This is an interesting concept.
YouTube – Tesco Homeplus Virtual Subway Store in South Korea.
Get to work
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.
-Chuck Close
Innovation with Geoffrey Moore
Geoffrey Moore’s thoughts and research are at the core our work for those of us in the arena of launching new technology products. “Crossing the Chasm” was and still is one of those books that are required reading for innovation and new product development people in the tech space. Here is an almost hour long interview with him.
Also, Mixergy, the site that created this video has lots of great interviews with technology startup founders. They also have provide video podcasts. I recommend the site and I have not caught up on all the videos yet. Good actual applied information about what founders went through, mistakes, and other good information.
Disrupters wanted?
A survey from IBM’s Institute for Business Value shows that CEOs value one leadership competency above all others – creativity.
CEOs identify “creativity” as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.
That’s creativity—not operational effectiveness, influence, or even dedication. Coming out of the worst economic downturn in their professional lifetimes, when managerial discipline and rigor ruled the day…
via what-chief-executives-really-want: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.
With the more complex, more dynamic world, leaders are needed to be creative. A creative person who can lead can be a disrupter. They can do 3 things that are needed by companies:
Disrupt the Status Quo. Every company has legacy products that are both cash—and sacred—cows. Often the need to perpetuate the success of these products restricts innovation within the enterprise, creating a window for competitors to advance competing innovations. As CEOs tell us that fully one-fifth of revenues will have to come from new sources, they are recognizing the requirement to break with existing assumptions, methods, and best practices.
Disrupt Existing Business Models. CEOs who select creativity as a leading competency are far more likely to pursue innovation through business model change. In keeping with their view of accelerating complexity, they are breaking with traditional strategy-planning cycles in favor of continuous, rapid-fire shifts and adjustments to their business models.
Disrupt Organizational Paralysis. Creative leaders fight the institutional urge to wait for completeness, clarity, and stability before making decisions. To do this takes a combination of deeply held values, vision, and conviction—combined with the application of such tools as analytics to the historic explosion of information. These drive decisionmaking that is faster, more precise, and even more predictable.
via what-chief-executives-really-want: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.
Quote of the day: Continuing innovation
Peter Thiel: People take it for granted that their retirement funds can earn 8.5 percent a year. That’s what their financial planners tell them. And sure, you look back over the past 100 years, the stock market has generally gone up 6 to 8 percent a year. But in a larger historical perspective, that kind of growth is exceptional. If you had done the equivalent of investing in the stock market from, say, 1000 to 1100 AD, you would not have made 8 percent a year. During the fall of the Roman Empire, you’d have been lucky to get zero. We’ve been living in a unique period of accelerating technological progress. We’ve gone from horses to cars to planes to rockets to computers to the Internet in a very short time. It’s not automatic that that continues.
via Utopian Pessimist Calls on Radical Tech to Save Economy | Magazine.
Get Creative by Zoning Out
Studies have shown that an idle brain is more likely to come up with a new idea. Yet, we often feel that focus is more of what we need. Try taking mental breaks from email and deadlines and let your mind wander. These breaks can be critical to remaining creative and open to fresh ideas. You can take a short break during a hectic day or you can opt for a longer creative sabbatical over a week, month, or year. Regardless of the duration, be sure you are giving your mind the space it needs to think long term and big picture.
via Get Creative by Zoning Out – Management Tip of the Day – January 25, 2010 – Harvard Business Review.
Leonardo da Vinci's Resume
Most people don’t know that his day job was to design instruments of war.
stone: Leonardo da Vinci’s Resume.
“Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Excellency, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy.
2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions.
3. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc.
4. Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion.
5. And if the fight should be at sea I have kinds of many machines most efficient for offense and defense; and vessels which will resist the attack of the largest guns and powder and fumes.
6. I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.
7. I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. And behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance.
8. In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance of fine and useful forms, out of the common type.
9. Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.
10. In times of peace I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings public and private; and in guiding water from one place to another.
11. I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.
Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.
And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency – to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.”
Stop the Presses! Literally.
Total paid subscriptions are starting to really fall off of a cliff for print media. This is greatly due to the Internet and the fact that they are giving their product away on the Internet. And secondarily, I don’t think the quality of most media is very good in several areas. Factual reporting, especially in science issues and on many political details seems weak in many mainstream newspapers. And, investigative journalism, for example, has seemed to be abandoned for some reason. This is just my opinion. But, the fact remains, they need to re-think their model, yesterday.
Interestingly enough, out of the top 25 newspapers, only one has seen growth in 2008-2009 – the Wall Street Journal. The one I like both in how they factually report news, have interesting commentary, and the best newspaper website, in my opinion. They are also the one I actually subscribe to.
Link: MINT-DEATH-OF-NEWS-R2.png (PNG Image, 1100×2001 pixels)
Innovating with a Systemic View
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Innovation creates change. That is pretty obvious. Innovation is all about changing things for the better. But, taking a narrow view of innovation by designing solutions and products solely focused on the customer – or “human centered” innovation that is just focused on the end user – can sometimes work out to a non-optimal solution.
This is because focusing narrowly on the end user can sometimes ignore the larger macro system. This is where an economically oriented methodology of looking at actors and systems can help the new product design process.
Tatyana Mamut, who is an economic anthropologist had an interesting story and model to use to vet larger implications of products that have good human-focused intentions:
During a recent project that took us to Ethiopia, we interviewed a local treadle-pump manufacturer who noted that the era of NGO and government interventions created expectations among their small-farmer customers that many agricultural products and services should be provided free of charge or at heavily subsidized prices. While the NGOs and government officials were certainly well-meaning in their work and support of farmers, their actions lowered the value of agricultural goods and services so much that local businesses closed shop or were forced to seek subsidies from the NGOs themselves in order to remain profitable.
Some quick back of the napkin economic thinking could have helped design a more optimal economically/ system-based solution.
Tatyana, working at IDEO, is working with a framework to analyze the impact to several actors in the system. It consists of 4 actors:
Constituents: Identify the primary constituents and their relationships. Who are the primary people the solution intends to affect? Who are the people, organizations, and other actors that are related and linked to the primary constituents?
Funders: Delineate the funders and investors. Who is bringing value in terms of money and other resources to the system? Who else—foundations, investors, shareholders, governments—are related to primary funders and have stakes in the funding?
Society: Determine the stakeholders in society who may be touched by the innovation. Beyond the primary constituents and those who are directly related to them, who else may be affected or have a stake in the intervention? What actors—such as schools, businesses, different social classes—may experience a value gain or loss as a result?
Nature: Articulate the aspects of the natural environment that may be affected. What areas of the natural environment need to be considered? Where will resources be extracted and how will they be allocated? Who—people, organizations, or public authorities—speak for these aspects of nature and the environment?
Next, posit where you might look within the framework to track the actors who will gain value through the innovation as well as those who might experience a loss of value.
Link: How Can We Zoom Out to Evaluating With a Systemic View? | GOOD
Big Businesses and Small Lifespans
Our institutions aren’t what they used to be. Below is a chart of the average lifetime of S&P 500 companies. Perhaps business and technological change are happening so quickly at an increasing (exponential) rate – that big companies can’t respond fast enough – driving turnover among these once large stable companies.
Link: Exponential Innovation & Institutional Demise | George Benckenstein
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