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.

2010 - Beginning of a Touch and Gesture Future?

by Idris Mootee

With the proliferation of multi-touch technologies and innovations, we face an exciting new future of physical interactivity that will be like doing tai-chi.

Will multi-touch become the mainstream interactive experience on small devices? The holy grail of touch interactivity is bringing together the simplicity of hand gestures with deep navigation. Will multitouch create a new user language much as we learn how to type? Imagine when multi-touch is deployed in home appliances such as washing machines and microwave ovens? Gestural commands can be much less obvious to users than those written on buttons and menus and can create a whole new set of challenges. It means more challenge for human factors people.

It is interesting to envision how a broad-based, mass-scale utilization of the technology beyond the iPhone/iTouch/iPad/iDesk. I want to see a digital desk where there are no computers, the surface is the computer and my smartphone connects to the cloud. And I want the desk to look like a Herman Miller Sense desk. I want to have a built-in Skype conference call widget and... oh yes, Facebook on my desk. I guess we need to retrain ourselves to use this, as we need to create a set of hand gestures standards in order to be productive with our digital desk.

Asus already has a dual-screen laptop, still in concept stage, but with a touchscreen instead of a keyboard, opting for a virtual keyboard just like the iPhone. This is a step towards the digital desk. The dual panel offers a flexible working space in which users can adapt to suit their prevailing usage scenarios, for example adjusting the size of the virtual touchpad and keyboard. Through hand gestures, handwriting recognition and multi-touch, users are given with a control surface that is both flexible and intuitive.

The touchscreen display market will be growing from US$2.2 billion this year to US$3.4 billion in 2014 according to NanoMarkets, a research firm. The growing demand for touch-screen technologies in mobile and portable computing will create new opportunities for suppliers of conductive coatings, substrates and sensors in addition to the display firms themselves. Mainstream display makers have begun to develop their own "in-pixel" technologies as an alternative to the current industry practice in which third-party suppliers add a touch sensor subsystem on top of an LCD display and then sell to OEMs. Instead of supplying companies such as HP, LG, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony, these mid-size touchscreen OEM manufacturers may end up competing against them. These companies include FlatFrog, RPO, Microsoft, NextWindow, TouchCo and Vissumo.

In the next 24 months we can expect to see the increasing prevalence of physical and gestural interactivity, beyond the Wii and the iPad. One thing for sure is that we're all going to be dealing with the fun as well as the challenge of interacting with and designing devices in different ways. One big challenge is simply due to the lack of transparency into the "commands" or actions available with a given device or environment, we don't see a switch in the air and there is nothing for us to touch.

Looking into the exciting new future of physical and special interactivity, we will need to create idioms and new vocabulary that are as discoverable and useful as possible. We will find out in 10 years time whether these new touch-based interactive paradigms such as gestural interfaces will be making life easier for us or creating a new interactivity divide between those who can use it and whose who gave up on it. Instead of learning to type like my parent's generation, the next generation may be learning how to do the 'tai-chi' of interactive gestures. Human Factors guys now need to learn tai-chi.


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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.

Picture - Trends for the 2010s

by Venessa Miemis

Here are a few recurring themes that have been popping up on my radar.
(click to enlarge)



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Venessa Miemis is a Media Studies graduate student at the New School in NYC, exploring what happens at the intersection of technology, culture, and communication. Connect with her at www.emergentbydesign.com and on Twitter @venessamiemis.

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.

Insights to Drive Apple iPad Success

by Braden Kelley

Apple announced it's rumored tablet device yesterday and chose to call it the Apple iPad - a very strange and difficult choice. "iPad" is a trademark that is apparently at present owned by Fujitsu. Apple had a similar problem with the iPhone and Cisco, which they were able to resolve with a bit of cash. I suspect that Apple will have to get out their wallet again to make Fujitsu go away. But even more troubling for Apple is that "iPad" is also the name of a fictious product that was lampooned by Mad TV three years ago in a less than flattering video. This has sparked the kind of viral buzz that a new product lauch hopes to avoid - the kind that may cause prospective buyers to not take the device seriously.

The launch of the iPhone was a home run. People immediately got it and lined up around the block to get it when it first came out. The launch of the Apple iPad, like I said before the launch, will likely turn out to be much more like that of the iPod - a single followed by a few more singles to finally score a couple of years later. Why?

Well, Apple themsleves didn't exactly convince everyone that they know why the Apple iPad is a revolutionary device. Here is the tagline for the device:


"Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price."


This would make you think that the Apple iPad is aimed at the tecno-lusting, uber-geek apple faithful who always want to be earliest of early adopters for any gadget from Apple. But from those people, the response to the device was a yawn. Those people are going to want the $829 version and that is a lot of cash for a piece a tecno-jewelry in this economy.

Will they buy a backlit-LCD iPad to use as an eReader or a portable DVD player? No, this group of consumers is not likely to do that either in the volume necessary to make the rumored 10 million first year unit sales. I'm not even sure there are 10 million of this consumer group out there. And if there are, they've probably already got an iPhone or an iPod touch or a Macbook Air that does pretty much anything that they might want to do on an Apple iPad.

Apple has definitely launched a solution in search of a problem. Apple's launch marketing shows that. In my mind the key question as to whether the iPad will be a success or not is this one:


"Do people want or need a fourth screen?


Most people already have three types of screens:

1. Large Screen (currently a television)
   
2. Personal Computer (Desktop, Laptop, or Netbook)
   
3. Mobile Phone (increasingly shifting to pocketable PC/phone devices)

Will the iPad realistically replace one of these? Probably not. Head-to-head it doesn't solve the relevant problem any better than the device in use. So it has to be a fourth screen - for most people. And, that is the way they've launched it. The iPad is a fourth screen for people who have lots of cash and can afford to have the iPad just laying around to pick up and use when their iPhone screen is too small and they can't be bothered to go boot up their computer. In the home it will probably be used most often when the Large Screen is already on. But that's a tiny market.

Apple doesn't know who this device is really for. But, when you're so focused on the technology and the design, somtimes you forget about the customer. Is the Apple iPad cool? Yes. Will Apple sell massive quantities of them in its first year? No. Will they eventually? Maybe.

For innovation to occur you must progress all the way from insight to adoption. Here is how I lay that out in my Innovation Moonshot framework:



For the iPad to become an innovation, Apple is going to spend probably 2-3 years in the Solution Education phase for the iPad (similar to the iPod):

• Getting it in customers hands
  
• Having them experience it
  
• Enhancing the device
  
• Finding ways to lower the price

$499 is a lot for a fourth screen. To do big numbers as a fourth screen, the iPad is going to have hit the $199-299 price point (or lower). I can't see Apple wanting to go there for a couple of years (if ever).

So, if Apple wants to sell large numbers of these, they might consider targeting non-customers in the primary screen market. These would be people who don't have a computer or have one but don't really want one. Let me explain. These are people like mother-in-law or my dad, who have no interest in computers or their complexity, but might want to do a bit of e-mail, get on the internet and look at some photos that people e-mail them or post online. For this group of non-customers, $499 isn't a bad price point because for them they would be buying one of their first three screens (probably their second or third). You can read more on this particular insight here.

But, if you're listening Apple, I've said it before and I'll say it again.


"People don't want a fourth screen. What they want to do is extend the screen they have in their pocket."


In the future as I see it, three screens will be too many. I've laid out my vision for the digital future before and I'll give a snapshot here again. If a hardware manufacturer would actually like to discuss my vision at length, please contact me. Here is my vision again:

What would be most valuable for people, what they really want, is an extensible, pocketable device that connect wirelessly to whatever input or output devices that they might need to fit the context of what they want to do. To keep it simple and Apple-specific, in one pocket you've got your iPhone, and in your other pocket you've got a larger screen with limited intelligence that folds in half and connects to your iPhone and can also transmit touch and gesture input for those times when you want a bigger screen. When you get to work you put your iPhone on the desk and it connects to your monitor, keyboard, and possibly even auxiliary storage and processing unit to augment the iPhone's onboard capabilities. Ooops! Time for a meeting, so I grab my iPhone, get to the conference room and wirelessly connect my iPhone to the in-room projector and do my presentation. On the bus home I can watch a movie or read a book, and when I get home I can connect my iPhone to the television and download a movie or watch something from my TV subscriptions. So why do I need to spend $800 for a fourth screen again?

Tell me Apple...


For some of my other articles on the Apple iPad written pre-launch, 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.

Will Apple Introduce the Innovation Expected from Google?

by Braden Kelley

Some great conversations have sprung up around my previous articles on the rumored Apple Tablet (iSlate). In the past I focused on what innovation Apple's potential tablet device might offer and whether or not Apple is likely to make the rumored first year sales projection of 10 million units.

A recent comment from "Marketing Department" brought up the topic of subsidies and whether or not Apple might be on the verge of introducing another business model innovation. So, in this article we'll dig a little deeper into that possibility.

When Apple launched the iPod, they introduced the iTunes business model innovation which turned the music industry on ear, quickly followed by the television and movie industries. Then Apple launched the iPhone and introduced the App Store business model innovation and introduced a new way for people to purchase software that the competition quickly rushed to copy. Now, what could Apple create with a Tablet device?

Well, obviously the App Store and iTunes will be present on this new device, and the iTunes Store will likely be extended to cover books, newspapers, and magazines. An extension of the iTunes Store is more of an incremental innovation. So what disruptive business model innovation could Apple do that would catch the competition off-balance?

Well, in my mind, Apple could very well launch the business model innovation that I expected to come with Google's Nexus One smartphone (but didn't) - shifting the subsidy model.

Currently, when a customer buys the Google Nexus One or the Apple iPhone, the mobile service provider subsidizes the cost of the device by about $325 in exchange for a 2-year contract from the customer. This ties the customer to the carrier for two years (and usually longer). I was expecting the Nexus One launch to include an unlocked phone that Google themselves subsidized in one way or another. One way could have been to pay the customer to use the phone on whatever carrier they wished by depositing money every month in a Google Checkout account based on ad views. This did not happen.

But Apple could take this idea one step further. Not only are they moving into the advertising game with some of their recent acquisitions, but they already have the incredible reach and product offerings provided by the iTunes Store and the App Store. While several people expect any Apple Tablet (iSlate) to have a retail price of $800-$1,000, a mobile carrier subsidy might bring it down into the $500-700 range. Might not Apple then be willing to subsidize it even further based on expected future media and content sales to push the price down into the $300-500 range and make it cost competitive with netbooks and the Amazon Kindle?

After all, Apple makes money (or could make money) in a number of different ways after the device purchase:

1. Applications (Downloads, In-App Advertising, In-App Purchases)
2. Media (Music, Movies, Television)
3. Books and Textbooks
4. Subscriptions (Music Streaming, Movie Downloads, Newspapers, Magazines, TV)
5. Advertising (TBD)
6. MobileMe

You could look at this very much like HP and their ink cartridge business. But how much of a subsidy could Apple offer?

Well, some limited data I found indicates that from this particular data set that the average iTunes transaction is $7 and an average of three transactions per month are made. That would equate to about $21 per month or $250 per year. So, what if you add in games, applications, and other content?

To keep the calculations easy let's say that the $250 becomes $500 when other kinds of content are added in, and using Apple's 30% revenue share, that would give an estimate of $150 per year per user. Yes, I know this is highly simplified, and from a small dataset, but we're just imagining possibilities not doing financial forecasts.

From this point, you could go two ways, look at this as a customer lock-in possibility for Apple and a potential perpetuity, or look at a fixed device life. Again, because this is only illustrative let's simplify and say that over four years Apple might expect (using this data) to earn $600 in revenue per device (excluding advertising revenue) and if Apple decided to dedicate 25% of this revenue to a subsidy, they could allocate $150 to bring down the cost of the device and the rest to go towards costs and profits. Throw in some advertising revenue for good measure, and maybe it makes sense for Apple to subsidize this new device by the $200 that might be necessary to bring the price to customer down into the $300-$500 sweet spot.

But how much of this revenue is incremental revenue? Will the device be an incremental purchase (an additional device people buy), or will it replace a Macbook, iMac, iPhone, or iPod purchase? Would it really make sense to do this?

Hopefully these quick and crude calculations have helped you to see why Apple might consider launching their own subsidy with their rumored tablet device (iSlate, iPad, iCanvas, iTablet, Macbook Slate, etc.) and why they might not. It will be rather interesting to see what they do...


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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.

Create It and They Will Come

by Kevin Roberts

I've been amazed by the global enthusiasm for the iPhone apps that continue to proliferate around the world. Creating an app is as simple as thinking of something useful. It's the modern day inventor's route to riches, and the modern day consumer's lifestyle compressed onto a small device. The creativity just keeps on coming, and it has the consumer at the heart of every decision.

The Urban Spoon app lets you define the parameters of what you want to eat. Anything you'd like to leave to chance, just solve with a shake of the phone. Is That Gluten Free? will tell you what you're eating while you are at the restaurant. The World Factbook '09 can solve discussions over dinner. Then GymGoal can help you work it off. And on it goes.

These apps are the ultimate conversation starter. "Have you got this app?" The power of the idea is transmitted every minute through conversation. Phones have got the world talking, but few guessed it would be in this unique manner.

Where was all this creativity before the iPhone opened a space for it? Are we using the other screens in our Sisomo family with the same creative, open approach? Cinemas, TV's, billboards and bus stops are all waiting for the app magic. The future is wide open, and screens are everywhere. Let's bring the world's creativity to every screen, not just the little ones.


Image Source: http://www.walyou.com/blog/2008/11/28/free-iphone-apps-this-black-friday/

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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.

Hello - The Future is Calling

by Steve McKee

Ninety-eight percent of American households have telephone access. Over the past 130 years, this once-revolutionary device has become so ubiquitous that we don't realize how much of our modern lifestyle has been built around it, from ordering takeout to scheduling doctor appointments, from responding to polls to hanging up on telemarketers. The telephone is something that we - as consumers and as marketers - have always taken for granted.

Not so anymore. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says that for the first time ever, cellphone-only households (20%) outnumber those with landlines alone (17%). And the trend towards wireless is gaining momentum. Nearly one third of 18-24 year olds live in households with no landline whatsoever, and - in a finding that seems odd on the surface - wireless-only households are more likely to include the poor, many of whom made the choice to eliminate their landline bill during the current recession.

This is a radical change with significant implications, not only for pizza makers and Yellow Pages companies, but for all marketers. Among the new dynamics:

• The telephone is no longer a device tied to a household, but to an individual. That opens up a world of personalization, from packaging (my wife's cell phone cover is pink) to performance (my daughter has a different ring-back tone for the weekend than the one she uses during the week) to pricing (there's a payment plan to suit just about everyone's needs).


• The telephone (and the telephone number) is no longer a place-based device. Marketers that once relied on area code information to determine the location from where a customer was calling now can't be so sure, as members of our increasingly mobile society take their cell numbers with them wherever they relocate.


• The telephone is no longer just a telephone. Two-way voice communication has now given way to multiparty, multimedia (and even satellite) access, making the ability to speak to someone on the other end just one rather quaint feature. You may even be reading this blog on your phone.

Most of us are content to let the Apples, AT&Ts, Motorolas and Verizons of the world think about where this once single-purpose device should go next. But as my firm has discovered in working with clients in a variety of non-telecommunications categories, we can't be content to let the future come to us.

With each technological advance comes new obstacles and new opportunities, and brands that pause to consider how they might leverage them are likely to find competitive advantage (and in some cases completely redefine the playing field).

Do you suppose there's an iPhone app for that?

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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.

Twitter Devices and Business Model Design

Industrial Design, Busness Model Design And Design For Change

by Idris Mootee

I was chatting with some members of our design research team just yesterday next to the cooler the other day. We were talking about how the iPhone is such a bad phone and a great media player, and the Backberry is such a great email gadget but a terrible browser. The conclusion was that phones were not designed to handle the 'social' functions and so they are just add-ons. What does a true 'social' gadget looks like? I will ask our design team to come up with some crazy ideas and I'm sure our clients will love to see them.

As more and more people use Twitter or Facebook as their core communications vehicle, what are the best gadgets designed for that? Is there a gadget that lets them tweet, reply, retweet, send direct messages, and connect with followers easily?

Here comes the Twitter Peek which sells for $99 or $199 (with service plan). But, users can also view TwitPics by clicking the "view content" option from the Twitter Peek menu. If users choose to pay $99 at the time of purchase, they will get the Twitter Peek device and six months of Peek service. After that, they need to pay $7.95 per month for network access. If customers plunk down $199, they'll get the device and service for the life of the product. In either case, Twitter Peek allows for unlimited tweeting. It has one key limitation - it can only support one account at a time.

An important industrial design discipline that they teach in school - Do we design something for a singular or more important function or something that does everything?

The preference is to design something with a purpose in mind. Is the Twitter Peek really necessary in the marketplace? Or do we need a Facebook device?


The deep satisfaction of design is when you find an elegant solution to a problem that has, until now, had a hindering effect on our quality of life (or experience or environment). The function should be super obvious - a straightforward solution to a meaningful problem. But, it is not that simple.

Industrial design is understood to be a part of engineering design, or as running parallel to engineering design (and increasingly interface design). However, when industrial design activity is engaged in the more aesthetic or style concerns of a product, it can be understood as running parallel with marketing and brand activity. And when industrial design is engaged and running parallel with business strategy activity, it becomes a very different game.

There is not a right or wrong or simple answer here, there is a lot of room for ambiguity and misunderstanding and many designers are confused about design themselves.

Many designers love to talk business model design, but I'm not sure how many are qualified to discuss this subject. My experience is that even among MBAs that I have hired, anyone with less than ten years of solid experience doesn't understand the real implications of these business model discussions.

My response to them is:


"How exactly do you change a business model without understanding the industrial and distribution economics and the individual players' competitive dynamics? There is always game theory at play in these moves."


One interesting thought is that traditional industrial designers came into being as mass production raised output and producers wanted to match market demand. This is still true, but not entirely the case. If industrial design comes within a marketing function and marketers buy the creative services of an industrial design consultant on an occasional basis for a special project, this is quite different than if industrial design is a part of the manufacturing function. And if industrial design comes within a strategy firm and executives buy the innovative services of a firm that has strategy + design capabilities (like Idea Couture), then it is part of the corporate strategy undertaking. That's design thinking in action, not design talking. Am I confusing you?

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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.

Open Innovation and Nokia - A Good Match?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have always respected Nokia which I consider to be a quite innovative company. Lately, I have been wondering how they approach open innovation so I did some research on their activities.

First, let's take a look at how Nokia defined open innovation in a presentation given by Kari-Pekka Estola, VP, Nokia Research Center in 2007.


"The sourcing, integration, and development of product and business system innovations through win-win external partnerships to capture maximum commercial value for R&D investment."


Kari-Pekka Estola also argued that open innovation is a critical trend and not yet another management fad due to these reasons:

• Innovation happens in smaller companies, global innovation hotspots and increasingly influential user communities.


• Several factors such as workforce mobility and venture capital are eroding the ability of corporate research labs to contain their useful knowledge.


• A new breed of independent research labs create a new source of R&D development.


• "Innomediaries" - innovation intermediaries - are enabling an increasingly active and distributed market for ideas.

As it shows, Nokia had a pretty good understanding of open innovation early on. They also execute fairly well. Let's take a look at their many open innovation-like initiatives:

Nokia Research Center is the hub of their open innovation efforts. It is very much focused on selective and deep research collaborations with world-leading institutions.

Open Threads is a newsletter by Nokia Research Center on open innovation. In the latest issue 2/09, the Nokia IPR team began a series of articles aimed at clarifying the basics of IPR and explaining how open innovation collaborators can engage with Nokia. Worth checking out!

Forum Nokia exists to serve everyone who is interested in the creation, testing, or business of mobile applications, content, or services. Forum Nokia provides several entry points for companies interested in developing new offerings with Nokia or towards to the mobile community.

Symbian. Last year, Nokia bought Symbian and then gave away the software code to the non-profit Symbian Foundation. In Why Nokia Bought Symbian, Then Gave It Away, Scott Anthony of Innosight, presents some good views on why this happened.

The Maemo platform. Dutch innovation consultants, Fronteer, recently mentioned that they will help Nokia on their work with Maemo which is an open source software platform with over 16,000 members. Fronteer mentions that Nokia in previous projects developed ideas and concepts with a selected group of lead-users and experts in a co-creation sessions. This time, they will take it a step further: they will share their ideas and concepts with the complete Maemo Community, both online and off-line, to collaboratively develop new Maemo concepts.

Although, I think Nokia overall does quite well there are a couple of issues that I would like to learn more about.

• External contributions in the later stages of their innovation process. Their open innovation initiatives primarily focus on technology and the early phases of generating new product and service offerings. Open innovation should include key external contributions in all phases of the innovation process; not just in the technology or idea development phases. I had difficulties finding information on how or if Nokia does this.


• Beyond technology. Nokia has a Corporate Business Development unit that looks for breakthrough ideas that are 'industry shakers' - innovative business concepts and technologies - that integrate with and expand beyond Nokia core business.

Having validated new opportunities with sound business cases, Corporate Business Development further develop them as new business programs within Nokia or collaborate with companies to establish licensing deals, joint ventures, acquisitions, or partnership agreements. It sounds interesting. However, I have difficulties finding information on how this unit defines and approaches open innovation and how they work together with Nokia Research Center on open innovation. Maybe they don't?

Nokia definitely appears as a technology-focused company and Nokia Research Center is all about research collaborations with world-leading institutions. Perhaps there could be a stronger link to the business community?

Nokia might already be doing the things I would like to learn more about. Hopefully, I will soon get the chance to discuss this with innovation leaders at Nokia. Until then, it would be great to hear your input and comments on this.

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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.

Video Interview - Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts

by Braden Kelley

I had the opportunity to interview Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi at the World Business Forum this week at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. You can see the video interview here:





Saatchi & Saatchi is a well-regarded advertising agency and Kevin Roberts has a lot of great insight on the customer. In this short video we chat about the evolving relationship between customers and their mobile devices, the state of integrated campaigns with social media as a component, and about Saatchi & Saatchi's "Do One Thing" (aka DOT) campaign.

For those of you don't know, Kevin Roberts is a contributor here on Blogging Innovation.

What do you think?

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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.

Big Box, Little Box

by Matthew E May

Have you seen it? Best Buy 2.0, I mean. They're going up everywhere. They're less than 10% of the normal 40,000 square foot big box Best Buy. I'm not talking about the store-within-the-store structure they use for selling cellphones. I'm talking about stand-alones of the same flavor going up in malls and downtown areas.

Best Buy Mobile. Little boxes, just for cellular. Radically original idea? Nah. They bought half of Carphone Warehouse's retail operations to form a joint partnership. Now they offer nearly a hundred phones from nine carriers. And borrowed from Apple: help customers set the darn things up and get them working before leaving the store.

And it comes at a time when a good number of retailers are closing their doors. They've got over 40 already in the U.S. Fourth quarter 2008 sales were nearly double that of the same quarter of 2007. And as everyone knows, fourth quarter 2008 was a retail nightmare.

All in all it's a fairly elegant strategy, if you think about it: expansion through subtraction.

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Matthew E. May is the author of "IN PURSUIT OF ELEGANCE: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing." He is constantly searching for creative ideas and innovative solutions that are 'elegant' - a unique and elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power.

Future Is Not More Gadgets

by Idris Mootee

Future gadgets will do things such as enhanced cognitive assistance and collaborative filtering. And that gadget is probably your phone.


Japan is always the best place for new inspirations. My rental phone also acts as a translator and all I need is to point the built-in camera to any Japanese characters. It exchanges personal information that works like business cards. It also reads 3D barcode and gets me all the information that I need as long as they provide them. It is so popular here, from real estate agents to consumer package goods - even the Louis Vuitton store has them for their special collections. But what works here usually won't work elsewhere and vice versa in most cases. But one universal truth holds for the Japanese market as well as Europe or North Americas, people are simply not buying new gadgets, but actually trying to do things with them or getting jobs done. As technology advances as if there are no limits of they can do, there are tremendous gap exist between the potential of these gadgets (whether they are converging into cell phones of diverging into separate devices) versus the limited ways we use them today. We have yet to see how these gadgets will change the way we live, work and socialize.


Marketers are jumping into the bandwagon. MasterCard just launched their first corporate iPhone app. Using the theme of its well-known "Priceless" campaign Priceless Picks pairs GPS and 3D maps to show you local deals, dining, and other points of interest in your immediate vicinity. It allows you to soar around the map in quasi-street view or bird's-eye view, identifying locations as the color-coordinated bubble pops up. Red for dining, blue for shopping, orange for "Priceless" items, and so on. It is supposed to point you to interesting sources for wine sampling via vending machine or a local jazz club, etc. It is a cool app.


Best Buy understands the power of gadgets beyond gadgets. Shari Ballard EVP/Retail channel believes individual gadgets don't mean as much as marketers think they do. Instead, "we see tremendous opportunity around how those devices work with each other, and with content people already own," says Ballard, "People are trying to do things with their technology products, not just acquire them." Best Buy is looking at many ways it can bring those connections to the center of the store, in formats that are easy for consumers to see and touch. "There is major work to do in helping customers see what today is mostly invisible. Now, we describe these products with a lot of hand motions and 'imagine this.' We need a physical way for people to interact with invisible solutions."


The question is how we untangle the future of consumer (and social) technologies to uncover unarticulated, unmet or yet-to-exist customer needs? And in the process of untangling the future we will become more tangled up with more technologies driving new behavior that we cannot even imagine? What are the next practices to imagine these new behaviors? And how do we know if some of these behaviors will be ending up mainstream?



The future is not more gadgets, but more integrated and modular designs. We will see a wide variety of innovative tools and apps that will emerge to help us leverage the information glut to our benefit. These new devices, systems, and services will enable us to alleviate the symptoms of cognitive overload and compensate errors and weaknesses in everyday life human decision-making. Much like a pilot relies more and more on computers to fly planes, technologies will allow us all to become smarter.



They will come in all forms and functions including enhanced cognitive assistance and collaborative filtering, surface-based three dimensional data visualization and display, reputation-based recommendation systems, personal productivity improvement software, affordable context-aware devices, social software tools, and systems that leverage social intelligence.

This is a future that is happening fast. It is not something that will only happen in Japan, but around the world. Tens of billions of economic value will be created, are you in for it?

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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.

Apple Tablet or iPhone Accessory?

by Braden Kelley

There is a lot of chatter out there focusing on the possibility of a new Apple Tablet being announced at Apple's next media event on September 9, 2009.


Will Apple launch a tablet computer?

Does it make sense for Apple to do so?


Let's look at the current state of the market for computing devices:

1. Many companies and individuals have recently made the switch from desktop computers to laptop computers


• Yet, still IDC forecasts laptops like the Apple Macbook to represent only 55% of worldwide sales in 2009


2. People are only now beginning to make the switch from dumb phones to smartphones in earnest


• Yet in Q4 2008, only 23% of handsets sold in the USA were smartphones like the Apple iPhone (according to NPD group)


3. Netbooks are currently the hot computing category


4. Mobile operators in many countries charge by the device for Internet access


• Adding an Apple Tablet would likely add $60/month to a mobile phone bill in the USA

So, given that a huge majority of individuals don't even have a smartphone, are starting to keep their hardware longer, and may have just purchased a new laptop or netbook, does it make sense for Apple to launch a tablet or netbook computer?


I may be completely wrong, but personally I think that:

1. Apple will not announce an Apple Tablet or Apple Netbook on September 9, 2009


• Even if they wanted to, I don't think they could make such a launch before January 2010 at the earliest


2. Apple may never launch an Apple Tablet or an Apple Netbook


• Experimentation with touch screens of various sizes could also point to a wireless iPhone and iPod Touch accessory

A Shift in How We Compute


People's behavior is changing. As people move to smartphones like the Apple iPhone, these devices are occupying the middle space (around the neighborhood), and the mobility of laptops is shifting to the edges - around the house and around the world.

Personally I believe that as smartphones and cloud computing evolve, these devices will become our primary computing hub and new hardware will be introduced that connects physically, wirelessly or virtually to enhance storage, computing power, screen size, input needs, output needs, etc.


- This would be thinking differently.
- This would be more than introducing a 'me-too, but a little better' product.
- This would be innovation.

And this would allow Apple (or someone else), by embracing this concept, to link up with pervasive, mobile, wearable computing efforts like those underway at IBM Research and elsewhere.


What will Apple really do?


What do you think?


See also: "Apple's Dilemma - Netbook, Tablet or Bigger iPod Touch"

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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 Dilemma - Netbook, Tablet or Bigger iPod Touch?

by Idris Mootee

Apple has a dilemma, should they put out products to push Apple towards the mass to appeal to Window users or pushing the innovating envelope on products that their loyal followers really want, or need? Netbook sales is growing fast particularly in Asia and prices have dropped to US$150 to $250. Meanwhile, Microsoft has said that it would rather not use the Netbook name any more, choosing "low-cost small notebook PC" instead. It is easy to see why.

How many years since Apple fans have been begging for a mid-sized, mid-priced upgradeable Mac Pro? How long have Apple fans have been asking for a small footprint $650 range entry Macbook? How long Apple fans have been asking for a $1600 range tablet that works like a big iPod touch? All these things will not likely to happen, at least not too soon.


Apple will continue to exercise its brand power and design as a tax for those loyal customers. The only time they might attempt at a low cost strategy is probably at the education market. Apple will continue to test the upward limits on how much we can tolerate the Apple premium. I think this strategy is working for them.

It is unlikely that Apple will release a Netbook and instead they might enter with something different. Netbook is a really a low cost pursuit of a mini laptop. On the other hand with the massive popularity of Netbooks particularly in the high school segment, do they want to lose out to these very important customers of the future? 5-6 years from now many of these young adults will become part of Apple's core customer segment. Wouldn't it be a good idea for Apple to offer a Netbook killer at this critical junction so they get as many people using Apple products as possible?

This is Apple's dilemma. But they are covering future options. The US Patent and Trademark Office has just officially published a series of nine newly granted patents for Apple. The most interesting one is the one that covers an Ink Phase Termination Engine that supports Apple's Inkwell technology and a future Tablet device supporting handwriting applications. The evidence for Apple's interest for an Apple based Smartbook-Tablet hybrid device is apparent.

Apple's granted patent generally relates to an ink manager for acquiring and organizing pen-based ink information for use by pen-aware and other applications. Although the current iPhone is dependent upon using your finger as the input stylus, a future larger tablet could in fact accommodate a stylus or pen-based input system as well so as to address both handwriting and drawing applications. Such a system would be able to tap into Apple's Inkwell application that is noted a as a key technology under OS X Snow Leopard. The illustration filed shows us that the tablet could provide a series of horizontal lines to assist users align their handwriting. Various control buttons could provide commands for scrolling purposes or to call up any apps.

Apple's working concept of a Smartbook-Tablet Hybrid was illustrated in a series of three patents covering gestures, scrolling and Synchronization. When you combine Apple's granted patent 7,564,995 published this week with a more current 2008 patent revealing a tablet-smartbook hybrid, it becomes clear that Apple is seriously contemplating a move into the smartbook market.

The key question with the tablet device is that what does it replace (if it replaces anything at all)? We have the iPhone or iTouch or Blackberry for email and we usually have a laptop, why do we need a tablet? You're still going to need a real computer and a cell phone to get things done or for lounging-around-consuming-junk-media. And real laptops are only going to get lighter and thinner, why do we need a tablet? There are now multiple rspeculation that an Apple tablet would be essentially an oversize iPod Touch, and will cost somewhere between a $299 iPhone/iPod Touch and the $999 MacBook. We'll find out very soon.


See also: "Apple Tablet or iPhone Accessory?"

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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.

Innovation in Education

Teaching Moves Beyond the Classroom

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

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

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


Making Use of Social Media Tools

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

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

(Further reading: Twitter in the Classroom).


Online Video Creates a Global Classroom

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


Gaming Gets Serious

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

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

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


Mobile Learning Comes Into Its Own

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

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


About the Author

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