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

Expanded Minds...

2012-01-19T20:55:00.004-05:00

Riding in a small plane from Philadelphia to my home town of Washington DC the other day, I could not help but hear (it was one of those small regional jets) the stories of a returning marine coming home. A very self-assured man of no more than 20 years old relating his experiences to the row in front of me. It was indeed an interesting 45 minute flight.

You see, he was a crew member in a helicopter. Not sure if he was a machine gun gunner but suffice it to say that his days were packed with dynamism as he so eloquently related about his days running missions to and fro. An "adrenaline rush" and "Intense" and "exhilarating" were some of adjectives he used to describe his daily missions. He then moved on to talk about his home-town visits and how he could not understand how people could live such boring lives with very little to do. No wonder, I thought. His mind and experience-map had expanded to the point that going back to his old world was a very limiting option.

Of course being one to derive insights whenever and wherever I can, I thought of corollaries with what I do. Coming up with concepts and structures requires the need to live in a heightened state of awareness where one forces clashes of ideas and business models in order to derive new ones. It is quite and addiction in fact, and it actually can be overwhelming since the mind can play "what if" scenarios incessantly. It can also be frustrating when others do not see the vision and intuition that emerges from refining fore vision.

So what is the take away?

An expanded mind cannot be put back in its old state. It is simply not possible, in my view.

Society needs to evolve to accommodate the expanded mind of that marine and businesses need to evolve to manage the creative energy released by newly developed creative minds.

"False Flat" Syndrome

2011-11-16T08:11:00.001-05:00

False flat is a term used in cycling and it refers to a situation that occurs when one is pedaling in what one believes to be a flat road.
The mind is a funny organ an tricks us all the time. Faced with a perceived flat portion of a road, ideally in a sunny day in a California road with low humidity and no cars, the mind relaxes and perceives the challenge of pedaling the next few miles to be easy and consistent. We are basically seduced by our visual perception of the terrain. Said perception starts to change as the pedaling becomes arduous for no apparent reason and we start to feel differently. All the while the brain is still persisting in that this should be easy; it is a flat road after all.
Is is amazing how a 1% to 3% incline, not readily evident to our visual sense, can affect physical effort and of course results over a long period. The longer the miles pedaled in such a section, the longer the struggle and the longer the dissonance.
In my experience a very similar thing happens in organizations that are trying to be more innovative. It happens when the resident culture tries to delay and block business models and innovation that threaten the status quo.
How?
By engaging with the new change-driven culture (one of the side benefits of an innovation practice) via a collaborative approach that with time proves to be a form or quiet resistance, the resident culture basically aims to kill and/or delay new ideas. This syndrome is exacerbated by organizations that repeatedly engage in restructurings that induce "wait and see" behaviors. There are many versions of these behaviors that I will not detail here but suffice it to say they are there and obvious for the analytical eye.
These behaviors are the corporate equivalents of the false flat syndrome and if not recognized and addressed, it will kill innovations and new ideas. Gauranteed.

The Burden of Maturity

2011-11-04T15:47:00.000-04:00

Recently my wife and I had occasion to reflect on the different levels of maturity that our children have to deal with as they go about their growing up. The discussion evolved, unexpectedly, to organizational maturity. Don't ask me how the leap happened, but it did.

What makes the human drama so perplexing and interesting is that we are all very different. We learn differently, our brains are wired differently, we are different. Why should maturity be an exception with our institutions? At the end of the day our institutions (and dare we say "governments") are managed by us.

In my eternal quest to try to understand how best to manage companies via an innovation imperative, I find that this maturity coefficient must be relevant and it will influence an organization's innovation DNA. A lack of maturity severely retards development and the generation of new ideas. Enhanced maturity allows for more openness, exploration and the generation of ideas (quantity and quality).

Focusing back on the individual; one of the burdens of professional maturity and the ability to understand the need for change before others, is that one stands alone - in many instances - and this is not a good place to be in organizations that do not assign value to maturity and fore-vision. We must develop support structures for people in these circumstances.

Recently I heard from an Innovation consultant that described a sudden insight from one of his clients when discussing his company's ability to generate ideas. His insight was that it is about quantity and from there the ability to manage the funnel to identify the jewels. Couldn't agree more.

The thing is, I instinctively know that there must be a strong correlation between an organization's ability to generate ideas and its level of maturity. Now we have to prove it.

Thoughts on FaceBook's "Frictionless Sharing"

2011-10-29T10:03:00.002-04:00

The question of Face Book's new "frictionless sharing" was asked in a recent Trends forum in LinkedIN. My contribution to it is written below.

Yes, I consider myself a techno-utopian and believe that technology can help us immensely. Witness the emerging field of neuro-science and how it may be able to help us understand ourselves better and aid our poor decision making skills.

On the other side of the coin, I have witnessed how technology has atrophied our social abilities: call it our "social curation" abilities. Regrettably, I think Facebook frictionless sharing will exacerbate this trend. Like the author says: there is value on what our friends write or say and we base a lot of our decision on this curation from our circles of influence.

Overall, I have mixed emotions about Facebook. It can be a great tool for communication but it can also blunt our humanness in ways we are only now experiencing. How many of us just "park" our friends in Facebook? I have "friends" in Facebook that I have not seen in years, although we are but 10 miles away and I have made repeated attempts to connect in 3D.

Let us face it, we are 7 billion humans now and if you think of us as a currency, we are being devalued just based on demographic growth. Technology and social networks play and additional role (ironic, really) in the acceleration of this devaluation by allowing us to create content (self broadcasting) that is competing with a lot more content contributed by millions of us. At the margins then, my specific contribution is devalued due to the shear amount of content being produced. Now, with the reduced value of my "curation" the content is devalued even more so.

Change Blindness

2011-10-22T12:36:00.002-04:00

I came across Nova Now on PBS yesterday and the episode had to do with the growing field of Neuro-Science and the different fields of research. An absolutely fascinating piece of content that everyone should watch and that profiles various scientist and their areas of focus. You have always wondered how magic happens? Well, now you will know:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/change-blindness.html

My particular interest is in merging this field with business management and thus explore better ways to run ourselves and our institutions and also to pursue innovative ways of being. Who would not want more Steve Jobs, right? There is so much to delve into, but one area that is interesting and applicable to my World has to with the perception of change.

There is a phenomenon called: Change blindness and it occurs in situations where we are so focused on one thing that we miss a larger event happening right in front us. For more intriguing demonstrations, see this website maintained by psychologist J. Kevin O'Regan, one of the first scientists to describe the phenomenon.

As one that has been in the trenches trying to shift people's minds to new ideas, this was very intriguing and I am now wondering if the research can translate to change management. In other words, can the specific findings of why and how it happens shed light into why people resist change? It turns out that in the process of change blindness we have neurons that make us focus on movement and another that makes focus less on what is happening around us. (I am not doing it justice so please see the episode). It appears that our brains are wired like this so we could see that tiger or lion that was about to eat us. In order words, a self-preservation instinct.

So, the question begs, is this self-preservation instinct going array and is it now stopping many of us from accepting the inevitability of change? Now is not the lion but that new product or idea that will unseat my power-base; absolutely, I see this every day. The harder question now is how to prove it - scientifically - and how to develop techniques to counter it. Anyone want to cooperate on this?

This is the work, this the hard work, this is the hardest work.

Living on the edge

2011-10-12T14:53:00.001-04:00

Two separate and distinct events occurred to my wife and I as we were trying to help people with their specific causes. Please remember that I wrote help - as in going out of our daily routines and struggles to assist another human being with their specific idea and cause.
In both instances the people that we were aiming to help (after getting their approval for us to do so) reacted in ways that were anathema to the situation. Both felt challenged and the basis for these feelings appeared to be caused by a sense of loss of control. In addition, both seemed to have reacted impulsively without giving the circumstances its due deliberation and thought.
This got me thinking, and while I am not a psychologist, it occurred to me that as we live on the edge driven by economic and social insecurities, we are reacting instinctively and protecting our "space" even when people are trying to help us. Or, is it a more profound issue, where people have lost their ability to distinguish friend from foe because we have been immersed for so long in this mercantilistic culture and "what is in for me" ethos?
Whatever the cause, both are unacceptable and all this will do is stop our collective efforts from helping each other dig out of the mess that we have created for ourselves. This is actually reflected in our political sytem which is a mirror to - yes - us.

Reductionism & Innovation

2011-09-22T11:32:00.000-04:00

In keeping with the new digitally enhanced human behaviors, we must pay attention to how these behaviors are carried over to the rest of people's lives. This means that we must be aware of the "impatience" factor that has been accelerated by our digital expectations. I feel that as we adopt communication technologies with increased speeds - such as mobile broadband on our smart handsets- these accelerated expectations are being carried over to the rest of our lives. I can't prove this is happening, of course, but I can feel it and based on my past reads of emerging trends, I am probably right on this one.
This is reflected in our increasing intolerance for "too much"; too much text on web sites for example, too much going on in car dashboards, too many TV channels, too much avertising. We are now processing more information faster than ever and - well - there is only so much we can retain.
Recently, I experienced a more poignant example of this impatience factor and my brain's need to see less. In entering my latest hotel room here in Frankfurt, I was confronted with 8+ different informational pieces sitting on desks, TV, radios, my bed, etc...One of them was for how to use the room phone. Really? Who uses hotel phones anymore. Get rid of it. Too much.
Reduce the pieces and alleviated the clutter in the room and in the mind of the guest. We simply don't have the time to process all these customer "touch points" anymore.
So, please, innovators and marketeers; please adopt messaging and product strategies that reduce and simplify as much as possible. It will be to your benefit
Short and sweet.

Complexity and Business

2011-08-02T14:51:00.004-04:00

When understanding complexity gets too hard for our feeble minds, go back to basics; as in biology and other sciences.
Here is an interesting deep thinking resource for all of us in the business of business. The Sant Fe Institute:
http://santafe.edu/research/topic/robustness-innovation/

Digital Behaviors: Analog Does not Translate

2011-03-10T12:47:00.003-05:00

So, interesting report on how magazine reading on the Ipad is not holding people's attention.
Not surprised.
What is the first thing you do when you buy a magazine? As for me, the first thing is I do is bend it and flip through it back to front. I know, weird, right...The thing is a lot of people do this. Buying an "analog" magazine is akin to buying a toy (I feel) with all of the allure of the feel and physicality of if. In the digital world, consuming the magazine is more about consuming "content", which in my opinion is a totally different experience and one that competes with all the rest of the screen consumption that we do.

Not sure how to bridge the gap. Perhaps Apple in all its magic will be creating flexible digital magazines? Doubt it.
Technology is a wonderful thing but is not all and it can't make up for the real world feel of...well, the real world.

Is Reality Broken?

2011-02-16T07:57:00.004-05:00

I think the author of this piece and book is on to something powerful.

Brain research is already showing that digital natives are using their brains in different ways. I won't go into how they are different, but if awareness is in fact our own individual cerebral projections (as some brain scientists attest) well then, maybe digital natives do in fact see and "use" reality in a different way.
Case in point: research shows that digital natives are not so prone to own autos. Why? Simple, they are comfortable with having relationships on-line and thus are not compelled to buy cars so they can drive to see their friends. From our digital immigrant perspectives this is crazy of course, but herein is the challenge of innovators: we must have open minds and accept new realities however different they may be to ours.
Back to gaming and in its defense; it is changing everything. Even the way we learn when you bundle it with story telling. The retention rates learning via these means are much higher. Example (proven fact by brain science) and a fact I already cited in this blog. If you record yourself performing and perfecting an activity- call it playing a piano sequence- you will learn 30% faster by watching yourself doing it. So, does this learning improvement mean that learning via raw and rogue reality is "broken" vis-a-vis learning by watching a digital video of reality?
Moreover, gaming skills/abilities are playing a big role in warfare since now you can do it via remote control/drones. So, if war is a "broken reality" then why not deal with it via a gaming console, thus lowering human and financial costs?
Then there is the concept of cessation. It is pretty clear that we humans have a hard time achieving adequate states of cessation without grave consequences to the entire world. As Bruce Springsteen's song says: "rich man will not be happy until he owns everything." If gaming can achieve a state of cessation on-line perhaps that will translate to the real world and in turn help humanity.
Reality definitely seems to be broken and perhaps, just perhaps gaming could help us rescue it.

Talent: Misplaced, Mistreated, Misunderstood

2011-01-20T09:54:00.003-05:00

Here is the genesis of this insight.

I was sitting in a bar with a good friend of mine last week sharing some deep and non-chronic conversation about...you know, life stuff. That day I was particularly down due to a sequence of news events from friends and their latest struggles.

So, my friend - who basically plays the role of life coach for beer and food - was asking me why was it that all these latest news were getting me so down. He challenged me to find the common theme from these different bits. After thinking about it for a nano-second, the insight came as it it had been waiting there for years.

All the bits of information had to do with good, talented and really intelligent people having difficulties with bad management or - if independent like some of them - with getting themselves or their businesses going.

So here it is: our social systems do not do a good job of "processing" talent. The system - whatever that is - lets us down all the time: We have the wrong people in management and we have talented and creative people dismissed or thrown out because they don't want to abide by the rules of business dictated by bad management. It is a bit of a circular problem. I consistently see people too young being in positions of authority. I consistently see highly creative people dismissed because of their quirkiness or becuase thet do not want to sit in a monocromaitc cube for 10 hours. I see people raised in other cultures dismissed because they don't fit the profile of the aggressive American, cowboy-based notion of "the" business man. I see incredibly talented people like my Art Director friend, Joethat while he is not a "business man" he has energy that if properly guided and mentored can lead to immense innovations and creations.

Here is a note to our executives and supposed industry leaders:

Talent is like energy; energy that needs to be understood, managed and unleashed. If you want static energy, then hire one dimensional people that will fail to move your company to the next level. If you want change, innovation, ideas, creativity then launch dynamic energy into your ranks. There are clear differences between the two and clear ways to identify them.
Now, don't reach out for your recruiter's telephone number. This is not about getting them "hired" to work for your company although that may be the answer sometimes. This is about you and your company opening yourselves to new energy management and engagement models so that you can engage these dynamic agents. In my experience these agents and their energy are already in your organizations but have been suppressed by the static nature of our organizations and need to be liberated.

Give me a call and I will let you know how...

Innovation Delayed- Innovation Killed.

2011-01-12T10:36:00.003-05:00

It has been awhile since my last post. This is because that balance thing erred on the side of a lot of work for the last couple of months. Perhaps I need a ghost writer: Nah, I like the excruciating pain of putting thoughts into paper in a way that has some impact. It is tough to compete with the constant media stream hitting our brains now days, you know.

In any case, here is the latest insight coming from a call I received from a friend of mine last night that was hired by a very large bank to create and run an innovation practice. She basically called to tell me that the bank was shutting the practice after about one year.
I can conjecture a lot of reasons why this may have happened, starting with the "real" reasons the sponsor of the practice decided to start it in the first place. Was it a play thing for the CEO? Did he want to use it to drive others out? Did he genuinely want to create new products? Did he want to just capture new knowledge? etc...

The first mistake is to have closed the practice; an Innovation practice needs a minimum of 3 years for it to show fruits. That aside, there is one reason that I know - for sure- sooner of later will have an impact on an innovation practice.

In most instances the existing corporate (and established) interests will attack and innovation practice; guaranteed. Moreover, many of those spearheading the attack (indirectly) will play the waiting game and delay engagement and many of them are employees with long corporate tenures that while may not be "civil servants" per se, have similar attitudes.
I have been fortunate to experience positive developments in the running and participating in our Innovation practice - now in its 5th year - but these wins have not come without intense, passion and energy-consuming battles that have left deep scars.

So, to tweak the old saying: "Justice delayed, justice denied, " "Innovation delayed IS innovation killed."

Think Again...

2010-11-23T15:18:00.000-05:00

Malcom Gladwell at his best....

http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

The Nascent Power of Video

2010-09-15T14:55:00.002-04:00

So you ask…how can video help me and my organization prosper? How can I get that pesky ROI to talk to me and my CFO?
While I am fascinated by video and its entertainment potential, I am even more fascinated by its potential for education and knowledge transfer.
Well, here is a hard fact confirmed by a couple of friends of mine that are both brain scientists (I know, right, cool company I keep :-)).
So, here it goes. If you desire to be good at a certain activity that is recordable, learning that activity will be accelerated by 20 to 30% if you see yourselves performing that activity on video.
So, let us say you are a piano player and you are having a difficult time learning a sequence. What you would do is record yourself doing the sequence the correct way and then viewing the video multiple times. Or, let us say you are a cyclist and want to improve your pedal stroke or posture, well, record yourself doing the activity the correct way and watch yourself on video.

We are primarily visual beings. There is a reason our sense of sight is front and center and is the sense with the longest reach.

Enterprise needs to wake up now to this reality and start to use video to manage, educate and inform. Video will be the new “communication” normal and it is already being adopted as such by the new gens…

Better turn off that camera now…

Observations, Insights and Suburbia

2010-09-01T08:52:00.005-04:00

Yeah, I know, I have written about this before: about how we need to refresh our perspective on a daily basis. I realized how hard it is to maintain this ethos the other day as I was travelling into the District of Columbia with my son at the wheel.

As we go about our daily routines I think our brains fall into complacency mode. It makes sense, I suppose. Not being a brain scientist but having read research on the matter, our brains seems to accommodate to the sameness of the routine and seems to block new inputs.

In any case, here is the situation. My son was driving our new Mazda 3 (btw, an awesome "little" car) and as we entered DC and we are sitting at a traffic light he makes the observation that the light posts for the traffic signals are placed on the street corners to the left and right and do not hang over the center as in most suburban environments. While this observation may not seem radical to most, to me it is since I had missed it.
First it shows that suburbia is a different environment than urban. Secondly, for those of us that have grown in suburbia only ( I have experienced both) this makes navigating urban environments an experience that needs to be learned and mastered by engaging our new perspective filters.
So what are the lessons to be distilled here for innovation and the search for new insights? 1) never fall into complacency mode. 2) constantly develop observation skills by asking questions, by looking around, by searching for patterns and differences; 3) have people with different background and experiences "observe" the same set of inputs; 4) move from suburbia to urban environments before our "street sense" is fully strophied :-)

Digital: Disrupts absolutely & creates resolutelty.

2010-08-17T12:02:00.003-04:00

Immersion and hyper-learning new concepts, ideas, business models absolutely leads to new ways of thinking that with time mature into new ways of seeing.
One aspect of Innovation is developing a quick sense of how things will change purely from observing how people adopt and use technology. From there one can play "what if" scenarios and of course try to capture as many different scenarios as possible.
I have been on record saying that the digital revolution will impact everyone and everything. But sometimes one has a hard time conceptualizing the exact "hows" even after extensive scenario development.
Here is one that I just read about and that basically blew me away. Of course, I never developed deep scenarios in this particular industry, but nevertheless, I was stunned by the finding.
It turns out that digital natives are very comfortable with having friendships online; their sense of having to see, feel and be present in three dimensional space is not necessary to maintain friendships. It appears that cyber-based exchanges suffice for many of them. The impacts of this shift on the Internet, telecoms, mobile networks is well known. The impacts on education are known as well and the impacts on the workplace- well...that is been felt as we speak. What I did not anticipate was the impact on the car culture (broader than just automotive industry). It turns out that digital natives do not seem to have the affinity for this culture as past cultures did. There is obvious positives to this: less driving, less oil consumption, less cars being bought, more walking, more public transit, less eating out?
Here is - yet again- a colossal shift coming on how we will organize ourselves in the future and every sector needs to prepare for it.
Like I said: Digital disrupts absolutely and creates resolutely.

Its Official: Hybrid Brainstorming is better than...

2010-07-15T15:00:00.006-04:00

The beauty of science is that you can actually design a hypothesis, test it, measure it and quantify it.

http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/56/4/591?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=innovation%2C+idea+generation%2C+brainstorming&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

So, you were wondering if group brainstorming sessions are affective as a new idea engine? Well, here is some good research that tell us that while effective, hybrid sessions composed of first doing individually and then doing a group session is much more effective.
There is a lot more there of course; 56 pages, actually, for those deep researchers that want to know the fine details...
Have fun reading....

Don't forget the organizational re-development...

2010-06-24T10:21:00.002-04:00

You know how it goes, new ideas and innovations are agreed and implemented but most enterprises forget to adjust the organization to serve them.

In a world where "static" is akin to death, a dynamic organization that can adapt and change itself quickly is paramount in order to succeed. At the very least, organizations need to mirror market developments and behaviors and they need to do this by inserting flexible structures that can adapt virally to new ideas and approaches. Think about this: companies use the term "divisions" to speak about how they are organized, the very word sounds divisive. It is all about you do this and I do that and if any new creative approach or idea is thrown up our way we will deal with it the best we can. This results in the opportunity getting lost (at worse) or parsed (at best).

Instead I propose that organizations be arranged to respond to complex deals first and easy, commodity type activities, second. One way to do this is to have high level conceptual and new-age thinkers with an ability to connect ideas and concepts, act as corporate and global business development "swat-teams" for large organizations. These people would have mirrored points of contact in each "division" that is relevant to a new idea or concept. They would also be "thought leaders" for the organizations and would have at their disposal a project management infrastructure to be able to implement ideas quickly. In my experience thought leaders are more intuitive and conceptual people that add great value but are not planners.

As innovation thinking continues to invent and disrupt industries, enterprises must reinvent and optimize the way they respond. Those that do will be the ones to evolve.

Not too far off future...Really! Courtesy of Cisco

2010-04-06T15:27:00.000-04:00

Atypical Management of...Creative Energy

2010-03-29T20:50:00.003-04:00

It occurred to me the other day that our business institutions are being run via the famous triple C's; command, control and communications. This insight came to me after a conversations I had with a friend when he asked me the question:
Is your company accommodating your creative energy?
I was surprised by the question and more surprised by the answer, which could be an entire chapter in an Innovation book.
While this command structure works well in the field of battle, it does not in an environment where people are asked to exercise their creative impulse. This old-new relic from our military complex does - I dare say- the opposite; it refrains humans from fully exploiting their creative wellspring. Companies are simply not structured to accommodate the ever expanding energy of creative individuals.
I am not sure what structures are the best in this regard - there are many - but this is one of the very things that the Innovation movement is trying to address. I think Google has ideas as does Best Buy. GE also has some good ideas as does Apple. All of them - and many others - are experimenting with ways to best stimulate and manage creative energy. This is a great thing for society and it is time to call for a best practices summit on this point.

The power of small gestures

2010-03-03T08:36:00.002-05:00

My last Saturday AM was very atypical. The call came in at 6AM informing me of a devastating earthquake in Chile where most of my family resides. I have lived through many earthquakes and thus I am intimate with all the facts around them. I have studied them, analyzed them and like most Chileans, have learned to live with them and dare I say dismiss them. This call from a Chilean friend was different. “This is a big one”, she said with a disconcerting shake in her voice as she also announce its magnitude “an 8.8.” Upon hearing these facts I went into emergency response and frantically and simultaneously turned on the TV, mobile phone and my PC. I accessed Facebook and twitter and started to seek information via the web, text, TV, all mediums. I called on the fixed line to try to reach my parents, both in their mid 80’s. I redialed several times; it was still early I told myself, so the lines will probably not yet be saturated. On the third try I did reach them. All is good and the family is all alright. Most live in Santiago where the damage was minimal.

Then as the day progressed phone calls, emails, text’s, posts on Facebook, etc…starting to stream in from friends and even acquaintances asking if all was all right. “All was alright”, was the standard response with and added and heart felt:” thank you for reaching out.” These small and easy gestures were huge and I thank all of you for doing them.

This of course got me thinking about the immense power of communications to convey a sense of connectedness. As we all go about our busy lives processing massive and ever increasing amounts of information, knowing that someone took a bit of mental energy to make that connection and to follow it up with an action is indeed a very powerful gesture.

Therein is the power of communication; it is about the action and the feelings that it conveys to the recipient. This is an important truth that all of us in technology and telecom must never forget.

The life giving power if Insights…

2010-02-18T11:10:00.002-05:00

I love new insights. I am hungry for them. They are a drug for me. If for no other reason than to try to get ahead of the future. Who would not want that?
In my world, new insights are the basic ingredients for new ideas. Without them the status quo remains as is: static. With them, there is dynamism. The more insights, the more they can be mushed together to develop aggregated knowledge, theories, philosophies, products, platforms...

Why can’t our political system understand this?

Here is one source for them to check out www.ted.com. Here is a golden source of fantastic insights from global brilliant agents of change.

Come on, go crazy. Whenever you are down, need inspiration, need to clear your mind, go and start your thinking anew…

The negative side of Momentum.

2010-02-16T08:05:00.009-05:00

The lament from a friend of mine went something like this:

"I feel that I have been sold the wrong bill of goods for years now. From buying into the materialistic version of happiness, to being a participant in self-aggrandizing conversations as if I was here for no reason but to make other people’s egos bigger, to isolating myself and my family in the suburbs as if that is the center of the universe, to spending lavishly on my house and my lawn for what? I don't know. To spending more, ever more, to having to drive everywhere…it all is starting to feel hollow..."

This got me thinking about the power of momentum and how hard is to stop and start a shift to a new way of seeing and being. The existing momentum has been going on for half a century now? The power of momentum can be so strong that it can eliminate ideas before they take root. Further, its power can be so strong that it can make natural, common sense ideas seem revolutionary.

Case in point is the effort by Michelle Obama to start "Let's Move"the call for action to stop childhood obesity. Few would argue that our existing momentum-driven ethos is NOT the cause of obesity. Of course it is, we don't walk anymore- anywhere! Kids are ever more isolated in the suburbs in bigger homes and live behind screens, be them game consoles or mobile phones. They eat poorly because we have lost our culture of food and healthy eating. Social interactions have been minimized and have fallen pray to our over-scheduled lives and the pursuit of more wealth and status. It is about schedules and achieving more so as to guarantee a future for our kids that seems somewhat skewed but we do not know quite how skewed.

"Let's Move" is basically a reaching out to the past (al least here in America because in Europe people do live much healthier lifestyles) to an idea that existed before the existing momentum took us all in a wild ride. It is an "idea" - as common sense as they come - that was suppressed in the pursuit.

Momentum then can be a huge enemy of innovative thinking and it applies to all social structures and organizations. I propose then that the most important challenge is not for leaders to create change but figure out first how to shift minds to accept change. This is truly the underlying challenge and the only way that we can stop what we are doing wrong and start anew.

Disruptive DNA: You are either born from it and if not, learn fast.

2010-02-11T08:13:00.000-05:00

Here is the challenge. If a company is born from disruption, it is in their collective DNA. If not, I assert that companies have a “dormant” DNA sprouting in some islands of disruption that are fertile for exploiting, development and mentoring. So, how does one go about waking and growing a dormant DNA? First one accepts this fact and second one goes on a massive mind “finding” effort with a very clear understanding of the challenge.

There is enough here for a nice and long juicy consultancy engagement from the likes of McKinsey, Bean and Corp and this is exactly what most companies do. They go and run for the hills, spend massively and force down ”brilliant” findings which are insights gained from internal resources in the first place.

This need not be the case, however. Knowledge has truly been unleashed. It is everywhere and can be generated almost overnight. One need only go into LinkedIN, for example, start a group and ask questions. The results are simply mind blowing.

The point is this: theories and tools that have been built around social networks, cooperation, crowd sourcing, “intrepreneurship” and internal innovation teams provide a rich source of information and ideas to solve any internal corporate challenge. It is all there and may be a bit disorganized and disjointed, but it is there.

The first thing to do is for the CEO to call an Internal Innovation Summit with all internal resources deemed to be operating at the vanguard of the company’s innovation efforts. This innovation Summit should have three objectives/intents: 1) to understand what everyone is working on; 2) discover and catalogue best practices for all to share and; 3) to “buy and trade” ideas/solutions/.platforms with each other.

More on Motivators and Carrots and Sticks

2010-02-05T07:06:00.002-05:00

Interesting research paper cited on Jan 16Th edition of The Economist titled: Carrots dressed as Sticks. Basically, they experimented on ways to tweak and maximize the effect of economic incentives.
It turns out that the value we attach to "possessions" is good for incentives if they are designed with this allure. So, think of it this way. Instead of saying: "if you can achieve this goal, I will give you $1k at the end of the year", one should say: " The $1k are yours right now but you will loose it if you do not meet your goal."

"The fear of loss was a greater motivator than the prospect of gain" The results were consistent and persistent according to the article.

Funny thing, the human mind. And, further evidence that how one says things may be as important as to what is said.

A quick reflection on the book Drive, by Daniel Pink

2010-01-28T13:08:00.003-05:00

In Daniel Pink’s latest book, Drive, he talks about the self determination theory (or SDT for short and in keeping with the “reductionism” trend). It turns out there is a global network of researchers working on this theory based on human needs. The big finding - quoted directly from the book – is that “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined and connected to one another.” Further, the book states that when that drive is liberated, “people achieve more and live richer lives.”

I thought about this claim and reflected on past projects that I have been involved with and further, looked at the “flow” of these projects. “Flow”, by the way, is another concept that Dan discusses in the book and that he challenges us to analyze in ourselves; how best do we achieve this flow and how can we enhance it, that is.

I did this and found some interesting insights. My flow was severely restrained when I encountered breaks in communication - and I will go further and say - breaks in connectedness. For me, breaking that feeling of collaborative connectedness did have adverse impacts on the flow of my innovation project. The second instance where flow was impacted was when I had to restrain my determination in the face of unresponsive structures such as legal processes. (We all agree that legal structures are needed, but we have to also agree that it is not the most flexible or creative Eco-systems out there, especially when it concerns developing new business models.)

Drive is a good read and it has some practical exercises for us to work with and for us to discover our drive. The overarching insight for me, however, is that the book reflects my personal opinion that in the primal/rational “blueprint” we humans are, we are a lot more primal than rational.

Keep on Fighting....

2010-01-22T16:09:00.002-05:00

How fair is a fight, when all the power of momentum, negativity and denial is tilted to one side?

Ask Obama this question and his answer is: keep on fighting. At the end of the day his job is mind-shifting, a very difficult thing to accomplish in the age of outrageous right wing commentators and supreme court decisions.

Not unlike what some innovators out here experience. In many instances the advancement of Innovation management theories in corporations can be a colossal fight. The combination of institutional momentum (what I call "stagentum" stagnation-momentum), corporate antibodies and old guard practices can become formidable barriers to new ideas and innovation.

How fair is the fight when the power of decision making is with people that don't believe in what one does? How fair is fight when we are ridiculed because we are doing things outside the box? Or we are to "touchy-feely"?

Like I have said before, Innovation is as much an exercise in mind-shifting as is an exercise to find new products/ideas. Innovators are inherently risk takers, be them entrepreneurs or "intrapreneurs". Is this really appreciated and recognized by corporations? Do corporations have a sensing system to find and recognize these people? Do corporations evaluate their people according to risk profiles (how much is a particular employee is "risking" in the performance of his/her job)? Sadly, I feel the answer is not likely.

So, what else is there to do? Nothing but keep on fighting.

I know, I know...but insights can come @ any time and multiple times....

2010-01-05T17:52:00.004-05:00

I can't resist, when I discover an insight I tend to over analyze it. Excuse me if this may be one of those instances.
In percolating Daniel Pink's new book "Drive" I find that his treatise of "economic" systems and "social" systems and the combustive clash of both, provides an effective analytical framework to analyze the specific cultural nuance of "genuineness".
Consistent with other writings on this subject, there is a difference between the "what is in it for me" cultural ethos and the "I am a genuine human agent that will engage with someone because they inspire me or like them" ethos.
So, hear me out...
If you engage with someone in a social context and then try to transport that to an economic context for the "what is in it for me" ethos, that is not genuine. Period.
I think the other way around is a genuine engagement because of the outward transparency and maybe , just maybe, if there is positive energy generated , this energy can absolutely be transported to a social context.
I know, I know, a tortured analysis, but what do we have brains for if not to push them into more rigorous corners?

Twitter and why it is not stupid

2009-12-18T11:00:00.002-05:00

So, here is the thing...communications is about sharing. We humans are “wired” to communicate. I read once (albeit about 10 years ago) that about 67% of what people talk about on mobile handsets is what they call “gossip.”
Call it what you want; gossip is communicating and everyone participates in it.

Hear me out. Take “THE media”, the big, scary media, they communicate to us inane things that we really don’t care about but yet they do such a good job of imbedding us with it via the many outlets that even people like me, totally devoid of any interest whatsoever in Tiger Woods and much less Golf, have me talking and writing about it.

So there, gossip IS communications.

So, back to Twitter; Twitter is about a new way to communicate and document. It is a new way to share with the World and a new tool for us to use judiciously. At first I was not seeing the value of Twitter but then I immersed myself in its potential and discovered that it was up to us – the human race - to use it in away that can add value to the world of ideas and maybe, just maybe, people will benefit from it, laugh at it, whatever.

With that in mind I realized that it is a wonderful tool for capturing the prevailing zeitgeist AND documenting it for future use for whomever and whatever. Secondly - being an amateur futurist- I thought, what a wonderful tool to capture insights and shared them with my community and whomever finds value on what I have to say as I go about reflecting on this thing called life and awareness. The beauty of Twitter is that you can “follow” only those that inspire you and that motivate you, etc…It is akin to the radio dial of old- you don’t like it: turn it off or go to the next station.

Twitter is not stupid: Twitter is just another communications tool much as talking, gesturing, body language, email, flirting, texting, reading, sharing, etc…IS.

"The Innovator's DNA"..sweet affirmation....

2009-12-09T14:17:00.001-05:00

Reflecting back on some of my writings about how Innovators have a distinct set of skills that are very different from what our MBA culture promotes, here comes affirmation of these thoughts from the December 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review and Mr. Christensen himself and his associates. The title of the piece is: “The Innovator’s DNA.” Yep, discovery skills are important and distinct and they are: Observing, associating, questioning, experimenting, networking.

So, smash together Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole new Mind” + Frans Johansson’s book “The Medici Effect” + Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and you get the same insights. ( A lot more work of course, but fun!)

Proof yet again that new ideas are nothing but packed vectors emerging from the greater collective ethos and there really are no “pure” ideas. Perhaps, that is, for the wheel J

Soft vs Hard Skills

2009-11-24T13:18:00.003-05:00

I get a kick out of people talking about hard vs. soft skills and the preeminence of the former over the latter.
In a World of evolving globalization and all the derivations therein such as Glocal; Global Village, Primitive Global, World Citizen, etc...the abilities to relate, build consensus, persuade across differing cultures and personal and business practices/nuances are more important than ever -the subject of multiple posts in this blog.
I would say now that the preeminence is flipping to soft vs hard. Why? From my vantage point technology (hard) is nothing without creativity (soft) and value building/generation skills (soft).

It reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with the Founder of a startup right after the tech bubble had exploded and I was looking for a gig. It was circa 2002 and I was trying to secure a business development consultancy. The conversation went something like this:
"I would love to use you right now but now I need to focus on hard skills" (My response was circumspect since I did not have the benefit of the insight that I am presenting right now.) At the end of the conversation and as I was ready to leave, the founder turned to me and asked:
"By the way, do you know such and such and do you think I could meet them?"
:-)

Passion Economy II and Movie Industry…

2009-11-17T11:12:00.001-05:00

I hear in NPR this am about the transition that you, the movie industry, will have to go through with the digital revolution. As one that has been imbedded into your space over the last few years and living in your world; I can only say that it will be painful. I know this because we Telecom people have experienced the disruption that digital has caused on us over the last 10 years and we see many parallels with your industry.

But, don’t despair fellow movie executives. We are here to help you if you will listen. We have been through this and we can give you a lot of advice and here is but one piece: Think of your industry not just as a provider of entertainment and look for other ways to categorize what you do. Play what/if scenarios and and/yes scenarios. For example, one of the big discoveries of what Telecom does (sadly retrospectively) is that we “enable creativity.” If we had known this at the beginning of the digital attack on our industry, who knows, perhaps we would be Google.

So, let me get you started: think “passion”. How do you apply this concept of passion and the passion economy to your revenue models? Well, think in terms of community and audiences and think in terms of all these passionate fans that you have out there for your brands: IronMan, Batman, Spiderman, Jason Bourne, 007, etc….Now start thinking how you could appeal to some of these fans and perhaps create a “new window” prior to a movie release where you could have exclusive, fan-based content. The sure thing about passionate people is that they will pay more for their passion.

So, this is just one example…Go crazy and play exhaustive what ifs and and/yes…trust me, it works.

Passion Economy?

2009-11-12T17:20:00.003-05:00

So, this is where this thought originated.
I was talking to a colleague about how stupidly we have have organized ourselves inside companies. We "comparmentalized" our thinking and have created these static and vertical buckets: "product development", "product management", "public relations", "marketing"etc...
What we have not created and need to create are "passion" and "creative" management theories that aggregate these skills/abilities into tiger/virtual teams with members that are passionate about the tasks at hand.
In my experience, the first step in selecting a tiger team member is to find those that have the passion. How do you do this? You "shop" it around and those interested will raise their proverbial hands and will want to participate. Moreover, however, Innovation managers need to be very cognizant of the effects management policies will have on people's creative drives; the management ethos should not be process before creative but the other way around.
From there I was thinking about these incredibly passionate people that will go to the ends of the earth for Horses, or Porsches, or Dogs, or Cats, or whatever...
This is not "long tail" stuff, this is deeply rooted passions and thus the idea that there is a "Passion Economy" emerging from all the social media dynamics.
I feel another book coming....

New corps and "Evangelization" skills

2009-11-02T11:15:00.002-05:00

Last Friday I attended an early venture breakfast where young companies go on stage and present their business plans in an effort to secure funding. The audience was mostly venture capitalists, all with different investment stage philosophies. Some like to come into the early stages, some mid and some when companies are fully matured and are looking to scale after achieving cash flow positive status.

I have gone to many of these over the years and it is a fascinating process that everyone in Innovation management should be exposed to; it presents us with a unique opportunity to experience a drastically different perspective and energy. It is, in short, a new ecosystem that needs to be understood well, specially if one works with young companies as I do.

I found that these entrepreneurs could also learn a thing or two from other – more corporately focused "intrepreneurs." One is that they need to be much better at evangelizing their ideas and in the process of doing so words and statements such as “you know” and “like” should not be part of the pitch. Further, I found that some of the pitches were not rehearsed enough and others were too detailed and long, describing business operations minutia that was not necessary.

This point was brought home when one of the very successful VC’s present there said that he bases a lot of his decisions on the person that he will be funding: “Do I like him/her or not”, was his mantra.

If that is not a case for really performing well on stage, I don’t know what is.

Virtual and Interpersonal skills..Oh yeah, Facebook as well

2009-10-29T11:56:00.003-04:00

Two thoughts. One on innovation management, the other on innovation casting:

1) In a globalized world where virtual and matrix management is becoming the rigor, we need to change how we manage processes and people. One thing is for certain, however. Personality, energy conveyance and the ability to stimulate, motivate and persuade are still relevant and I would argue more so. The only difference is that now these attributes need to be projected via digital means: video calls, conference calls, the written word on emails, etc…What does this mean? It means that communications and interpersonal kills are more important than ever and need to developed even more so. How to improve on these: attend improvisational sessions, take acting lessons, learn how other cultures communicate and take media training…This just for starters.
2) My wife and I were brainstorming yesterday as to why Facebook users have (some of them) this incessant need to update their profiles constantly. The answer we came up with is that FaceBook is the new digital village and “updates” is the equivalent of walking across the central park where everyone could see you and what you were doing. For those having trouble visualizing this: imagine a small village in the Amazon with all the shacks in the periphery and a big central and open area on the middle. You decide to go fishing: you grab the rod and you walk across to your brother’s shack to “pick him up”, etc…all activities were in full view to everyone on the village and everyone new what you were up to….
3) OK one last one on the mobile application revolution that is going on: There are 85K applications now available on the Apple Application store. Most people download a bunch (40 seems to be about the average) but most of us only use 5 or at most 10. (Something to do with humans only having 24 hours a day comes to mind.)
So, what is the next revolution: automatic, non-engagement apps that one can set up and run automatically. Any comments from all you developers out there? Have I just stimulate the creation of the next app? If so, hey, please remember: you first read it here..

Empathy, Economics and Culture: Yes, it is happening

2009-10-09T09:28:00.004-04:00

Trying to tap into the zeitgeist is not an easy thing, but as someone said (paraphrasing): one can never be wrong in trying to bring the future forward.
I am starting to hear and read a lot about empathy. (Yes, that human quality that rumor has it we all possess but has been somewhat suppressed by our acquisitive culture.) Books are being written about it and one that I read recently is www.wiredtocare.com/, a book written by Dev Patnaik, an innovation consultant/guru and all around nice guy.

So being someone that likes to look for evidence (anecdotal of course) in real life – you know, life is it happens here and now, visceral, raw, cultured & civil- I have been listening and have found evidence that people are thinking a little more empathetically.

I won’t deny it, most of the people exhibiting this new found awareness are what I call “new life agents”; people that are a bit more advanced in terms achieving a holistic humanist vision regarding the whole spiritual/life/purpose/balance thing. Nevertheless, the point is that there seems to be the start of a new awareness.

The first example is a friend of mine who used to sell mail order high-end beauty/dietary supplement products; you know those natural and organic concoctions that promise to make one stop aging? In any case, she was really doing well selling lots of the stuff ($$$) and all of a sudden she stopped doing it. I of course asked why and I was shocked by the answer. She had stopped because she discovered her customers (many that could not afford it) where buying (hoarding it she called it) the stuff and getting in debt doing so. She said she simply could not be part of that.
Wow! I often wonder if Wall Street executives have ever thought in these terms. I surmise most likely not.

Another example not long ago was from a guy that was buying a small car and not an SUV (OMG: sacrilege!!) I asked why and he said well I want to help the environment and want to buy a car that is ULEV rated. (ULEV stands for ultra low emissions vehicle for those of you uninitiated on matters automotive.)
Wow! Wouldn’t it be nice if all of us would be motivated in such ways? Who knows, perhaps we can change the world after all.

I think we can, is my answer, and we can start by thinking how we can make our companies more empathetic – and yes – capture this trend for money making ventures.

Static Vs. Dynamic. Again

2009-09-17T09:22:00.002-04:00

One of the “global” themes that cut across my opinions and writings is that nothing will remain static and everything will becoming dynamic. From how we build cars to how we relate to our customers and children.
Why? Because communications technology and Innovations are making it so and telecom carriers are a critical piece of the puzzle in enabling this “dynamism.” As such they need to continue to shift their thinking from “network based” to “creative enablement.” But I digress.

Everything – and I mean everything - out there is subject to the static vs. dynamic dichotomy and enterprises need to adapt to this paradox. For starters we need to develop different and more dynamic KPI’s (key performance indicators).

This became evident the other day in an exchange I had with some innovation colleagues on the question of entrepreneurs vs. "intrepreneurs" (those inside corporate environments “doing” innovation- iPhone anyone!) and which are more effective and which add more value to the society as whole.

This is a HUGE, GINORMOUS topic that one could write a book about, but for now let me explode one little, itty bitty sub matter in this debate. And that is the issue of motivation and what drives people to innovate.

One gentleman made the point that entrepreneurs are more successful because they have equity and thus a stake in the success of a new Innovation. I don’t disagree and, yes, we need entrepreneurs to create new industries and they are absolutely motivated by the proverbial golden pot. Where the hypothesis is mistaken is in the assumption that everyone is moved by this “extrinsic” motivator. There are many people motivated by other “intrinsic” motivators as well and that will innovate inside enterprises all day long and that are not motivated by a pot of gold.

Yes, I know, a cliche, but I will nevertheless say it: Money is not everything and KPI’s for individuals (intrepreneurs) should incorporate a blend of extrinsic and intrinsic KPI’s. For more on this, please go to www.TED.COM and see Dan Pink’s (author of “A Whole New Mind”) video on this. It is fascinating.

Peripheral Vision

2009-09-08T09:16:00.002-04:00

Well, you know what they say...Instead of complaining do something about it....Well, I have been complaining about the lack of "peripheral" vision that our executives and leaders have displayed over the last few years so I have been promoting the idea of acting and improvisational workshops for adults. Nothing new, really, but I think there is an untapped demand for such workshops here in Northern VA (NOVA), where we are somewhat guided by staid and stale thinking. The challenge, of course is to get people to recognize this deficiency and for them to come out and experience the mind shaping (and blowing) benefits of improvisational workshops.
For those in NOVA and that are interested in attending; please direct your browser to www.creativecauldron.org, and search for "In the Moment" Adult workshop. The workshop will run every Thursday for a month.
Full disclosure, I am a board member of Creative Cauldron and will be taking the class myself.

Dynamic is in. Static is out.

2009-07-27T09:21:00.001-04:00

I was having a chat with a recruiter the other day and of course I took the opportunity to share my insights into his industry. Let me just say that one of the big, gigantic, jumbo mega trends out there and is that nothing - nothin - can or should remain static. Static is dead and dynamic is in.

Why, you may ask? Because technology (mostly informational) has created the ecosystem to make everything dynamic; there is no industry out there that cannot benefit somehow from the adoption of new informational technologies to make their relationship with its employees or customers much more dynamic, real and transparent.

Needless to say the “recruiting” industry is one that is absolutely ripe for dynamism starting with how they engage the new generation of workers and how they properly engage the tail-end of baby boomers that have been frustrated by their leading edge cohorts (now retiring) that have intensity and pent up energy, packed with immense knowledge in their brains and with a desire to mentor and work with younger entrepreneurs.

Have you heard of my “just in time strategy” concept I asked?

The theory, I proceeded to converse, is rooted in the concept that technology is moving too fast for traditional old ways of creating products and capturing value inside companies. The old, “gate-based” product development cycles with time horizons of three years, are dead. In its place, what companies should do is partner with young upstarts that have the energy, hunger and “eye in the prize” mentality. This is what gets a company to add value in a just in time fashion.

The relevant piece of this concept for recruiters is – of course – that the skill sets that are required (on both sides) to bring together the frenzied young entrepreneur and the slower large company are very different. The traditional and static product development skills now become secondary to partnering, collaborative, negotiation and knowledge transfer skills; these are the skills needed for the future. The recruiter’s new role should be to bring these two worlds together by deeply understanding these new skill sets and matching them to contrasting corporate cultures.

Engagement Energy

2009-07-14T13:29:00.000-04:00

Just when one thinks no one is listening - or reading- one gets a couple of emails from friends as to why I have not published. First let me say THANK YOU. It is truly an honor for all of you to take the time to read what I write. At the risk of running into an existential wall, one is always questioning if there is true value on what one has to say and getting notes from some of you confirms that – well – perhaps there is something there. Thanks again for your time.
Life is busy and getting busier with all sorts of new demands on our time, a lot of them driven by new technologies. Dedicated attention is definitely becoming a paramount commodity which should be accorded its proper amount of respect. With this in mind, let us talk about “engagement energy”.

As is always the case – at least with my odd psyche- my insights are developed from multiple vectors and the two most relevant ones on this occasion occurred during a high performance driving (www.driversedge.org) school for teenagers that I attended with my son and, two, a speaking engagement that I did for Front End of Innovation on the subject of culture: general and specific corporate cultures.

Before going further, please let me take the time for a plug for the Drivers Edge guys; it is an amazing experience that all teenagers should attend. Drivers Edge is a non profit organization that travels the country and offers these events for free! A quick stat: The number one cause of death for a young adult between the ages of 16 and 25 is a car crash. If this statistic does not wake up parents to the perils of the road I do not know what will. These guys teach high performance driving and high speed control maneuvers and it is a must attend event for all teenagers and parents. I am a proponent if even further training which I am pursuing for my son. But let us stop here on this point.

As experts give us the time and attention we should do the same in equal doses. Moreover, if an expert with limitless experience in a specific subject that could save the life of your teenage son is giving their insights free of charge; our engagement energy should be ever more present, especially when it comes at no cost. As I sat there listening to Jeff Andretti, Pierre Kleinubing, and other auto racers with impeccable racing credentials, I could not help but notice the lack of energy from some of the people that were present; it felt as though some thought this was owed to them; a feeling most prevalent with the teenage lot. Perhaps it was just me feeling this or perhaps it is a Washington DC region thing (there is a reason they call this region the “Hollywood for ugly people” after all.) This brings me to the next insight: culture

In being asked to talk about Innovation (a new way of thinking, really) and culture, I was asked to comment on my own cultural background and the effects that it may have on my views. After all I have lived in four distinct cultures and worked in four distinct cultures. This self assessment (which I recommend to everyone) was very hard to do but it revealed some interesting insights that have radically changed the way I communicate. The most significant insight (lots of background analysis that we need not go into here) is that I attribute much more value to the time I spend engaging with other people be it for business or personal reasons. This causes asymmetries with others because my engagement energy is usually greater, particularly if it is with someone and/or something that I deem important.

In the final analysis there are at least two occasions where our engagement energy should be heightened: 1) when we are getting wisdom for free and 2) when we are engaging with others in matters of substance.

Video and the new Workforce: Enterprise must respond

2009-05-13T23:56:00.004-04:00

The move from text to visual is clear; we are in the middle of it. What is also clear is that attention spans are becoming shorter and that "movement" and "snappiness" in visual communications is becoming a must. This will be the new normal.
A new and interesting perspective regarding the synergy of these trends, is that they will become essential if a business is to be able to communicate adequately with its new workforce which is now composed of digital natives that have grown up accustomed to these traits.
This past Monday I participated in the Streaming Media East event in NYC and in an after-show get together (sponsored by investment bankers I might add) I got into a conversation with the CEO of a company that basically helps companies distribute information effectively behind its firewalls. He is the one that brought this point to the forefront and it is absolutely right on.
It is a known fact that these new generation of workers do not abide by the old rules. The very notion of what constitutes an "immersive" experience is being redefined.
Video is here to stay as a communication medium and enterprise needs to adopt it as part of their corporate communications strategy much like email become the new medium in the 80's. If not, the new gen workers will become restless and will be "media snaking" somewhere else.

What does Culture have to do with it!

2009-05-05T10:28:00.000-04:00

The cancellation of my trip to Germany today this week prompts me to write this blog entry and connect a couple of insights that have been swimming in my mind. The first is how inadequately prepared we are to deal with this basic and “distant” threat. I say “distant” because our social institutions have taught us to sort of be dismissive of these things as if we were above them.

I have been very forceful and critical of these facts (in particular towards our religious institutions) in my writings. We dismiss our basic nature and instincts to our peril.

The terrifying side of our dismissive attitude as a species is that we leave behind unresolved challenges. The list is long and expansive: birth control, teen pregnancy, sex education, drug legalization, public health preparedness, financial regulation, the environment, etc…These are fundamental ecosystems that have to be addressed and reformed but have not. We move on to the next thing, drunk with our self congratulatory and ego-centered culture leaving behind exhausted institutions, real leaders and environments.

I am often asked about Innovation and Culture and the interaction of both. By culture we mean corporate cultures. Much as what is reflected above in our general culture is reflected in corporate cultures. They have huge legacy issues as well that have not been addressed. One of them is the need for revamping training and education with the objective of teaching life learning, another is to install effective collaborative platforms, another is incentives that are conducive to innovative thinking and not “keeping my job.”

Lately, I hear the incessant din from auto analysts on how wrong the leadership at GM and Chrysler has been and how simple it is really do design cars that people want to buy. Nissan has done so, FIAT has done so and even Porsche emerged from their crisis triumphant and now own Volkswagen. I agree, but it is “simple” for those with up-to-date leadership skills composed of: vision and perspective, passion for creating and the ability to thrive in rapidly changing environments.

The first step in the process of transforming from an “also ran” corporate culture to an innovative culture is to first acknowledge the existing culture and its limitations. The second step is to find ways to work with the limitations and/or fix them. The follow up tasks from the second step is to start asking the hard questions: Is the corporate culture that I am trying to change engineering driven or sales driven? Is the culture heretical, dismissive, or hierarchal? Is it closed or distributed? Is the culture risk averse? Is the culture operations driven, process driven, etc…?

The Greatest Risk of All...

2009-04-17T09:17:00.003-04:00

Having just come back from international travel and being an spectator to the latest fear mongering that the Mexican drug cartels will invade the USA and kill us all, it never ceases to amaze me how wantonly unsophisticated some of the thinking of our citizenry really is. Even our supposed leaders – to my dismay - exhibit similar characteristics. Yet again, more evidence of the emotional sinkholes that some of citizenry has become. We simply cannot get past the emotional thinking traps spouted by irresponsible talking heads via our shiny flat screens now casting their images in fine, bombastic details.

We have lost our ability to think critically and analytically- period.

Please, please, people start thinking. Take classes that teach improvisional thinking, understand statistics, read history and understand why things are the way they are. Discover that we drive the violence in Mexico via our drug consumption. Understand that we spend $60 Billion on the war on drug for the sake of 35 Million addicts and that this is not a good return on investment. Please understand that we are supplying the weapons to them and please understand that our choice to allow the sale of assault rifles in America is allowing Mexican drug operators to come to USA and buy these weapons. Please understand that our hunger for cheap products and services is driving China to produce defective products that poison us and drive immigrants here to cut our lawns, build our houses, and make our hamburgers.

Please.

In reading the latest brilliant innovation re-thinking treatise on risk and the need to reorient ourselves on how we perceive risk, http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102552338083&s=260215&e=001vC7pQ5l4o0u4KOzHdkgxabmdLuR5rwvasl8wpM2fTIJtQX7CoAvsiflQK1Pz3kBkDrIFWfZdmKZIhDaVKtw2Rk9UY0jrIPldNNlovVsK_g2LdxPRQ1niHoTaHQ-9gWerbevB2VOdjdHBrC_-DITPkg0J9JpTK4ydit occurred to me that the greatest risk to America is these aforementioned inabilities. Why? Because when you really think about it, all decisions result from our selections and choices and if we are not capable of distinguishing fact from fiction, we can cause serious damage to the entire world. Need proof? We are living the results of our poorly conceived choices of the last eight years. There is simply no argument on this fact.

Like Benjamin Franklin once said: “Investment in knowledge always pays the best Interest”
So let us start…

Thoughts on Reductionism and Clicks...

2009-04-14T13:34:00.002-04:00

What does it say when one's name is reduced to a letter? I am a Dale Carnegie graduate which in his teachings emphasized that a person’s name is one of the most important sounds one will ever utter in the process of making friends and influencing people. So what is one to do now, call people by their first letter? If so, then isn’t it presumptuous to assume that I may want to be addressed by the letter A. This is clearly some kind of trend that we can aggregate under the concept of “reductionism” driven – in my humble opinion- by our need to deal with the crushing amount of information being piped into our brains…I have seen this trend evolve over the last year and it seems to be gaining speed. Innovators out there: take notice.

On clubs and clicks- In our attempt to synthesize and filter reality, one has to look inwards at times and ask behavioral questions of ourselves. The other day, I did exactly that regarding my lack of interest with clubs. My adult life has been punctuated by joining clubs (Porsche Club, bicycling, soccer, Latin) and sticking with them for awhile but then losing interest. Why? The answer was surprising and while not representative of others out there perhaps, it is nevertheless an interesting data point. I lose interest when clubs turn into “clicks” which in turn breed the idea of “us vs. them” mentalities. This is instructive because it is what happens inside companies as well: sales vs. engineering, operations vs. marketing, PR vs. sales, Fixed vs. mobile, etc…

I am not an anthropologist (although I am wishing I was) but there seems to be something in our DNA that causes this pattern. Perhaps it is our need to reduce reality to a manageable level (that reductionism thing again), perhaps it is our need to feel liked by others, perhaps it is our need to belong to something, anything! Whatever it is (I invite anthropologists to tell me why), it is something that needs to be battled, especially as it concerns the ability for a company to be more innovative.

Interestingly enough this pattern does not seem to be happening in “social networks” such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…Or is it?

I was in Chile last week and I was amazed as to how much closer the citizens of Chile live on the edge of danger as compared to the USA. They just have a different perception of danger, it seems. There were many examples but here are just a few: groups of people gathering and conversing next to roads and only moving away at the last minute as the car approached; the cyclist cycling in the city of Santiago in ridiculously narrow lanes without a helmet and with trucks whizzing by within micro centimeters from death; the pick up truck overloaded to the point that the suspension could break any minute; the small car stuffed with too many people, none of them wearing seatbelts.
If one thinks hard enough, there are plently of insights to be derived from this latest observation. One of them is that we must exercise our powers of observation wherever we are. Another one is that even the most hardened of concepts can still be the subject of interpretation. The last one is that in developing countries such as Chile, the perceptions of danger will evolve providing ample room for business opportunities like selling biking helmets.

Scattered Thoughts....Travelling, IT Security..

2009-03-26T09:39:00.004-04:00

I was in Germany last week and the combination of jet lag, little sleep, dinners, meetings, trade shows, etc..really killed me. It has taken me 4 days to fully recover from the fog that I have been in since getting back Friday night.

For the first time in my career, I fully felt the effects of this travel. I could see and feel physical changes. As I looked in the mirror over the weekend, I could see my facial muscles change and show a face that I did not recognize. Further, my disposition was sour much to the displeasure of my family.

Note to travel policy decision makers: Travelling in cattle class for business has a huge impact on the health of your employees and paying for business class is probably a good investment, specially on overnight flights. The static old guide of allowing business class based on "flight time" does not work.

It could be the getting old thing, it could be the "out of sequence" that everything becomes when one is travelling across time zones. It could be a lot of things. One thing is clear, however, we need a better way to travel.

Please, I am calling on all Innovators out there. Please, please Startreck fans, find a way that to teletransport soonest...

The perennial tension between IT and Creativity...

Now more than ever, the IT departments in corporations are having a huge impact in an enterprise’s ability to innovate. The news about Obama and his blackberry that he has allowed to keep after strict security policies is just but the first salvo in this tension.

The advent of mobility and the extension of enterprise business operations, the ability of a brands to extend their reach via the multiplier effect that smartphones will provide, etc…, all of these are now subjected to the whims (capricious or not) of the head IT policy guy.
If an innovators ability to experiment is compromised by these IT policies, then that is not a good thing. Take mobility and the explosion of mobile applications that are basically changing how we live and work. This is the next revolution in Innovation thanks in part to the Iphone.

Calling in all security experts: Do what you have to do, but please take into consideration that like it or not, business and business processes, creativity, communications, ego-casting, social networks, etc...All of them are going mobile....

2 Quick Insights..."Luxury" is dead and the new Academia

2009-03-11T16:46:00.003-04:00

I was at an Innovation conference 2 weeks ago and amongst the many insights that I was able to capture, a few were fairly obvious and a few not so obvious.
One that seems over the top obvious is that the term "luxury" (and the whole in your face "treat yourself because you are special") marketing mantras (are you listening Lexus and Range Rover?) are dead. Yes, dead.
News Flash: It is really no longer cool to drive a big SVU and own a big house. It is really not cool to be narcistic and market to these incstincts. We have entered a new era (not fast enough, really) of wholesomeness, empathy, respect, truth, trust, firmness. For a lesson on a company that has captured this new ethos, look at what Hyundai is doing. They certainly got the message and are acting on it.
In any case, I hope I am right. Now we need for this to "scale" to the rest of spoiled humanity.
The second not so obvious is that we - the people - are the greatness impediment to progress and new Innovations. On the one side because we are scared of technology (witness the Stem cell research debate) on the other because we have chosen to adopt innovations without really understanding the consequences. So we are squeezed in between these two extremes resulting in paralysis and/or giddiness.
OK, one last one...
My audience may not think this is a new insight, but it was to me....hoooold it...here it comes:
Academia no longer has the monopoly over education and - more importantly - knowledge transfer. Think of the possibilities!
I was told this by a brilliant academician and I personally have found this out from trying to work with academics. Now I know why; in many ways - at least as it concerns Innovation management theories and lessons - I am competing with them!

The Fertile Ground of Ideas between Extremes

2009-02-26T11:28:00.001-05:00

As I sit here working from home I am hearing a piece on the radio about new research that finds that when one exercises it prepares the mind to be more receptive and positions it in a “better state of equilibrium” for receiving information. Further, the research also found out that kids that have the hardest time focusing learn better after exercise and occasional mini exercise breaks during the school day. The resulting research was so positive that a school system in the state of North Carolina here in the USA, has adopted its recommendations and is already seeing some results.

Of course we all sort of knew this at the margins. For example, I think best when I am walking and I write stories in my mind when I am riding my road bicycle. After these insights I started thinking of ways to be more active at work and one of the ideas was to have standing work stations. I do not particularly like sitting down all day in front of a computer, so I looked around, observed people and different scenes and came up with the idea (borrowed from airports, bars, etc…) of having standing office spaces for those of us that may want to work standing up.

The idea was dismissed and as I thought about why it was dismissed, I realized that it was so because people tend to think in binary terms and either/or propositions. There is so much that we can do to make things better and sometimes solutions are so simple and common sense that they are dismissed because of what I already labeled: snappy polarity.

Having just come back from an Innovation Conference in New York City arranged by The Economist (yes, the magazine guys) it got me thinking indeed how wedded we still are to old ways of doing things. Further, how wedded our minds are to not considering that fertile field of ideas and solutions that reside between extremes.

Stimulating the "Initiative" Gene

2009-02-23T15:17:00.002-05:00

Consistent with the belief that it is our obligation to constantly reformulate how one looks at things via new perspectives and asking questions around the peripheries of what we do, I would like to propose a new way to visualize how we motivate people.
If I look back at the things that I have done to get new Innovations adopted during my career, I find some recurring themes.
One of them has to do with the evangelization process that one has to compel when a new Innovation is positioned inside an organization. In a somewhat circuitous route, I believe that the way to get people to want to support your ideas is by stimulating their “initiative” gene, if there is such a thing.
So, how does one design an organization to provoke individual initiative? Here are a few conditions that are a must: 1) the organization has to be flexible enough to allow employees to deploy their initiative without fear of retribution, of stepping on other department’s toes, or fearing that they can loose their existing functions. 2) The organization has to allow the combination and recombination of “tiger” teams and once a team has been proven, re use it. Getting things done is a lot more about people getting along and having similar visions than technological challenges. 3) Once a tiger team is implemented, the rest of the organization needs to encircle the tiger team with focused support, especially with administrative and non-essential issues. 4) Incentives must be tied to project objectives. 5) There has to be a path of acceptance for the members of the tiger team as they return to their traditional roles.
The key fundamental point is to adapt organizations to human nature and its vicissitudes and not the other way around.

Communications, Staying in Touch, A rant

2009-02-13T09:07:00.003-05:00

So here is the thing…It seems as though with all this communications technology out there – please, let me count the ways: phone (talking), email, IM, Twitter, SMS, web email, Facebook, linkedIN, community portals, etc… people seem to be in touch less, at least as it concerns the digital immigrants. You know... us old folks...that is, anyone not born since Microsoft has been a life force.

This frustrates the heck out of me because I have members of my communities that do not exercise their communication muscle via these new technologies. They are stuck on the old world and use that “talking” medium to the exclusion of everything else…”Oh, I don’t know how to text”, goes the old refrain…Well, LEARN…”Oh, I am just too tired to call at the end of the day” Well, send an SMS or email or twitter or IM, saying so!

Please, here are a few insights on this subject in no particular order of importance; just top of mind thoughts:

1) Communication is not just about talking on the phone; it is also about being in touch, providing life status to your friends and community and - very simply – showing that you care…Life is for sharing, right?

2) Using these new technologies will open new channels of communications with your kids; guaranteed. A good thing in anyone’s book.

3) If you don’t choose to use any of these technologies to reach out – then, in my book – you are saying you don’t wish to remain linked to that person. Period.

4) Writing an SMS to say, for example, “Got your VM…Jammed….We’ll cal bak in few days” takes less than 30 seconds, surely an adequate investment with the people you care about. Moreover, there are ways to stage these messages and send them with little effort. Let me see, 30 seconds is a TV commercial…can you spare that time? I think yes…

5) Moreover, if you have a Smartphone – such as an iPhone, G1, Blackberry, etc…there is NO excuse for you to not be able to send a note via any of these mediums to the people you care about.

6) What is wrong with being proactive and occasionally sending a TEXT (SMS) to all your friends, community…whatever…saying…”Have you in mind, Hope all is well”

News Flash: It is a NEW world out there. This world is no longer static and one-dimensional, it is dynamic, intersectional and engaging. It is real-time, cooperative and collaborative, and it’s fast. It has become all these things and like it or not it will stay this way.

Please adopt these Innovations and be in Touch!

Competitive Intelligence..Inside is best

2009-02-05T10:52:00.000-05:00

Just the other day I was invited to speak locally at a competitive intelligence conference. These practitioner were very intrigued by the whole concept of innovation and the philosophical efforts therein to accelerate and harmonize the process of producing product and services that people actually want.( Let us remember that 80% of product launches are failures). In my view (and theirs) timely competitive intelligence should be an important part of the “innovation algorithm.”

Sources of competitive information cover the gamut and range from web sites, to analyst reports, to primary research to web searches. There is one source, however, that is often overlooked and that is a company’s own internal activities. The larger the organization the more competitive intelligence that is available for analysis, mining, comparing, etc…

The difficulty is in capturing and sharing this information. Therefore the easy and high level answer is to implement a knowledge management/sharing platform internally that is able of capturing and sharing this information. Most importantly, however, is the need to empower employees to share this information - perhaps in anonymity if need be.

Much as the “data” generated by systems is becoming the most relevant monetizable assets, so goes perhaps with the knowledge generated inside corporations. There is immense value in this knowledge but only if shared.
I know, easier said than done but essential.

Survival Responses

2009-02-02T08:08:00.010-05:00

As I was doing a little work this weekend, I was listening to a talk show in NPR radio. The host was Diane Rehm and the subject was a book called The Survivors Club, authored by Ben Sherwood a researcher. (For those international colleagues that are not familiar with NPR, it stands for National Public Radio, a free service that is funded largely by individual contributors).
The author set out to research why and how humans respond to survival situations and as it inevitably happens with new research, some very interesting information and ideas emerged from the book.

One of them is the development of a test available at http://www.thesurvivorsclub.org that aims to predict our individual responses to survival situations. It turns out that there are specific patterned behavioral responses that all of us fall into. The majority of us (about 80% according to the author) fall into the freezing response, which, it turns out it’s not the most favorable to dealing with survival/emergency situations. (Caveat: I have not read the book as of yet, but intend to).

The author broadly defines survival situations to include loss of job, health problems, financial problems, combat, as well as extreme emergency situations like airplane accidents. And rightly so in my opinion; we tend to be dismissive of some of these events and the impacts of the same in our abilities to go on. As one that has been through some of what he defines as survival situations (loss of job, health problems with loved ones, financial loss – I work in telecom/hi-tech after all) I can attest to the fact that our responses to the same unequivocally speak to how we will emerge from them.

While this was intriguing, the more fascinating idea was the reason why the author created this “test.” The author believes that by all of us knowing our response-type we will be better prepared to respond to survival situations. Further, he does so in the hope that some of us will pursue strategies aimed at improving our responses. His hypothesis is rooted in evolutionary theories, in that by performing these actions we are in effect guiding our genes to learn to the benefit of all in subsequent generations.

So, in the pursuit of ideas on how to drive more efficient Innovation, it occurred to me that we need to borrow some of these survival theories and apply them to Innovation management theories and in effect aiding us and our corporations to adopt better survival response practices.

The first step is therefore to read this book and encapsulate practices that can help us be better prepared. The fist and foremost practice, it turns out, not surprisingly, is acknowledgment and acceptance that what one is facing is in fact a survival situation.

It is not about more education...

2009-01-30T13:19:00.002-05:00

In the pursuit of a semi-intellectual discussion on Innovation and the perceived value of the same with the current generation of CEO's, a question was posited about the new generation of CEO's and their ability to absorb and retain new innovation theories. Further, the specific question was asked: will the increased education make them more receptive to these ideas? (paraphrased).

My respond was the following (and it is something that I have noted before):

It is not about more education at all. This is a fallacy; we know this now more than we ever wished. Witness the havoc - on a global scale - caused by the highly educated Wall Street crowd with their new MBA's from brilliant educational institutions like Wharton, Harvard, etc...

There is a difference between being "educated" and "cultured." What we need is more cultured facilitators (we need to stop calling them leaders, because if you believe in the power of human creativity to innovate, then what we need is facilitators and not "leaders") starting with CEO's that are open, aware, sensing, receptive, global and that value creativity and the tools to make this happen in their organizations.

Moreover, we need CEO's that want to make their workforces more cultured and thus address the "conceptual" gaps in their organizations, by instituting a life-learning ethos and utilizing theories such "appreciative inquiry" to drive knowledge transfer and to harmonize their workforces to better accept new learning's.

Taxi Wisdom...

2009-01-15T18:33:00.006-05:00

"They all work for me” he said..

In my world a slice of life is an occasion where ones soul is nurtured and enriched with new insights and discoveries. It should be the task of all of us to find meaning on those small moments that to most go unnoticed and un-contemplated. This is the stuff of new learning’s and insights.
Here is an idea: what if life is nothing but a sequence of new beginnings, all of them motivated by new learning’s? My latest slice of life episode was a conversation I had with a taxi driver on the way to the airport.
His name was Farooq and he had very interesting life lessons distilled from a difficult life on the road. You see, his philosophy was that all people around him, all of us humans going about our life movements, those of us that interact with him and his taxi. All of us, doing the mundane things of existence, all of us work for him.
He went to explain that by these interactions and by his positive and non-judgmental reactions to them he is facilitating for others to do their work better, releasing positive energy which in-turn facilitate the lives and work of others that may be his future riders.
Wow!
During the ride to the airport, he was tested and what a beautiful test it was. As we were merging into the highway there was an instance where it was obvious that a truck, itself merging into traffic, was going to cut us off and instead of playing his horn to push him out of the way, he did so to invite him to get in front of him.
“You see, he is working for me and therefore I have to help him do his work better”
Then he went to say that awhile back he had done an analysis and quantified how much time he had lost when another vehicle had cut him off. He said he added the time for 20 instances (taking into consideration that most he vehicles he passed later on anyways) and his grand total was….ready….60 seconds!

I work for Farooq.

"Community Equity", enterprise and how service providers can help.

2008-12-23T10:53:00.004-05:00

The cat is so totally out of the bag that it is not even funny. Open Innovation is here to stay and service providers must respond in kind and able to assist our enterprise and media customers in this process. Why? because service provides are at the intersection of all relevant forces.

Take the enterprise markets as an example. As they discover the twin powers of community building around their brands and Web 2.0-type mechanisms to converse with their communities, they are increasingly seeking holistic solutions from service providers that understand these dynamics best. Bringing these two disparate worlds together is not easy and requires entities that understand the power of combining evolving communications technology with applications. Further, it must be done in a consultative manner and via an interactive dialogue.

In order to most efficiently do this, service providers must be conversant with Innovation methodologies that can accelerate the process of creating, advancing and packaging these solutions and further, that have the vision to see and anticipate technological and market evolutions.

I hold that Telecom carriers are in a unique position to provide these holistic solutions to enterprise since they are present at the intersection of all these forces.

With the realization of this fact, and the proper adoption of open innovation theories and new business models, carries could easily play a critical role in capturing "community equity" for our customers.

In order to germinate this idea further, let us start by rebranding the industry from: Telecommunications to "Telecreation"

Innovation Orbits and the Perils of Success

2008-12-22T12:04:00.001-05:00

Like it or not as we grow doing what we do we create orbits around us.

If one is working in Innovation one must take tangents to learn about Innovation management and the latest thought provoking ideas on how best to design our enterprise systems and people. While in this tangential process of discovery one realizes that there is so much we don’t know that needs to be explored and in this journey one creates an orbit of like-minded people on the same mission and with the same intentions. Or, are they?

At the risk of using a cliché, all is connected and there are many relevant intersections to learn from. For starters there are economic, organizational and leadership theories. Further, there is psychology and brain research. There are also human nature theories and political economic theories. In short, there is lots of fertile ground to intersect and interact with via conferences, books, exec training, research papers, one-on-one meetings, videos, etc…

Engaging in this process is quite thrilling, thought provoking and to some extent addicting. For some of us this can become a life mission: and why not? The process of anticipating the new and from there uncovering reasonable ideas that one can package and create a product or service that is marketable, is an immensely complex process fraught with many hurdles and challenges.

So, there are a lot of positives from the orbit that one creates during the journey (any journey for that matter). But unfortunately, there is the negative side as well, mostly driven by the human element and its primitive emotions lying dormant in our reptilian minds.

I think they call it “the perils of success”? Once a certain success is achieved, there is never a shortage of people that will take credit where there is none or discredit one’s progress without provocation and justifications. We all know this happens in all circles be it enterprise, academic, political, etc…The interesting thing about human nature is that its governance is indiscriminant to fields of endeavor, and if not managed correctly can derail the success of an innovation project.

It will be awhile before we humans evolve into non-ego centric leadership models and our brains evolve to support true collaborative eco systems. Until then, we must guard against these developments by being aware of the orbits that are created in the pursuit of an idea and one must have a plan to deal with the negative spin offs.

More importantly, one must leverage these perils to once advantage in the pursuit of an idea and project success….And, herein is where the trade secrets lie…

Dynamic Communications and Transformation

2008-12-17T09:26:00.003-05:00

I was asked to participate in an Innovation management survey the other day regarding the question of Transformation and how well companies handle this very important condition. I call it a “condition”, because transforming the way a company thinks (which by extension means transforming peoples mindsets) is a very difficult task that I have had some experience with.

Someone once said that 80% of the World’s problems are caused by miscommunications. I believe this to be true. We humans are very imperfect when it comes to processing information. We need to synthesize and we need to have artificial constructs in order to make sense of things. Add to that cultural differences and we really are in difficult territory interpreting things. This leads to massive “lost in translation” issues.

One of my deep insights in working in Innovation environments is that communications plays a massive role. How one communicates internally with colleagues differs extensively from how one communicates to those immediately outside one’s group but that you depend on to get things done (I call these Innovation touch points). How you communicate to the next internal corporate layer, also differs. How you communicate to your partners and how you communicate to the market at large differs as well.

You get the point; communications is highly relevant and must be dynamic, fresh and prescient. I have lots of lessons learned here that would exhaust the size of this blog, but I will throw a couple of concepts and practices that I have recommended and adopted internally. The first is simply this: repetition.

There is the old saying that repetition is the mother of learning; well, my dear beloved audience, this is absolutely true. We have seen immense positive results from applying this very easy concept (more difficult to execute of course). One example here is training. Training is communicating new concepts, isn’t it? (the training ethos - and in general our teaching ethos- has been corrupted and accelerated by “death by PowerPoint” and static teaching mechanisms that convey information but don’t really “teach.”)

In keeping with the repetition recommendation, here is on practice that pays dividends. Don’t hold one big training session, but multiple smaller ones that are more tightly integrated with smaller groups of like-minded individuals intended to isolate the naysayer’s and enhance the learning energy of those in the audience.

Acceptance (capitulation?) before Creation

2008-12-15T13:04:00.002-05:00

This weekend I was reading an interview in the Atlantic magazine with a Chinese money manager – Gao Xiging - who controls about $200 Billion of China’s wealth; wealth that is basically keeping our nation from collapsing and that was obtained from American’s out of control consumption.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/fallows-chinese-banker

The interviewer was James Fallows, a fantastic journalist with immense international experience, specifically in Asia. The Chinese gentleman was educated in the USA as a lawyer and graduated from Duke University and had worked in the USA before moving back to China to take on this role.

His vision therefore is a broad vision composed of US-based and Chinese perspectives. The interview was about the financial crisis that in large part was precipitated by us and our “pragmatic” American attitudes; a pragmatism that in my view is hurting us.

What really caught my attention, however, was his statement about what our new President needs to tell the American people. Here it goes:

“This is wartime; this is about the survival of our Nation. It is not about our supremacy in the world. Let’s not talk about that anymore. Let’s get down to the very basics of our livelihood”

This statement is not so different than when a company- faced with survival caused by disruptive technologies – needs to do in order to rise again. Accepting the truth is the first must- have. The second is capitulation.

The important innovation lesson here is that minds must accept and internalize the disruption before they can deal with new creations. Or, as a great Zen expression states:

A closed mind rejects what they see.
A wise mind rejects what they think.

Good advise indeed.

Innovation, Leadership and "Street Sense"

2008-12-12T08:56:00.003-05:00

I know it has been a long time…

Google, as I understand, is brutal on us bloggers that do not keep up their blogging activity, so I guess search result may not be picking this up until I get going again.

Time to catch up.

In any case, I wanted to pick up on the theme from my last entry. That is, that nothing will forever by static and everything is becoming furiously dynamic.
Witness the incredible pace of change and how fast things are happening. Witness how quickly wild capital can collapse economies and event countries. Witness how quickly the greed-based subprime mess/contagion is collapsing industries and how quickly old, stale, static leadership is being proven wrong, false, cruel and in the end- hyper-irresponsible.

Exhibit one: GM. This albatross is where it is partly due to shockingly bad leadership totally devoid of foresight. It does not take a genius (or maybe it does) to figure out that GM was too big, had too many brands and had leadership unwilling to make the tough choices. Witness the Hummer brand; need we say more?

Given the furious pace of change, one thing that all of us in Innovation need to be aware of is the “now future”. I call it the now future, because glances of what the future will be are all around us if we take the time to listen and take note. We need to be totally ON and aware of trends as we build and evolve products on a daily basis.

The interesting thing is that the pace of change and technology is moving so fast that it is changing us, further accelerating developments. I have talked about his before extensively and have given presentations on this issue. We have to get better at sensing this now future and here is another thought that perhaps can help get us there.

We need to teach our executives and leaders “street sense.” This idea arose from a coffee grab I had with a bunch of international colleagues that were brought up abroad and that had very varied backgrounds and experiences. They had this “street sense” and were commenting on the fact that there seems to be a lack of this quality in American business cultures.

So, this got me thinking of course.

At the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing I have been told that I have “good” street sense (what “good” means is subject to definition but let us leave this aside for now and please flow with me on this). So I started looking for answers and I think the answer may lie on our backgrounds. In my case, I was raised in four different “social cultures” (Chile, El Salvador, Mexico and USA) and four different business cultures (American, British, German and Latin American).
Having this multiplicity of exposures, I surmise, gives our brains multiple experiences that are basically stored in our minds not as active memories, but as latent memories always serving as a check to whatever event is presented to us. ( I would love to partner with brain researchers on this in order to prove the theor empirically.)

So, the huge challenge then is how to package this insight to teach our emerging leaders? We can try the approach used in the movie Matrix, but we are not quite there yet where we can upload new learnings via a port in the back of our heads.

I have said many times that immersive travel is one answer. Immersive travel is very, very unique but most people are scared by the prospects. Another trick is participating in improvisational workshops; I have done a couple of these and they really work in waking the mind and presenting it with new dimensions.

While I think of other ways to accomplish this, I invite you to think about it as well...

"Feeling" Innovation and the currency of speed

2008-11-17T15:32:00.005-05:00

I know that for some of you the experience of opening up and using a Google phone is either: 1)fait accompli, for all those of you in advanced mobile markets such as Korea, Japan and to some extend Europe, or 2) who cares, for all of you that just want a phone to work as a phone.

So, here is the thing, the last thing a Google phone does (and for that matter the iPhone) is make calls. As I have noted before, calling these "hand-top" devices "phones" is a total misnomer. These devices represent the future in so many ways that it is hard to qualify them. For starters, they are the source of some of the greatest innovations, such as the inventor of a microscope that attaches to the phone camera and can take and send pictures for the purposes of diagnosing diseases all around the World in ten minutes or less. http://www.popsci.com/

Part of innovation management is trying to develop "forevision" and watching my son's unfolding experience was quite revealing int is regard.

For starters, impressing a teenager is not easy and the Google phone accomplished this with little effort. Secondly, 90% of the time he has used the phone for everything but making calls. In fact, the majority of the time he has been using the device's 3G broadband capabilities to access the Web via its applications...In other words, the device is being used as a laptop with the added benefit of convenience, speed and real time results without the hassle of having to go somewhere else (to a PC or laptop) to get the requested information.

The insight here is that the device allows for the receipt of information wherever one is and in the process of doing other things like watching television, riding in the car, even using a PC, talking to another human being, etc..This makes speed and location most important leading to the idea that speed is in fact a "currency" that will rise and fall with the ability to deliver information quickly and via cool applications.

This evolving "currency of speed" is reflected in other technology fronts such as the ability to deliver advertising to web sites in 10 milliseconds or less, creating service tiers and pricing schemes determined by how fast an ad can be served.

Why? because the online user at the other end will move on to the next site if not.

Innovation needs Inspiration Too

2008-11-13T09:00:00.005-05:00

A few years back I met a writer of novels who had been on that journey for many years. He was young and was fortunate to have the funds to be able to go places to "get inspired". Fast forward a few years and a conversation I had with my brother in law who had the opportunity to meet Bruce Springsteen and talk about his creative process. It turns out, he needs inspiration as well.

The creative process requires inspiration, period. And those involved in Innovation management need it as well. I think humans in general require inspiration and the first thing we need to acknowledge is that this is a thing we NEED in order to live to the fullest.

I want to share a piece that I received from an inspirational speaker that I had the pleasure of meeting last year during our kick-off. His name is Eric Taylor and is the founder of Selfgrowth.com and empowerment group international.

One of the things that I have decided to do is to gravitate to people that can inspire and Eric is one of these people.

I find that when I engage with inspirational energy, I impart the same energy back in multiple ways. Eric does so with his weekly emails, of which this is one. I hope that I can do the same by sharing it with you.

Now You Can Blame Obama

Dear High Achiever:

IF YOU GOT PAST THE HEADLINE (No more politics for a while, please!) no, I’m not jumping on the Presidential Election bandwagon … sharing my political opinion … or typing a word about Candidate Palin (although I’m tempted).

So what’s up with the headline? President-Elect Obama is at the very core of FYI #130, no doubt. But it’s not about politics.

I’d rather share with you an observation and information that I believe will have a far greater impact on your quest toward personal development.

It’s about two interviews I watched with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Now, if you didn’t tune into this year’s Summer Olympics and if you don’t follow professional basketball, you may not know these two gentlemen and the influence they have over today’s young athletes. So --

Here’s some background: Kobe Bryant is more controversial than LeBron James, but both of these men are giants (no pun intended) in the world of professional sports, especially basketball. When they speak, play basketball or endorse a product (at least Lebron) people listen, watch and buy. Don’t know Kobe or LeBron, simply Google.

Here’s the Obama connection: So, I’m on my elliptical doing my cardio workout the morning after the election, bouncing back and forth between watching ESPN highlights, listening to my iPod and catching updates on CNN. I typically don’t watch CNN (Constant Negative News) but I do make an exception every four years for something like the Presidential Election.

Fortunately, I caught two brief interviews on ESPN with Kobe Bryant and LeBron James as they were being asked about the impact of Barack Obama being the first African-American elected President of the United States.

Their responses were similar and, to me, they were profound and insightful.

Of course, they were both very proud to be black and to live in America. They were also surprised that they had an opportunity to witness this historical event in their lifetime.

But what had the greatest impact on me was that they both said, and I’ll paraphrase –

Now you really can become and achieve anything you want. Kobe Bryant referenced that being a rap artist, an actor or professional athlete were once perceived as the only professions to make big money and have an impact if you were African-American. LeBron James spoke about how this election will impact his future children, and they way they will view the world, and the opportunities that exist.

As I said at the start, this FYI isn’t about politics. And it’s also not about race. It’s about beliefs and self-improvement and --

It’s about you and me. One thing both LeBron and Kobe made clear was –

Now you have no excuse.

Barack Obama took away your excuse. And you can blame him for that. It doesn’t matter whether you are black or white, rich or poor, now it’s clear that anyone has the potential to become President of the United States of America.

Both of these sports superstars are wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most people. They live a privileged life as a professional athlete in America. And now they are telling the people who hold their opinions in high regard, from all walks of life, of all races and professions, and especially the impressionable young children of this nation –

“ Now you really can become anything you can dream of, even the President of the United States”.

No more excuses. These interviews made me reflect on all of the excuses I hear people make about why they are not successful. Barack Obama stole that excuse last week, crushed it and discarded it forever.

You know his story and his history. Like it or not, you must concede it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a story of privilege. At one point after the election, when talking about the dog he had promised his daughters, he indicated he would like to go to the pound and get – his words:

“A mutt like me.” His success is earned. His win showed everyone who can see past the politics that you can do anything you set your mind to.

FYI Takeaway: I want to encourage you to stop blaming your past for your future. It’s true; your past does not equal your future. What happened yesterday is history, learn from it and keep moving in the direction of your goals and dreams.

Eric Taylor is the Chief Inspiration Officer of SelfGrowth.com and founder of New Jersey based Empowerment Group International. He delivers more than 100 energized and interactive keynotes, workshops and seminars each year to corporations, associations and tradeshows. He is the author of the Energy Passport, Co-creator of the Best Year Ever! Personal Empowerment Program and Co-author of The Complete Sales Training Encyclopedia. Eric can be reached at 732.761.9930 ext.114 or email Eric@SelfGrowth.com or Eric@EmpowermentGroup.com

Nothing left Static: Digital and the power to disrupt everything

2008-11-07T11:01:00.003-05:00

As I sit here in my hotel room in LA with the patio door ajar, I can feel that famous temperate and sweet weather that has made California a world destination and the creative cauldron that it is.
On the occasion of the American Film Market tradeshow taking place here, I am trying to understand the impacts of the digital revolution on this industry.

As I have said before I do not feel that the industry leaders are assesing these impacts in a methodical way. OK, so perhaps they are and I just don't see it and they are quietly trying to assess the synergistic impacts (or not) of all the technology-driven trends and facts bearing down on them.

One interesting company from Europe doing just that, has created a web-based marketplace for the buying and selling of content (all of it destined to be digital). It is a "simple" B2B portal where you can easily preview any content that wishes to use the service (for a fee of course). It is sort of like an "Amazon" for content that incorporates all the backoffice functionalities dealing with contracts, transcoding, licensing, etc...All of it with the easy of clicking.

The implications of this new technology are huge. On the "cost" sid it could make this very tradeshow redundant, so suffice it to say CFOs will like this services. On the other side (notice I am staying clear of positive vs. negative attributes) it will accelerate the commoditization of content much like Amazon has done for books.

Herein proof yet again of the relentless march of the digital revolution and the disruptive power of the same driven by innovative thinking, creativity, entrepreneurship.
Nothing will forever remain static and everything will be dynamic.

The Energy of Rebirth.

2008-11-05T19:37:00.003-05:00

Innovation is at times pressing the reset button and starting anew, rejoicing in the new energy that is thrust upon us when exploring with new eyes and minds wide open.

Liberating the soul to explore new horizons and possibilities is part of the human condition; It is at the core of what liberty means. Once new conditions are unleashed and unshackled, everything seems possible.

I had one of those moments this AM where I could feel this new energy; a sort of rebirth.

Like it or not, the events of last night have shaken every social dynamic and construct; it is truly a colossal event full of portent and potential.

My day today started at 3:00 am, as I needed to catch a flight to the West coast. After an instantaneous waking I performed a quick check of CNN and quickly discovered the ground shaking events of last night putting the first "black" president in office.

I was elated not for reasons that most people would suspect; I was elated because the USA and the world needed to come together in a desperate way and Obama was, without a doubt, the only person to perform this magic.

As I made my way to the security line at the airport, the line was short and quick (benefits of early flights and mid-week schedules). When it came my turn to present my boarding pass, I did so to the security person that happened to be an African American woman. As I handed her my boarding pass and license she greeted me with a cheery "good morning" to which I responded "a very good morning indeed."
In turn, she responded: "yes, time for new beginning and coming together."

The energy of rebirth is palpable and has been unleashed.

It will all be alright in the latest installment of reinventing America.

Innovation Stimulus Package: Report from The Information Technology Innovation Foundation

2008-10-30T11:57:00.005-04:00

I wonder if we will ever see the day when we have "The Oscar's for Teaching and Education". I was lamenting this very thing with my wife the other day over coffee. Or maybe, we can have "The Oscar's for the greatest Innovation of the year"

In my experience, I find that a "life learning ethos" is a must in any society that wants to be at the front end of change and innovation, and critical to innovation management, creativity and - in general - creative thinking.

I saw a great quote yesterday in the hallway of my daughters school from Gandhi.

"We must be the change that we wish to see"

It fits in that we need to revamp our ideas of what education is and what it is for. It fits because in order to advance our minds and views we need to start the process of becoming life learners with ourselves.

I leave you with the top 8 recommendations from the aforementioned insitute available at:

http://www.itif.org/files/TimelyTargetedTemporaryTransformative.pdf

Allow IT Investments to Be Completely Expensed in 2009
Provide a Tax Credit for Investments in Health IT Made in 2009
Provide $2 Billion to Colleges and Universities That Invest in Needed Research Infrastructure in 2009
Provide a Tax Credit of 50 Percent for Investments in Energy Efficient Equipment in 2009
Provide $1.6 billion for Computers and Broadband for Low-Income Families with Children at Home
Provide an $8 Billion One-Time Infusion into the Highway Trust Fund to Spur Ready-to-Go Surface Transportation Infrastructure Investments
Allow U.S. Companies to Bring Back Foreign Earnings in 2009 at a Lower Corporate Tax Rate
Provide Forgivable Loans to States to Shore Up Budget Shortfalls, Provided That States Expand “Rainy Day" Funds in Later Years

We need a new definition of Smart

2008-10-24T07:38:00.003-04:00

Yes, here I go again...

Watching and hearing Dr. Greenspan in front of Congress yesterday was truly a revelation in one sense and a confirmation of another. There is a wholesale detachment out there from our leaders that is very hard to comprehend given what is transpiring. It is as if they are operating in a different orbit, immune from the physical world. They speak and move as in a cloud, floating above the chaos and pain. It is truly remarkable.

I understand how it can happen, though, it is that blissful human condition that comes when one is called an "oracle" and when one is drunk with power and hijacked by collective acquiescence. These things have vanquished historical leaders, and here again it has claimed its latest victim.

There is something that Mr. Greenspan said yesterday that resonates with my prevailing ethos that in order to advance innovation thinking you need leaders with a different set of attributes and human assets, not rooted in ego-centered leadership structures and static interpretations of what "smart" is and what "smart" can and cannot contribute to the benefit of society and innovative thinking.

In admitting that he had made mistakes he said (a direct quote) "that he was puzzled that the smartest people on wall street would buy these derivatives" that now are killing our society.
It turns out that 72% of those "derivatives" were purchases by hedge funds, in other worlds the Black Stones of the world with the "smartest" people to come out of business schools.

Now we know that this type of "smart" does not scale well and does not necessarily translate into benefits for the common good. We need new definitionS of smart and thank God this is finally being recognized by the latest brain research. There are many "smart" types or "intelligences" and the key is to deploy these different intelligences at the right time in whatever cycle of a thing or system one is working on, be it a business cycle, a product cycle, a creation cycle, a regulatory cycle, etc...
For more in this, please click on this link. This innovator talks about the new, new brain skills that we need for the future and talks about Daniel Pink's new book " In a Whole New Mind"

http://stefanlindegaard.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/six-right-brain-skills-every-intrapreneur-should-cultivate/

This seems to be gaining a hold in Innovation Management circles so why not try it in our regulatory and political elites?

Extremes and "Snappy Polarity"

2008-10-17T09:20:00.001-04:00

So here we go again, from one extreme to another.

We basically had eight years of one political party drunk with power ruining things for everyone. Now, based on the latest Wall Street Journal op ed ( October 17, 2008) we are already talking about the liberal super majority destined to get drunk on power and really ravage things for everyone.

This could absolutely be true and could happen. Let us hope that they have learned the lessons from the last eight years and don’t. I hope that if Senator Obama wins he will have the intellectual fortitude (as he appears he does) to perform post mortems on what has happened and guard against abuse of power.

The point, however, is that once again we the people are engaging in what I call “snappy polarity”. We swing from one extreme to the other as if there is no middle ground and no lessons to be gained from hybrid thinking and new proposals. I will stop here because this is not a political but an innovation blog.

There is analogous behavior in business, however, and it is a polarity of extremes driven by the consultancies. I find it so ironic that at the same time the Boston groups of the world are advising one company to decentralize, they are advising the other to centralize. I will not mention names, but this is exactly what has happened in my industry with several players. What is up of that? I theorize that they are just taking advantage (don’t blame them, really) of the massive confusion that exists in corporate boardrooms regarding solutions on how best to organize and compete in a crushingly competitive world.

In my view, it ought not to be about these extreme solutions; it ought to be about hybrid concepts and ideas on how to drive for maximum creative and innovative output. If this is truly the objective- and it ought to be- then these dictums are stale and dead on arrival.

There are management concept and ideas emerging from Innovation theories that challenge these practices head on. How about rotating management structures? How about adopting trial and error-based organizations? How about adopting venture capital theories in management? How about organizing around “fast failing” philosophies? How about intra-company entrepreneurial centers?

Will our ego-centered management cultures accept these solutions and ideas? Not yet, but they will.

The point is that new, hybrid ideas need to considered and tested and not dismissed with this entrenched polar thinking and snappy, emotionally driven behaviors.

Innovation and Creativity

2008-10-16T08:01:00.002-04:00

So here is the deal...Innovation and creativity go hand in hand and the stimulation of creativity is becoming an area of focus in the mainstream think tanks. (I know, I sound like a broken Mp3). For the latest on this, please go to your latest issue of Harvard Business Review (October 2008 issue). If you don't have it, sorry, you are missing some good stuff.

I am not pushing, HBR, mind you. What I am trying to push for is for the wholesome adoption of creative teaching in our society because in my job, I see a dearth of creativity in the people that are not in "creative" endeavors but are responsible for the heartbeat of companies.

In any case, here is the link to the article for those that may want to download it (and pay for it).

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=R0810G

But wait, there is more.

For all those Executives out there that may just have arrived at this blog by accident and are trying to institute an innovation practice and want to hire people with a creative bent, here is some quick advise.

This is purely anecdotal, but when interviewing a potentially creative person for your Innovation practice, present them with a product that you may be thinking of producing and see how they react and what they say. Don't tell them too much in terms of what you expect them to say; in other words don't present it as a case study. Instead throw it out there casually and just say: "if you were part of the innovation team how would react to such a product."
For responses look for phrases such as: "...what if we could do this..." "...Oh yes, and we could do this if we changed that..." or "...how about if we changed it to adapt to this and that market" "if I did this, it would address a new vertical" "the go-to-market strategy could be this..."

In my experience responses with a passionate tone that include these catch phrases are reflective of three things: 1) intellectual curiosity; 2) willingness to be part of a group with "we" instead of "I" and 3) a creative drive to create something new in a team invironment

Innovation and Human Nature

2008-10-10T12:25:00.004-04:00

What can a lowly Innovation blogger say about what is going on in the World...not much, really.

Our "leaders" are so embattled trying to prevent the next depression, that all voices have been drowned out now in favor of operational execution of a rescue plan that while innovative is seriously complex, complicated and time consuming to execute well.

The crisis, unfortunately, needs action real-time, as in now, and not 6 months from now when the "reverse auctions" might finally be put in place.

In my view this crisis elevates an issue that has been in my mind for a long time and it is the issue of Human nature and the lack of relevance we attribute to it.

In very simple terms: As a nation rooted in puritanical principles, we seem to willfully dismiss and discount human nature as a factor in human actions.

In this latest episode, we have ignored greed as a supremely relevant human instinct.

Did we really think that the mortgage broker would NOT sell the wrong mortgage to a new Latino immigrant when he could make $1M + / year in commissions by doing so?
Did we really think that the Wall Street MBA just out of Wharton business school would not create the latest financial instrument so that he/she cold make their $1M+ yearly bonus?

Another example...in our discussion of teenage pregnancy do we really think that kids will stop having sex because we tell them not to? Instead of accepting the fact that sex is an instinct and part of human nature, we dismiss it and teach our kids abstinence and do not teach about sexuality and how to avoid pregnancy.

Let's all grow up and accept that we humans are imperfect and part animal (oh, the horror) and that we need to address these imperfections in ourselves via ALL our social systems.

Innovation, Technology and...Yes, you guessed, new Jobs

2008-10-02T09:41:00.003-04:00

I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Dr Atkinson last month. He is the founder of The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) based in Washington DC. The ITIF is a small think thank producing wonderful reasearch and advancing the cause of technology anb Innovation.

One of its missions is to elevate the profile of technology and Innovation as a driver of economic growth and economic development. The following report is a must read for everyone in Innovation Policy circles: http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=34

Based on my conversation with Dr. Atkinson it appears that there people in government that do not believe -let me repeat - DO NOT believe that the greatest economic expansion of all time during the 90's happened - in large part - because of technology and Innovation. Apparently the Internet, digital telecommunications, Google, the wireless revolution, the Iphone...all of it happened becuase for other reasons and had nothing to do with new Innovations hitting the market and changing the very core of how we communicate and live.

There you have it folks...Yep, sad but true...

Innovative Solution to our economic crisis: Prudence as the vehicle

2008-10-01T10:25:00.002-04:00

This morning during my drive to work I was listening to NPR where they were discussing – what else- the latest “Innovation”to come out of Pennsylvania street.

As a congresswoman was being interviewed about her no vote, she mentioned the word “prudence” and expounded on it being part of the mid-western value system. In my world prudence is a universal value, but let us drop this line of thinking for now.

Like everyone else, however, her analysis stopped there and did not take the next logical leap, which is how do we stimulate the prudent people; first as a way of thanking them for being prudent and second as a vehicle for fixing the economic mess that we are being told we are in.

Being in innovation and involved in a daily process of evangelization of new ideas to internal and external audiences, I have come upon the realization that in many instances companies mobilize their entire "enlightened" energy to change the minds of the reluctant few which in may intances are CEO's.

By any measure, this is not a good utilization of resources: the many mobilizing for the reluctant few. Or, taking this logic one step further, those with prudence ought to be the ones to change the minds of the imprudent. With that in mind, here is my recipe for our politicians to consider:

Take the $700 Billion and distributed to the prudent few. Let us say this equals to about $1Million for each prudent family. In case the prudent few become imprudent due to this new found windfall (let us cover for weak human nature traits, like greed) we will have them save at least ½ of it in a prudent bank (thus building bank reserves and loosening credit) and the other ½ they can spend in specific purchases. If they need a car if would have to be American so that we help Detroit and the trade deficit. If in education, it would have to be advanced education in Math & Science so that it can help us compete with China and India. The rest they can use to pay off their credit card debts (the next shoe to drop in American households) and lower their mortgage debt and thus bring balance to their equity holdings.

There you have it, should any politician out there wish to call me on this. Please feel free to do so.

Oh boy, we need an Innovative Thinking overhaul...

2008-09-29T11:49:00.002-04:00

Lack of Leadership and Innovation thinking continues...watching the debate last week was a painful experience for me. Besides the total lack of respect that McCain exhibited to his counter part, there is so much to say about the lack of intellectual rigor that was so evident from our septuagenarian candidate.

How can we still be talking solely about spending and framing the debate in a spender and not-spender polarity? Have our leaders so diluted the message – and ourselves - that we cannot develop the debate past the spending, no-spending mantras? Do we have to rescue everyone from celebrity-induced trances (including our supposed leaders) in order broaden the debate and make them understand that education and our children are NOT “expenses”. Have we become so deficient in understanding this? Education is an INVESTMENT and not an expense. Healthcare is an investment in our people and not an expense. Broadband connectivity is an investment in our knowledge infrastructure and not and expense. There is abundant research on these issues. Investment of this sort pay big dividends in the long ru; there is a payback that is captured. Yes, there will be a cash flow issue at the front-end but in time all of us benefit from these investments.

One example of an investment that paid unbelievable dividends to our country was the GI bill. Studies have proven that the country more than made up for this investment after World War II. Mr. McCain ought to know this.

Investments – and especially education – are so obvious a benefit to society that it really needs no further explanation, or does it?
Are we that bereft of intellectual curiosity that we can’t allow ourselves to understand these concepts? If so, we are in a lot deeper trouble than we thought.

An Open Plead for True Leadership

2008-09-23T07:44:00.001-04:00

Please, please, to all those with the power to create, affect change and inspire; to all those powers - be them metaphysical or spiritual- please give us real leaders and please give us the capacity to understand what real leadership is.

Give us the capacity to think deeply and with great care. Give us the capacity to get past our self imposed celebrity filters and stop the analysis at: “she seems nice.” Give us the analytical mind-sets to be able to connect facts and not fiction. Give us the critical thinking skills and the brain power to go back and see what a disaster immature and arrogant un-leadership has been laid on our door step and that of the World. Give us the strength to not react to emotional triggers.
More importantly, however: Give us the strength to look in the mirror and say to ourselves, I am responsible for the mess this country is in due to my own flaccid and indifferent participation.

Let’s get active and demand more. Let’s demand an idea revolution and do nothing but have our political leaders seek practical ideas from the populace. The entire World is opening up and open Innovation is the mantra; but our politics are, more than ever, insular, cynical, fractured, closed minded.
Our “leaders” recycle the same theories and vernacular over and over again. Their speeches are like bad re-runs from four years ago, except for a few “key” words here and there addressed to the same “ordinary” middle class, mom and pop Americans. It is the same old calculation that created “political consultants” that teach them how to manipulate us into thinking like they want us to think.

Please, stop this. Our country is bleeding…

Leadership is not jumping post facto and claiming to be able to fix things via rhetorical soliloquies. Leadership is being able to change course and provide guidance before disasters happen; not afterwards. Leadership is having the forethought to understand where things are and where things can be. Leadership is having the fortitude to stop negativity. Leadership is not selling oneself to the devil by doing whatever is necessary to get power. Leadership is being able to stimulate positive attitudes. Leadership is being able to accept the ideas of people smarter than ourselves.

At the end of the day it us that need to demonstrate positive, educated and cultured Leadership. At the end of the day it is us that need to flow these leadership qualities up to them and not them to us.

Innovation, Technology and Politics: Who has a Technology Platform

2008-09-16T08:27:00.004-04:00

In discussing Innovation and Information Technologies the other day with the Founder of Technology think tank, it occurred to me that we have a "branding" problem with IT and in general Technology.
The fact is that the major economic expansions are driven by innovations in technology. Witness the 90's boom. While it led to a crash, it nevertheless created immense wealth for many.
This fact however, does not seem to be known by the populace. Why? I theorize that it is because people have a hard time "connecting" the benefits of technology with their daily lives and their jobs. It is an imperative that we do a better job of making these connections for our customers. Apple is a great example of a "technology company" that has figured out (for now) how to translate technology into customer experience, i e., where technology meets the road, if I can borrow and change a known aphorism .
The more important point here is the following:
If we do a better job of "branding" technology and the benefits of it to the populace- just maybe- we will be able to elevate its political profile and - just maybe - people would be more concerned about its impact on our economic survival.
Job creation is quickly becoming a continuum; with new, hi tech jobs originating at one end and these same jobs dissipating into India's outsourcing infrastructure and China's factories. This is a fact that cannot be denied.
Therefore, we need technology to create the next wave of jobs that can lead to economic expansion and Innovation is a large part of this process. Everyone in Innovation is saying this; from economists to venture capitalists, to those running businesses.
So, given that we are in an election year, which candidate has a written and structured Innovation and technology platform?
On this count Obama is the winner.
In a recent analysis done by a technology consultancy, McCain's "platform" was non-existent and had to be derived from "inferences" from his record.
Please remember these facts when you are the voting booth this November.

Just ask why is that? Innovations Lessons from "live" markets

2008-09-11T14:20:00.007-04:00

So here is the deal, I need to buy a new car because – well - because my lifestyle is forcing me to. I have to have a car in order to survive in the suburbia-induced car culture that I have created for myself and family. It does not help that public transportation in Northern Virginia is as rare as a bicyclist hitting a bear and survives to tell about it. This actually happened in Montana yesterday. You don't believe me? Check it out:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/custom/offbeat/sns-ap-odd-bicyclist-vs-bear,0,26902.story

The car that I have chosen to purchase is a Honda Fit, an environmentally-aware car responsive to the new world order consisting of high prices, a warming environment and immature politicians. It is actually a ULEV (ultra low emissions vehicle) car rapped in a small, sporty and utilitarian package. And, but of course, it is a Honda, a car of supreme quality.

If you want to read about the car, click here:
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/hot_lists/car_shopping/budget_rides/2009_honda_fit_first_drive_review
So, highly motivated to make a positive impact on the world and actually give a boost to our flailing economy, I boldly make a call to my local dealership in order to check out the new 2009 Fit. Low and behold there is a waiting list for it….

Huh? A waiting list?

Ok, so I know everyone is suffering from high prices and I know there is a shortage of economical and safe small cars out there. But a waiting list...during a recession?

Being intrigued by this, I did a little research and here is deal. (Like they say, there are always hidden lessons for those willing to seek for answers.)

The Fit was originality built as an “entry” level car to replace the Honda Civic, which has become bigger and more expensive. The Fit was designed to be a more exciting entry level car that would appeal to the young, digitally enabled, MPEG driven crowds. It turns out, however, that the Fit appears to be a hit with another market; those looking to “downsize.” (A lot of this going on right now in our beloved economy).

So, Honda got a hold of this fact with what I surmise was great customer research, and updated the car to accommodate this market. They made it a tad bigger, added a tad softer suspension, refined the seats and the interior a bit and, well, here I am on a waiting list. Now the digital set + the downsizing set wants one. Everyone wants one!

The innovation lesson here is the following: What adjacent markets are out there that could be easily served by tweaking a product a bit here and there?

Another revolutionary example of this is the Nintendo Wii; a product that was born from asking the question: how do we serve the non-gamers?

A very simple lesson that perhaps is not so evident until you: 1) Ask the questions, 2) keep in deep touch with your customers and 3) perform a little research

Innovation Slow Down? Of course

2008-09-05T09:17:00.002-04:00

Another great voice from the silent -but becoming louder - Innovation movement is raising the alarm. This time not from someone raised and protected in academic or think-tank circles, this time it is from someone that has been in the technology and innovation trenches for her entire career. Her name is Judy Estrin and was former CTO of Cisco and an entrepreneur, founder of four technology startups. Please check out the article below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/technology/01estrin.htm?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1220620493-Tb12xYB2EfoxHkvGFog++w

There has been an innovation slowdown. It is fact. Why? I do not really now. I theorize that it has to do with economic cycle maturity (in that we may have reached our economic and creative zenith), or our lack of attention and focus on the core issues, those being education, infrastructure and health-care. Maybe it is has been caused by the "crowding effect" an economics term that describes how by spending and focusing on one thing (war in Iraq) "crowds out" all other concerns and priorities.
Whatever the causes and effects, there is still time and I commend Obama for trying to give this issue the attention that it deserves by advancing the idea of a cabinet level CTO position and the names of people like Vint Cerf that have been in the trenches of Innovation and industry creation.

Digital Innovation; It does and will change everything

2008-09-03T15:43:00.004-04:00

I hate to say it...but I told them so...

The scene was a digital event in Hollywood about 1 year ago when I ventured the comment that there will come a time when digital technology will allow the making of entire movies without actors.

The responses from the audience ranged from a resounding "no way" to "it will never happen" to "you are crazy"

It never ceases to amaze me how dismissive people continue to be regarding the power of digital technology. It is a form of willful ignorance. Not unlike that displayed by our politicians that refuse to adopt new ideas becuase they simply do not understand them.

So, here we are a year later and a new technology/product called Aguru Dome offers exactly what I postured 1 year ago; the ability to make real-life digital doubles so real that we are almost there in terms of not needing actors.

Interestingly enough, I have no seen a lot of the traditional media carry this news item. I actually found it on a BBC web site in Spanish and then traced it to this site in English:
http://www.dv.com/news/news_item.php?articleId=196604209

I don't know what other proof people need to understand the transformational nature of the times we are living; maybe this latest fact will finally make them see the light and develop the much needed sense of urgency. Perhaps this time with the palpable fear that the culture of fame is under attack by software code will make people understand.

Just image, making movies without the heavy expense of $$ millions currently paid to actors and their egos? I think script writers, directors, producers are probably salivating at the thought...

The power of Innovation continues undaunted in its pursuit to change everything!

Travelling, Observing and Resetting Thinking

2008-08-18T02:46:00.005-04:00

On the occasion of my travels to Europe (for work and pleasure) I find myself thinking about perspectives and how much travelling can help reset thinking and aid in Innovative creation.
The mere fact of being around new historic surroundings and observing differing human behaviors can be so refreshing.
Case in point were two observation. The first was an older couple here in Budapest. They were in their mid 60's early 70's. I saw them in a park this past Sunday sitting side by side at the base of a statue staring into their individual mobile phone screens. They did this for the longest time so they were either playing games or reading some kind of email/text. The length of time that they were doing this was uncanny and a behavior that I have never seen in the USA.
Like I have asserted many times, mobile broadband is the future and here in Europe things are a bit more advanced than in the USA, including adoption at all ages.
The second observation was more pedestrian and not full of significance, but nevertheless interesting. I saw a brand new model black Rolls Royce of the very expensive kind with a chauffeur and two riders. The license plates were from Florida, USA.
Aside from the fact that obviously this observation involves lots of money, so many other questions beg for answers.

Innovation and Leadership: IBM's Forum on Global Leadership and it final Report

2008-08-06T11:20:00.004-04:00

I know my audience is interested in this sort of thing, so I am including a link to the Forum on Global Leadership and its final report. I was a contributor to this report.
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/globalleadership/pdf/online_FGL_white_paper_final.pdf

For those who reeeally know me, you know that the international/global dimension is front and center for me in many respects and for many reasons.

The subject of my last entry had lots to do with the global dimension as a vector of influence in creating true, cultured leaders.

The initiative for this Forum came directly from the C-Level's of IBM. I congratulate IBM for doing so and reaching out to those that want to make a difference.

This final report was created using the theories of open innovation, including reaching out to the "global-idea-bank" that ALL of us are part of.

Pleease, please, please...share this report with everyone that you can: CEO's, friends, family and colleagues. It is of the utmost importance to do so.
This report will be sent to members of congress and I hope the white house as well.

Lots to say....Leadership and taking on Wall Mart

2008-08-01T12:33:00.005-04:00

I know, I know...It has been a long time...

There is so much to say and so much to comment on that I basically shut down for a few weeks. Add to that vacation and business travel schedules, family duties,etc...Well you get the drift.

One though that has congealed on my mind has to do with this issue of "leadership" and "leadership development". I get flyer upon flyer and email upon email from just about every top Business school (Harvard, UVA, Duke, Wharton) pitching my these "leadership development" seminars that - incidentally - range in price from $6k to $25K. Not an insignificant amount for a weeks' time.

So, I am thinking: what does leadership development mean? In my view - and this is strictly my opinion- it means FIRST having an open, global, sympathetic and empathetic mind.
Without this basis, I ascertain, it will be very difficult to "develop" leadership qualities. This basis- call it world aware- can ONLY be achieved by experiencing - directly- the way the rest of the world lives. One has to understand the world, before one can change it.

I can't tell you how many times I have met "leaders" that have been fortunate enought o have become leaders through luck and sometimes hard work, that simply don't get it and sadly are not interested in getting it. I call this willful ignorance.

The broader point here is that in our culture we assign the wrong definitions to our leaders. We define them along "mercantile" and "fame" attributes. This does not work. Just because you can start a business and make millions (though birth right in some instances) it does not necessarily make you a leader of people. Just because you can read a script well (true creativity is in the writer of the script) it does not mean you can ran for President.

If you need proof of how badly this ethos has been for us in the USA, please look back at the last 8 years of political leadership. Here we have the zenith of inmaturity and yet - we the people- via our own willful ignorance, have given them the power to basically do as they wish.

Like a friend of mine once said: "There are educated people and then there are cultured people- there is a difference" What we need are cultured leaders.

On a lighter note, please read this following blog entry forwarded to me by a friend. It is hilarious!.

http://acctcville.blogspot.com/2008/07/so-i-generally-choose-not-to-patronize.html

Peace, Innovation and the SouthWest

2008-07-05T14:46:00.005-04:00

If looking for inspiration is your thing, then look no further than the SouthWest corner of Utah. The natural beauty inherent in the national parks here rival any man made creation anywhere, anyplace. The splendor of this land is truly beyond belief and makes one think very hard about the meaning embedded in the red-colored canyon walls. This beauty can only and truly be experienced by hiking deep into the canyons. Here one finds riveting peace and quiet once one pulls away from the throng of tourists going for the quick hikes. A peace punctuated by overarching silence and only the sounds of the natural World sans humans.
Peace being what it is; something that we all want, is an interesting subject more so when one sees a billboard on the side of the road asking the following:

"Can peace be achieved without prayer?"

The implication that peace cannot be achieved without it is really upsetting to me and drove the writing of this blog.

We humans have the power to use what God, or energy, or whatever, gave us and we certainly have the power to achieve peace without prayer. There is nothing wrong with prayer, the power of prayer has been documented in brain research as well and has a positive effect in the same.

Innovative thinking and letting go of old ways of thinking is what we need in order to achieve peace. Oh yes- if forgot-we need to unsettle the established interests as well.

Why is this so hard?

Milken Institute's 2008 Tech and Science State Rankins

2008-06-24T11:48:00.006-04:00

Now, I find this very interesting. In this years ranking of the top 10 States, 6 are in the East, 2 in the West and surprisingly 2 in the Middle (west, sort of middle).

I can understand Massachusetts taking the top spot with all its academic resources. It is surprising to see Maryland with the second spot and Colorado with the third spot. Interestingly, California (the mother of Innovation for the USA came in 4th place.) Virginia came in 6th place in my opinion due to its addiction...I mean dependency...on the defense industry.
It is a known fact that Virginia has ceded the ground on biotech to Maryland, perhaps another reason for the standing of each state.

Lots here to digest and percolate and I will not play editor on this one any longer...

http://www.milkeninstitute.org/tech/

Ok, one more....

Interesting to note that California- while not taking the top spot- is still the greatest source of new ideas. So what does this fact say about California? Could it be that the creative, open environment makes the difference?

I know, here I go again. I am not making this stuff up, however. Richard Florida author of the seminal book The Rise of the Creative Class, documented the positive impact (via econometric models) of creativity on GDP. For more on him go to http://creativeclass.com/.

Mr. Florida did a lot of his research and work while at George Mason University in Northern Virginia. Unfortunately for us in the USA, while we were consuming ourselves with wars, unethical leaders and self-inflicted economic disasters, he was given $20M + by the city of Toronto, Ontario to develop a creative center there.

Btw, Canada is emerging as a leader in the area of innovation, creativity and social and human development.

Got to love globalization....

Good work Milken Institute...

Innovative Thinking: Cast a new perspective just for fun!

2008-06-20T12:46:00.003-04:00

Here is a fantastic example of innovative thinking. By totally shifting their perspective, these two researchers from Duke University have uncovered a brilliant new way of understanding fuel consumption and where we ought to focus our efforts. A very simple shift from "miles per gallon" to "gallons per mile" opened up an entire new way of seeing and finding solutions.

Here is the link:

http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/news/larrick-soll-mpg-0608.html?utm_source=ee_newsletter0608&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=executive_education

Next time you are confronted with some spare time, recast old ways of thinking into new ones just for the fun of it.; you will be amazed at what you can come up with.
One example for my industry, Telecom.
Old thinking: "We provide telecommunications infrastructure services to industry and consumers."
New Way of thinking: "Our technology and communications infrastructure enables the World's creative impulses."
Perhaps if had done this little exercise a few years back, we would have anticipated trends that we have sorely missed.

Innovation and Creativity (yes, I know, not again)

2008-06-18T09:08:00.002-04:00

Well, yes, here I go on this thing about creativity. I have to post this piece because, again, I feel that as part of the new renaissance that we are living through, the subject of creativity is gaining currency everywhere you look.

The latest example is the venerable HBR (Harvard Business Review). In the April 2008 issue of HBR, they interview Twyla Tharp, the World famous choreographer on the subject of creativity. Here is the link. Please have a look. It is a great interview.
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?_requestid=25852&value=BR0804&ml_subscriber=true&ml_action=get-article&ml_issueid=BR0804&articleID=R0804B&pageNumber=1

So as not to bore everyone with my own crazy ideas (not so crazy, I am finding out) here is an excerpt from the interview.

"I think everyone can be creative, but you have to prepare for it with routine. There's is no other way around it. It's an absolute mistake to think that art is not practical- or that business cannot be creative."

We need to stop lamenting and start capturing

2008-06-12T09:01:00.000-04:00

Being on the road and participating in many conferences and forums, I come across many with lamentations on the way things are going: Kids don’t read books anymore, the music industry is under attack, our attention spans are reduced, no one is reflective anymore, on and on…

I tell them yes, you are right; things are changing, but that is the nature of evolution. We are evolving as we speak –like it or not. I go on to say, this very exchange of ideas, this very moment is evolution at its core.

There is proof of this emerging everywhere. The digital natives think differently than most of us digital emigrants. Brain research is starting to emerge that shows how kids are using different areas of the brain to process thoughts. Further, their patterns of technology-use are drastically different. A few examples: increasingly they are cutting the cord on fixed line telephony, they rather text and IM than email, they are skimmers of information and bore quickly with long form text, they are definitely more visual, they play with their mobile devices.

So, my dear beloved blackberry that never leaves my hip and is a good friend when I am alone in business trips, may have to change in order to serve the new generational behaviors, How, I don’t know, that is for RIMM to figure out.

This may be a logical leap that some may not accept, but I nevertheless will make it: as we evolve, so does our soul and our valuation of what touches us deeply. And products and services that touch the soul will be the ones that will have the greatest and longest run.

The rise of young social entrepreneurs and social businesses is proof that the new generations are looking for more meaning on what they do and how they do it. New technology that “enables us” is also proof that there are hidden explorations waiting to be untied…

My last entry touched on the anecdote with the iPhone and how its enabling qualities did touch our collective souls that night in Philadelphia.

Is the iPhone a soulful product? I would say maybe, in an ephemeral sort of way due to its capacity to enable us to be better and “do better”

This is a trend that needs to be captured by all of us in Innovation. Not necessarily driven by monetary gain and profit, but because it is where things are going. In the end the mercantile dynamics will play out by themselves.

It would not be the first time this is so; if you don’t believe me just look at Google and YouTube…

Sometimes knowing your strengths can triumph over overwhelming odds

2008-06-10T20:31:00.001-04:00

So there I was on my long bicycle ride of the weekend. It was a very hot Saturday with temperatures in the mid 90’s with a humidity index in the mid 100’s. I was making my way to my daughter’s soccer game that was to start at 12:30PM.

I had started at around 10AM when the heat was still manageable and the route that I had picked and that I knew well, called for an ascent from the Potomac River in Washington DC into the suburbs of Virginia and past the infamous beltway. (The rise in elevation is not easily discernable in a car but - trust me - it is quite discernible in a bicycle in a hot day.)

In any case, as I was trudging along and struggling up a particularly steep climb, two riders passed me as if I was standing still. (I was so proud of my progress until that point). Based on their attire (both wearing the same) it was fairly obvious that they were pro’s or semi pro’s

After passing, I decided to try to keep up with them to see how far I could go. As we moved along I noticed that I was able to considerably close the gap in the curves and they were able to pull ahead on the straights. I started to think as to why this was so and quickly realized that they did not know the trail as well as I did. This thought was affirmed when I saw them turn around and come back to a turn they had missed.

In the ongoing effort of trying to keep up, I used this newly gained knowledge and for the next couple of miles I was able to match their pace and shorten the distance to nothing. Then, however, came a long straight in the blazing sun and they quickly became distant caricatures in the trail horizon.

While the insight seems trivial, it is worth expounding on it. Innovation is about DOING the new. And, in the process of inventing the new and maximizing resource effectiveness, it is also important to know your enterprise’s strength propositions. These could be complex systems, they could be processes, and they could be inherent leadership qualities. It could be many things…

The job of an innovator is to find these propositions. And, who knows, it could be as easy as knowing the way better than your competitors.

Innovation for the Soul: The iPhone and the power to affect change.

2008-05-25T20:06:00.002-04:00

Being in technology and believing deeply in the power of the same to change the World, many times I encounter those not so convinced and that challenge my beliefs by assertions and lamentations that society is worse for it. Further, having the privilege of having grown up in other countries and cultures, I field many criticisms from abroad from the many friends and family that I have left behind. These people are a constant sounding board, and are not shy about expressing their view of the World and the shortcomings of the USA and its foreign policy practices. From there, by extension, of course, other related subjects emerge such as: imperialism, over-consumption, climate change, over-use of technology, etc...

Basically, when one visits - as I am now doing in Chile - one is exposed to provocative discussions from relatives and friends frustrated by the state of the World that many blame on the existing political elite reigning in the USA. The refreshing thing is that they do it acknowledging Chile’s own limitations and ever-increasing corruption scandals.

During one of these rounds, we focused on the use of technology and the perceived stupidity of mobile phones and the obsession with the latest iPhone by the social “pretenders” (Chile is notorious for being a hyper “look-at-me” society where people will go very far to show their latest acquisitions and pretensions).

In any case, the discourse on the subject of the mobile device got my thinking in particular as it concerns the iPhone, a device that is fascinating and only a prelude of what is to come in terms of mobile power. Not having an iPhone (I am waiting for the 3G version) I am very intrigued to discover how people are using it for what it is: a mini computer/device with immense powers that happens to make phone calls.

Last weekend I had an opportunity to observe/participate in a real- time episode with an iPhone while in Philadelphia for my niece’s graduation from UPENN. To celebrate, all 28 family members that were there went to dinner at a restaurant called Maggiano’s, which is notorious for the copious amounts of food that it serves. After eating what seemed like only 10 % of what was served, we started to feel very guilty about the excess and started to figure out what we could do with all the food. We were not about to throw it away; it was simply immoral to do so.

Enter a relative of mine and his iPhone. With its friendly navigation, GPS and search functionalities, we triangulated with the restaurant and quickly found several soup kitchens a short taxi-cab ride away that we could donate to food to. We chose one with the route depicted on the iPhone, took a taxi and a few minutes later delivered the food to a very grateful group of people hungry for good Italian food.

So, while the debate rages on, here is proof positive of the positive power of technology and innovation. The combination of curiosity, exploration, and a desire to give and solve a problem was resolved by the iPhone in real-time and for real people.

Benefaction accelerated; this is what I call Innovation for the soul.

The Power of Individual Action (aggregated)

2008-05-16T19:41:00.001-04:00

Believe what you want about climate change, but the science is hard to refute. Changes are happening and while the connection between human activity and changes has not been proven, it is hard to not acknowledge that we are having an impact.
Sort of like the cigarette-is-bad-for-your-health debate of decades ago…Boy, were we ever wrong about smoking.

In any case, what brings me to the arduous task of transferring fuzzy thoughts into actual readable text that my scarce audience can read, has to do with individual actions and the inherent value they possess to drive collective action and from there power to effect change.

You see, I believe that the sooner we can aggregate these individual actions into a cohesive whole, the sooner we will get started in achieving change. Easy, right? Well, no, very difficult indeed. Changing people’s behavior has to be up there with managing the universe in terms of difficulty.

I have been thinking about this for awhile because I have taken it upon myself to do what I can to reduce my CO2 load. This means a lot of things from cycling to work, driving less, driving less aggressively and slower, walking to the local eatery to get lunch, turning off lights and computers when not in use, dumping the SUV, keeping the same house and not “upsizing”, etc…

The turning-off-the-lights-at-work bit is the activity that inspired this piece.As most of you know, lights at work stay on all the time; night and day, in fact. I find this to be really dense, especially when we are taking about lights- such as in copy rooms and kitchens – that are sporadically used. I mean, really, what is the purpose of having them on to light up copier machines? So, in response I turn them off after I use the room. Moreover, I turn them off as I walk by these rooms on my way to the bathroom during the work day. And, given that I drink lots of liquids during the work day, these walks can be quiet often. The interesting and sad thing is that 90% of the times that I walk by these rooms, the lights are on.

I simply find it criminal to leave these lights on for no purpose whatsoever and more so because they are left on by people that are unwilling to adapt themselves to perform the simple task of lifting an arm to flip a light switch. (In Europe this is done for you, as most lights have sensors that turn on when there is movement, actions that have caused Europe to consume 1/2 of what we consume on a per capita basis)

Talk about a new (old) innovation that is good for the soul: let’s do something for the common good and turn the lights off when not in use. It makes total sense, doesn’t it?

I do not have a source for this fact this very minute, but I have read multiple articles on ways to save energy via conservation and the savings that we are able to achieve in terms of Co2 reductions, are simply astonishing. But, here is the catch: we all have to aggregate our individual actions into a powerful conservation force.

So, go ahead, dare prove the sociologist, ethnographers and human behavior researchers wrong. Let’s build the force via each one of us acting on our individual, local and prescient power to change the World.

Soft SKills and Business: Yes, they Work

2008-05-08T13:50:00.002-04:00

Ok, so how more official can it get? I don’t know about you, but for me The Economist (www.economist.com) is as reputable a publication as they come concerning business theories and when they write a story about the benefits of psychology and the positive impacts on business, one must pay attention.
Now, I know that I have written a lot about the need for “soft” skills and how we have overdone the analytical side of business management. I am not a management theorist and don’t pretend to be one, but some things just make so much sense that we really don’t need to wrap an academic study around it. I try to write on things that track with nature and soul which in turn sort of validates them- I know, kind of a tortured philosophy.
This particular piece appeared in the May 3rd to 9th edition of The Economist titled: Inside a Deal. It is on page 88…Go ahead, check it out. It is further confirmation that “soft” skills are needed in order to succeed well. The key work being: well.
It turns out that after Psychologists analyzed the dynamics of a good negotiation, low and behold, they found that that those people with “perspective-taking” abilities did far better than those without. By far better we mean that 76% of the time a deal was struck by the perspective-takers vs. 54% for the “empathizers.” Now, if you need to ask what perspective-taking ability means, you should probably not be reading this blog (not that many do anyways :-).
But ok, a definition is in order: perspective-takers were those with an ability to understand what the other was “thinking” and what their “interest” and “purpose” were.
There you have it folks. It is true. Soft skills do work and ARE valuable to business.

Innovation for solving problems: The Milken Institute's Global Summit

2008-05-05T16:58:00.002-04:00

Last week I had the immense privilege of attending the Milken Institute’s Global Summit in LA. The event was well attended to the tune of about 3000 attendees and 400 panelists of which I was one.

I have attended and participated in many of these types of summits but never have I experienced such diversity in the attendees. Given Michael Milken’s background in finance, it was not surprising to see lots of attendees from that sector. Nevertheless, the profile of all the others was rich with diversity to include academia, NGO’s, technology, education, energy, agriculture, media, medicine to name just a few.

It was disheartening to feel the pressure of the all the World’s problems as they were presented during the conference. But it was also highly enlightening to see so many people trying to make a difference. The place was crawling with Nobel laureates such as Mohamed Yunus of Grammen Bank’s fame. Or Craig Venter, an innovator that wants to solve many problems via synthetic biology, a new field with great promise for the future. Quincy Jones was also there; a prolific man, song writer, producer, director, you name it...Peter Diamandis, MD, founder, Chairman and CEO of the X-price foundation was also there. A foundation designed to explore the immense power of he World’s creativity www.xprize.org

I was invited to participate as a panelist in the topic of: Digital Technology: Personal Innovations, surely a subject in its infancy as we have yet to even fathom the depths of what mobility and the hand-held devices that we have become so attached to, have in store for all of us. The future is by definition fraught with uncertainly and one can speculate endlessly about its attributes. This is the beauty of trying to predict the future; one is really never wrong in doing so. One thing is for certain, however, we seem to always underestimate the pace of change and the impact of change. My panel was shared by Executives from media, hardware and internet and we all arrived at the conclusion that we are indeed in the midst of a revolution led by the frantic pace of technological innovation, to which human systems (economic, personal, spiritual) are not adequately prepared to deal with. This is specially the case with the “digital imports” that the majority of us are, as opposed to our children, “the digital natives.”

It is my opinion that in order to understand where we are going in terms of human evolution we need to first understand how we got here. There is an amazing amount of work written in this space. One such book that I recommend is www.wakingtheglobalheart.com . It is a very interesting treatise on where we have been and where we are going.

In the other extreme, there are works of people that are performing ground breaking research in brand new fields. One such book that I found fascinating and that I bought at the conference is: “The Brain that Changes Itself” by www.normandoidge.com. This book address the new field of neuro-plasticity and the discovery that our brains are much more flexible and able to change than we previously thought. This is music to my ears, as I have always thought that life learning – one the of core principles of Leonardo Da Vinci – is a practice that keeps the mind challenged and agile.

Innovation, life and the impacts be create

2008-04-21T21:17:00.002-04:00

A large part of Innovation thinking is to be open to inputs from the World around us and in a sense be hyper-engaged with the same in order to derive valuable insights. Didn’t someone say, “Things happen for a reason?” Isn't the reason to teach us?

This point has been brought to me many times courtesy of life experiences that for most people are just life’s passing and go unnoticed and unexamined. The other day I had such an experience that taught me a good lesson and motivated me to write this entry.

As I have noted before in this blog, it has been my philosophy to look for insights wherever one can find them. In fact I have made a practice of recording these insights on the go via personal recording devices, journals, photography, etc…In no other time in history, by the way, has this been easier to accomplish. If one is open to receiving, accepting and exploring, digital technology is making it easier by the day.

Case in point is the mobile phone.

If you permit me a digression: Most mobile phones (in my opinion they should no longer be called a mobile phone, but instead a palmtop, digital assistant, personal device, hand computer, whatever) come with voice recorders. In fact, just recently a new startup created an application that will turn your recording or voice mail into text and send you an email of it. Wonderful, isn’t it? This is what I call productive innovation.

My thinking is that you never know when an insight might come in handy when you are trying to solve a problem, create a new product, whatever, so why not record it for when you may need it?

Ok, back to the story. The other weekend I was going on my habitual long bike ride. (I am a long distance bicyclist and on the weekends I will usually go for longer distances.) In any case, my route starts the same way every time and thus I go through the same neighborhood on my way out to the scary world of inattentive drivers in large SUV’s chatting on mobile devices. This one time I was riding by the house of a gentleman that is always working on one of his three BMW’s. A motor head, I thought, the many times that I had ridden by him. As I was approaching his house it was the same scene; him under the hood of one of his cars with a buddy next to him. This time it was different. As I was riding past his driveway he lifted his head from his work and yelled: “How many miles are you riding today?” I was a bit stunned and very intrigued since I had never even had a word with him. In reply I answered back with my mileage estimation for the ride. “Have a good one,” he darted back.

Continuing on I started analyzing and looking for an insight into the surprised engagement, when I came upon the next experience of the ride a couple of blocks later. As I was waiting for the red light doing circles waiting for the light to turn, a car pulls along the side and there is this kid, no more than 5 or 6 years old, staring at me as if I was an apparition from Jupiter. I can only imagine that my cycling clothing, helmet, sunglasses and blinking red lights (all purposely colorful to alert drivers of my presence) and my bicycle must have made an impression of the third kind on him. The intensity of his gaze was fascinating and somewhat alluring. At that instant the insight consolidated in my head and is the following:

As we move about in life, we have/create/make impacts on those around us, even when we think we are not. Further, the extent of these impacts is unknown to us, and we can choose to make them positive or negative.

I sincerely hope and believe that that day I made an impact on that kid; perhaps I planted a seed in his brain about cycling as an alternative transportation and lifestyle, perhaps he will grow up taking care to watch for cyclists, perhaps he will be forceful with his parents to take him out riding. As far as the gentlemen and his cars, every time I ride and he is there, I wave and we have the same exchange starting with: “How many today.”

For Innovators this is an important lesson, as the innovations we create can and will have impacts beyond what we scantily try to estimate with our MBA derived metrics and analytics.

Innovation (and how to not overuse) and the Web Experience

2008-04-08T09:29:00.002-04:00

It wasn’t too long ago when we were patient with the response times and overall experience when accessing and using the Web. This is absolutely no longer the case – at least not with me. As broadband speeds increase, so does the customer expectation for speed and ease of use.

For technology and service providers the challenge comes from the fact that every incremental increase in customer expectation demands a marginal increase in the performance of the next iteration of a web site, product or service. In essence, one is always behind the customer perception, as it were.

In my view this is the way it should be. It challenges us to Innovative- always. That said, in doing so Web designers and service providers need to be aware of the “permanency” of evolving expectations and outright intolerance for certain web-site functionalities that detract from the overall experience.

This insight was brought to me courtesy of my less-than spectacular-experience utilizing the Ticketmaster web-site to print my concert tickets. In order for me to print my tickets, I had to create an account and the process of printing the tickets was absolutely Byzantine. 10 years ago I would have said, awesome, I can print my tickets. 5 years ago, I would have said, ok, I can deal with this, Now, I say how obnoxious that I have to: 1) create an account and say no to participating in their “social network” and 2) go through this torrid process to print what I had overpaid for.

Lessons for Ticketmaster here: 1) the more pressed for time people are, the more they expect from their web experience to include intuitiveness, ease of use and speedy processing. 2) Some services ought to abandon efforts to wrap a social network around what is basically a commodity purchasing experience. You are one of them.

It is bad enough that there is perception of dealing with a monopoly. To further damage the customers experience by unnecessary encumbering the user, is just dumb.

Product Development tools and Innovation

2008-03-27T14:51:00.003-04:00

Ok, so now you have been in Innovation Management awhile my friend blurted out over dinner and wine…So, invent the killer product of the future, he posited. You know what the trends are and you now know how to build products and develop new business models...

What is holding you back?

My answer to this challenge is simply this. While I may have the desire, passion and intentions to build new products that address emerging trends, not everyone in the product planning cycle are of the same idea and neither are companies organized to truly utilize innovation management theories to their fullest. Most companies still have old product development tools based on gating systems and six sigma mandates that at times can kill product innovation.

Innovation management, at least my version of it, is a super fast continuum with ideation at one end and product pilot testing at the other. The idea is to try new ideas and concepts and “fail them fast”, as it were, so as not to waste inordinate amounts of resources on products and services that may not bear fruit and meet the pre-prescribed financial measurements. New, digital technologies, certainly lend themselves to this type of product road map, and for sure agile, start-up partners can support in this process.

For innovation to flourish, the existing legacy systems and legacy minds and methodologies have to evolve in order to advance truly revolutionary (most often hyper-evolutionary) products and services. No one is advocating the elimination of these legacy systems, but merely creating hybrid knowledge systems that accommodate innovation theories.

We are living in a time where companies rise and fall in three years; the same time that some product development philosophies allow for the development of new products.
So, the good news is that things are changing and companies are reacting because they have to. The bad news is that there is no sense of urgency and the adaptation is taking too long.

Battling 24 hour working schedules in China and India, and competing with new hyper-driven entrepreneurs with something to prove will not be easy. Much less so with product development cycles, mindsets and theories rooted in the old analog World. This has to change and change fast.

In Innovation, it is about the little things as well

2008-03-24T08:40:00.000-04:00

Scientists say that we humans share approximately 98% of our DNA with Monkeys. If one analyzes every human feature one would also discover that the differences between us are very small and consists of hyper small variations on the same theme. We are very much alike; a little more length here, a little broader there, bigger eyes here, smaller eye lids there, a little darker, a little whiter, and on and on. Further, the differences in facial features are characterized by even smaller variations, really.

And so it is in business.

Excellence in service delivery is characterized by the very small things. I am of the opinion that if one really wants to make a difference in the innovation front one needs to make sure- first and foremost- that the basics are taking care of in the delivery of products and services for the simple reason that this is where the majority of service differentiators can happen. It is not enough to have an innovative service or product without innovative service delivery (be it a revolutionary way of delivering it, or simply through service-delivery excellence).

One incident not long ago made this point very clear to me. It involved the very routine engagement with a rental car company. Upon returning the car to the airport in Tampa Bay, FL I was going through the motions of returning the car, a scene I am sure replicated millions of times across the USA every day. What made this occasion different was that the mobile printout machine that prints the receipt on the spot was not working. Faced with this service delivery touch point, the attendant decided to “de-enhance” the service by telling me to walk to the office- which was a distance away – to get a printout of the receipt. When I got there, I had to wait extra time and had to ask for my receipt. I also had to wait behind some other people waiting for their receipt.

Now, please understand, walking was not the issue and neither was the extra time that I had to wait. The upcoming flight-time was to be long and I always make it a habit of being plenty early to airports. The point is that the car-rental attendant missed an opportunity to make a difference during a small, but yet critical, engagement with this customer.

Now, why was that touch point with this customer important? Because by making that occasion exceptional it would have had the effect of leaving a positive impression of superior service leading to an accumulation of service credit in this customer mind that would have been stored for the next engagement. As it happens, the next time I rented a car from this company the experience was not smooth and was further negatively impacted by my lower expectations from the last encounter. On the second occasion, the car had not been properly serviced and did not have windshield washer liquid and the low-air-tire indicator light was on the entire time I drove the car.
Now, with two consecutive bad experiences, I have a very low expectation of this company and its ability to deliver exceptional service. Had the attendant in the first occasion provided me with a superior experience, I would have attributed my last experience as a one-off.

Will I continue to rent from this car company? Yes, but not if I can have a superior and exceptional experience with another car rental company. Would I be impressed with an innovative new way of delivering a product and/or service from this company? Just Maybe.

It is about the small things, people say; indeed they are.

Redefining New Leadership Traits

2008-02-19T08:12:00.002-05:00

I have always asserted that for the most part companies focus too much on certain leadership traits over others. You know, the hard skills over the soft skills, the deep analytical skills over intuitive skills. This is not to say that these skills are not valuable; they really are. But - I know, the use of " but" is passe and should not be used - the fact is that all organizations needs all skills at all levels. This is one the core learnings from Innovation Management. For a succesful Innovation practice to flourish, you need to create an intersection of diverse traits and skills.

So, what prompted me to write this entry? The fact that I am sensing that there is a new awareness out there about these issues as I am reading many articles in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), for example, that seem to be searching for new answers regarding leadership, collaboration and innovation.

Could it be that we are reevaluating how we define leadership and how we find new leaders? If HBR is writing about this stuff then it must be gaining considerable currency in the rest of the business world, right? I certainly hope so because it feels good to be validated after years of speaking about it.

Two weeks ago I spoke about it tangentially during my keynote speech at a Frost and Sullivan conference. The essence of my speech was that we must engage the World for all it offers: creativity, leadership, best practices, knowledge centers, etc...
One of the lessons of global leadership is that traits such as humbleness should not be dismissed - as we do in the USA - as merely weak traits. I see this all the time. Instead of embracing these traits and the people behind them, we dismiss them and cast them aside. A wonderful treatise on this subject is an interview with Linda A Hill, a professor at Harvard and an expert in Leadership, where she talks about new ways to find Global Leadership.

The January 2008 issue of HBR has some additional interesting nuggets to consider. The one article that I would like to site is titled: Learning the Fine Art of Global Collaboration by Alan MacCormack and Theodore Forbath. The title says it all. One particular passage that I would like to address talks about People being one the critical four components of succesful global collaboration with the other three being processes, platforms and programs. In any case, in the dissection of what is important in people they write: "succesful firms alter their recruitment, training, evaluation, and reward systems to focus on "soft" skills such as communication."

Need I say more...

The Soul and Life learning

2008-02-12T08:51:00.000-05:00

So much of innovation is coming up with new ideas and concepts via a change in perspective. (I have included the above picture to stimulate a change in the same before reading on).

I have spoken and written in the past about perspective and the value of changing it often. Many a time I have read about artists needing to travel in order to change their perspectives and drive inspiration and passion.
This entry, however, is about the value of life learning which to me is a constant change in perspective.
I am one that is motivated by constant learning and in thinking about this subject it occurred to me that our social systems do not seem to instill this philosophy. If Leonrado De Vinci espoused it, who can argue against it?
One very simple idea would be to create 10, 20, 30 year University degrees. Who decided that four years is enough? (of course there is Masters and PHD's). But really, why not have life learning degrees that are broader and instead of narrowing the field of studies like a Phd does, why not broaden it? Instead of a Phd in business, how about a life learning degree in a mix of subject such as: conflict resolution, critical thinking, social intelligence?
Just and idea to throw out there for those of us in Innovation...

Spotting Trends and Harnessing the Evolution of Innovation and Technology for Your Benefit

2008-01-14T11:32:00.000-05:00

This past November I participated in an Innovation conference where I had to present the results of a group brainstorming session on the subject of how to create innovative cultures in staid companies. This past December I was approached by another Innovation conference to participate as panelist on a thought leadership conference. This February I am giving a keynote address at a Frost and Sullivan conference on the subject of spotting trends and market shifts, I was approached by F&S to do so due to my work in Innovation Management.

All of these events prompted me to think about the subject of trends and to write this entry. Some trends are so, so evident that there are hard to read; it is something akin to fish not seeing water because it is all around them. Who was it that said something to the effect that the hardest things to see/understand are those that are closest to us?

Well, I won’t make this mistake here. One trend seems fairly evident to me now: Innovation is a complex subject that EVERYONE seems to be interested in learning about.

Another trend that I have identified is embodied on the article titled: Universal builds site to master its own mobile destiny, by The Hollywood Reporter. This article addresses the nascent movement to by-pass the “walled garden” approach that has been a favorite of the telecom carriers in the USA.

Since this article, however, the likes of Verizon, to their credit, have responded in kind and have committed to opening up their mobile networks to application providers; a commendable move and a good salvo in the “open networks” squabble.

If one believes – as I do – that “technology will always find a way” then the walled garden approach that carriers have been espousing is dying real-time- as in right now.

The evolution of digital technologies has demonstrated over and over again that with the passing of time, technology will evolve with immense increases in processing power. Further, the trend also has shown that with more power comes more simplicity which in turn drives ease of deployment and, ultimately, its use. This news item is the very proof of this fact; the ability of Universal to want to be “the masters of their own destiny” is only achievable because of the relentless pace of technology.

As technology develops and advances, it becomes dispersed; accelerating innovation and leading to the creation of easier-to-use technologies which in turn enables new business models and revenue models. In the case of Telecom and media, these models are becoming less dependent on the carrier’s strict revenue- sharing percentages and the networks.

We all know by now that resistance to the progress of technology and innovation is futile, therefore carriers and those in the business of delivering content need to have strategies on how to deal with it and these strategies need to be intelligently managed and deployed. Moreover, resistance, and hiding from technological innovations, can embolden their disruptive nature making them even more powerful.

Another, more holistic idea for any industry facing disruptive technologies resulting from the resistance to them, should be to accept them, adopt them and start the process of learning them. How does a carrier enterprise do this? They do it by adopting philosophies and practices from other industries.

Let’s look for instance at the Venture capitalism community. They have very practical best practices that interestingly enough, they, themselves are changing. Instead of just lending money, they are now thinking more along the lines of lending+ incubating + promoting their portfolio companies. It is very instructive to understand how successful Venture capitalists behave. In doing so, one can discover that they have a high tolerance for risk-taking and relish new technologies and business models due to the immense payouts these may bring.

With that in mind, why should carriers (and industry in general) not “play” with the new disruptive technologies by starting parallel businesses outside of the constraints of the mother ship, where they fund new startups, deploy innovation teams and basically go to market with them?

In the absence of regulatory constraints they absolutely should, and they should do so by motivating the innovation teams in those “corporate startups” with equity sharing and ownership structures. Going further, all employees with hidden entrepreneurial tendencies should be motivated via proper ownership incentives to actively think of new ideas and businesses that could be taken outside the company and launched.

This is not something revolutionary. Google is doing it and so will others. No one can argue that Google has not been successful in growing their business and now expanding laterally with intentions on becoming “the masters of their own destiny”.

Lastly and most importantly, no one in innovation management should ever miss evident trends and dismiss ANY new technology as non-disruptive. One does this at their peril.

Technologies can and will evolve and will become bigger and faster disruptors if not addressed intelligently.

2008-01-03T12:43:00.001-05:00

Lately (well, over three years now) I have become a long distance bicycling addict which unfortunately places me out on the streets together with inattentive drivers driving giganticus SUV’s while on cell phones. If this is not scary enough, now I understand from the latest research, that GPS receivers are the latest distraction toy to complement cell phones. As I deeply believe in the powers of evolution to enlighten us into healthier ways, I hope that we hurriedly are evolving ourselves to accommodate our new, always-on, connected lifestyles. I, and I am sure all my fellow bicyclists out there feel the same way, am praying for this to happen sooner rather than later because the close calls have become too close and in many unfortunate cases, deadly.

What brings me to this latest stream of thinking is not the trials and tribulations of sharing the road with inattentive and arrogant drivers and their vehicles, what has surfaced instead, thanks to this new found love, is an insight regarding the notion of perspectives.

My perspective concerning our incessantly itinerant society has forever changed since riding. My past perspective was that cars are cool and the more horsepower the better. I have been a “car guy” since I was a kid ( it sort of runs in my family). I grew up with my father and me tinkering with cars, motor boat engines and all sorts of stuff of the motor kind. In fact, my dad actually had the audacity of building a pull-along trailer from the ground up. He designed it, built it and finished it with his bare hands (ok, not a car, but close enough and I helped a lot in its completion.). The change in perspective has so drastically changed my attitude about cars that I have actually started to think in new ways to change my lifestyle in order to minimize the use of cars. I am even thinking of ways to eliminate their use from my daily routine and commute. I have almost reached the conclusion that to continue to build a societies around cars is unsustainable. With ever more cars filling the roads in ever shrinking spaces to make knew roads (at least in Northern Virginia, USA) the solution is not cars but hybrid transportation systems that include public transports, bicycling, Segways, yet-to-be-marketed-personal transports, and -yes, that dreaded word- walking.

Ok, so this blog is about innovation. In an innovation practice, changes in perspective are of supreme importance. A change in perspective provides fertile ground for new ideas, solutions and insights. Further, if one is in the business of innovation management one has the obligation to actively pursue changes in perspective. Routine can be paralyzing if one is not cognizant of it.

There are many ways of achieving a change in perspective. The most obvious of all is traveling. Nothing can better open minds and change perspectives than traveling. The key, however, is to travel to new places that challenge preconceived notions and not to places and destinations that are “comfortable.” I have seen first hand the sweeping changes that this can produce. As one that was brought up internationally, I know this already, but for others this may not be so readily apparent.

Not too long ago I witnessed the changes that occurred when my mother in law traveled for the first time to a third World country and had an encounter with a member of the third World. After traveling to those “safe” destinations for most of her traveling life, she finally had occasion to experience a third World country in all its rawness while in a cruise of the Panama Canal. While the encounter was unintended, the experience of seeing the extended hand of a 5-year old beggar through a wrought iron fence asking for coin, was a transcendental experience that changed her perspective forever.

Changed perspectives; they work.

Innovation and Diversity: A critical best practice

2007-12-21T14:20:00.000-05:00

If a company wants to establish themselves as innovative and if they truly want to institute an innovative and creative culture, then they must re-think the hiring and promotional policies and think diversity, not only in the racial sense but in a much broader sense.

Innovation is a complex eco-system with many variables and requirements, one of them being, in my experience, the need for people from different walks of life with different experiences and psychological profiles. Remember those crazy Myers Briggs tests? Those tests are fantastic, as they provide valuable insights into the different profiles that an innovation group requires. From the highly sensing types to the highly left brain types, they can all contribute to an innovation practice with their skills in the proper job.

I see it again and again. Too often we promote the wrong profile into the wrong positions. A feet-in-the-street sales person does not make a good sales manager. Period. Yet, I have seen this being done over and over again. The profile of a good hunter sales person does not transfer to the profile of a good manager. If one reads the lessons from Jim Collin’s fantastic book: From Good to Great, one can see this being the case. According to the book, the ultimate level of management that can be reached by managers is the fifth level (very few). At this level managers are almost ego-less, in that they promote and mentor the team members and the cause above themselves. In my experience, truly brilliant sales people do not handle this transition well.

If one would not place a serial entrepreneur inside a large bureaucratic company, why do we find it acceptable to place people with the right skills in the wrong positions positions?

The other day I heard a story from a friend that works in a telecom company that is starting a new sales vertical targeting a specific telecommunications segment. He related the frustration of top management over lack of results from that new group that was started to address the vertical. The cause appears to be another atrocious recruitment and hiring practice that is anathema to establishing and innovative culture. A certain manager was hired from another Telecommunications company. In turn this new hire proceeded to hire the same people that he worked with at his last company. Now, we all know that most people tend to hire like-minded people. With that in mind, where is the diversity in profiles?

Diversity – at all level - works. In an innovation practice, I want artists, philosophers, thinkers, writers, project managers. Additionally I need people that are intuitive, mathematical, young, old, international….The last thing I want is a bunch of individuals dressed in khaki pants standing around talking Golf.
I am not alone in this belief. Frans Johansson, author of the book: The Medici Effect has proven it as well. This book is a fantastic read on the power of diversity at the interaction of ideas and cultures.

Detachments

2007-12-14T11:23:00.000-05:00

As I was driving to work the other day, I was listening to NPR and the show Marketplace which was doing a special on Innovations. The piece was about the business of Foundations and how they grant money to non-profits. One of the experts being interviewed come upon the idea that non-profits need a little more than a “mission” statement to drive them and that they should be more “objective oriented” (read for profit management practices).
Duh! of course.
I am a huge proponent of “best practices” and to that end why not use some of the management lessons learned from the for-profit World and apply them to the non-profit World? Is this really Innovation?
Now, the bigger and more important insight for me upon listening to this story and others similar stories is that we have created these “artificial detachments” that at the end of the day have done a disservice to the advancement of human progress. Non-profit - For-Profit; Religious-Humanists; Consumption/Living-Environment; Businesses- rest of society, etc…
I understand that humans need to dissect things in order to understand our World better, but we are all in this together and we live in one Earth that cannot be replaced on a whim. Just to make the point: The environment IS living and consuming. Our daily comings and goings are not taking place in a “virtual World”; they are taking place in our physical environment and as we “do” we “cause immediate effects.”
We do a disservice, when we become so “stove piped” that we cannot adopt ideas from others without calling them Innovative. The adoption of best practices and ideas from “others” should be part of our daily rituals. Further, we also do a massive disservice to ourselves when we loose sight of how integrated everything is and needs to be.
As innovators we need to be aware of the holistic nature of everything and need to deploy a mindset that captures all ideas wherever they may be. This is what I do – I try to live in the world of others and explore their ways of doing things.
Like someone once said, if you really want to understand someone “you must walk a mile in their shoes and hear the beating of their hearts”

2007-12-12T08:54:00.000-05:00

One simply cannot be in Innovation management without having a pulse on what is happening internationally. In the case of my industry, being at the intersection of media, telecom and technology is a must and finding those leading-edge markets and regions where innovation is accelerating ahead of the USA is critical to my practice. For my industry these regions and countries are Europe, Korea and Japan.
One simple example is broadband penetration in Japan. While in the USA we get excited about 5Mg download speeds for $40 a month, in Japan the going deal is 100Mbps for $19.99. Now, that is what I call broadband. And, oh yes, I forgot to mention, it is fiber and not cable.
Two weeks ago I had the chance to feel the international pulse via a conference in Europe; Berlin, Germany to be exact. The event was wonderful and what struck me the most about the event was the seriousness of the proceedings and the dedication and attention given by the attendees to the topics and discussions. There seemed to be a genuine, intellectually-based desire to learn and explore new horizons. I compare this with US-based events where there always seems to be an undercurrent of stress characterized by attendees looking to sell their next deal. Moreover, the attention spans in the USA are supremely short and getting shorted every day. It seems as though we no longer care about learning about new ideas, business models, etc...
Being an internationalist, this reinforces my lifelong mission to educate about the benefits of learning from our fellow human beings across our shores.

Synchronicity and Innovation

2007-12-07T08:42:00.000-05:00

The attachment of meaning to synchronicity is highly dependent on where one is in his/her search for significance. As one that is innovation, I seek inputs and nuggets from everywhere. I have made the deliberate decision to open my mind to all occurrences that cross my path and analyse them; not in detail, but as potential pieces of puzzles in my search for new ideas, products, issues, etc...
Just yesterday during my morning commute, I saw this car with a set of highly creative bumper stickers with very distinct messages. I found it fascinating and very creative and in at the end of the encounter with the car, I found myself stimulated and though about new ways to convey messages via SMS and other digital technologies. SMS is still in its infancy and it has become a great medium that people are comfortable with, that is easy to use. The same day I spoke to a company that is adapting the use of search and directory services to deliver information via SMS gateways.
This is what I call synchronicity. A wonderful experience it was, more so when at the end of day, going back home, I found myself behind the same car. Now, what are the changes of that?
Believe it or not!