Innovation: The Who's Where's and How's

So here is the thing.  I downloaded the last upgrade to my Facebook (FB) app and without warning (that I was able to read readily and was not embedded in legalize that no one can understand) it added two icons to my Android desktop: FB camera (another one that I do not need or want) and FB messenger. I was a bit taken aback by this action. I find it presumptuous of FB to think that I would want those two additional icons on my phone (I don't, btw). I am not a Facebook power user and I have a life and actually have to work all day so I really do not need these two icons to help FB in their pursuit of "frictionless sharing" (as I discussed in another blog entry). This "sharing" is becoming a study in inane self promotion and "churnalism." Very little of what is posted is actually original and worth a read. The short of it is that I don't appreciate the presumptuousness displayed by FB. This is arrogant and once a company (free service or no) ...

There are many reasons I wanted to start an Innovation practice (in the new lexicon: Innovation Lab) inside a large corporation that is at the front end of dealing with the digitally-based disruptive onslaught. The initial co-founder and I suggested such a practice to our management in response to a lunch we had with an Innovator from Nokia back in 2006 and the pre-iPhone era. (Yes, the same Nokia that is now fighting for its life.) There are huge lessons learned just from that lunch that may explain why Nokia finds itself in the situation that it is in. I will expound on that lesson at a latter date, for  now to the subject of this post. I wanted to learn and feel what it would be like to go against the grain, delve into emerging new ideas and to institute new thinking. In retrospect this is what I had always done in my career and thus wanted to put those abilities into a "legit" environment where that was "the" job. Now in its 6th year, the practice has chan...