Tag Archives: Innovation
Create for others or create for yourself?
Innovative Scandinavian born companies, like Linux and Skype, are inspired by a series of guiding ideals. They build products and services for the benefit of Society, not for their own individual gain.
From the FastCoExist arcticle:
The Nordic countries hold to an unwritten but deeply felt and practiced code called Janteloven or, in English, Jante law. This code, regardless of an individual citizen’s conscious adherence or acceptance of it, comprises a deep, omnipresent undercurrent of Nordic culture. The code prescribes egalitarianism, collectivism, homogeneity, and conformity as values to be protected and practiced by citizens. To subscribe to the notion of individual gain or individuality over the collective ethos; to consider oneself superior in any way; or to display any shard of elitism is abhorrent, undesirable, and unacceptable. You might say it’s pretty much the exact opposite of how we think as Americans.
Compare that to the West where individualism is encouraged (no wait, required) and only the strong survive to the detriment of others. Apple has famously stated that it builds products it’s employees will want to use, not it’s users. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as fashion designer, musicians and any kind of artist operates this way. (more…)
Innovation posts of the week: How Silicon Valley Innovates
Stop Inbreeding Innovation – HBR
Revealed! Silicon Valley’s Secrets To Innovation Success – Forbes
Seven Steps To Find Your “Uncommon Sense” – MIT Sloan Management Review
The Innovation Knowing-Doing Gap – Innovation Management
The Commoditization of Scale – HBR
Why Youth Has an Advantage in Innovation & Why You Want To Be a Learn-It-All - Above The Crowd
Customers will replace R&D as the main source of new ideas
According to a new report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, titled The next decade of Technology in Business, business leaders believe their companies customers will replace R&D as the main source of new product and service ideas by 2020. (more…)
Innovation and Diversity
This is a guest post by Dr. Ralph Ohr. Dr. Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.
A while ago, I came across the following tweet by Gary Hamel:
Tomorrow’s management systems will need to value diversity, dissent and divergence as highly as conformance, consensus and cohesion.
It reflects well the fact that businesses range in increasingly dynamic and complex environments, imposing accelerated and mostly unforeseeable change. The most promising way for organizations to face this unprecedented discontinuity is to develop an ability to adapt to changing conditions and emerging opportunities: Adaptability. (more…)
Innovation must reads of the week: The Breakthrough Bias
- The next decade of technology in business – Economist Intelligence Unit Report
- Beating the Odds When You Launch a New Venture – Innosight
- 4 Reasons Companies Are Timid About Investing In “Big” Innovations – Fast Company
- The Breakthrough Bias by @andrewhargadon
- 5 Key Points to Consider when Developing an Innovation Strategy – Innovation Management SE
- A New Approach to Manage Disruptive Innovation in an Environment of High Uncertainty – Innovation Management SE
Can you create value if you’re not curious?
Not as far as I’m concerned.
For as long as I can remember it’s always dawned on me that late adopters are not innovative. I mean, how could they be if they are not curious. I know, I know. Sometimes being late to the game is great. There are hundreds of examples of companies that were late to the game and ended up changing the game. Apple, Google and Facebook immediately come to mind.
But I think that curiosity drives the kind of creativity that leads to breakthroughs. To breakthroughs that create value. A simple formula I have is:
Curiosity = Value creation (more…)
Chief Error Generation Officer
Boss as CEGO-Chief Error Generation Officer. People learn ONLY from screwup-and-adjustment cycle; your role is to accelerate the process.
— Tom Peters (@tom_peters) March 18, 2012
Awesome tweet by Tom Peters. It reminded me of the movie K-19 Widowmaker.
There are a few scenes in the movie K-19 The Widowmaker, which stars Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, where Ford (the captain of the submarine) starts a number of drills to test the crew’s ability to execute under pressure. These drills, simulate situations that might go wrong. How about starting a fire in the crew’s sleeping quarters? How about shutting down the torpedo bay? How about jamming the sonar? All at once. What do you do?
The thinking goes, if you can test your edge, you can execute under extreme pressure.
This is what Tom Peters is referring to. Not someone who just wants to make people feel uncomfortable (although that’s true too) just for the heck of it, but a more strategic role of accelerating learning. (more…)
