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

Too many leaders feel that the only way to drive new innovations is to rip up what was there before. This does not make sense. The existing debate over healthcare insurance is a case in point. It is either an entirely new healthcare scheme (government funded) or nothing. The existing employer-based scheme seems to work well but not for all. Why not then try to solve the problem by keeping what works and deriving lessons from what works to create a hybrid solution?   Keep what works and supplement it with another solution that could be government funded. First learn from what works and use it on the supplemental solution. It is in the “walking” or “what works”, where valuable lessons reside; wisdom that innovators can learn from and lessons that can be adapted and tweaked into the next new thing. We don’t throw away walking once we learn to run, now, do we… Levi jeans did not stop making jeans when faced with designer jeans (Jordache started the tr...

About 10 years ago - in this very blog - I coined the term: frictionless sharing . The term never went viral, but some readers did make note of it and some even used it. With that term I was attempting to predict the day when we would share media and data in a matter of nano-seconds thanks to our smartphones and enhanced UX’s designed to do just that. More sharing means more attention on web sites, which in turn means more advertising served. And, well, here we are.   It has come to pass. We are now perhaps witnessing an emerging trend that may go the other way. I am starting to sense some people sharing less due to the concern with unsecure behavioral data fusing with analytics, and of course, the ever-present growing concern of big brother and AI tracking what we are saying, publishing and doing. Perhaps, then, it is time for a new term to be coined: contextual sharing. That is a propensity to share less via a more targeted approach and to those that ...

Let's face it. We are different. Very different. In. So. Many. Ways. And leadership abilities run the gamut. Consistently, however, we all seem to want empathetic leadership and in the eternal search for it, we have made serious mistakes. Nothing can delay progress more than a weak, egocentric leader.  And nothing can kill ambition and inspiration faster than un-empathetic leader. So, let us try to vet leaders in better ways. And let us aim to find those that have empathy and that wish for others to succeed beyond themselves.  Yeah, I know, hard in today's world. They are out there, however. There is one very simple test that we can start with. It is so simple is laughable. In my experience doing business across multiple cultures, this one pronoun will consistently reveal the truth about where a leader is in the empathetic, ego-less scale. That pronoun is: I Someone many years ago suggested trying to write everything without using "I." It is hard. Very har...

"Ok, so now you have been "managing" the future via innovation imperatives for a bit," my friend blurted out over dinner a few years back. So, "invent the killer product of the future," he continued. "You know what the trends are and now you know how to build products and develop new business models." "What is holding you back?" This conversation happened over a couple of pints and while working for a Fortune 60 company trying to reinvent itself in the face of massive disruption. The answer was simply this: While there may be strong desires, passions and intentions to invent the next internet, what matters is the operational capacities to make it happen.  Most companies still act with analog operational tools and mindsets. Many companies still have old product development tools based on gating systems and six sigma mandates that will kill product innovation. Like someone once said: "Six Sigma is for exploitation. Design Thi...

In my frequent travels to Chile in business and social capacities, the inevitable comparisons come up about differing cultural and business practices. I can claim a modicum of ability on the matter from having spent my life working internationally and observing cultural differences. My inspiration is Alexis de Tocqueville, which did similar work, in his seminal work: Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840. A missive about our own USA culture and a great read. At the risk of sounding critical about another culture that I happen to love and that I am aiming to change, I will nevertheless venture forth. One consistent complaint from those visiting Chile is the lack of a service culture. This observation is in contrast to the USA culture, which in my experience is second to none. Why the difference? A Chilean friend shared his insights on the question. He is a professional that works in Chile’s number one industry and number one export – cooper. ...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/innovation-glad-trash-bags-febreze-whaaat-andres-jordan?trk=prof-post

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/innovation-thinking-i-get-how-does-help-my-company-andres-jordan

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

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

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

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

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