Saturday, October 21, 2006

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Shaping the Future -- [ DECISION MAKING ] -- Scientific uncertainty often becomes an excuse to ignore

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Shaping the Future -- [ DECISION MAKING ] -- Scientific uncertainty often becomes an excuse to ignore long-term problems, such as climate change. It doesn't have to be so: "People excel at seeking patterns, drawing inferences and framing new questions. But they can fail to recognize inconvenient facts and can lose track of how long chains of causes relate to effects"

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Salesforce.com Launches AppExchange Incubator -an innovation ecology


In this announcement SalesForce.com adopts an incubation approach to SAAS service developers - fully integrating their Apex development platform for promising startups including the provision of space, business services, software development platform,and even access to venture funding. This is an innovation ecology to watch.

Salesforce.com Launches AppExchange Incubator - Salesforce.com

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

IN - a new quarterly by Business Week

IN Manifesto
What IN: Inside Innovation Is All About

With this inaugural issue of IN: Inside Innovation -- we dedicate ourselves to the proposition that making innovation work is the single most important business challenge of our era. Our goal is to make a meaningful difference in the difficult journey toward building innovative business cultures. IN hopes to inspire, to provoke, to teach, and to be a trusted advisor and guide. Every quarter, we'll provide you with a how-to tool kit of lessons and case studies that address specific problems managers face in changing their organizations. In this premier issue, we show exactly how five key "C-Suite" drivers of innovation inside big corporations do it. In future issues, we will offer the best innovation metrics, show how to build open-source idea machines, manage global networks of engineers and trend-spotters, find truly creative talent, and instill design thinking to satisfy unmet consumer needs. IN is also a community. It links you to our online Innovation & Design site, with its blogs, columnists, metrics, and stories. Join us.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Corante Innovation Hub

Seems like we should become affiliated with these folks.Corante Innovation Hub Here's the intro:
"The Corante Innovation Hub is your starting point for keeping abreast of the best writing and thinking on innovation across the blogosphere and beyond. Here you'll find the field's most insightful observers and commentators tracking and reporting on its latest developments as well as weighing in on its future."

Thursday, October 05, 2006

IBM Research | IBM Innovation | Global Innovation Outlook


IBM "gets it" and you should get a copy of IBM Research Global Innovation Outlook available in PDF or in hardcopy by request.

Here's the opening of the Sam Palmisano's introduction

"Few words are more ubiquitous in business or society today than
“innovation.” It’s rare to walk through an airport, watch an hour of
television or pick up a major publication without running across it.
It’s on the minds of a growing number of CEOs, government officials,
and academic and community leaders as they look for ways to survive
and thrive in an increasingly complex and connected world.

We use the word at IBM, too—but that’s nothing new. Innovation has
been central to our company for nearly a century. It’s the primary reason our clients do business with us, and the simplest and truest statement of IBM’s purpose in the world. In fact, three years ago, IBM employees affirmed “innovation that matters—for our company and the world” as one of our three core values.

“That matters” is important. Those words say that what we do produces differentiation and real business value for our clients. They say that we’re focused not only on being creative ourselves, but on helping our clients be innovators—and that we do the same for our partners, our suppliers, and our multiple communities of collaborators and co-creators. They say that the work we do together changes the world in meaningful and lasting ways.
IBM Research | IBM Innovation | Global Innovation Outlook

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

2 Mirrors or 81? Innovate by Simplifying

A new study on the auto industry released this week by the Harbour-Felax Group includes a lot of scary facts about how far GM, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler are lagging in their innovation strategies. One very telling detail: One of the Big 3 (the report doesn't specify which one) is about to release a new model that has 81 different options for the side view mirrors. The comparable Honda has 2 options.

Consequently, the American firm has 5 people responsible for sourcing mirrors; Honda has just one person. This is probably an extreme example, but even if you discount the difference, extrapolating this disparity across the complexity of an entire car, and then across the entire range of offered products, it becomes clear that the increased cost burden becomes a significant competitive factor.

"Simplify" is a powerful innovation strategy. Not sufficient unto itself, of course, but a key element in a complete methodology.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Yahoo "gives away" its Crown Jewels

Yahoo has decided it can't build or buy enough Innovation so they are enlisting the worldwide developer community by providing their email authentication code openly.

This is another example of the "open" approach to catalyze innovative developers as "partners" in a permanent innovation process. The link is from an obscure Toronto group and popped up on Scobleizer.

Toronto House Cleaning - virtually online: Yahoo To Open Up Email Authentication

Yahoo "gives away" its Crown Jewels

Toronto House Cleaning - virtually online: Yahoo To Open Up Email

"Yahoo has decided it fcan't build or buy enough innovation so they are enlisting the worldwide developer community."