream and what I am evangelizing and seeking support for.

Our strategic plan for innovation needs more voices, more intelligence, more appreciation and funding for the people who work independent of the big corporations. For example, the independent artists, scientists and consultants who are driven to be innovation practitioners, people who discover opportunities and can share and teach best practices for how to turn good ideas into social, technical and economic change in small and large ways. We need a strategy that supports grass roots innovators in bringing forth innovations in the context of their use, everywhere and on scales small and large. This is BIG, Very Big, but we are a nation of big thinkers and we can do this.

Grass roots innovation. Innovation by and for the masses. It is happening all around us. This is our great treasure and this is what we need to support in our innovation strategy.

What do you think?


For more on this topic, check out Bob Preston's perspective.

To view the American Innovation Strategy - please visit this government site

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Cynthia DuVal is an experienced ethnographer and the Founding Director of the Pacific Ethnographic Research Center.

What is Government's Role in Innovation?

by Jeffrey Phillips

Recently a number of bloggers and Tweeters have linked to an interview with Greg Bialecki, who works for the governor of Massachusetts on economic development. The question posed to Bialecki was "What is the appropriate role for state government in accelerating innovation?". Bialecki does a good job of straddling the many sides of the question, noting that many businesses are against more government involvement, since they believe it will lead to regulation and taxes, or favortism.

But the question is a good one. At any level of government, from a city to state or province to a federal or national government, what is the appropriate role for the government in an innovation policy or strategy? It seems to me to break down into three likely outcomes.

The first is based on the Apollo program. In this instance the government identifies a significant need or opportunity and challenges itself and industry to achieve it (put a man on the moon before the end of the decade). Note that the statement doesn't dictate specific technologies or vendors. It is a challenge that created excitement and enthusiasm. Government agencies, private industry and other organizations then asked themselves - OK, if we are going to achieve this seemingly difficult mission, what is necessary for us to do? Then they went on to solve a number of engineering challenges and captured the attention of the nation. Thousands of kids (I'm one) wanted to become an astronaut because of the excitement and glamor. I think that this kind of effort - creating a challenge that engages all of the population - is one involvement in innovation that governments should have continuously. Right now, rather than creating a 1000 page health care plan, the government should set a specific goal and ask all of us to help achieve that. Perhaps the goal is universal coverage with no increase in healthcare outlays. We need big challenges to come together and overcome these hurdles.

This leads to the second possible government involvement - selecting preferred industries or technologies. Government involvement in selecting the "best" or preferred industries or technologies is fraught with hazard. Left to its own devices, the government that created ARPANET might still be monopolizing the ability to communicate and interact. Clearly any government with research facilities should be responsible for generating new research, but not selecting which technologies are approved or disapproved. Government involvement at that level and scale is bound to be tied up with political favoritism and will be showered on the largest and most powerful (see for example the GM bailout, or the bailout of larger banks).

The third kind of involvement is something rarely seen in the US outside of the Defense Department - a public/private partnership. The government could easily define specific issues or challenges it faces and create opportunities for innovation to address these specific issues. While this does occur on a limited basis today, the contracting rules and the size and influence of incumbents make it difficult for smaller firms or new entrants to compete. This means that many of the same old tired ideas and concepts are constantly recycled. If the Federal government could open itself up to more innovation around its biggest challenges, and invite a wide array of innovators and reduce the issues around contracting, it could create an entirely new innovation community which might significantly impact its ability to govern and its ability to deliver services. Secondarily to these outcomes would be the scaling of new ideas which could then flow back into the private sector. Thus, the government could be an incubator of ideas that eventually benefit the private sector. To a certain extent, this was true in the 40s, 50s and 60s, but as significant government research has dwindled, less innovation flows out of the government. We could easily turn the tables by asking the citizens and industries to respond to innovation challenges.

From my perspective, I don't want to see any government picking industries or technologies. I do want the government to identify key challenges and needs, and bring together the best minds to create innovative solutions. Currently, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to innovating with, or for, any government is the bureaucratic hurdles involved in contracting, and the over-reliance on existing "beltway bandits" who have long incumbancy but little innovation incentive. Let's open up the interactions, bring more people and firms into the innovation arena and have governments define the big challenges and turn the rest of us to work.

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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.

Innovating Health Care with S.I.T.

(The LAB: August 2009)

by Drew Boyd

Health Care Reform, as the U.S. government sees it, promises lower costs, better access, and improved quality for all. Let's apply a structured innovation method to health care to see if we can achieve some of these goals. For this month's LAB, we will apply Systematic Inventive Thinking to the hospital discharge process.

Discharging patients from the hospital is a critical aspect of health care delivery. It is a time of transition where one group of care givers stops treating the patient and another group starts. The most frequent type of transition occurs when patients go from hospital to home, happening nearly 40 million times each year in the U.S. Studies show that about 20 percent of discharged patients have an adverse event - a preventable emergency department visit or re-admission - within 30 days following hospitalization. The discharge process is so important that a cottage industry is emerging around it. Some consultants, software products, best practices, training, and research studies focus just on discharging patients.

To use S.I.T., we start by listing the components of the service (process):

1. Issue the Discharge Order
2. Schedule follow-up appointments with next care givers
3. Develop medication plan
4. Identify post discharge services (nursing, rehabilitation, etc)
5. Develop written discharge plan
6. Review diagnosis with patient
7. Review tests and procedures that were performed
8. Review written discharge plan
9. Confirm patients understanding of the plan
10. Wheelchair the patient out of hospital

To apply S.I.T., we use each of the five templates to one or more of these components to create a "virtual product," a hypothetical solution for a yet-to-be-identified problem. We then work backwards from this "solution" and match it up to potential problems that it solves or benefits that it delivers. This is classic "SOLUTION-TO-PROBLEM" innovation.


1. SUBTRACTION:

• Remove the Discharge Order. This is a great way to start off using a structured innovation method, especially in the group workshop setting, because it creates a sense of anxiety and ambiguity. The Subtraction template is particularly good at breaking fixedness, those static frames of how we think the world works. After all, how can you have a Hospital Discharge Process without the Discharge Order? Using Function-Follows-Form, imagine the potential benefits of removing this first step. For example, instead of starting the discharge process upon written doctor's orders, now the process starts the minute you arrive in the hospital. Instead of "Hospital Admissions," the patient enters the hospital with the intent of discharge. At arrival, the pre-conditions for leaving the hospital are developed, so that the patient can leave when those conditions are met.

2. MULTIPLICATION:

• To use Multiplication, we make a copy (or copies) of a process step and change it in some way. Let's make copies of Step 9, confirm the patients understanding of the discharge plan. We multiply that and change it: the patient confirms their understanding when they arrive home. Perhaps the patient has to go to a web site that tests understanding of the discharge process. The potential benefit is more compliance with the discharge plan and reduced complications.

3. TASK UNIFICATION:

• This template requires us to take a step in the process and assign it an additional task or job. Let's take Step 2 - scheduling follow-up appointments with the patients family doctor (and other care givers). The additional job is to require the family caregiver to issue the Discharge Order. In other words, it is now the family doctor who determines when the patient leaves the hospital, not the hospital doctors. Benefits? Perhaps this could shift the risk of complications to the "receiving" doctors and away from the hospital. This might encourage the family doctor to be involved earlier in the hospital stay so they are better able to make the right decisions.

4. DIVISION:

• This template works in three ways: dividing a step physically, functionally, or preserving division - dividing while preserving the characteristics of the whole unit. For this exercise, let's divide Step 3, The Medication Plan. Perhaps the hospital develops the medication plan using only generic drugs forms. The determination of using generic versus name brand drugs is "divided" out for later determination by the family doctor.

5. ATTRIBUTE DEPENDENCY:

• This template is the odd one in that it uses attributes of the situation instead of components. The idea is to create (or break) dependencies between attributes to create the "virtual product." Normally, we would create a full matrix of attributes, both internal and external to the situation, a tool described in other LAB's. Here is one example of how this would work for the hospital discharge process. We create a dependency between: patient's understanding of the Discharge Plan and reimbursement by the patient's insurance company. The more they understand it, the more hospital charges are reimbursed. Benefit? This could encourage more compliance with the plan and reduce re-admissions.

As with all businesses, hospitals will survive and thrive with a sustained commitment to innovation. Leading hospitals such as The Mayo Clinic and others are doing just that to transform health care from a political debate to real change.

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd