We're at the Bottom of the Top (Alltop)!

This blog is now listed on Alltop.

Not familiar with Alltop? Check out their site - they aggregate news and blogs under specific topic headings. It's a great service for busy people.

We're listed in the innovation section - http://innovation.alltop.com/ (it's at the very bottom - right next to Richard Branson's blog - but hey, at least we're there).

What The F**K is Social Media?

Many organizations are attempting to get their hands and arms around social media and what social media might mean to business. Internet marketing experts are saying that social media is as revolutionary as the internet - meaning social media will have a huge impact on the way we live and do business.

This presentation will give some perspective and data about how and what social media is.

How are you using social media in your innovation process?

What The F**K is Social Media?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmediamarketing marketing)

Innovation Metrics - a new white paper by Langdon Morris

Langdon recently presented a webinar on innovation metrics and developed a new white paper to go along with that presentation. To download a copy of this white paper see the publications section of the InnovationLabs web site.

Here's a short synopsis:

Innovation Metrics

The Innovation Process and How to Measure It
By Langdon Morris

Like everything that businesses do which involves the investment of capital and time, innovation has to be measured. But unlike many other forms of measurement in business, measuring innovation presents problems for the process that is to be measured. We might call this ‘innovation uncertainty principle:’ many ways that we might want to measure innovation can significantly impede the innovation process itself. This is because innovation involves a venture into the unknown, and if we try to pin these unknowns down too fast we may make them harder to recognize and realize.

For example, we have to look at the very concept of ‘return.’ ‘Return on Investment’ is a standard and accepted measuring tool that managers have relied on for decades. But it’s now an accepted joke in the research and development community that the term ‘ROI’ really stands for ‘restraint on innovation,’ because ROI-based assessments tend to embrace short term thinking, and to exclude the development of long term, breakthrough, and discontinuous ideas and projects. Using ROI to measure innovation thus endangers the very thing you want to measure, and makes less likely the end goal of the process, which is better innovation.

This presents difficult problems for R&D managers. At a recent meeting at HP Labs, a manager commented that they could not even look at any project that did not have the potential to be at least a $50 million business. The problem, of course, is how you can know. What do you include in your research plan, and what do you put aside? Did the researcher who’s work led to the creation of HP’s multi-billion dollar inkjet printing business know what he was getting into when he became curious about the burned coffee he noticed on the bottom of a coffee pot? Could he have said his idea about superheated ink would be worth $50 dollars, much less $50 million? Unless he was inspired by a fit of hubris, probably not. So if someone had asked him for the ROI on his research work, he could either guess, lie, or say he didn’t have any idea.

Yet innovation has to be measured, surely, or else it cannot be managed. So what to do? Exploring some of the best options is the purpose of this White Paper.


Contents

• Introduction
• Innovation Methodology
• The Innovation Funnel
• Stage -1: Strategic Thinking
• Stage 0: Portfolios & Metrics
• Stage 1: Research
• Stage 2: Insight
• Stage 3: Ideas
• Stage 4: Targeting
• Stage 5: Innovation Development
• Stage 6: Market Development
• Stage 7: Sales
• Inputs, Process & Output
• Conclusion
• References

When the Improbable Comes Crashing In (Like Now)

I have been reading a very interesting book called ‘The Black Swan,’ all the more timely because it’s about events that are ‘highly improbable,’ and also significant. Such as the current global financial crisis.

Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s basic argument is that most statisticians and economists have adopted a quantitative approach to risk assessment that is mathematically elegant but incomplete, and relying on their misguided models they have created a series of debacles, of which our current crisis is one.

Being neither an economist or statistician myself, I am not qualified to judge his argument from a professional perspective. However, as an observer of the modern world (as indeed we all are), his comments make eminent sense. And more importantly, they have significant consequences for the strategic thinking that every business leader must be agonizing over amid the tumult.

If you’re like me, you’re thinking, ‘This had better not ever happen again,’ followed immediately by, ‘But if it does, I’d better be ready …!’

Here are a few quotes that embody the pertinence of the book (remember, the book was published in 2007, ergo written before that):

1. “Regulators in the banking business are prone to a severe expert problem and they tend to condone reckless but (hidden) risk taking.” (p 209)

2. “The government-sponsored institution Fanny Mae, when I look at their risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events ‘unlikely.’” (p 225)

3. “We have a paradox. Not only have forecasters generally failed to dismally to foresee the drastic changes brought about by unpredictable discoveries, but incremental change has turned out to be generally slower than forecasters expected.” (p 168)

The book isn’t the easiest reading, but it is enormously helped by Taleb’s remarkable candor (he goes on a multi-page rant against the Nobel Prize committee, among other amusings) and his self-confident irreverence (as evidenced in the quotes).

What does all this mean for strategy? A lot, I think. I’m still sorting it out, as these are not simple issues and the models that Taleb provides are so different from what we have been accustomed to that it takes time to digest. Nevertheless, it’s clear that a deterministic approach to strategy is surely doomed.

Of course we know this already - that’s why scenario-based planning is superior to the prediction business. It’s better training for the decision makers, and provides better ground for assessing risk because it attempts to account for the massive and unpredictable events that give the book it’s title.

Still, we mollify ourselves with the annual forecasts made by trend-watching firms (what will be ‘in’ next year?), economists (when will the housing market turn around), and governments (‘social security will be broke by 2025. No, make that 2040. I mean 2030. Actually, we don’t know.’)

Taleb is getting a lot of attention these days, deservedly. And I (and probably many others) will be thinking about what his models mean for the organizations we manage and consult with.

If you have grappled with these issues I would welcome your input.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House, 2007.

Turn Here - A business model innovation that should prosper in a down economy

I first saw TURNHERE: internet video several years ago when they were just starting to build their innovative outsourced network of free-lance video story tellers ( now including over 5000 trained videographers globally) and a quality array of web distribution partners like Yellow Pages.com, a number of other online directory partners and a list of top web distribution channels like google,Yahoo, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

TurnHere creates low-cost, high quality short video promos for the global hotel and travel industry, book publishers, and companies and individuals who can benefit by presenting their short stories on the web to highly targeted viewers.

With everyone's marketing and ad promotion budgets constrained by the growing financial crisis , Turn Here could be a recession-proof business model .

To Learn more about this innovative business model, watch Robert Scoble's video on TurnHere embedded below.

Turning Points: Important events change how we think

While we experience of accelerating change when a lot of events happen one after another, there is a second type of change that also affects how we feel. This is the huge event that in one moment changes how everyone thinks. Sometimes this is called a ‘turning point.’

Examples of these big events from past would of course include the attacks of 9/11. Following 9/11 millions of Americans were sad and even depressed for many months, and the social and political dialog around the world continues to refer to 9/11 as a landmark event that permanently changed our perceptions of reality.

Another big event was for example, the day of the first atomic bomb was exploded. And what about the first human steps on the moon, or assassinations of well-known public figures? These have all had profound and lasting impacts on our values, beliefs, and attitudes.

We know these things have occurred in the past, and they have been, for most part, unpredicted and unpredictable. As we think about the future of society, it's worthwhile to imagine turning points in the future, consider what sort of reaction there would be to them.

What would happen in the US if there was another large terrorist attack like 9/11? Or what if it happened in Europe?

What would happen if the governments of the world instituted environmental regulations to halt global warming, and the new rules changed how everyone lived and did business?

What if there was a massive Global Economic Recession on the scale of 1929 - 1935?

What if the food supply is poisoned? This in is happenign right now in China, as thousands of young children are hospitalized because their milk powder was poisined with industrial chemicals. Once the immediate crisis is over, you can be sure that there will be a large investigation, a big trial, and perhaps also a lingering trauma across Chinese society. Something similar happened in the US in 2007, when 800 metric tons of poisoned wheat was smuggled into the US from China and used in pet food. More than 4000 pets died.

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This blog post is number eleven in a series on key trends for innovators.

Nations, Corporations, Churches, and NGOs

While government remains critically important in the modern world, and becomes perhaps more important each day as we careen from crisis to crisis, many other forms of social organization also have increasingly significant social impact.

Corporations wield increasing power through their control of resources. The giant corporations are now thought of as global entities, and they are less and less tied to the values or policies of a particular nation.

Similarly, many religious groups have increasing influence over the beliefs of their members, and display that influence in elections and other social forums. The Catholic Church, for example, has more than a billion members, and its ideological and religious views play a key role in the political lives of the nations where many Catholics live.

And now we are seeing that non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace are increasingly influential in shaping world opinion, playing an advocacy role for issues and causes that they feel are important.

These four forces - nations, corporations, churches, and NGOs each have their own viewpoints, goals, and needs, and as they seek to fulfill them, they come into conflict over their different visions of the future, creating tremendous complexity in our world.

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This blog post is number ten in a series on key trends for innovators.