Post(s) tagged with "innovation"

When the mind is employed about a variety of objects it is some how expanded and enlarged.

Adam Smith, 1766

1 May 2013 13 Permalink
innovationfast-and-loosecooperationconnectivesadam smithquotations

Making Time

image

Innovations now are increasingly about rethinking and redoing historical models of production, and using time to advantage:

Claire Cain Miller and Stephanie Clifford, E-Commerce Companies Bypass Middlemen to Build Premium Brand

What is empowering the upstarts now is the Web’s ability to reach lots of consumers without the costs of operating physical stores as well as a change in manufacturers’ willingness to work with small brands.

[…]

Because they are not dependent on third parties, these e-commerce companies can also introduce products much more quickly.

Crane and Canopy, for example, releases new duvet covers and sheet sets every other week and designs textiles based on current trends on Pinterest and elsewhere, instead of planning collections seasons ahead of time like most brands, said Karin Shieh, its co-founder.

“We want consumers to get those products immediately, so we connect our customers directly with the factories that are currently making bedding for Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus and high-end brands,” Ms. Shieh said.

But Crane and Canopy sells the bedding without all the extra costs. A queen-size white pintuck duvet cover on its site, for instance, is $119, while a similar one by DKNY is $400 at Bloomingdale’s.

Crane and Canopy’s principals leveraged their knowledge of what factories were making for others. How do they get that information? Personal relationships with the factory owners allows them to build their offers and production in the draft behind other, larger, slower competitors.

They are making time out of thin air, and cleaning their competitor’s clocks.

The New York Times

1 April 2013 6 Permalink
making timebusiness innovationinnovationfast-and-looseslow-and-tighte-commercecrane and canopy
Tom Agan, Why Innovators Get Better With Age ⇢

Yet another trend headed in the wrong direction. Companies are letting go of innovators because they are in their 50s.

Tom Agan, Why Innovators Get Better With Age

According to research by Alex Mesoudi of Durham University in England, the age of eventual Nobel Prize winners when making a discovery, and of inventors when making a significant breakthrough, averaged around 38 in 2000, an increase of about six years since 1900.

But there is another reason to keep innovators around longer: the time it takes between the birth of an idea and when its implications are broadly understood and acted upon. This education process is typically driven by the innovators themselves.

For Nobel Prize winners, this process usually takes about 20 years — meaning that someone who is 38 at the time of discovery will most likely be nearly 60 when he or she receives the prize. For most eventual laureates, that interval is spent attending and making presentations at conferences, networking with colleagues, writing additional papers, editing academic journals and talking with the press.

Let’s assume that with company resources, it will take a corporate innovator 10 years instead of 20 to educate others about the nature, implications and applications of a new idea. If that’s true, a reasonable target retention age for attaining an average level of innovation would be at least 50.

YET despite the overall aging of the work force, many organizations are heading in the opposite direction. One executive at a major investment bank remarked with concern that the average age at his firm was 32. This phenomenon is not unique to corporations. Many medical institutions and universities  have also shifted to younger workforces. Butaccording to research by Benjamin Jones of Northwestern University, a 55-year-old and even a 65-year-old have significantly more innovation potential than a 25-year-old.

If an organization wants innovation to flourish, the conversation needs to change from severance packages to retention bonuses. Instead of managing the average age downward, companies should be managing it upward.

Looking at Nobel Prize winners might be a bit off the mark, but I wonder about the average age of patent holders: are they going gray, as well?

31 March 2013 28 Permalink
innovationageinnovators
Solving the right problem is far more important than solving the problem right: If you’re not focusing on the right thing, a great solution to a problem that nobody really cares about creates little value. But even an imperfect solution to a problem people really care about can create a lot of value.

Stephen Hoover, What We’ve Learned at PARC About the Business of Innovation

Source: techonomy.com

22 March 2013 18 Permalink
innovationquotationsstephen hoover

Socialogy: Interview with Jennifer Magnolfi

Read More

19 March 2013 6 Permalink
jennifer magnolficoworkingzappostony hsieharchitectureworkspaceinnovationcreativitysocialogy
 citycollaboration The Global Innovation Index Some insights from the attached chart: Innovation has become global: all regions show potential as hubs of innovation (the two upper quadrants show the countries leading in the GII ranking). There seems to be a positive relationship between population size and efficiency: six countries among the most densely populated, including three BRICs, are in the top 10 on the efficiency index: Nigeria, China, Pakistan, Brazil, India and Bangladesh (countries to the right of the chart; the chart shows the full name for the 30 most populated countries, except for USA and the UK). ViaINSEAD eLab Social density strongly correlates with innovation: coincidensity.

citycollaboration

The Global Innovation Index

Some insights from the attached chart:

  1. Innovation has become global: all regions show potential as hubs of innovation (the two upper quadrants show the countries leading in the GII ranking).
  2. There seems to be a positive relationship between population size and efficiency: six countries among the most densely populated, including three BRICs, are in the top 10 on the efficiency index: Nigeria, China, Pakistan, Brazil, India and Bangladesh (countries to the right of the chart; the chart shows the full name for the 30 most populated countries, except for USA and the UK).

ViaINSEAD eLab

Social density strongly correlates with innovation: coincidensity.

Source: citycollaboration

17 March 2013 89 futuretechreport Permalink
conincidensityinnovation

Fauxpenness

I don’t know how I missed this term: fauxpen, or fake openness:

Tristan Louis, Fauxpenness

Fauxpenness: Calling a system or platform open while it is, when more closely scrutinized, under the tight control of its provider.

Fauxpen system (or fauxpen platform): a system or platform that claims to be open but, upon closer examination, isn’t.

I came across fauxpen in a tweet today, but related to fauxpen innovation:

However, I can’t find anything written on fauxpen innovation. Pointers, anyone? Tweet me up at @stoweboyd

Source: tnl.net

21 February 2013 2 Permalink
fauxpenfauxpennessfauxpen innovationinnovation@jenvandermeerjen van der meer

Is Social Business Innovation A Competitive Advantage?

Ove at GigaOm Pro, I push on the idea that innovating in social business tools and practices is a critical area for competitive advantage. If so, we shouldn’t optimize for reducing risk:

Stowe Boyd, Balancing risk and social business innovation

If social tools offer competitive advantage then experimenting with new tools and new approaches to tool-mediated sociality is a necessary aspect of corporate innovation. After all, innovation isn’t limited to the R&D group. Innovation can happen across the board: in how we work, how services are delivered, and how products are designed, delivered, and applied. One of the most fertile areas for innovation is the interplay of people in the business, and between company staff and people outside the business: clients, partners, and the broader marketplace.

Yes, experimentation carries risks, and costs. But these are a necessary part of innovation of all sorts, and a necessity in social innovation as well. Certainly, we want to bound risks, and to structure our experiments so that we can fail fast, but what we cannot do is optimize all risks out of the business at the expense of innovation.

Let’s consider one facet of this reasoning in the context of choosing applications. Who should get to pick what social tools will be used?

I also offer up a graphic, contrasting fast-and-loose and tight-and-slow approaches:

Go read the whole thing, if you want.

Source: pro.gigaom.com

28 January 2013 16 Permalink
fast-and-loosetight-and-slowsocial business innovationinnovationcompetitive advantage
nCycle concept bike: lockable handlebars. The handlebars are the lock. Check out the project portfolio: there’s a lot of innovative design there.

nCycle concept bike: lockable handlebars. The handlebars are the lock. Check out the project portfolio: there’s a lot of innovative design there.

8 January 2013 24 Permalink
designinnovationbikes
 via Stair-Rover Po-Chih Lai designed the STAIR-ROVER in his final year at the Royal College of Art and it has attracted significant interest globally. The STAIR-ROVER is currently being redesigned to take it to production. A long board that can skate down stairs.

via Stair-Rover

Po-Chih Lai designed the STAIR-ROVER in his final year at the Royal College of Art and it has attracted significant interest globally.

The STAIR-ROVER is currently being redesigned to take it to production.

A long board that can skate down stairs.

7 January 2013 14 Permalink
stair roverskateboardsdesigninnovationpo-chih lai
1 2 3 4 →

About

Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. more.

Working on longer format projects, Sign up for the newsletter.

GigaOM Research analyst and curator.

Also writing beaconstreets.com.

Contact me. or ask me a question.



My Vizify profile.

Socialogy

  • John Hagel | John offers up some great insights, like the fact that passion is lower the larger that businesses get.

  • Euan Semple | A chat with my old pal, and the author of Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do

  • Will McInnes | The author of Culture Shock and managing director of Nixon/McInnes

  • Jennifer Magnolfi | An interview with the woman who said, 'Work is not a place you go, it's a thing you do'.

    • Hot Now

  • What Drives Us? | A draft chapter of my book, discussing motivations, Maslow's hierarchy, and fluidarity.

  • Socialogy: Interview With John Hagel | I Speak with Joh Hagel about the innovation at the edge.

  • Complex organisation arises from webs of interaction among causal factors | So, it turns out that DNA is, in fact, a great metaphor for business culture, but only after you realize that DNA is not a few hundred off-on switches, but instead a universe of unknowable complexities, that we can interact with, and understand at some abstract cartoonish level, but not control, and never fully comprehend.

  • Bitcoin May Be the Global Economy’s Last Safe Haven | Paul Ford

  • Innovators Get Better With Age | Companies make a mistake by relying too much on the innoations of the young, because Nobel laureats don't come into their prime until their 50s.

    • Oldie

  • Infodemics | 2009 | Passing incomplete or inaccurate information about some risk event can make people take actions that increase the damage of the event itself.

    • Lynx theme created by Andrew Stichbury for Tumblr.