Innovation Perspectives - Trendspotting Trifecta

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

by Braden Kelley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are you waiting for?


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

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

What's in a Name?

Lessons in Insights & Innovation From Anti Monkey Butt Powder

by Mark Prus

I am a professional name developer, and I like to gather opinions about product names. Earlier this year I posted a Twitter Poll to gather opinions on Anti Monkey Butt Powder... Good Name or Bad Name? The results indicated that about 70% of people thought Anti Monkey Butt Powder was a bad name.

However, the real learning came from the comments I received about the posting. The people who thought it was a bad name were making fun of the name and the product. The people who thought it was a good name were people who suffered from what might be described as a "chafed butt" due to extended horseback riding or motorcycle riding or truck driving. Several claimed to be consumers of the product and they were very defensive about the name... they thought it was perfect.

So what is the lesson on insights and innovation? It is very simple... do a great job of developing consumer insights behind your product and those insights will lead you to terrific ideas, such as a novel name for your product that speaks loudly to your target market. Who cares about the majority of people who might ridicule your product? What you should really care about is the "passionate minority" who will turn into loyal fans!

The owners of Anti Monkey Butt Powder did a terrific job of identifying with their very narrow target market. The "problem" of having a chafed butt is not one that everyone has, but if you do have it, you understand what Anti Monkey Butt Powder is designed to do. If you do not have this "problem" then it really does not matter what you think because you will never buy this product.

I chose Anti Monkey Butt Powder for the Good Name Bad Name poll because I thought it was a clever name, but when the passionate responses came in from people who identified with the product, I loved the name even more!


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Mark Prus is a marketing consultant who offers a name development service called NameFlash^SM.

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.

Apple Tablet Article Rundown

by Braden Kelley

Today is the day of Apple's latest media event. This is the one where everyone expects Apple to introduce some kind of new tablet device (iPad, iTouch, iSlate, etc.). Because this could be another transformational device innovation by the company, and because insights should always come before ideas and solutions, we've been discussing some of the potential insights behind the device here on Blogging Innovation.

If you've missed some of these articles or would still like to join the conversation before or after the device is launched today, here is a rundown of the articles we've contributed to the Apple tablet conversation beginning with the article on the bottom on August 31, 2009:

1. Apple Tablet Won't Save Newspapers
   
2. Will Apple Introduce the Innovation Expected from Google?
   
3. Apple Tablet Won't Be Runaway Success
   
4. Microsoft - Apple - Google in Tablet Battle
   
5. 2010 - Year of the Man Purse
   
6. Where's the Innovation Google?
   
7. Apple Tablet Sneak Preview
   
8. What Innovation Could an Apple Tablet Offer?
   
9. Apple Tablet or iPhone Accessory?
   

The articles are not feature rumor articles, but instead a collection of conversations around why Apple might do a tablet device, what kinds of innovation they might offer, and the launch of such a device might affect human and market behavior.

I hope you enjoy them. And I, like everyone else, look forward to seeing what Apple actually introduces today.

Insights and execution drive business success. Let's see what insights Apple has chosen to build their device on, and if they can execute on delivering a solution powered by those insights that finds success in the marketplace.

We're waiting...

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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.

Rethinking the Design of Kitchen Appliances

by Idris Mootee

My kitchen is overcrowded. There is no end in sight as we continue to invent new kitchen gadgets.

I have always wondered why many small kitchen appliances are so poorly designed both in form and function. Cooking is an art form and the appliances should reflect that. I've spent an hour at John Lewis' basement looking at their kitchen appliances. John Lewis' has better designs than what we see at Sears or Macy's. I guess B&O should start designing toasters.

Last year Electrolux Icon appliances and Interior Design Magazine held a competition with winner Marcello Zuffo's futuristic kitchen that featured movable components that can be reconfigured to adapt to the task at hand and incorporated a contemporary sculptural component contrary to a typically rectangular floor plan.

Designing a kitchen is an art, combining form and function while reflecting on the personality of the owner or designer. The kitchen has now become a place which is as much for cooking as it is a place to entertain guests while preparing a meal. Designer kitchens have been sprouting for decades now. More and more homeowners have been renovating and remodeling their homes to include designer kitchens. In kitchen designs and even appliances, Europe is at the forefront of kitchen design and designer kitchen innovation. In the US, unless you're prepared to throw a lot of money at the problem, you're pretty much stuck with some mass-market solution. And then the question is do you want stainless steel? It that going to go out of fashion soon or it is here to stay? Didn't everyone think black, and then white, were going to be classics?

Anyhow, most of the stuff we see out there in the US is pretty poorly designed. Europe is a little better. But they need to think "system" instead of individual products. James Dyson now wants to compactify our kitchens. And hopefully beautify them in the process. In a US patent application filing, Dyson and his colleagues Peter Gammack and David Campbell describe a smart way to save space on overcrowded kitchen worktops by radically changing the design of the gadgets that typically clutter them.

Yes, think "system." The team says the trouble with today's kettles, toasters, juicers, food mixers and coffee grinders is that each type of gadget tends to have a different space-hogging design. Kettles tend to be jug or dome-shaped, with a protruding handle and flex on one side, and a spout on the other. Toasters are generally box shaped, with the timing and toast ejection mechanisms protruding from one end. That means users must leave a large "footprint" around each appliance so that their handles and controls can be reached easily. That's a very smart way to start. Kudos to the Dyson team!

In their patent filing, the idea is simple: make all free-standing gadgets like kettles, toasters, juicers and food mixers in the shape of tall cuboids that can easily be pushed together on a worktop, with no wasted space between them. As the controls could be recessed in their flat lids or on the front panels, no space-wasting side access is required. The patent also suggests connecting the appliances together - presumably using a common power supply. Why haven't people thought of that before?


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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 vs Commoditization

by Steve McKee

You can hardly turn around these days without running into some sort of reference to innovation. Dozens of books about the topic line the shelves at Borders and Barnes & Noble, from "The Art of Innovation" to "The Myths of Innovation." Innovation is rapidly becoming the latest business buzzword.

But before you dump 'innovation' into the jargon dustbin along with 'reengineering', 'rightsizing' and 'paradigm shift', consider this: the need for innovation has never been greater than it is today.

Doug Hall is founder and CEO of Eureka! Ranch, an organization that helps companies define, refine and improve their new ideas. In an interview with SmallBiz magazine, Hall defined innovation as that which:


"moves companies and their offerings along a continuum from providing commodity products or services to having a monopoly that is extremely difficult to combat."


Hall's definition is spot-on, and made even more significant by the fact that no company's position along that continuum is static. If you're not actively moving your company away from commoditization, it's destined for it. The extent to which any business proposition or value equation is achieving success in the marketplace is the extent to which it will attract competitors who want what it's got. There's simply no free pass to sustainable success.

If you're making money you're making noise, and competitors are bound to notice. They'll deconstruct your products, mimic your pricing structure, duplicate your distribution system, infiltrate your customer relationships, and do anything else they can to take your margin and market share. In so doing, they'll be creating acceptable substitutes for your products and services, which without intervention will inevitably lead to a price war in which no one wins. Unless you can stay ahead of the game through continuous renewal and change (i.e. innovation), your competitors will commoditize you right out of business.

As frightening as this prospect might be, many companies are intimidated by the concept of innovation. They somehow think it's the purview only of organizations with massive R&D departments funded by equally massive budgets, not the typical small- or medium-sized business. But this reflects an incomplete and unrealistic understanding of what innovation is really all about.

One of the reasons executives think this way is because we tend to associate innovation with breakthrough leaps forward - advances that change the playing field, shift competitive dynamics, make the covers of Forbes and Business Week and end up as business school case studies. Certainly, big innovations can be big news, and for good reason (Doug Hall's research shows that major breakthroughs are worth four times as much as minor innovations). Naturally, they're the ones that get the most press.

But the systematic introduction of even small improvements along the commodity-monopoly continuum can compound to deliver just as much (if not more) impact as a single big breakthrough. Popular Science says of innovations:


"The objects don't necessarily need to be beautiful. They don't have to be eco-friendly. They don't even have to be difficult to build. They just have to push past what we thought was possible just twelve months ago."


To that I would add that they don't have to be big. They just have to be consistent.

If you spend just a few hours critically analyzing your industry from a customer's perspective (perhaps even involving customers themselves), you'll identify dozens of pain points about which somebody ought to do something. Airline seats should be comfortable. Take-out orders shouldn't be wrong. Physician's handwriting should be legible. The better you can anticipate what customers will be wanting/needing/expecting down the road, the more likely you can be the leader that first addresses the issue. No one, as they say, ever asked for a microwave oven. Or even a curved shower rod.

Want to keep commoditization at bay? Focus on innovation. No matter what size, shape or form your company is.


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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.

Building Up Innovation Capital

by Rowan Gibson

As usual it was Peter Drucker, the godfather of modern management, who said it first. Right back there in 1966 (!), in his landmark book "The Effective Executive", Drucker argued that companies would need to build a new kind of organizational capital as the industrial economy gave way to the knowledge economy. His famous proclamation was that, in future, brainpower would be a more valuable asset for wealth creation than factories and financial clout. All of which came true, of course. But that was not the end of it. Now, over four decades later, we are once again challenged to rethink organizational capital as we make the transition from a knowledge economy to an innovation economy. And that creates a new agenda for every single company.

For most of the last century, as well as the previous one, we looked at companies as if they were comprised of only two kinds of capital: financial and structural. Financial capital obviously refers to a company's balance sheet. Structural capital is the value of its physical assets - its networks, facilities, warehouses, plants, inventory, and so on. Thus, if we had gone back and spoken to the super-rich industrialists and financiers of the late 19th and early 20th century - such as Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan - they would have told us that this was the only way to measure the worth of an enterprise. Move forward a few decades and the same would have been true if you had talked to great business builders like Henry Ford, Alfred P. Sloan, Thomas Watson Sr., or any of their corporate accountants. What counted back then was the tangible stuff that is easy to quantify and monetize on a financial statement.

In the 1980s and 1990s, that began to change. In large part because the stock market value of companies was beginning to get out of all proportion to the "book value" of their physical assets. Microsoft, for example, had an almost 8-to-1 ratio of market value to physical assets value. And when Philip Morris bought Kraft in 1988 for $12.9 billion, the "hard assets" of the firm were calculated to be worth only $1.3 billion. That means Philip Morris was paying a full $11.6 billion - or 89.9% of the transaction price - for "other stuff" that wasn't even on the balance sheet: intangible stuff like brand equity, marketing capability, and so on.

British futurologist Hugh Macdonald coined the phrase "intellectual capital" to describe these intangible assets. He defined it as "knowledge that exists in an organization that can be used to create differential advantage." And in a seminal article in Fortune magazine in 1991, Thomas Stewart wrote that "every company depends increasingly on knowledge - patents, processes, management skills, technologies, information about customers and suppliers, and old-fashioned experience. Added together this knowledge is intellectual capital."

From then on, we had three forms of capital - three basic kinds of assets - with which to measure a company's worth. But in a new, innovation-based economy, where value-creation is the new Holy Grail, the way we define, measure and manage organizational capital is again woefully incomplete. In 2001, strategy guru Gary Hamel argued that financial, structural and intellectual capital, by themselves, do not create new wealth. And I agree with his astute observation. Think about GM. If any company on earth ever had huge amounts of money, massive dealer and supplier networks, giant manufacturing plants, countless technological patents, well-oiled management processes, tons of customer information and decades of industry experience, it would have to be General Motors. Yet where is GM today? In effect, all of those assets have proven to be almost worthless in terms of creating new wealth.

Hamel's view is that the three traditional forms of capital are largely inanimate. In today's competitive era, they need to be animated or catalyzed by three new kinds of organizational capital if we want to translate them into wealth. He calls these "imagination capital", "entrepreneurial capital", and "relationship capital", all of which are different forms of human capital.

Consider the first one. Most companies would tell you that knowledge is a critical resource. Many large organizations have internal KM efforts aimed at sharing information and experience across the firm with a view to continuous improvement. But in a world where the pace of change has gone hypercritical, we're finding out that success has less and less to do with learning from the past, and more and more to do with imagining future opportunities. Knowledge has become a commodity. Let's face it, you can go online and find out almost anything with just one or two clicks. So the issue is not how much you know but how creatively you can leverage what you know. Today, the advantage increasingly goes to those firms that develop "imagination capital" - which is the capacity to dramatically reconceive what the firm is and imagine entirely new uses for its financial, structural and intellectual capital. Einstein's oft-quoted reflection that "imagination is more important than knowledge" becomes the mantra of the innovation economy.

Second, companies need to develop their "entrepreneurial capital", which means building the entrepreneurial spirit into many, many employees across the whole organization, not just in an incubator or some new venture division that exists out on the periphery of an otherwise orthodox company. It's about creating a cultural environment where the entrepreneurial spirit is everywhere; where ordinary employees can have the courage to experiment and try something new, where they can get unfettered access to the financial and human capital they need to push their ideas forward.

The third of these new kinds of capital is "relationship capital" (or what I would call "network capital"), which refers to the connections a company can make between previously isolated people, ideas, resources and domains - both across and beyond the organization. Innovation is so often about spotting the opportunities that come from recombining and blending all of these ingredients. The quality of a company's network of relationships - its ability to connect with individuals and organizations that have very different skill sets and capabilities - is becoming more and more critical to its own capacity to innovate.

Here's the sad reality: most companies don't have a clue about how to support
the development of these new forms of capital. So the challenging agenda for
organizations around the world will be to think about exactly what it takes to
build, measure, manage and exploit what amounts to their "innovation capital" - which is so essential to creating wealth in our times.

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

Do you have a Corporate Innovation System?

by Rowan Gibson

Co-authored with Peter Skarzynski, CEO of Strategos, in close collaboration
with well-known strategy guru Gary Hamel, I believe that "Innovation to the Core" (Harvard Business School Press) is by far the most important thing I've ever done.

Lots of people have been asking me for a synopsis of the book, so here goes...

Could you describe your company's "corporate innovation system"? Ask this question inside most organizations and all you get is a blank stare. It's obvious that, in the vast majority of firms, innovation is still more buzzword than core competence.

Yet a few leading-edge players - including GE, IBM, P&G, Whirlpool, Shell, Cemex, Best Buy, and W.L. Gore - are demonstrating that large industrial organizations really can tackle the challenge of innovation successfully in a broad-based and highly systemic way.

What these companies understand is that it's entirely possible to make innovation an "all-the-time, everywhere" capability, something that becomes part of the organization's bloodstream - just like quality, for example.

Instead of ascribing innovation to a mysterious mix of happenstance, individual brilliance and the occasional bolt of lightning, the first thing we need to do is demystify the innovation process. If you want to create a high-performance "innovation engine" inside your organization, you need to recognize and address three cultural preconditions for making breakthroughs happen: creating time and space in people's lives for reflection, ideation and experimentation; maximizing the diversity of thinking that innovation requires; and fostering connection and conversation - the "combinational chemistry" that serves as a breeding ground for breakthrough ideas.

Next, you need a methodology for systematically generating novel strategic insights - these are the raw material for innovation breakthroughs. There are four specific kinds of insights that enable innovators to discover new and unexploited opportunities of real value. These are: company and industry orthodoxies that deserved to be challenged, trends and discontinuities that could potentially reshape the business landscape, competencies and assets that could be leveraged to create opportunities beyond the boundaries of the existing business, and emergent but as yet unaddressed customer needs.

Once your company has built a foundation of novel strategic insights using these four "lenses of innovation", the next step is to "crash" various insights together to see if the collision opens up new opportunities for innovation. Radical business innovations are almost always the product of "creative collision" - i.e. they are based on a combination of insights, ideas and domains that don't usually belong together. It is also imperative to examine each component of your company's (or your industry's) business model, using insights from the "four lenses" to uncover opportunities for industry reinvention.

In addition to this ongoing insight discovery and ideation work, which should engage as many minds as possible across your organization, the goal is to open up the innovation process to your extended network of customers, suppliers and partners, involving all of these constituencies in the search for new growth opportunities.

Once your company is using all these available means to improve the quantity and the quality of new ideas entering its innovation pipeline, you should make sure you are employing the right evaluative criteria at every stage of the opportunity development process, so that you avoid prematurely killing off potentially valuable ideas. The most important question to ask first, for example, is not "What's the expected ROI?", but "How BIG is this idea?" - based on the understanding that it is radical (rather than incremental) ideas that tend to deliver breakthrough performance.

It is also crucial to build mechanisms for rapidly reallocating resources behind new growth opportunities, as well as an "innovation architecture" that gives strategic coherence and consistency to your opportunity portfolio. You want to make sure your innovation pipeline is robust enough to nurture, manage and commercialize the ideas your organization decides to pursue, and that it is capable of managing growth opportunities with very different timescales and risk profiles. You are also going to need a comprehensive set of metrics (linked to management compensation) that is designed to measure innovation performance - including inputs, throughputs, and outputs.

Finally, to drive innovation to the core, you need to put the necessary systems, structures and processes in place to make innovation a self-sustaining enterprise capability and a tangible core value. This requires four interdependent and mutually reinforcing components that need to come together to institutionalize innovation: visionary leaders and organization aligned around a common vision of innovation; a disciplined approach to building innovation capabilities across the organization; a systematic approach and supporting tools to enable idea generation, pipeline and portfolio management; and a collaborative, open culture that rewards challenging the status quo.

Do all of this and your innovation outputs will soar!

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

Creating New Innovations with Customer Insights

by Jeffrey Phillips

I guess my kids are just too old for crayons anymore, so I missed the Crayon Maker when it was first released, but I'd like to use it as an example of understanding customer needs and identifying lead users, and how an innovation can open up an entirely new market space and revenue opportunity.

For years kids have had broken crayons and their parents have melted them down and formed new crayons, often by mixing the broken pieces. My wife did this for our kids just a few years ago using a muffin tin in the oven. I'm going to guess that Crayola was aware of this activity, neither encouraging or discouraging the activity, until 2003, when it released the Crayon Maker, a machine that allows kids to melt down their crayons and create new ones. Now, crayons have been with us quite a while, and parents have been melting down the broken pieces for quite a while. What took Crayola so long to respond to these lead users who were creating their own crayons?

But let's push through the existing Crayon Maker and think about the opportunities for new innovation. Right now Crayola is only positioning the Crayon Maker to melt down old, broken Crayons. Why not offer Crayon Shavings or Crayon Bits, built specifically for melting down? These would probably be cheaper to produce, and Crayola could probably charge more for them, giving kids two activities - making crayons and using the crayons. Next, why not let kids make Crayons in different shapes? Right now the Crayon Maker makes Crayons in the same shape as they come out of the box. Creating forms or molds in different shapes wouldn't be difficult and could be more fun for kids.

Next, why not sell dies or additives that let kids make their own crayon colors? You could turn the creation of crayons into a science experiment, allowing kids to create their own colors, textures and perhaps even scented crayons. Simply by creating a machine that allows kids to create new crayons we can open up a lot of other product and service offerings. What's taking you so long, Crayola?

Or how about a mold that allows you to make your own Legos? A firm such as Lego could easily create and sell molds that allowed children and parents to make their own Legos out of Play-Dough or bread dough or a host of other viscous material. Then the kids could create, and play with, their own Legos, perhaps creating Legos of different colors and textures. When they were done playing with them, they could easily dispose of them (or in the case of Bread Legos, perhaps eat them!)

These examples are simply thought exercises that indicate how innovation should work. A customer need or lead user is identified, a new product or services is delivered and it opens up an entirely new market opportunity. What customer insights are hiding in plain sight in your business? What lead users are creating products and services to simplify their lives based on your products or information?

Think this doesn't happen in the "real world" of adults? Check out Mint.com, which is taking the financial world by storm. Mint simply helps individuals consolidate a view of their financial lives online. What we've been doing in spreadsheets is now done automatically for us by Mint. Why didn't the banks see this opportunity? What new products and services could a Mint create by offering a consolidated view of your financials?

It's important to interact with your customers and understand what they are doing and creating to improve your products. Sometimes you may discover customers who have created entirely new products or solutions based on your existing products. These lead users often point the way for new product or service development. Once that new product or service is developed, it can open an entirely new market for your firm.

---

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.

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.

Future of Shopper Marketing

by Kevin Roberts

The Sam Walton Business School at the University of Arkansas is on our calendar every October because of the superb annual conference run by the Center for Retailing Excellence. Andy Murray, Global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi X, was a founder of the conference, and this year a keynote speaker. His subject was "the future of shopper marketing" - which should apply to anyone and everyone who wants to sell something to a customer.

The presentation featured five key points (and a whole bunch of arresting stories, insights, and examples):

• Put yourself at the heart of the customer (most companies try it the other way around)


• Navigate the experience of your customer from the "shelf back"


• Create ways for customers to participate and be involved in your brands and store experiences


• Explore the fringe/edge/margin for new ideas (Wal-Mart was a fringe idea, it came from Bentonville, not Chicago)


• Find new ways for manufacturers and retailers to collaborate authentically based on trust, transparency and shared goals

This is a special presentation and will be viewed in five years time as a definitive statement about the world's biggest activity: shopping.

---

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.

Are You Thinking Ahead of the Curve?

by Robert B. Tucker

The other day in Cincinnati I met Filippo Passerini, Procter & Gamble's Chief Information Officer. Fascinating guy. Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Rome. Father of three. Technical mountain climber. And the toast of his organization right now for what he and his troops have been able to accomplish.

Passerini was the driving force behind Procter's radical revamping of its entire back office operations. The move obliterated $1.2 billion in costs from P&G. It enabled the consumer products giant to respond quickly to the Global Economic Crisis, and bring new products to market faster than ever.

So how does Filippo unwind after routinely putting in 60 hour weeks? He plays chess. "Thinking what your opponent will do three moves out is good discipline for business," he told me in a thick Italian accent.

Filippo is the perfect illustration of an important innovation skill -- thinking ahead of the curve.

"It was our reading of trends that led us to make this move," he explained. In frequent open-ended brainstorming sessions, he and his core team of five saw that the world was shifting. It was moving from 'big is good' to 'flexible is good' to 'network is good'.


"Fifteen years ago, if you were a big company, that was a competitive advantage. Then flexibility was the way to achieve it. But we saw that over the next five years the network would become more and more important."


What to do?

Passerini's vision was that the entire company should operate from one consolidated, integrated global services network. He and his team assaulted the assumption that the way P&G handled back office functions like finance and accounting, HR, facilities management, and IT was good enough. They knew it was riddled with duplication and waste. So they set forth to build a new unit -- Global Business Services - to take over and consolidate all such operations.

Today, 'shared-services centers' in Costa Rica, Manila and Newcastle, England, provide networked support around the clock to P&G operations everywhere. All non-strategic activities have been outsourced to outside vendors. And Passerini and his group have 'decommoditized' themselves (his word) from being internal service providers to become strategic partners to the organization.

In researching a forthcoming book, I've been interviewing dozens of high output managers like Filippo Passerini. They don't try to predict the future, which is impossible. But they do make it a priority to spend time thinking ahead of the curve.


"One of our pillars is thinking out in the future and anticipating what is coming and then making your move. It's so much better than reacting."


Innovation-adept leaders like Filippo Passerini don't just gather better intelligence. They creatively crunch this data, argue about it, debate its implications, and try to connect the dots in some meaningful fashion. They seek to arrive at a point of view, both individually and collectively, about how to turn today's rapid changes into tomorrow's opportunities. And then they take action.

How are you "sussing out" (as the British say) the trends in your market and in the wider world? What's new in your information diet that's stimulating your thinking? What trends, emerging technologies and developments are you doing deep dives on to gain a knowledge edge?

"I manage my life like a chess game," Passerini told me as I was leaving. "I still continue to study the trends every day."

Not bad advice for all of us.

---

Robert B. Tucker is the President of The Innovation Resource Consulting Group. He is a speaker, seminar leader and an expert in the management of innovation and assisting companies in accelerating ideas to market.

Are You Innovating for the Past or the Future?

I had the opportunity to meet and chat with local ethnographic researcher Cynthia DuVal about the role of ethnographic research in the innovation process, and she shared an insight that I thought I would share with the rest of you.

She mentioned that it is important for a good ethnographer or researcher to consider the timeline of the development process when extracting insights. Why is this important?

Well, if you've got a 12-18 month product or service development process to go from insight to in-market, then you should be looking not to identify the insights that are most relevant today, BUT the insights that will be most relevant 12-18 months from now. If you can go from insight to in-market faster than that, that's fantastic, but the point still holds.

If your research team takes all of the data they've gathered and extracts insights for today, then you are innovating for the past, and if they develop insights too far along the time continuum then you are innovating for the future. You can't really innovate for the past (your offering won't be innovative and will be beaten easily by competitors). If you innovate for the future, then adoption will be slow until customers become ready. The trick is to task your insights team to provide guidance for the future present.



The ideal of course is to design a product based on customer insights appropriate to the time of the product launch to maximize the useful life of the customer insights.

The product or service are an expression of the customer insights, and it is the useful life of the insights that we are concerned with, not the useful life of the product or service (a post-purchase concept). When the insights reach their sell by date, sales will begin to tail off, and you better have another product or service ready to replace this one (based on fresh insights).

Now, extracting accurate customer insights for the present is difficult enough. Doing it for the future present is even harder. But, if your team starts out with that as its charter, they will likely rise to the challenge, for the most part.

Because the team will likely only get the insights mostly right, it is important that your go-to-market processes include a great deal of modularity and flexibility. In the same way that product development processes have to design for certain components that are 'likely' to be available, but also have a backup design available that substitutes already released components--should the cutting edge components not be ready in time.

To innovate for the future present, you must maintain the flexibility to tweak branding and messaging (and even the product or service itself) should some of the forecasted customer insights prove to be inaccurate and require updates. It is also a good idea to evaluate, as you go, whether or not a fast follower version (e.g. iPhone OS v3.1) of the product, service, and/or branding or messaging will need to be prepared to address last minute customer insight discoveries that can't be incorporated into the product or service or branding/messaging at launch.

So, will your team have the flexibility necessary to innovate for the future present, or will you find your team innovating for the past or the future?

---

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.

Keeping Innovation Ideas Flowing

It happened a few months ago, when I was meeting with some people from one of the world's leading consumer goods manufacturers. This is a company where you would expect innovation to have been honed down to a fine art because it has launched a slew of successful innovations over the course of its long, proud history.

But these executives candidly admitted they had a problem. They had started an initiative to solicit ideas from across their organisation. It started well in the first year, slowed down in the second and was almost at a standstill by the third. Like the parents of a delinquent child, they asked "Where did we go wrong?" and it didn't take me long to find the answer.

It's quite typical these days for companies to set up an online suggestion box and ask their employees - perhaps also their customers - to send in ideas. The reason these initiatives tend to start with a bang and then dwindle down to nothing is that most people already have one or two ideas in their pockets.

They may even have been kicking them around in their heads for some time. So the minute somebody asks for suggestions and offers an incentive for submitting them, all those would-be innovators come out and post their ideas.

But soon after this low hanging fruit has been picked and processed, a company usually finds that less and less suggestions are coming in despite the fact that the same incentives are being offered and management continues to beat the innovation drum with the same intensity.

Here's why: people find it far easier to submit ideas they already have than to go through the intellectual work of coming up with new ones.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against electronic suggestion boxes or idea management software per se. Indeed, one of my key messages is that companies should involve as many minds as possible - inside and outside the organisation - in their innovation efforts. So, essentially, these platforms are a good thing.

The reason they so often fail is that they are way too passive. They simply sit there waiting for lightning to strike. They don't do very much to create the conditions that produce the lightning in the first place.

They don't trigger innovation by inspiring people with new insights and perspectives. They don't train people how to stretch their thinking along new lines. They don't create a thick matrix of connection and conversation between many different voices. And they don't guide would-be innovators on how to turn a wild idea into a concrete business plan.

If you cling to the notion that innovation is something enigmatic and ethereal and that an electronic suggestion box will somehow just pluck ideas out of the ether like a radio antenna, your innovation efforts will not get very far. Instead, you need to build your idea collection system on a deep understanding about how the innovation process actually works.

To put it simply: big ideas are born from breakthrough insights. Go back and look at any case of successful business innovation over the last few decades and you will invariably find that it was about challenging conventional wisdom about how things are done or recognising the power of some nascent trend to upend an industry or leveraging some competence or asset in an exciting new way or discovering some deep, unarticulated customer need.

These kinds of insights are the raw material out of which radical innovations are built. So it follows that, if we want people to continually come up with powerful new ideas and growth opportunities, we have to continually inspire them with a constant stream of fresh, strategic insights.

Indeed, we have to teach them to discover such insights themselves by giving them the right thinking tools and training them to use them. We have to show people how to use eye opening insights to generate eye popping innovations.

One company that has done this highly successfully is Whirlpool, the global appliance manufacturer. Instead of just setting up a passive electronic suggestion box, the company established a sophisticated IT infrastructure several years ago called 'Innovation E-Space' which is open to anyone at Whirlpool who has intranet access.

With just a few clicks, Whirlpool employees can look for inspiration by perusing insights captured on the system, they can use these insights to spark new thinking, they can submit their own ideas and insights, they can build on existing ideas, they can follow an online tutorial on how to turn ideas into business concepts and they can find innovation coaches and mentors in their region who can help them organise seed funding for their ideas.

Whirlpool also instituted a leader led training process (like GE's Work-Out) aimed at enabling their people to continually apply the system to their own jobs.

Over the last five years, Innovation E-Space has had hundreds of thousands of hits from Whirlpool's employees worldwide and has become indispensable to the way people share ideas, learn together and collaborate on innovation projects in the company.

Rather than starting out with a torrent of ideas and ending up with a trickle, the system has gone from strength to strength and has been instrumental in making innovation a daily reality at Whirlpool. Most importantly, it has also helped the company add billions of dollars in innovation generated revenue to its top line.

As for the organisation I mentioned at the beginning, I told them they would have to do much more than just ask for ideas and then sit back and wait for them to come. In fact, I recommended that they take a good look at Whirlpool. And if your company is facing a similar struggle to maintain the momentum on innovation, you might want to do the same.

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Rowan Gibson is a global business strategist, a bestselling author and an expert on radical innovation.

Innovation Insight Contest Winner

Congratulations to Evelyn Hannon!

Evelyn has won the Innovation Insight Contest and a copy of "Rethink" by Ric Merrifield.

Thank you to everyone who submitted their favorite innovation insight or quote, and to all of you that voted. I hope that you had fun with the process. If you have any suggestions for future contests, please add them as a comment to this blog post or send an @reply on Twitter to @innovate.

Here is the winning entry from @Journeywoman (Evelyn Hannon):

"Question all rules. 1900 Olympics only 15 women took part. It was feared if she ran too fast her uterus would fall out."

While all of the entries were great, there were a couple of things that struck me when I read Evelyn's entry that aren't explicity in the text:

1. Smart organizations don't see innovation as an effort, but as a movement. Too often we let the "rules" limit us, instead of seeing the rules as something to test against in stages over time.
   
   
   • Why have things always been done a certain way? Why is it a rule?
   
   
   • What prohibits us from doing them differently?
   
   
   • What changes would have to occur for a particular challenge to become easier?
   
   
   • What changes would have to occur for a constraint to no longer exist?
   
   
   • What insights can we uncover from apparent contradictions?
   
   
   • What is our plan for achieving the collective incremental changes that will result in an overall rule change?
   
   
2. Too often the "rules" are determined by the companies building the industry over time.Disruptive innovations often occur when a new entrant seeks to understand what customers think the "rules" should be.


• Industry "rules" are usually built around operational efficiency goals


• Existing airlines believed the "rules" were focused on hub-spoke efficiency and network size


• Southwest Airlines recognized that customers believed the rules of the industry should be based on price, customer service, and convenience (point to point travel)

Are you questioning the rules?


Here is a bit more information about the winner:

In 1982 when few women were doing it, Evelyn Hannon put a backpack on and went out into the world to travel solo. An early adaptor on the web, in 1997 she began telling her travel stories online at Journeywoman.com which today is the largest online travel resource for women. Her mandate remains to inspire women of all ages and at all stages of their lives to travel safety and well, and to connect female travelers around the world. Now approaching 70, Evelyn continues her travel writing and is considered the guru of 'how to' in women's travel. Each morning Evelyn sends out one JW Tip of the day to over 2000 Twitter followers. TIME Magazine named her 'one of the 100 innovative thinkers of this new century' for the work she does on behalf of 'women travelers.'


If you're passionate about innovation, join the lively innovation discussion on the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn:


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Design, Discovery and Humor

Here is an interesting and funny video from Ted with David Carson speaking about the importance of graphic design and intuition:



During his presentation, David Carson uses a great quote on intuition:

"The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you, and you don't know how or why." - Albert Einstein

He also talks a bit about how the pendulum is swinging slighty back from simplicity in graphic design, and how as we become more digitally driven, graphic design will feature more people and more handwriting.


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Five Finalists - Innovation Insight Contest

In honor of the impact that Twitter has in democratizing information, Blogging Innovation is awarding a copy of the only business book I know of with a green cover - "Rethink" by Ric Merrifield - and a quick winner's profile on this blog, to the winner of the innovation insight contest.

The voters have spoken and we now have five finalists (as determined by your @reply and comment votes).

I now have the unenviable task of choosing a winner from amongst these five great entries and announcing the ONE (1) winner on July 2nd via my profile on Twitter and on this blog with a quick profile of the winner, their winning entry, and a link to their web site.

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Here are the five finalists (ordered by number of votes received):

1. "90% of what we learn comes AFTER we launch a new product." - Eric Feng, CTO of Hulu - @veget


2. Question all rules. 1900 Olympics only 15 women took part. It was feared if she ran too fast her uterus would fall out. - @Journeywoman


3. Insight in a Marketing-driven company is hindsight, while Insight in Innovation-driven company is foresight. - @Lerou


4. Research is the transformation of money into knowledge - Innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money! - @Lerou


5. Implementing best practice is replicating yesterday; innovation is designing tomorrow. - @paulsloane

If you're not on Twitter, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed to find out who the one winner will be.

I look forward to announcing the innovation insight contest winner tomorrow!


Join the lively innovation discussion on the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn:


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Vote Now - Innovation Insight Contest

In honor of the impact that Twitter has in democratizing information, Blogging Innovation is awarding a copy of the only business book I know of with a green cover - "Rethink" by Ric Merrifield - and a quick winner's profile on this blog, to the winner of the innovation insight contest.

Vote for your favorite innovation insight before 23:59 GMT on June 30th via one of the two following channels:

1. Twitter - Send an @reply on Twitter with the # of the entry you are voting for and @innovate AND #i140 in the body of the tweet


• This will allow everyone to see the votes


2. Blog Comment - Vote below as a comment - include the # of the entry in your vote

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I will announce five (5) finalists on July 1st on this blog, complete with links to their Twitter accounts.

I will announce the ONE (1) winner on July 2nd via my profile on Twitter and on this blog with a quick profile of the winner, their winning entry, and a link to their web site.

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Please vote by # for one these 30 entries (in no particular order):

1. The sovereignty of your #innovation is often more valuable than its content. - @jsbelfiore


2. "90% of what we learn comes AFTER we launch a new product." - Eric Feng, CTO of Hulu - @veget


3. The key to successful #innovation is learning to channel your inner wise-ass. - @jsbelfiore


4. Do Better Today - What You Did Yesterday. - @pehodk


5. #Innovation is a mirror, which reflects your thought processes. If you see nothing, you're a vampire. - @jsbelfiore


6. Genius in innovation is the clever reapplication of the "obvious" in a non-obvious manner or area - @jmccolgin


7. Solutions come & go based on current technology; but underlying needs of audience transcend time and lead to meaningful solutions - @adamdole


8. Innovation doesn't just fall into your lap - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


9. Ideas have to be consciously designed - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


10. The application of a technology follows the generation of an idea, not visa versa - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


11. Innovation is the intersection of what's possible, viable and desirable. - @ddetlefsen


12. Innovation requires commitment. What is commitment? A chicken is "interested" in breakfast. The pig is "committed" to it. - @ddetlefsen


13. Innovation is change that adds value. In math: I=Magnitude of Change*(addition of good features + removal of bad features) - @ddetlefsen


14. Innovation does not just happen for free or by magic - it's a game you can choose to win - @simontevans


15. Make innovation happen by instilling fear - why? Because chasing an oppt is an option; running away from danger is a must - @bpluskowski


16. Innovation is the process of uncovering problems for which people need solutions, and then developing a valuable and accessible solution. - i360 Insight


17. "Nothing can withstand sustained thinking" ~ Voltaire - @tomludwicki


18. Innovation is like loosing weight. Everyone wants & talks about it, knows its benefits, but most won't work for it. - @ddetlefsen


19. Aligning Business models with market expectations and Challenge the Market with Rapid Demonstrator development - @stefaanvermael


20. Research is the transformation of money into knowledge - Innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money! - @Lerou


21. Insight in a Marketing-driven company is hindsight, while Insight in Innovation-driven company is foresight. - @Lerou


22. Implementing best practice is replicating yesterday; innovation is designing tomorrow. - @paulsloane


23. I do not know who discovered water but I am sure it was not a fish. We cannot perceive that in which we are immersed. - @paulsloane


24. Organizations that have a high % of people initiating innovative solutions 2 social problems are far more likely to thrive. - @DennisHoenig


25. Will not innovate with a scam, will not innovate sending spam. will not innovate if workers cram, will not innovate Sam I am - @chris_townsend_


26. Innovation and creativity seem to peak where the ripples spreading outward from knowledge networks intersect. - @geniusnet


27. Creativity = the contxn b/w 2 seemingly random objects. Innovation = creating market value from two seemingly random objects. - @adamdole


28. Question all rules. 1900 Olympics only 15 women took part. It was feared if she ran too fast her uterus would fall out. - @Journeywoman


29. Humankind's evolution: Stone Age-> Feudal Age-> Industrial Age-> Information Age-> Knowledge Age-> Awareness Age - @CrazyColombian


30. Everything big started small. - @ryantracey

If you're not on Twitter, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed to find out who the five finalists and the one winner will be.

I look forward to announcing the five innovation insight contest finalists!


Join the lively innovation discussion on the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn:


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

140char Innovation Insight Contest

In honor of the impact that Twitter has in democratizing information, I'd like to give everyone a chance to win a copy of the only business book I know of with a green cover - "Rethink" by Ric Merrifield.

The rules for entering the contest are simple. Send us your favorite innovation insight in 140 characters or less* via one of the two following channels:

1. Twitter - Send your favorite innovation insight as a tweet on Twitter with @innovate AND #i140 in the body of the tweet


• This will allow everyone to see all of the innovation insights submitted on Twitter by doing a search for #i140


2. Blog Comment - Post your innovation insight below as a comment in 124 characters or less


• This is to level the playing field for people who post a comment vs. a Twitter tweet

---

@reply and comment voting from 00:00 GMT to 23:59 GMT on June 30th will decide the finalists.

I will announce five (5) finalists on July 1st on this blog, complete with links to their Twitter accounts.

I will announce the ONE (1) winner on July 2nd via my profile on Twitter and on this blog with a quick profile of the winner, their winning entry, and a link to their web site.

---

Here are the entries so far (in no particular order):

1. The sovereignty of your #innovation is often more valuable than its content. - @jsbelfiore


2. "90% of what we learn comes AFTER we launch a new product." - Eric Feng, CTO of Hulu - @veget


3. The key to successful #innovation is learning to channel your inner wise-ass. - @jsbelfiore


4. Do Better Today - What You Did Yesterday. - @pehodk


5. #Innovation is a mirror, which reflects your thought processes. If you see nothing, you're a vampire. - @jsbelfiore


6. Genius in innovation is the clever reapplication of the "obvious" in a non-obvious manner or area - @jmccolgin


7. Solutions come & go based on current technology; but underlying needs of audience transcend time and lead to meaningful solutions - @adamdole


8. Innovation doesn't just fall into your lap - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


9. Ideas have to be consciously designed - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


10. The application of a technology follows the generation of an idea, not visa versa - Gijs van Beeck Calkoen


11. Innovation is the intersection of what's possible, viable and desirable. - @ddetlefsen


12. Innovation requires commitment. What is commitment? A chicken is "interested" in breakfast. The pig is "committed" to it. - @ddetlefsen


13. Innovation is change that adds value. In math: I=Magnitude of Change*(addition of good features + removal of bad features) - @ddetlefsen


14. Innovation does not just happen for free or by magic - it's a game you can choose to win - @simontevans


15. Make innovation happen by instilling fear - why? Because chasing an oppt is an option; running away from danger is a must - @bpluskowski


16. Innovation is the process of uncovering problems for which people need solutions, and then developing a valuable and accessible solution. - i360 Insight


17. "Nothing can withstand sustained thinking" ~ Voltaire - @tomludwicki


18. Innovation is like loosing weight. Everyone wants & talks about it, knows its benefits, but most won't work for it. - @ddetlefsen


19. Aligning Business models with market expectations and Challenge the Market with Rapid Demonstrator development - @stefaanvermael


20. Research is the transformation of money into knowledge - Innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money! - @Lerou


21. Insight in a Marketing-driven company is hindsight, while Insight in Innovation-driven company is foresight. - @Lerou


22. Implementing best practice is replicating yesterday; innovation is designing tomorrow. - @paulsloane


23. I do not know who discovered water but I am sure it was not a fish. We cannot perceive that in which we are immersed. - @paulsloane


24. Organizations that have a high % of people initiating innovative solutions 2 social problems are far more likely to thrive. - @DennisHoenig


25. Will not innovate with a scam, will not innovate sending spam. will not innovate if workers cram, will not innovate Sam I am - @chris_townsend_


26. Innovation and creativity seem to peak where the ripples spreading outward from knowledge networks intersect. - @geniusnet


27. Creativity = the contxn b/w 2 seemingly random objects. Innovation = creating market value from two seemingly random objects. - @adamdole


28. Question all rules. 1900 Olympics only 15 women took part. It was feared if she ran too fast her uterus would fall out. - @Journeywoman


29. Humankind's evolution: Stone Age-> Feudal Age-> Industrial Age-> Information Age-> Knowledge Age-> Awareness Age - @CrazyColombian


30. Everything big started small. - @ryantracey

And some of my own to help stimulate thinking (@innovate):

• "Innovation is a gift. What are you doing to ensure employees want to give it?"


• "An innovation leader's job isn't to provide the answers but to provoke the thinking that gets you there."


• Knowledge Management is more about "How do I?" while Innovation is more about "Why don't we?"


• "We must create clarity in innovation strategy, goals, and participation for a continuous innovation culture to be created."

I look forward to seeing your favorite innovation insights!


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Twitter and Social Media in Plain English

I thought I would share a couple of plain english videos from Common Craft on Social Media and Twitter for those who are new to these two phenomenons.

Twitter in Plain English

Social Media in Plain English

These are really high level overviews. The Twitter explanation unfortunately leaves out the fact that many people in the Twitter community (including me) use Twitter to share insights and useful links.

What do you think?

@innovate