Tag Archives: Tijuana

To innovate better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission

Cultures of innovation are naturally dynamic. Employees think of new ideas and try them on the fly. Processes and procedures are fluid. There often is no one right answer to a problem, but rather experimentation drives many projects, efforts, assignments, and ultimately opportunities for improvement.

With that said, in my neck of the woods, businesses are the complete inverse.

Take a recent experience I had with the marketing manager of a telecommunications company based in Tijuana. With Startup Weekend Tijuana 4 coming this week, this marketing manager enthusiastically let me know that she signed up to participate. “Great!”, I said. But there was one minor problem: she didn’t want me to tell her boss about it.

Sucks!

According to her, the boss doesn’t want people to have their head occupied in anything other than what they’re supposed to be doing at work.

Sound familiar?

The non-obvious innovation obstacle: charlatanism

No, we don’t need innovation offices or officers for our cities. Buzzword mania, and everyone wanting to be a part of the bandwagon make it a ignorant proposition. Most of the innovation offices want to resemble Silicon Valley, including its focus on technology.

Remember, innovation isn’t just about tech. So, another tech center does not innovation make.

The case for continuous improvement

I think we can agree that continuous improvement is necessary for any kind of innovation. And, when you aim for continuous improvement, to the extreme, it is easy to notice those that don’t. Therefore, it also easy to notice strategies and approaches that won’t ignite innovation.

Case in point: The local newspapers in Tijuana.

Last week, we held a mini-conference in our office. We invited our buddy and Partner, Adrian Pedrin to come in and give us some insight as to what it takes to work in Hollywood. Before the event, to our surprise, we had inquiries from local newspapers to do an interview with him.

So, the next day after the event, we had El Mexicano interview Adrian. Here is the note:

adrian-pedrin-tijuana

Missing, is a lot of important details. It is no secret that the media will always publish what they think is important, not what you want. But, for the newspapers, this is also an area of opportunity. For those of you in the modern world who read WSJ, NYTimes, USA Today, Financial Times, BBC or any modern newspaper; what I’m going to tell you won’t be a surprise.

For example, why didn’t they post the interview in podcast format? Why didn’t they post the interview on the web? Having so much content available, why didn’t the use it?

These are all valid questions, and, in the modern world may be expected from a media company. Media companies can inform and shape people’s opinion with the content they publish, and, the way they publish it. That is why when I see local newspapers who haven’t caught up with the rest of the world, it causes me concern.

I’m not ranting about this because it was an event I organized. It isn’t about me, it’s about all of us.

Maximun productivity at coworking space IOS Offices

coworking space in mexico IOS Offices

Fast Company recently published an article about the benefits of a coworking space. From experience, I have my office in mexican coworking space IOS Offices, I can tell you it is true. Especially the part of feeling more productive. Why that is? I have no data  to back it up, only how I feel while I’m there. When I was working at home, I do not feel the sense of accomplishing something, as our home isn’t really meant to be a place for work, but to relax playing play666. I ended performing less than I did when I tried a co-working space. Maybe it is because of the excitement of going to work and I have developed a plan to give myself a proper sleep. It was difficult adjustment, and I had to resort to Modafinil from to help me focus in the day for the first two weeks in the office.

And to share that feeling of productivity, I regularly invite other entrepreneurs to work at my office at anytime. Here, I interviewed Ivan Rodriguez of startup Instapart, to get his thoughts on his experience while working there (spanish):

Poetic Action Movement in Tijuana

This is a guest post by my buddy Alejandra Lopez, @thisisallyg. Please watch the video at the end of this post.

Finally, the project I’ve been doing for so long is finished! Let’s start this blog post with the day I was happily Tumblrin’ on Tumblr and suddenly I start to see all these pictures of “Poetic Actions” which lead me to Wikipedia because the poetry was just so beautiful:

The Poetics Action Movement is a public poetry project started in Monterrey, Mexico in 1996. Founded by Mexican poet Armando Alanís and involves painting fences and walls of the city in a kind of poetic graffiti way.

These phrases are usually about love or deep optimist words, or phrases representing actual situations in life; there are also song lyrics and phrases by the own Alanís, as well as other famous writers.

blu maya and the simpsons