What You Don't Know Can Kill You - Facebook, Twitter, iPad, Kindle

by Adam Hartung

Nancy Munro of Knowledgeshift.com posted a great blog "Technology was Blago's Enemy Again." Although many people watch The Apprentice, I'm not one. Apparently the former governor of Illinois was a contestant, and when he was challenged to lead a project team his lack of technology skills got in the way of effectively doing the job. Although he's a smart lawyer and politician, his tool set had become outdated. A competitive team leader who was very good at texting and other state-of-the-art technologies was able to best Governor Blagojevich's team, and the ex-governor was "fired" by Donald Trump from the show.

On the surface, this is a funny story. But Nancy points out how it reflects the very real issues of using technology when competing. All businesses compete every day. Those that learn to use new technologies are able to get more done, faster and more effectively. Those who fall into a routine of doing things the same way, and don't advance their tool set, run the risk of being knocked out of the competition. Mr. Blagojevich's inability to use modern technology killed his chances of winning the competition.

Will you, or your business, go to any trade shows or conferences this year? Probably. But you'll limit attendance because you're still worried about financial performance. How will you select where you go? Probably by attending the ones most closely associated with your industry or business. But think about it, are those the ones that will be most valuabl? You'll probably mostly hear what you already know, and reinforce your existing beliefs about the business. Is that really an effective spend?

Instead, shouldn't you use the funds to learn about what you don't know? Like how to be a world-class social marketer? This is an amazingly fast growing area where early adopters are gaining new sales. For example, Guy Kawasaki and the world's leaders in social marketing will be talking about how to get sales and profits from Twitter and Facebook at something called "The Smartbrief Social Media Success Summit." I'm not a shill for the conference (I'm not even speaking there), but this kind of event offers the very real opportunity of learning something you don't know - rather than reinforcing old Lock-ins and keeping you doing what you've always done.

Have you purchased a Kindle or iPad yet? If not, how do you know what they can or can't do? At SeekingAlpha.com "Thoughts on the iPad" offers one person's reflection on what the iPad does well, and doesn't, and where it might evolve - as well as how it compares to the Kindle. These devices are selling in the millions - so are you and your business thinking about how to use one to help sell more products or make more money? Yahoo and Google are both launching ad models for iPad (see Mediapost.com "Yahoo Readies Launch of Online Advertising Model"). Are you considering using this media to reach new customers? Have you considered how one of these products embedded in what you sell might offer you a competitive advantage? If you and your colleagues haven't tried one, experimented, how would you know?

Our businesses rarely get into trouble from something we know well. It's what we don't know, what we ignore, that gets us in trouble. Like Craigslist.com wiping out newspaper classified ads. The newspapers didn't even see it coming. On the other hand, if they had investigated and used Craigslist they could have prepared, and maybe even developed a competitive on-line product to grow new revenues!

It's incumbent upon us to constantly expand into new markets. We have to constantly keep White Space alive where we use resources to experiment in areas outside traditional permission. It's easy to keep throwing all our resources into what we know, but in the end, it's what we don't know that will knock us out of the game - like poor Blago.


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Adam Hartung, author of "Create Marketplace Disruption", is a Faculty and Board member of the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, Managing Partner of Spark Partners, and writes for "Forbes" and the "Journal for Innovation Science."

Video Interview with Mickey McManus - MAYA Design CEO and Principal

by Braden Kelley

I had the opportunity to interview Mickey McManus, Chief Executive Officer and Principal at MAYA Design at The Economist's conference "Innovation: Fresh Thinking for the Ideas Economy". I'd like to share a video interview I did with Mickey during the event:




In this video Mickey talks about the role of design and a bit about the future of pervasive computing.



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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.

Amazon - Make Kindle Open Source to Beat Apple iPad

by Yann Cramer

Independent research boutique ChangeWave surveyed 3,171 consumers and found that, amongst respondents planning to buy an e-book reader in the next 90 days, a towering 40% favor Apple's iPad, with Amazon's Kindle attracting only 28%. While the marked preference for the iPad may be temporarily over-inflated by the hype surrounding its launch, there is no doubt that Apple's entry in this market is a threat to Amazon. What should Amazon's next move be?

Acknowledge. The first step is to recognise a few hard truths:

1. That the main threat is not the iPad selling better than the Kindle, but the iBook business model seriously denting Amazon's e-book retailing market share (currently estimated at 90%).


2. That in spite of its heavy investment and outstanding achievement in developing and launching the Kindle, Amazon is not an electronic goods company, let alone a technology leader.


3. And therefore that having the Kindle as one of the very few devices that can read e-books sold on Amazon will become a serious handicap to Amazon's mainstream business which is to sell books. There is no way back: the e-book market is rapidly growing and consumers will not settle for second best e-readers. If the Kindle becomes technically unable to compete with the iPad (or any other future new entrant), the barrier that Amazon has created by restricting the number of devices that can read e-books sold on its website will not hold for long.

Unlock the innovation potential of the Kindle. In a head-to-head confrontation on technological innovation, Amazon stands little chance to come on top of Apple. To unlock the innovation potential of the Kindle Amazon needs to take a path that Apple is reluctant to walk: open innovation, or, more radically, open source.

Open innovation would see Amazon orchestrate a network of lead-user enthusiasts, electronic good suppliers keen to win new business, and geeks with outside-the-box ideas. It would still require Amazon to retain a core capability to sieve, internalise, connect and integrate the input from this network, but it would tap into an enormous innovation work force that even Apple could not match.

Open source would be a more radical step. By letting other manufacturers adopt its e-book standard, Amazon would create immediately an intense competition for its Kindle but such competition would have two major advantages:

1. Growing dramatically the offer of Amazon-compatible e-book readers would push the prices down, win over new customers to the e-book technology and overall grow the e-book 'cake'. Amazon's Kindle would enjoy only a share of that cake, but it would be a share of a much bigger cake.


2. It is likely that Amazon would be able to tap into Kindle's competitors for technology improvements to be applied to the Kindle itself, therefore keep up with the pack instead of inexorably falling behind.

Even in the worst case scenario that would see this newly created e-book reader competition completely outclass the Kindle, Amazon's e-book retailing business would not be threaten but rather boosted.

The question is whether Jeff Bezos, who is reported to have invested a lot of passion and personal energy in the Kindle, can take the bold step of unleashing competition on it for the sake of reaping larger benefits in Amazon's mainstream


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Yann Cramer is an innovation learner, practitioner, sharer, teacher. He's lived in France, Belgium and the UK, he's travelled six continents to create development opportunities with customers or suppliers, and run workshops on R&D and Marketing. He writes on www.innovToday.com and on twitter @innovToday.

Innovation, Technical Risk, and Schedule Risk

by Dr. Mike Shipulski

There is a healthy tension between level of improvement, or level of innovation, and time to market. Marketing wants radical improvement, infinitely short project schedules, and no change to the product. Engineers want to sign up for the minimum level of improvement, project schedules sufficiently long to study everything to death, and want to change everything about the new product. It's healthy because there is balance - both are pulling equally hard in opposite directions and things end up somewhere in the middle. It's not a stress-free environment, but it's not too bad. But, sometimes the tension is unhealthy.

There are two flavors of unhealthy tension. First is when engineering has too much pull; they (we) sandbag on product performance and project timelines and change the design willy-nilly simply because they can (and it's fun). The results are long project timelines, highly innovative designs that don't work well, a lack of product robustness, and a boatload of new parts and assemblies. (Product complexity.) Second is when Marketing has too much pull; they ask for radical improvement in product functionality with project timelines too short for the level of innovation, and tightly constrain product changes such that solutions are not within the constraints. The results are long project timelines and un-innovative designs that don't meet product specifications. (The solutions are outside the constraints.) Both sides are at fault in both scenarios. There are no clean hands.

What are the fundamentals behind all this gamesmanship? For engineering it's technical risk; for marketing it's schedule risk. Engineering minimizes what it signs up for in order to reduce technical risk and petitions for long project timelines to reduce it. Marketing minimizes product changes (constraints) to reduce schedule risk and petitions for short project timelines to reduce it. (Product development teams work harder with short schedules.) Something's got to change.

The relationship between innovation and technical risk must be changed. For every unit measure of innovation there must be less technical risk. Or, conversely, for every unit measure of technical risk there must be more innovation. Sounds great, but how? Well, deep questions like this deserve deep answers, answers that only the great philosophers can provide. As it turns out, the great American philosopher (and baseball player) Yogi Berra provides the answer:


"If you don't know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else."


"Where we are going", our destination, is a solution to a technical problem which the innovation process winds us toward, and the probability we'll "end up somewhere else", getting lost, is technical risk. We've got to know where we're going if we're to have any hope of getting there.

The key to getting there is problem definition. Not the regular kind, but the physics-capturing kind; the kind that is expressed simply, with regular nouns and verbs, that can be explained to non-technical folks, and fits on one page.

It is a better way to distill problems rather than dilute them; to clearly, simply, and unambiguously define problems using words we can all understand; to trust, but verify. I call it One Page Thinking.

One Page Thinking is a method to define a problem at its most basic level so that everyone can understand it. There are a couple simple rules for One Page Thinking:

1. Each problem must be defined on one page.
   
2. There can be only one problem on a page.

Problem definition of this type is powerful and difficult, and it's the key to innovation. Once the real problem is defined, once the physics are understood and can be described plainly, the problem is solved, and the destination is close-at-hand.


Here is an example of One Page Thinking for the problem of being overweight:


The physical elements of the system are represented as blocks labeled with nouns (PERSON, FOOD, CALORIES); the actions are represented as arrows labeled with verbs (EATS, PROVIDES, POWER). The undesirable action is represented by a red arrow and an X in front of the verb (X MAKE).

All technical problems - even complicated ones - can be distilled into this type of simple diagram, but it can only be done if your technical staff truely understands the problem. True understanding is required to translate complex physics and math into simple nouns and verbs and to translate complex interactions into straightforward block diagrams. And, likely most importantly, true understanding is required to stand up in front of a CEO with only a single slide consisting of a block diagram and simple nouns and verbs.

So, if you want to find out if your technical staff understands the problem at hand, ask them for a one page block diagram using simple nouns and verbs.

Not many have seen or done this one-page, physics-capturing problem definition. And it's power is severely underestimated and poorly understood. I'm sure many think I'm off my rocker when I say that one-page, physics-capturing problem definition is the key to innovation. But, I stick by my assertion. Once this hyper-rigorous problem solving helps you know where you are going, innovation can be as straightforward as entering a street address into your GPS.


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Dr. Mike Shipulski (certfied TRIZ practioner) brings together the best of TRIZ, Axiomatic Design, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (2006 DFMA Contributer of the Year), and lean to develop new products and technologies. His blog can be found at Shipulski On Design.

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.

Creative Environmental Integration

by Paul Williams

Over the past several years, I've had the good fortune to be able travel around Europe. I've taken tens of thousands of pictures.

I love this shot below.

Terra cotta roof tiles, and lush, greens hills a patchwork alternating vineyards and olive groves. This is Vinci, Italy. Where Leonardo was born and grew up - you know - Leonardo da Vinci (of Vinci).

However, in the middle of this great shot - is a mark of the late 20th Century - the satellite dish. You can also see mid-century old-school antennas.


[Fig. 1 Vinci, Italy View]

You can click the image above for a larger view. Take out the tv equipment, convert to black and white, and you'd enjoy the same view from over 200 years ago.


Environmental Integration

While it's not perfect, I spotted this solution to disguise dishes in Amsterdam. They've covered the dishes with a 'picture of brick' to blend into the building. This is an apartment building above our grocery store. While not perfect - the dishes aren't as obvious.

[Fig. 2 Amsterdam Dish Disguise]

This reminds me of the 'environmental integration' being used to conceal cell and communication towers are being decorated to look like trees.

[Fig. 3 Faux Phone Pole Pines]

I've had that Amsterdam shot in my pictures folder for a while - waiting to share it with you. Thought you'd find it interesting. However, there are business lessons these disguises and concealments may teach us. I'll post another article tomorrow! Until then, take care.


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Paul Williams is a professional problem solver at Idea Sandbox. He can help you create remarkable ideas to grow your business. You may read more at his website and find him Twittering as @IdeaSandbox.

Fantastically, Brilliantly, Insanely Amazing

by Kevin Roberts

One thing about the January 27th launch of the Apple iPad clashing with President Obama's first State of the Union address was that they both focused on Jobs.

And check out the awesome enthusiasm Steve Jobs and his team have for their new baby in this video!





A lot of hype and hyped-up criticism have accompanied the launch of the iPad. Nothing new there. Apple attracted lots of criticism with the launch of the iPod in 2001 (total sales: 220 million) and the iPhone in 2007 (total sales: 34 million). They centered on a perceived lack of functionality. So it's not surprising to hear gripes that iPad doesn't support HDMI or Flash graphics, or have a built-in camera.

The critics have missed the point. The iPad is not a netbook or scaled-down laptop. In fact, it is only a distant relative to the traditional PC or Mac. Instead, its lineage is the DVD player, the VCR, the television set, the radio, the newspaper, the telephone, the telegraph. It is not a workhorse loaded up with functions and hardware. It is a platform for story-telling, interactive, personal and immediate.

The story of human technology is the relentless advance in the direction of greater utility, connectivity, immediacy, affordability and flexibility. The iPad represents a quantum leap in that direction.

We want to communicate with each other, cheaply and easily. We want information where and when we need it. We want to be entertained and to entertain ourselves. We want to get closer to the people and the things we love. The iPad promises to do that. Technology that fails to serve that purpose is just a gadget, suitable for little more than collecting dust.

There's an interesting blog post in the NY Times predicting that the iPad will become an irresistible toy for children because kids will love the tactile nature of the device (they love to jab at things!), 'painting' software allows for mess-free splatter, it's an ideal distraction for car trips, and the screen offers endless story opportunities. I couldn't agree more, but the author could go even further: They are pretty compelling reasons for adults to get their hands on an iPad, too.

Related Articles:

• Radical Innovation of Meaning


• Apple's Hidden Disruptive Innovation


• Insights to Drive Apple iPad Success


• Will Apple Introduce the Innovation Expected From Google?

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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.

Technology Does Not Equal Innovation

by Jeffrey Phillips

I had the opportunity to speak to a group at a university recently about innovation. In fact, I've spoken to four universities about innovation in the last few months. There's a growing awareness that innovation needs to happen in university settings. This would include innovation on the administration of the university, in the teaching methods and in what is taught. But that's a sideline to what I want to write about today.

In my most recent speaking engagement I was confronted by a senior faculty member who argued that all this talk about "innovation" was pointless, and missed the main target, which was that we needed more focus on science and engineering education. In his mind, innovation was equated to technology, and only scientists and engineers could bring new technologies to life. While I agree that scientists and technologists can bring innovations to market, I'd argue that that definition of innovation is awfully narrow. It seems to me that innovation can occur in many avenues that have little or nothing to do with technology, engineering or science.

In fact we have recently worked with a financial services institution, a health care insurance firm, a life insurance firm and several other firms in the services industries where there are no physical products developed and few if any engineers or scientists. Yet these firms are innovating. Innovating their service models, customer experiences, processes and business models. Apple, held up as the ultimate innovator, is a technology firm but innovates instead more around user experience, linkages, partnerships and content.

There are a number of firms that innovate around technology and science, so I don't want to downplay the importance of technology in innovation. However, we do need to understand the balance between product innovation and all other kinds of innovation, and the importance of engineering and science to innovation. It's really a question of set theory. Technology innovation is a subset of innovation generally, and while all technology innovation is innovation, all innovation is not technology innovation. As much as it may pain my engineering friends to say it, there's a lot of innovation happening that has little or nothing to do with technology. Conversely, there's a lot of technological research that will impact our lives through new innovations as products and services.

This dichotomy also explains a lot of angst in the intelligentsia about the termination of NASA's return to the moon program and the decreasing amount of federal research generally. The belief is, and I agree with this, that we learn more and capitalize on that knowledge when we explore space flight or invest in primary research. But curtailing space flight does not necessarily make the US less innovative. It leaves us in a situation where, from a governmental point of view we may become more dependent on the Russians or Chinese to put vehicles in space, or perhaps it makes available a private enterprise approach to space flight. But reducing investment in these areas doesn't mean we are less innovative, it just spreads out the responsibility for innovation more broadly. But that had already happened in the 70s and 80s, as private enterprise took on more direct research and investment and the federal government's role declined.

OK, enough of the tangent. Innovation depends on creating and developing new ideas. Some of those insights are based on new technologies or improvements to existing technologies. Some innovation, however, is based on insights about services, processes or business models, and don't rely on technologists or engineers for insights. To claim that all innovation is technology innovation, and that without engineers and scientists no "real" innovation can be accomplished is to view the world of innovation with a very narrow lens.


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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.

Cisco Announces $250,000 iPrize Competition v2.0

by Braden Kelley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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



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


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

Innovation, 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.

Microsoft - Apple - Google in Tablet Battle

by Braden Kelley

2010 may be the year of the man purse, and it will be very interesting to see what people to choose to put in the new gadget bag they will keep close at hand.

In this article we've got a video sneak preview of another potential Apple Tablet application, and two videos of what Microsoft's entry into the tablet wars might look like. Microsoft might actually fire the first shot in the tablet wars at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Apple (iSlate) and Microsoft (along with HP) are both already trying to re-imagine what my be possible in the mobile computing environment, and I'm sure Google with join the fray soon (along with HTC). The key thing to watch here though is not the technology that the companies come up with, but the changes that we are going to start seeing in people's computing behavior. That will be the fascinating bit. Computing is about to undergo a major transformation, and while I would rather see an extensible mobile phone than a proliferation of new devices, I think they'll help us get there.

First let's take a look at a video sneak preview of Microsoft's Courier:





And then here is another video showing a conceptualization of how Microsoft thinks people might use it:





And finally, Coursesmart, a digital-publishing joint venture of five major textbook publishers,looks to move beyond their current iPhone and iPod Touch offerings to woo students to adopt their planned eTextbooks for the planned Apple Tablet in place of regular textbooks. Check out the video here:





So what do you think?

Which device would you like to have close at hand in your gadget bag?

Follow the link for another sneak preview of a magazine application for the Apple Tablet.

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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.

Emerging Computing Paradigms

by Idris Mootee

HCI (Human-Computer Interactions) science is fast evolving to deal with emerging computing paradigms. Today it is a little Cognitive Science and AI, a lot of anthropology and Social Psychology.

HCI is a fascinating discipline; the field has its origin in the 80s primarily in computer science and cognitive psychology. Today it exists in a confluence with design as a discipline that owes to traditions including human factors, industrial design, architecture, information design and graphic design. HCI contains a number of semi-distinct fields of research and practices in human-centered informatics. One example is the Sixthsense from the MIT Media Lab. An augmented reality (AR) project, that aims to seamlessly integrate digital information with our everyday physical world. A very cool HCI concept, your hands movements are the interfaces.

HCI is about people, interactions and system interfaces... First, people do what people are good at, such as observation, interpreting, determining what is important, and making the final decisions. There are situations human decisions need to be assisted by data visualizations. Second, computers do what they are good at, which are repetitive tasks and routine. Neither people nor computers are forced to do what the other does better. HCI integrates the two so they can compliment each other to achieve more productivity.

There are a few challenges in applying universal design in the context of HCI in order to provide the formative insight needed to design interactive products that can be experienced by the mass in different contexts. The distinctive characteristics of these products may be identified by briefly considering the changes in the socio-technical paradigm, from the early days of computing to the 21st century human interfaces intended to provide a gateway into the world of distributed information paradigm, the scope and context of use of the computer (hard to define what a computer is these days, or what power is required to achieve the distinction), as it becomes a mediating tool for increasing different types of human (both business and personal) activities.

In another 10 years, mini computing devices will be everywhere as medical and consumer devices reach mass adoption. While HCI is still in its infancy, some HCI practitioners are trying to break away from common conception of an "average" user interacting with a laptop in the office to get work done, and to engage in a conscious effort to develop new understanding, methodologies and tools, in order to understand the following:

1. How emerging new distributed computational paradigms will create new challenges for HCI designs? How do we research behavior that does not exist today?


2. How new interaction /interface design can be effectively used to serve an increasing range of system-mediated human activities?


3. When does interactions / interface design cross the line and becoming service design? Interactive artefacts are now being introduced into service settings in a larger degree.


4. How new visceral interactions that driven by interactive paradigms rather than user needs emerge, beyond the imagination of the novice users.


5. What are the emerging threats to privacy that force us to rethink some fundamental concepts in HCI when attackers, ranging from the curious to the highly malicious, might abuse or subvert the system.

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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.

Scouting for Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Nerac is a global research and advisory firm for companies developing innovative products and technologies. Two of their employees, Kristy Lutz Ulmer and Margaret Fiore, recently published a report on how companies scout for innovation.

I just got to read it and I find this to be great stuff that I want to share with you. You should also download the full report here - Innovation Scouting For 2009

The findings in the report fit well into a key thing being discussed in the open innovation community right now; the real effects of open innovation are due to behind-the-scenes activity rather than flashy portals and idea-generation campaigns.

The report has lots of great insights and the authors want to highlight these conclusions:

• Innovation scouts acknowledge a general lack of formal knowledge of the process of scouting, including how to find and evaluate ideas.


• The more integrated a company's products are into other companies' products, the higher the likelihood that scouting is considered important.


• There are many different approaches for implementing innovation scouting, with companies using internal innovation scouts, external partners, third party scouts, and consultants.


• Most companies operate with a small cadre of scouts, usually fewer than six resources.


• The scouting role is not always confined to internal R&D departments within an organization, but instead is often jointly sponsored across multiple business units.


• Innovation scouts use many methods for finding new ideas, with competitive intelligence the most prevalent source of ideas.

As we can see from the snippets below, the report is full of data and interesting conclusions:

Usage of Innovation Scouts:
Of the nearly 600 companies surveyed, approximately 30% of the respondents knew that their companies use innovation scouts. Another nearly 8% were aware of plans to begin using innovation scouts. Surprisingly, just over 42% were unsure whether or not their company employed scouts, so the usage rate could actually be higher.

Age of Scouting Program:
When asked how long scouts had been in place, 37% reported their companies have used innovation scouts for over five years, followed by another quarter that have used scouts between two and five years.

Size of Scouting Program:
Most companies operate with only a handful of innovation scouts. Our survey found that of the respondents who use innovation scouts, nearly one third have fewer than three employees in this role. Only 14% have more than 25 scouts.

Objectives of Scouting Programs:
The most important driver cited by 70% of respondents was "early identification of disruptive technologies." This is followed closely by building the product pipeline, leapfrogging the competition, and creating something novel.

Sponsorship of Scouting Program:
38% said that scouting was sponsored by their R&D organization. Another 24% reported that it was sponsored by Business Development followed by 21.8% respondents that indicated their scouting was jointly sponsored by several executives or groups.

Scouting Resources:
Our survey sought to identify norms regarding how scouting programs are staffed. We found that the most common staffing approach (at 63%) is to tap company employees on a part-time basis. However, over 25% have full time employees in this position. Over a third of the respondents characterize their scouts as technically oriented, and over one quarter as business/marketing oriented.

Scouting Methods:
We found the most common techniques for uncovering external ideas include conducting competitive intelligence (76%), attending relevant conferences and tradeshows (72%), leveraging academic connections (71%), and exploiting their network of innovators (55%). Other, less common methods include the use of third party networks (41%), innovation "bounty" challenges (18%), and crowd sourcing (8%).

Knowledge Gaps of Scouts:
Our survey asked an open-ended question regarding the biggest knowledge gaps or primary training needs for innovation scouting. The most common response, by a measure of over 3:1, was a lack of understanding the "process" of scouting, that is, how to actually go about doing the job.

Successes and Failures:
More than two-thirds of respondents rated their innovation scouting programs as just "moderately successful," with only 12% rating their efforts as "very successful." While a majority of companies surveyed feel their scouting programs are successful, this indicates there is certainly room for improvement.

Great job by Kristy and Margaret of Nerac! Check the full report here: Scouting For Innovation 2009

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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.

Microsoft's Vision for 2019

I found this video showing how Microsoft imagines we might interact with technology in the world in 2019, and I can't say that I agree with what they find to be compelling real world uses for future technology.

As I watched the video, I saw lots of things that were visually interesting but very little that would deliver increased productivity or true value in terms of time or money savings.



Most of what they are imagining I find to be visual noise, that would actually decrease productivity and overload the brain.

The most compelling thing I saw was the digital white board that they quickly skipped over.

Second most compelling was the plant identification by video input example. If you expand that to showing the computer just about anything and receiving back information about what you are seeing, it could be a very valuable educational tool.

What do you see in this video that is compelling?

@innovate

Frequent Diner's Club

The coupon is as American as apple pie, and American shoppers love a good bargain. Some people love to clip coupons and some feel that it is beneath them, that somehow using a coupon makes them less of a person. I'm not quite sure I understand that one, but to each his own. Despite American's aversion to haggling, there is no doubt that there are a lot of goods and services in America with variable prices. It is just that in most cases, instead of asking for a deal, you have to know about a deal ahead of time. This usually means knowing where to find the coupon.

Similar to the stories of three people in a row of airline seats having paid vastly different prices for seats next to each other, in the same way, three diners may all be paying different prices for the same entrees. Whether companies want to admit it, the same is true for many other products and services as well.

The internet intensifies this phenomenon of variable pricing and has the potential to spread your coupon beyond those you intended to give it to. The most famous story is the story of the free iced coffee coupon that Starbucks distributed to some of its employees encouraging them to share it with friends and family. The problem is that one or more of those friends and families posted it on their websites and suddenly Starbucks was facing more redemptions than they anticpated. They chose to stop accepting the coupons altogether, touching off a negative PR firestorm.

So, how can restaurants make technology work for them instead of against them? The first thing that all restaurants should be doing is trying to identify their most frequent patrons and engaging them in a meaningful dialogue. In order to have this kind of dialogue the restaurant must be careful about the kind of communications they send, and seek to offer personalized opportunities that occasional diners do not get. Imagine a restaurant that is used to having 70% or more of its reservations for the evening full by 6pm and the rest of its capacity filled by walkups, but one evening it is only running at 30% full by 6pm. An ordinary restaurant would just suffer through a poor night.

A smart restaurant might take advantage of their preferred diner program to text the members that live within ten miles of the restaurant to let them know that if they come in this evening that they can choose a special price on the evenings' special or have the evening's special appetizer or dessert for free. This helps the restaurant fill spare capacity, helps loyal customers feel special (and even more loyal), and will the reduce the amount of food waste.

A restaurant that tracks preferred diner's tastes, might be able to organize special events that speak to the preferences of different customers on slow nights, or possibly allow the restaurant to draw in certain customers on nights that certain specials are offered that might please a certain group of customer's palettes. There is also no denying that pulling in customers on their birthdays (with a free meal or glass of wine) tends to pull other people along with them. Are there other occasions that you can think of an offer that you could provide that might encourage the preferred diner to bring others along with him or her?

Are you using your loyalty program to fill spare capacity?

Are you really using it to reward and encourage loyalty?

@innovate