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by: Scott Goodson
What we saw today was the spark. The explosion will continue for twenty years. We will all feel the warmth.
Watch the Steve Jobs video from today and you will understand how Apple will dominate the smartphone market for the next 25 years. Wow. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile.
Continue reading "Brand New Big Shit. It All Started Today for Apple." »
by: Yann Gourvennec
At Cisco France's request I wrote this brief article (see per below) on the role that innovation can play in customer relationships. This article will be published shortly in the client publication, which is entitled Ciscomag. In order to write this article, I used the material developed for a previous interview carried out in September 2007 for NextTimes, which is the Orange equivalent of Ciscomag for Orange Business Services (click here to read the September issue of NextTimes, the article being on page 2).
Continue reading "Innovation in Outsourcing: Definitely Not a Pipe-dream" »
In a wide-ranging interview on business strategy and the particular challenges posed by hyper-competition, Richard D'Aveni of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business explains the importance of being able to import and export ideas from different marketplaces:Continue reading "Importing and Exporting Ideas from Different Marketplaces" »
by: David Armano
The question isn’t if we’re heading into a recession. It’s how bad will it be—and what we learn from it? As marketing budgets feel the squeeze of the housing crisis and a slowing U.S. Economy, now is a good time to think about opportunities. That’s right. Opportunities. It just happens that the digital medium could be your best friend in a time when belts tighten. Here’s a few starters for how digital can help your business or brand thrive in a recession:
Continue reading "10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive in a Recession" »
Continue reading "Must see video: "We Think" vs."The Cult of the Amateur"" »
by: Idris Mootee
Continuing on this topic. Let's start with some key findings from a recent McKinsey survey. According to the survey, a company's main challenge with innovation today is finding enough talented people.
Continue reading "Innovation and Design Thinking - Is It A Mindset, Process or Profession?" »
by: Dominic Basulto
Companies that innovate at a snail's pace may not be in quite the competitive mess that some experts think they're in. Forget rapid prototyping and rushing beta versions of products to markets.
by: C. Sven Johnson
Generally, I don’t follow the news of every company entering the virtual space. I just don’t care if Levi’s creates their own branded virtual world and, other than the advertising and marketing community, I don’t know who does (though I don’t doubt there are consumers out there who do care). Instead, I pay attention to those companies which might do something interesting on the product development side of things.
by: Lynette Webb
I really like this analogy. It touches on an interesting debate too… although I personally agree 100% open always trumps 100% closed in the end, nowadays it’s not always so black and white. Services can be open in some aspects and not others; there are different degrees of open-ness…
Continue reading "Proprietary Platforms are Like Ice Cubes" »
by: Karl Long
And myspace might be saying “Thanks for the add” to google as well.
I had initially thought this story from Tech Crunch was like a formation of a “coalition of the willing” with the other social networks, but I’m begining to think it might have much bigger implications.
Continue reading "Open Social - the Social Network For Companies Scared Of Facebook" »
by: Idris Mootee
I was surprised to receive so many responses from my last post on "management buzzwords", including dozens of emails, I guess that resonates with many of you guys. I personally think the underlying reason for that behavior is simply because many people simply have no idea of how to deal with their business challenges, so they resort to using buzzwords to give the perception that they have the answers.
Continue reading "When Did You Last Re-frame Your Business?" »
by: John Caddell
Hamel talks frequently in the book of enrolling the entire company in innovation. Among all the obstacles to achieving this--the lack of democracy, the weight of inertia--the biggest one in my view is the information gap. Comparing the volume and depth of information I had access to when I was a senior executive to the paucity I had in any other position--the difference was staggering. (Note: you can find excerpts of "The Future of Management" here.)
Continue reading "On Gary Hamel's "The Future of Management" part 5 - Final thoughts " »
by: C. Sven Johnson (via: Business & Games)
by: Karl Long
So in the first week Radiohead’s album, In Rainbows, which they allowed customer to set their own prices 1 sells 1.2 million downloads and gets an average of $8 each. Next time I’ll just ask them to up the bitrate a little bit.
by: John Caddell
When we think of innovation, we think of products. The Segway, the iPod, the Roomba, the hot cellphone of the quarter. It's not surprising: they make good copy, and they can be photographed.
But, according to Gary Hamel, in his new book "The Future of Management," product innovations are a short-lived form of competitive advantage. A highly-successful new product gives you only a few years of excess profits before imitators and, yes, more innovative products commoditize it. (Doesn't it seem that the RAZR's heyday was a thousand years ago?)
Continue reading "On Gary Hamel's "The Future of Management" part 1 - Management Innovation" »
by: Karl Long
So this is some early experimental thinking here so feel free to poke holes, call bullshit, or add your own take in the comments.
I’m using the term co-creative marketing here as I think it’s a better more holistic term than “viral”. I still think viral is a totally valid tactic, but I don’t think it’s a strategy. Viral in most cases is not much better than a 30 second spot except it’s distribution is cheaper, I guess that’s why marketers and advertisers are so generally comfortable with the concept.
Continue reading "Beyond Viral: 3 ideas for Co-Creative Marketing" »
by: John Caddell
If you love the messiness that is the sprawl of information on the World Wide Web, then read "Everything Is Miscellaneous," by David Weinberger. If you hate that messiness, you should read the book, too. It'll teach you a few things.
Continue reading "Miscellaneous means more knowledge for those who want to dive in" »
by: Dominic Basulto
Leave it to the New York Times to stir up the innovation pot with the provocative thesis that innovation is increasingly becoming the exclusive preserve of the techno-elite, notwithstanding the recent trend toward consumer-generated innovation.
by: Alain Thys
Spoiler alert: This post gives away a key plot point of the final Harry Potter book. So if you've haven't finished the book, do not read on.
Last week Monday (at 1:30 AM) I finished part 7 of the Harry Potter series and after sat through the young man’s wizardry adventures for thousands and thousands of pages, the end of the series felt like losing a friend.
by: Lynette Webb
I've come close to buying the book "Cult of the Amateur" a few times now, but have shied away as I sensed it was going to be one of those books I threw at the wall every few pages in frustration.
Continue reading "Decisive Factor Is Not how We Create but How We Consume" »
Rejoice New York, one of your sons has joined the Futurelab list of contributors. Not so long ago Dominic Basulto used to curate the Fortune Magazine's Business Innovation Insider and act as Director of Editorial Strategy at Corante.
by: Lynette Webb
This was the title of an article I stumbled across, a review of a book about AI and the way minds work. www.emcp.com/intro_pc/reading12.htm. I can't vouch for the book yet, although I've just ordered it... (I have SO many books piled up now, it's getting ridiculous!)... But something about this phrase just really grabbed me.
Continue reading "If 2 Minds Are Better than One Then How about 2 Thousand?" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
While reading something yesterday concerning marketing in virtual worlds I resisted the urge to comment. Last night and again early this morning, I further resisted the temptation to post something here regarding what I’d read. And I’m now resisting the urge to slip something in. I won’t.
by: Dominic Basulto
Over the weekend, Rob Walker of the New York Times took a closer look at the evolving business model for Threadless.com, which has often been cited as an example of democratized innovation, consumer-generated innovation and amateur innovation (and sometimes all three at the same time!).
Continue reading "How Threadless.com democratizes design and innovation" »
by: Yann Gourvennec
This document was originally designed to address the questions which were sent to me by large customers wanting to launch work 2.0 initiatives. Very often these clients wanted to jump on the bandwagon, but they didn’t know how to do it. They required help and guidance, even to understand the very meaning of Web 2.0.
Continue reading "how to turn your large organisation into a web 2.0 wizard in 15 steps" »
by: Danah Boyd
Over at the Britannica Blog, Michael Gorman (the former president of the American Library Association) wrote a series of posts concerning web2.0. In short, he's against it and thinks everything to do with web2.0 and Wikipedia is bad bad bad. A handful of us were given access to the posts before they were posted and asked to craft responses. The respondents are scholars and thinkers and writers of all stripes (including my dear friend and fellow M2M blogger Clay Shirky). Because I addressed all of his arguments at once, my piece was held to be released in the final week of the public discussion. And that time is now. So enjoy!
by: Guy Kawasaki
I know that you might be sick of my Art of Innovation speech, but Zentation has created a very good way to view a PowerPoint-based speech that shows both the speaker and the current slide.
Continue reading "Art of Innovation Online Video with PowerPoint Slides" »
by: David Armano
I'm a sucker for successful communication whether it be visual, written, or oral. So take a look at this presentation from Scott Gavin titled "What is Enterprise 2.0"? It uses a persona based approach to tell a story.
by: Dominic Basulto
Piggybacking on the whole "outside innovation" trend, Delta has created a new micro-site called Experience Change, which encourages airline customers to submit ideas, tips and insights into how to make the travel experience better.
by: Yann Gourvennec
A brand new version of the Orange innovation whitepaper for business services - which I have co-authored with Jean-François Fava Verde - has just been made available (click here to download).
Continue reading "Joint innovation: a client perspective in real-time" »
by: John Caddell
Struggling to grow your revenues through differentiation, competitive strategy and line extensions? You're playing on the wrong field, says Erich Joachimsthaler, author of the new book "Hidden In Plain Sight: How To Find And Execute Your Company's Next Big Growth Strategy."
by: Alexander Osterwalder
I just finished a draft presentation for a workshop on the topic "Competitive Advantage through Business Model Design and Innovation". I'm facilitating the workshop next June with about 100 executives in Guadalajara, Mexico. The workshop is hosted by the Tecnologico de Monterrey (ITESM). Your input regarding the slides is most welcome:
by: Yann Gourvennec
On April 23rd, I was giving a lecture on the marketing of technological innovations to our Paris University MIB-MBA students. This mba is done in conjunction with San Francisco State University. I am now making my training material available to all online at visionarymarketing.com. It comes with slides, bibliography, videos and business cases. Enjoy!
Continue reading "MBA training material on innovation available" »
By: Chris Lawer
Everyday, marketers, product developers, managers, all business-people in fact talk about “value”. In fact, I reckon it is probably the most popular – yet at the same time, most misunderstood - word used in everyday business conversation.
(Quick “non-empirical test” using Google: Value – 776 million hits, Customer – 583 million hits, “A Definition of Value” – 606 hits!)
Continue reading "“Value”, “Value”, “Value”– the Most Vague and Over-Used Word in Marketing" »
