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

Below is a re post of a chat in HBR Group. Enjoy. Lot of value here.  Companies have not, are not, mostly will not, be ready and/or adopt IoT in a timely fashion. I am not talking about startups building those new value-circles, or tech corps in the know. I am talking about the big incumbents.  From my perspective having lived disruption (enabling new techs that can transform products such as VOIP for Telecom) the big boys (or gals) have a hard time finding the intersections and engage in dangerous reductions in complexity. This is why innovation methodologies like Design Thinking are making such headway (CapitalOne, Apple, IBM, 3M, others...). They are designed to deconstruct and self-disrupt supply chains and force one to find the white spaces that can be improved (digitized and "IoTized" shall we say :-)). Given the pace of digital techs (positive and negative) now self-disruption should be mandatory. Just ask Sony... I also love helping corps self-disru...

Kind of interest for all of us here - I imagine agents of change in the forefront of technology- to still be held back by the tyranny of the status quo and ancient and static thinking frameworks. Take "Value" We could spend ages talking about what value is and the changing nature of value. Unfortunately, too often it is equated with ROI and financial metrics. As Glen Cage so well say it: "Who would have thought a decade or two ago that giving away one's work for free would make money?" There is new hidden/unmeet value being born everyday. Take the sharing economy allowing the creation of "value" in dormant assets like our spare bedroom. But wait, that is economic value. How about the social value of meeting a new human and expanding relationships via the sharing economy. There has to be value in that, isn't there? Call it soul value. Call it connecting value. After all the sharing economy (greatly advanced and promoted by the mobile and app revo...

I have lived the telecom revolution of the 90's. Lived the mobile revolution of the 2000's. I lived the social revolution of the late 2000's and now living the "cloud" revolution. All, amazing revolutions that have changed how we live and who we are. Even how we use our brains.  The coming of IoT is nothing short of mind-blowing as compared to past revolutions. It consolidates all of them into immensely powerful and practical applications that will change us -again.  Now we will be able to tell what food stuff is missing from our refrigerators via a notification on our mobile app. Better yet, it will notify the grocery store that will prepare the package so one can collect it on the way home or be delivered by drone or autonomous car. Now we will be able to navigate via internal "GPS" inside buildings by using new elevation sensors that will be imbedded in new chip steps in our life management devices we call smart-phones. Now our devices will be able to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMfjL_iXQsk

Los conceptos de Innovación nacieron en mayor parte en respuesta a la disrupción causada por las tecnologías digitales. Estas mismas están cambiando el mundo y la competitividad de maneras vertiginosas. El nuevo mundo es digital y disruptivo y nuestra perspectiva tiene que ampliarse y tiene que cambiar. Tenemos que ser más abiertos y tenemos que entender y integrar la nueva manera de ser del usuario en nuestras estrategias, sean corporativas o estatales. Si nos enfocamos en el hecho de que al nivel más básico la tecnología esta despertando y agilizando el criterio creativo de los ciudadanos de maneras trascendentes nos dará le perspectiva necesaria y amplia, y así - a lo menos - podremos anticipar las tendencias que están impactando nuestras sociedades de maneras disruptivas. Entender y poder “bailar” con los conceptos de innovación y al mismo tiempo cultivar los aspectos positivos de las tecnologías digitales, posicionaría a Latino América en un camino y...

Below is my letter to the editors of the Washington Post regarding their Sunday, April 13th piece titled: Google’s Power Play. I congratulate you for going after it. We seem to be so enamored with this sexy American success story that seems to be lulling us into thinking all is good with the world and that Google is on our side. Think not. As a “techno utopian” with over 30 years experience with the Internet and telecom, I love tech for its power to innovate and solve real problems. Social problems. Environmental problems. And not necessarily for the creation of the newest iPhone. I am very concerned about Google’s amassing power and here is why. Google is not your traditional brick and mortar company with limited expansionary potential of the ‘physical’ kind. Google is in the vanguard of digital and big data expansion in the digital realm and as such, the combination of its search engine, its capacity to integrate and create algorithms at will, and its ability to ...

The concept of blending things and ideas is one with a long history, of course. It probably started during the stone age as our brains matured. Perhaps then, an enterprising soul deliberately blended cooking meat with some sort of wild berry deriving a new taste sensation that empowered him or her to experiment further. Likewise now in the age of digital and adoption of innovation-based frameworks for the purposes of discovery and economic development, the ability to blend existing trends, products and movements to derive new insights is paramount to the development of new businesses and society.  Generating new ideas that can be discovered via an aha! moment or as part of a more structured approach, such as design thinking, does happen and the value of those participating in these endeavors cannot be denied. Many new innovations come from these sessions that have given rise to companies such as IDEO and Jump Associates, for example. These companies facilitate the cr...

I am a car guy and I absolutely love the new 2015 Mustang. It really is a design with Soul (yes, capitalized). An amazing and seductive blend of European and American design cues. Simply gorgeous. I was able to recently experience the Mustang at the Washington DC auto show. A shadow of the auto shows in LA and Frankfurt but hey, this is DC, the land of beige and black sedans and soul-less minivans and SUV’s. In any case, cue in the real-life Mustang I experienced at the show.  I was instantly smitten. So much so that I gave them my email so that I could be notified the minute it is for sale. Following up with me via email Ford was kind enough to ask me for my opt-in to future advertising.   Attached to the email was also  a link to their site. I never, ever say yes to these things but, hey, I am in love.   Upon checking the web site for the car I was given the choice of languages and for kicks I opted for Spanish being fluent in that language. ...