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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" »
by: Idris Mootee
Companies that are squeezed by low cost competitors and channel proliferations are looking to ways to add value to their brands and products. Fancy packaging will not do the job as it adds cost and creates more waste. The best way out is to look to "design" to create a higher level of aesthetic sophistication and emotive elements for the brand.
Continue reading "Are You Ready for the Coming "Feminitization of Everyday Objects"?" »
Something tells me that this visual shouldn't require additional explanation. :-)by: Idris Mootee
There is so much hype around innovation, (including customer inspired innovation) and ethnography these days almost every research firm is telling you that they do ethnography and every design firm is an innovation firm.
Continue reading "Since When Has Everyone Become an Ethnographic Expert!" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff
Dr. Ernie Medina and his partners launched their first XRtainment Zone in California last year. The mission of XRtainment Zone is to provide families and kids of all ages a fitness club of their own "where working out is all play."
Continue reading "G4H 2008: XRtainment Zone - Beyond Serious Games For Workouts " »
by: Christian Smagg
There are risks associated with adopting any new technology, and Enterprise 2.0 is no different. Enterprise 2.0 holds the promise of dramatically increasing business productivity, stimulating greater innovation, and creating tighter connections between employees, as well as with partners, suppliers and customers.
Continue reading "Enterprise 2.0 Fear Factor: Overcoming Risks, Uncertainties and Doubts" »
by: John Caddell
Every CEO these days wants to reinvent her business. One problem is thinking big enough. Being part of an industry, a market, a sector tends to limit a company's peripheral vision. How do companies break out of their comfort zone and find strategies that take advantage of their unique strengths while opening up new markets?
Continue reading ""Big Think Strategy" Is a Fun, Inspiring Read on Reinventing Business" »
Continue reading "The Communist Manifesto of Chris Anderson" »
by: Dominic Basulto
During times of both economic boom and bust, business innovation tends to flourish. During a boom, flush pockets and rosy visions of the future lead to generous spending on innovation projects. During a bust, the need to hunker down and deal with everyday business reality leads companies to innovative solutions.
Continue reading "The Strange Birth of the Banana Box Retailer" »
by: Christian Smagg
There are risks associated with adopting any new technology, and Enterprise 2.0 is no different. Enterprise 2.0 holds the promise of dramatically increasing business productivity, stimulating greater innovation, and creating tighter connections between employees, as well as with partners, suppliers and customers.
Continue reading "Enterprise 2.0 Fear Factor: Overcoming Risks, Uncertainties and Doubts" »
Continue reading "Building an Innovative Culture - What Does It Mean?" »
by: Michael Hoexter
The events of December when the US Congress dropped an extension of the existing tax credits for renewable energy from the 2007 energy bill have highlighted the need for the renewable energy industry to take a different tack in the area of policy support and marketing strategy.
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy XIII: Valuing Energy and Energy Services" »
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" »
"Best of market trumps first to market"
Continue reading "Alan Cooper: "Best of Market Trumps First to Market"" »
Continue reading "just because we can, doesn't mean we should" »
by: Idris Mootee
It is not easy to break through the clutter of the hundreds of competing products out there and some wonder if differentiation is even possible. That's the reason why some of the greatest brands of the world are coming to us for innovation. Innovation is the only way to break out of the commodity cycle.
Continue reading "Three Simple Concepts for DIY Innovation" »
by: Idris Mootee
The hottest new agency is WANAA (We Are Not An Agency). Ok, there is no agency called WANAA. You get the point. Headhunters are calling everywhere tyring to recruit new heads for interactive agencies as many have plans to replace theirs. The problem is the interactive heads just move around from one agency to another...with little result...sadly. This is not going to change anything. Coming back to the topic of agency consolidation, these are the questions:
Continue reading "The Hottest New Agency for the Year Is WANAA!" »
by: David Armano
Is there really such thing as an "un agency"?
I'm always on the lookout for patterns: And the industry is full of them right now.
by: Dominic Basulto
Starbucks is quietly rolling out a pilot program of $1 coffees and free refills to customers at select stores in Seattle. Despite all indications that Starbucks is slowly morphing into a McDonald's-like fast food chain complete with dollar menus, highway rest stops, and drive-through windows, Starbucks spokespersons vigorously deny the notion, claiming that the pilot "is not indicative of any new business strategy."
Continue reading "Starbucks Rips Another Page from the McDonald's Playbook" »
by: Idris Mootee
Here I am with Adam (a smart and creative guy who started with us only for a week) in our new office. He was given three tools to get started: 1/ a power drill 2/ a IBM tablet and 3/a blackberry. He has a typical profile of the people that we carefully select ..the left and right brainer..the raw material for an innovation provocateur.
Continue reading "Why Is It Even Harder for Leaders to Innovate?" »
Continue reading "Exploring Adjacent Sector Innovation Requires External Provocateurs" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
Here’s a quick note to call attention to something that might be of interest: Another avatar fabbing outfit has set up shop. Most of you are probably already aware of Fabjectory, the service that’s been “3D printing” Second Life avatars and objects for the last year or so. Well now there’s a service available for fabbing World of Warcraft game characters.
The return of Howard Schultz to Starbucks in the CEO role -- combined with the deluge of press attention about the looming showdown between McDonald's and Starbucks for the hearts and minds of coffee drinkers around the world -- raises a very interesting question: To what extent can the founder of a company spark a turnaround by returning to the CEO role?
Continue reading "Starbucks turns to its founder for a spark of innovation" »
by: Joel Makower
I've long been an admirer of Gary Hirshberg, the idealistic and iconoclastic "CE-Yo" of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, which he co-founded in 1983. I first met Hirshberg a decade later, in 1993, when researching my book about corporate social responsibility, Beyond the Bottom Line. I recall being impressed at the time by his passion and commitment, but also his humbleness and honesty. "I think whatever your definition is of social responsibility," he told me at the time, "if the message is, 'Look how great we are,' then you're missing the boat." It was a refreshing change from so many companies' arm-waving, self-congratulatory approaches to social responsibility, both then and now.
Continue reading "Gary Hirshberg: Changing the Culture and 'Stirring It Up'" »
by: David Wigder
As companies plan their green investment strategies for 2008 and beyond, they should take into account that caps on carbon emissions are all but inevitable in the future. In fact, it is highly likely that caps will be in place in the US within the next few years. The 187 nations that attended the UN climate conference last month in Bali (including the US) agreed to negotiate a successor agreement to Kyoto by the end of 2009. Perhaps more importantly, Congress already has several climate bills under consideration.
Continue reading "Partnership Pitfalls and Avoiding Murder" »
{Update: It’s great to see an entry like the one I came across on Kim Pallister’s blog yesterday (Link). I’d learned about Build-A-Bear Workshop sometime last Summer iirc [Note: as I thought… on Raph Koster’s blog - Link], and my thoughts then were very much the same as what he details in his post, and pretty much follow the kinds of things I’ve been discussing here in other entries.
by: Eliane Alhadeff
Following my prior post Microsoft Shaping The Serious Games Movement Into A Multi-Billion Dollar Market, where I state that "by no means would Microsoft join either a current $ 150 million dollar market or a to-be $ 1 billion market only in 2011" (as projected by a few sources), BusinessWeek has published an article this week where David Boker, senior director of the Business Development Group at Microsoft's Aces Studio, one of Microsoft's game studios where ESP was developed, says Microsoft conservatively estimates this market at $9 billion.
Continue reading "$9 Bi: Microsoft's Conservative Estimate for the Serious Games Market" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff (also see Business&Games)
The West Midlands (UK) region is fast becoming recognized as one of the key EU regions with regard to the development of Serious Games.
Continue reading "Mapping The Serious Games Industry Within The UK " »
