A very inspiring video from IBM celebrating its 100th year in business with 100 IBM innovations made its way across my screen. I love this stuff (and not just because I’m an IBMer). It’s remarkable to think about how profound an impact innovation can have on the world. I often marvel at the very ordinary fact we can fly airplanes and drive cars in addition to the extraordinary innovations that enable us to see pictures from Mars. Here’s the IBM video:
Feel inspired now?
Ready to change the world?
Are you brave enough to have a go at it?
I know I do but…. where to start? what to tackle? who to work with?
I believe we need to find ways to transform the triumphs of innovation into stories that inspire and awaken the passionate innovators in all of us. I have a theory that if we can somehow “turn on the lightbulb” of creativity and help people harness their own practical experience, we can uncover even more powerful innovations for our world. I believe that all of us have some innate passion and creativity but most of it remains dormant.
But how can we unlock this dormant value?
Here’s a few thoughts:
I believe we need more ways to showcase past and present inventions and innovations.
I’d like to hear personal stories from Innovators about how their “lightbulb” was turned on.
I’d like to tune into an inspiration channel with user-contributed content filled with videos, books, articles, etc. that are inspirational in both technical and non-technical ways.
Showcase how thinking about things just a little differently can lead to new opportunities or improvements.
Provide platforms that breathe life into ideas whether through tools, collaborators, or something else.
In short, find ways to turn on the lightbulb….. and keep it on!
“Companies have looked at working with intrapreneurship for a long time — is what we’re seeing now different?”
I say yes, at least for software intrapreneurs, for the following reasons:
cheaper – it’s possible to try internal incubation without having to make significant investments as a result of the more open environments and tools…
new opportunities – with the down economy, there appears to be more risk tolerance with taking small gambles on longshots with limited downsides but potentially significant upsides…
staying competitive – across the technology landscape we’ve all witnessed companies like Google launch new services / revenue streams derived from stimulating and nurturing intrapreneurial passions…
social – the explosion of social networking externally has led to models for improving internal social networking and crowdsourcing…
reputation – innovation is a hot term and many seek opportunities to build their reputations and grow their personal network…
I’m sure there are many other contributing factors as well. What do you think?
Learned a new term today…. Hero Graphic. Apparently it is recognizable, describes some call to action, and is visually not too complex. I wonder if the image below counts?
I was one of the panelists to share insights about how companies can use social networking for innovation. The event was on Friday January 14, 2011 at Santa Clara University.It was a really interesting event where leaders from several major companies as well as knowledgeable academics discussed external and internal challenges and approaches for leveraging social networking for innovation.
Some goodies I picked up from the speakers include:
ideas are an organizing social object
Techshop sounds like a way cool community workshop with industrial tools to help get the maker out in all of us
give people access to a network of collaborators, give them access to the right tools…. get out of the way
crowdsourcing can be very good for incremental innovation, disruptive breakthroughs perhaps not so much
The crowd might miss stuff.
position yourself to become the ‘escape valve’ of ideas
“Technology has the shelf life of a banana” – Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems
Difference between Consumers & Enterprise with respect to innovation = consumers not about money, enterprise is ALWAYS about money
Pain for external innovation is socializing value of co-creation and negotiating IP
We are clearly entering a future where there will be more and more open innovation markets, perhaps there will be too many
There are idea networks and there are action networks. (I personally love this ‘action network’ term, captures the essence I think).
there’s not doubt about need for mobility going forward but there’s disagreement to how critical mobility is for supporting innovation efforts.
The Chicken and the Pig fable is an analogy for the different levels of commitment. (Personally I think there are many many chickens dressed up like Pigs.)
Of course there were many more insights, especially during the internal panel but I didn’t get them all down in notes. I also walked away with a list of web sites to check out for some reason or another. Here’s some things I heard about and sounded interesting enough I looked them up:
Magic Seth – guy does amazing mind-reading tricks via technology
I’ve been fascinated with Quora for the last few weeks. Earlier today I posted a response to the question “How do you foster a culture of innovation in a large company?” and since I’ve mulled over this for some time, I wanted to also capture my thoughts here. Below is what I posted as a response.
For innovation to be successful in large organizations, I think you need a strategy that considers the end-to-end lifecycle of innovations. To me this means you need an ecosystem which spans several stages and provide capabilities that allow formal & informal innovation:
Get Ideas – where can we get ideas, how can we validate and rate them, can we stimulate innovative thinking in particular areas, etc.
Try Good Ideas – where and how can we try out some of these ideas, who funds prototypes & pilots, how do we know if they are good, etc.
Promote Winners – how can we get our promising innovations into the mainstream, who funds taking them to the next level, how easy can they integrate and/or scale, etc.
Productize – is this something we can sell, is there a market for this, etc.
Across each of these stages, you need to also be mindful of the dynamics and perspectives of who is involved. Each stage of the end-to-end innovation lifecycle brings a different set of interested parties.
Motivations – What motivates the innovator? What motivates the early adopter? Why would a mainstream person be interested? Is this optional or required?
Incentives – Do we need incentives to get ideas, to rate ideas, etc? How di we celebrate successes at each stage? What are the benefits for involved parties?
Investments – Why should we invest time/money/resources/attention? Is the return tangible? How long before we see results?
Risks – What happens if we fail? Are we willing to put our money where our mouth is?
I further believe you MUST ensure connectivity and flow across each stage of the end-to-end innovation lifecycle or you will only get pockets of success. In conclusion, the innovation ecosystem is more valuable than the sum of its parts.
Shortly before the holidays I decided to stop checking in through Yelp’s iPhone app. I really gave it a go. For around 6 months I regularly checked in when I was at restaurants, grocery stores, music lessons, basically anywhere I went. What do you suppose I earned for over 300 manual check-ins?
I’m proud to tell you I’m the “duke” of 20 different places. I have acquired the prestige of 6 special “badges” while also being recognized by yelp as a “regular” at 11 establishments. Impressive, right?
No discounts. No special treatment. Nothing tangible. Just feel-good ego-stroking nothingness. This form of gamification simply plays to our competitive nature. It is hollow and empty. I feel like I am wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Games are fun and don’t need to translate into tangible stuff but somehow I feel like somebody gets something tangible out of this. Somebody also has gone through great pains to make me think I’m getting something out of it.
I’m not faulting Yelp here, they are working with what they have and riding a trend. However, I am concerned as we see more and more gamification in software offerings (particularly in the mobile space), we will begin to see more and more distrust by users. Nobody wants to feel used… nobody wants to realize they are parading through the streets with no clothes on.
I believe we will see cars become just another ‘device’ that connects to the cloud. So navigation (and many many other things) will just become apps accessed through your vehicle.
I think there are greater prospects for multi-modal inputs (voice, touch, gesture, etc) inside vehicles and hope to see the future taking advantage of these prospects.
My team has had great success leveraging UCD and Agile in combination. (Disclaimer – we are using the spirit of both processes, not the formal execution of both). Here’s how we commonly work.
When planning iterations, we focus on defining high-level user stories and work with the business to prioritize those stories. Note – we include refinement user stories as well as new features.
Once we have business priorities, the team (UCD & Dev) discuss the high-level user stories to gain agreement on what seems achievable in the next iteration. This may or may not include a round of planning poker but it does really get at estimating & sizing based on complexity, resources, and time. The key here is that both UCD & Dev understand which elements they have dependencies on one another for.
We then present a recommended scope for the iteration and gain agreement with the business.
Once agreement on the high-level user stories is gained, we work to detail those user stories with more granular requirements (ability to… ).
As we enter the iteration, UCD goes deep on UI and design elements impacting the user experience by iterating on mockups and seeking user feedback on designs. Meanwhile, dev starts on the technical or architectural tasks.
As UCD firms up the UX designs, the dev team can leverage the mockups as guidance for the front-end and point out any unexpected technical issues as necessary.
We’ve found this process allows a great amount of flexibility to evolve the designs as we learn more through validation with users.
30-Dec-2010 — Recycle your holiday cards for charity http://bit.ly/gZIGLd 29-Dec-2010 — RT @JasonFalls: look at biz metrics from @webmetricsguru respond to @jowyang’s latest http://ar.gy/68v > data reality hard to reconcile 28-Dec-2010 — RT @dhinchcliffe: Unlocking the Mayor Badge of Meaninglessness http://bit.ly/hqmeJU A must-read from @umairh > why I checked out of yelp 28-Dec-2010 — RT @billjohnston: Jeff Bezos’ Regret Minimization Framework – via @thomasknoll > carpe diem! 24-Dec-2010 — RT @jbell99: “world-class brands.. Facebook profiles to showcase… digitally irrelevant 1way comms” http://bit.ly/gzsNYK > sadly seen often 22-Dec-2010 — RT @sgblank: Hubris, Passion and Customer Development http://bit.ly/fJmvX6 > entrepreneurship is a virus, not a job. So practical and wise 22-Dec-2010 — RT @ABCeyEvents: How can you bring innovation into your already established business? http://tinyurl.com/3yjjnbf #innovation 21-Dec-2010 — RT @peHUB: Depressing Thoughts About Groupon’s Model http://dlvr.it/BpBrf > think they need model not so easy to replicate or dead in a year 19-Dec-2010 — Rape, power, activism, wikileaks, michael moore, Olbermann. Compelled by @sadydoyle ‘s #mooreandme http://bit.ly/ehg5ZO 19-Dec-2010 — RT @roonoid: US Senate votes to repeal DADT (don’t ask don’t tell) 18-Dec-2010 — RT @bhc3 Are you a receiver of signal or an issuer of signal? > receive socially, issue privately (boss, etc) due to poor social adoption 18-Dec-2010 — RT @davewiner: Twitter is my del.icio.us. http://r2.ly/6dxb > my thoughts exactly. Gave up on social bookmarking years ago 18-Dec-2010 — RT @andrewchen: 400 year trends from Google books search http://bit.ly/enJtoc > interesting #visualizations of word trends (horse vs car) 18-Dec-2010 — After checking in for months on @yelp, decided I’ll be checking out of this location check-in nonsense until further notice. #nyresolution 17-Dec-2010 — RT @roonoid: Advice to son, “When someone asks if you like school, just answer ‘yes’; life’s easier that way”. I need to apply at work. > +1 17-Dec-2010 — How Twitter Users Changed in 2010 http://t.co/6TT4fFO via @mashable > Nice #visualizations of usage trends and changes 15-Dec-2010 — RT @mikeloukides: Nice bit of analytics: most overused buzzwords in LinkedIn profiles http://bit.ly/g8Zd3y < like country display at bottom 12-Dec-2010 — Used twitter to find out why I’m stuck on San Mateo bridge. Apparently car fire. #realtime 12-Dec-2010 — RT @avc: What looks great today may suck tomorrow http://bit.ly/g8bNLt < importance of forward-think beyond financials. Love myspace example 12-Dec-2010 — Flipboard for iPad’s twitter integration is beautiful and fun http://www.flipboard.com/ 11-Dec-2010 — Cool furniture innovation / design. Take it apart and hang it on the wall http://bit.ly/f6xYUa 11-Dec-2010 — Listening to npr podcast on hip hop growth from fad to genre http://bit.ly/g24QLu 11-Dec-2010 — RT @terrigriffith: Great panels on social networking & #innovation to take place 1/14/2011 Santa Clara Univ < how can I share ibm story? 10-Dec-2010 — RT @megbertapelle RT @JaneBozarth: Looking at real newspaper for first time in forever. It’s all news I read on Twitter yesterday < so true 10-Dec-2010 — Favorite gift for my daughters. Paper mâché angels. http://bit.ly/dXa30qhttp://plixi.com/p/62159991 10-Dec-2010 — RT @StumbleUpon: HBO considering leaving cable packages, offer a stand-alone service: http://su.pr/60q9bz < expect to see more of this 09-Dec-2010 — what the internet killed http://www.newsweek.com/photo/2010/12/08/peep-shows-yearbooks-and-other-things-the-internet-killed.html 09-Dec-2010 — @elsua I only used iphone4 for photos/videos in India for a month. Apps i liked for that at http://bit.ly/ebkKR6 09-Dec-2010 — RT @elsua: Daily #iPhone App: AutoStitch #elsuapps > love creating panoramics with this app… So easy 09-Dec-2010 — RT @horizonwatching: Dell Social Media Listening Command Center http://on.mash.to/fgiER0 cc @adamclyde 08-Dec-2010 — Reading: The Future Of Selling: It’s Social via @forbes http://cptl.st/eHh3xD #scrm 03-Dec-2010 — Listening to what technology wants. http://bit.ly/hpe1y1 02-Dec-2010 — awesome teaser for new privacy app http://benthebodyguard.com/ nicely done @benthebodyguard 02-Dec-2010 — win win incentive system for speeding http://bit.ly/dFaDMd txs @subdigit 02-Dec-2010 — now i need to fight the urge to buy the #groupon deal everyday…. must resist getting stuff i really don’t need 02-Dec-2010 — RT @dtapscott: FTC proposes ‘do not track’ option for web users. It’s a good start. #privacy http://ht.ly/3isMW 01-Dec-2010 — Social Media and the Workplace from @commoncraft http://www.commoncraft.com/social-media-workplace-video #scrm 30-Nov-2010 — @rawn #scrm seems mostly focused on front-end now… linking to back-office is key for b2b and very hard to do right 26-Nov-2010 — RT @ebertchicago: Netflix Instant Streaming accounts for 20% of internet traffic in evening hours. http://j.mp/hPvHvC > wow 25-Nov-2010 — Happy thanksgiving all. Is being thankful part of your core life strategy? http://bit.ly/gFiSE0 23-Nov-2010 — Looking closer at klout.com 23-Nov-2010 — crowdsourcing your data analysis in a competition model… yup, there’s a SaaS for that…. http://kaggle.com 22-Nov-2010 — he “go collab on mobile apps” me “but mobile pilot is closed” he “come up with ideas, then we’ll get mobile access” me “???” 22-Nov-2010 — The Firehose 7000x Bigger Than Twitter’s by @marshallk http://t.co/W7oOjqG – geo-tagged stuff from mobile devices 22-Nov-2010 — looking for win-win thinking? check out http://www.recaptcha.com making security checks helpful to book digitizing 21-Nov-2010 — Reserved my preferred name at http://about.me waiting for public beta to start #aboutme 21-Nov-2010 — Interesting communications today… 2. Major family news distributed via Facebook, not over phone 21-Nov-2010 — Interesting communications today… 1. email from nordstrom “reminds” her there are things in her shopping cart she didn’t buy yet 21-Nov-2010 — RT @terrigriffith Your social intranet is where work gets done by @larsz http://bit.ly/crGyHH < commented what happens 2 trad employee comms 20-Nov-2010 — messing about with montage… created social crm page #scrm http://bit.ly/cPzOJo 20-Nov-2010 — RT @SocialMedia411: #1 Movie 5-Day Opening Sales = $200M. New Call of Duty Game = $650M. http://nyti.ms/c6EL8g < wow huge turning point 20-Nov-2010 — @charleneli love discovery elements of stumbleupon. So easy to contribute. Wish I had more freeform tags. 19-Nov-2010 — had a nice discussion at lunch with @jamet123 about enterprise decision management #edm thanks for the book james 17-Nov-2010 — The Basics of Social CRM deck made the featured section of slideshare’s home page. #scrm http://bit.ly/ajIxA0 cool 16-Nov-2010 — preso on the basics of Social CRM http://bit.ly/ajIxA0 #scrm thanks to @pgreenbe @jowyang @ekolsky and others 16-Nov-2010 — RT @WCGrid Happy 6th birthday World Community Grid! http://bit.ly/a9w2NT < I’ve been member since 2005 15-Nov-2010 — leadership and dog walking http://bit.ly/9GQcKa 13-Nov-2010 — 10 businesses destroyed by smartphones http://yhoo.it/bEL3mY 13-Nov-2010 — RT @armano: Frog Design brings us a “world of tweets” Global Twitter activity heatmap. http://bit.ly/b3kz5W < nice 11-Nov-2010 — RT @BobWarfield Heretical Thinking: Enterprise 2.0 is Dead: http://bit.ly/d8TOti < where’s the beef in terms of ROI… compelling post 11-Nov-2010 — @ekolsky enjoyed your rapid primer at #e2conf-20. chart download has a problem http://www.e2conf.com/santaclara/2010/presentations/ 10-Nov-2010 — Very pleased to have met @charleneli at lunch today and to chat with @rawn #e2conf 10-Nov-2010 — Congrats luis! RT @ITSinsider: The IEoY10 is @elsua. Congrats. #e2conf 10-Nov-2010 — On way to social crm day at #e2conf 09-Nov-2010 — installing #rockmelt…. lets see what this is all about. 09-Nov-2010 — think i’m gonna give OhLife a try… http://ohlife.com 08-Nov-2010 — I just commented on RT @HarvardBiz Your Own Kind of Moneyball: The Metrics that Measure You http://s.hbr.org/astFlu 08-Nov-2010 — Finding out more about social business announcements from IBM #ibmexperience http://bit.ly/socialcollab 07-Nov-2010 — Reading apple & ibm aren’t all that different. http://nyti.ms/bjsFDA 06-Nov-2010 — Believe we are seeing e2.0 awareness, not mainstream, with c-suite. Still need to crack middle mgmt and late majority users. Cc: @amcafee 06-Nov-2010 — I’m planning to attend social crm day @ #e2conf Santa Clara, Nov 10. http://www.e2conf.com/santaclara hope to meet many there 06-Nov-2010 — “Giving TwitBar a go. wish it was sidebar rather than toolbar”( http://twitthis.com/opm26m ) 05-Nov-2010 — new post: dimensions to the value of my work http://bit.ly/bjSYyX what about you? 05-Nov-2010 — RT @flowingdata: When people break up, according to Facebook updates http://bit.ly/9nHJdC < gotta love data analysis 05-Nov-2010 — @amcafee #andyasks movie one-liners “these go to 11” spinal tap http://bit.ly/a57JJK 03-Nov-2010 — Growing more weary of propaganda and excess hype. But I guess perception is reality. 03-Nov-2010 — RT @roonoid: If you develop expertise… but don’t share it, does it have any value? > expertise = valuable. sharing = marketing, rep build 01-Nov-2010 — RT @citizenIBM: @TheEconomist reports how IBM is reinventing employee volunteerism http://econ.st/ag7IVy < I am csc alum 30-Oct-2010 — Not happy about my #angrybirds addiction. Pursuit of 3 stars for every level is silly, right? 30-Oct-2010 — @wolfc interesting thing at peets which didn’t come from yelp checkin – only about 30% customers use cash
As my friend Mike likes to say “I’m a lucky man….” I still can’t tell whether it’s an affirmation or tongue-in-cheek but it’s one of the traits I like about him. Another friend told me about this iPhone app called the Gratitude Journal and explained how it changed his outlook.
Sounded interesting to me. I mean happiness is a core strategy for everything that I do on my life, after all. I’m a believer that love conquers all, positive thinking is powerful, mind over matter, etc… (yeah, all that foolishness). I also know myself to be susceptible to taking things for granted. So I decided to challenge myself to try this gratitude journal and see what happens.
It changed me…. and more importantly my children.
Although I didn’t stay very disciplined in using the gratitude journal beyond a few weeks, the sheer fact the I was confronted with thinking positively everyday about what I’m thankful for was enough to leave a mark on me. I thought about how lucky I am to live where I live, feeling safe and warm, surrounded by people that love me. To quote Mike… “I’m a lucky man.”
One night at dinner, I was telling my inspiring wife about the gratitude reflection activity. She’s a clever one and suggested we should all express our gratitude at dinner each night. So we started that night and each of us, including my 6 & 8 year olds, each said three things we were grateful for during that day.
We’ve been saying our “thankfuls” at dinner for over a year now. We’ve also added to it by saying three ways we helped someone else each day. I love this and feel proud to be teaching my children this personal reflection technique.
I am a lucky man! I’m especially lucky to now keep my core life strategy (be happy and appreciative) in my mind every day.
Anyway, the point here is that by simply asking yourself an often-overlooked question, you can make improvements and realign to your core strategy. This applies in personal (see above) and business activities.
As business leaders, do we remember to ask the fundamental questions that explore alignment to our firm’s core values & strategies? For example, do you know whether your company prefers faster time to market or quality? If you do know the answer, do you remember to explicitly ask about it when reflecting and making business decisions?
Perhaps this is a bigger concept than what I wanted to post about. What I’m getting to is that perhaps a simple checklist (hat tip to the checklist manifesto) of questions related to your core corporate strategy could help your firms get back to and apply the most important and essential criteria that makes it unique and competitive.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Shortly before the holidays I decided to stop checking in through 
As my friend Mike likes to say “I’m a lucky man….” I still can’t tell whether it’s an affirmation or tongue-in-cheek but it’s one of the traits I like about him. Another friend told me about this iPhone app called the