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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.
by: Dominic Basulto
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.
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" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
{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 " »
Continue reading "Muslim Car? Buddist Cell Phone? What's Next?" »
by: Christian Smagg
There are risks and challenges associated with adopting any new technology, and Enterprise 2.0 is no different.
It is quickly becoming evident that successful implementation is arising from business strategy, aligned with clearly defined outcomes & objectives, and supported by organisational structures, company's culture and adapted technologies. Like any other project, it requires thought, preparation, support, energy, and communication.
Continue reading "Driving successfully web 2.0 into the enterprise" »
Now that you’re a nanotechnology expert, here’s the next trend to study: Free. This is a video of Chris Anderson discussing his next book. Chris is the editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail. Kudos to whoever a Nokia decided to put this keynote online for the rest of us. And kudos to Core77 for finding it via Nova.Continue reading "Must-Watch Video: "Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price"" »
I've been struggling through the new book “Authenticity” by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore,
and I've been wondering why I've struggled. It's not a badly-written
book, and I remember reading and liking some articles adapted from
their earlier book, “The Experience Economy.”
I'm also interested in the idea of authenticity (link to prior post).
But nonetheless, I've read the book in fits and starts. It's been a
chore.by: Guy Kawasaki
Batelle Memorial Institute recently completed a report called "Productive Nanosystems: A Technology Roadmap." It's a complete analysis of this world-changing technology.
Original Post: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/12/must-read-nanot.html
by: Yann Gourvennec
Yesterday, 12th of December 2007 was a great day in my recent career as a lecturer in marketing and innovation which started last April with the 360° analysis of the marketing of ICT products and services (click here to access the files). Indeed, I was invited by Pr Manuel Sosa to pitch on the subject of joint innovation at Orange business services, in order to present our activities in front of the students of the executive MBA of INSEAD.
Continue reading "joint innovation presentation at INSEAD" »
by: Alexander Osterwalder
Yesterday I finished a draft for a simple business model innovation manual co-financed by La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and DOTARS. In the spirit of open innovation I am sharing this "beta version" online to trigger your feedback.
Draft Business Model Manual (beta version): How to Describe and Improve your Business Model to Compete Better (pdf)
Continue reading "Draft Business Model Innovation Manual (beta version)" »
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy Part IX: What is Renewable Energy Anyway?" »
by: Dominic Basulto
Earlier in the week, I had the unique opportunity to hear Peter Semmelhack, CEO of New York-based Bug Labs, describe how his start-up company was radically disrupting the traditional consumer electronics industry. Using a modular, open source approach, Bug Labs is focused on bringing the Long Tail of Gadgets to everyday consumers.
Now this is interesting. From the SLNN site (Link):
The Fashion Research Institute (FRI) in conjunction with IBM is developing a product lifecycle management solution for the fashion industry that specifically addresses the industry’s unique needs, cutting time to market. Designers will be able to access 3-D tools from within SL or Open Sim to create their fashion product. The 3-D models of the design can be shown in a virtual showroom. Everyone who has a share in the product will be available to review the design: product managers, designers, design directors, merchandizers, costers, executives, sales staff and show room managers. After the creative vision has been finalized, factory specifications are created that will enable the item to be manufactured in real life.
Continue reading "A Virtual World-Based PLM for the Fashion Industry {Updated}" »
by: John Caddell
Upon first reading this month's Harvard Business Review, I skated over “Breakthrough Thinking Inside the Box” (free link). I was probably too wrapped up in the storytelling article. Or I was concerned that this was another “strategic secret in 3000 words or less.”
Continue reading "An Important New Resource for Improving Innovation" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Stanford Magazine has a terrific article about Kiva
called “Small Change, Big Payoff” by Cynthia Haven. This is the story of how Matt and Jessica Jackely Flannery created it to enable people to make micro loans to entrepreneurs around the world.
by: John Caddell
The podcast is back, this time featuring Tony Ulwick, author of the book "What Customers Want" and CEO of Strategyn, a consulting firm helping companies improve their innovation processes.
by: Alain Thys
Every day thousands of people die from bad marketing. Neither Google nor I remember where I read these words. Perhaps I never read them at all. But as I was flying from Zurich to Amsterdam I couldn't get them out of my mind.
I had just read about Sir Bob Geldof badgering a number of CEO's on their moral obligation to get involved in poverty. And while - bless him - he probably saved quite a few lives by guilting them into a donation, I doubt whether anything beyond "token money" will change hands.
Continue reading "Marketing Challenge: Can We Profit From Poverty?" »
by: John Caddell
There's a fascinating interview at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge with HBS professor Alan MacCormack, covering innovation and how it's moving away from Corporate R&D and into a collaborative web of partnering & alliances. (You can find a working paper on the subject here.)
Continue reading "Innovative Companies Must Excel at Partnering" »
by: Dominic Basulto
In the current issue of Portfolio magazine, former Intel CEO Andy Grove suggests that corporate behemoths - sometimes, but not always - may be better suited to disruptive innovation than smaller, more nimble upstarts:
Continue reading "Andy Grove on How Large Companies Can Become Disruptive Giants" »
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: Eliane Alhadeff
Via: NanoMission - 3 Games Modules Available For Download!
Following my prior post Serious Games To Understand Nanotech, PlayGen has made 3 game modules available for download:NanoMedicine, NanoScaling and Nano Imaging.
Continue reading "Serious Games To Understand Nanothech Available For Download" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff (via Business & Games)
For most people, video games mean entertainment, like TV or the movies. But their true meaning may be much bigger, impacting every aspect of our world, from education to business, society and culture.
IBM explores how video games may impact every aspect of our world, from education to business, society and culture.
Continue reading "Serious Games Pioneering How We Will Learn & Work In The Future" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
I caught a whiff of this piece on the Guardian earlier this month, and having finally read it, all I can say is, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster someone else is starting to talk about the impact virtual worlds will almost certainly have on real world commerce. Victor Keegan has fired a nice warning flare in his article, “Virtual China looks for real benefits” (Link). From the piece:
by: Alex Eperjessy (via Business & Games)
They call themselves a hot new advergaming company. Blogger opinions are already split on this, with some calling it a great idea and others arguing that it’s nothing but a fishy scheme. Last week, Moola’s CEO, Arlen Ritchie, gave me a presentation that stretched slightly over one hour. He gave the demo, I asked the questions. The result is below, God help us all.
Continue reading "Interview with Arlen Ritchie, Moola's CEO" »
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
This past summer I’d mentioned a summit on virtual goods and linked to a TechCrunch article related to the panel, “Are Virtual Goods the Next Big Business Model?” (reLink). A video of that discussion, chaired by Susan Wu of Charles River Ventures, was posted shortly after the panel, and while I managed to watch the first few introductory minutes of it, I neither finished watching it nor returned to it. Until now, that is, after a reminder from a post on The Meshverse Journal (Link).
by: Eliane Alhadeff
A web based virtual shopping mall launched in New Zealand, allows users to navigate a three dimensional space to browse and buy products, bringing what the company says is the same shopping experience as in the real world. http://www.themallplus.com/ is not a portal that redirects consumers to third party websites, instead creating an online virtual shopping mall.
Continue reading "Serious Games Bring the Mall to Web Browsers" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
IBM researchers talked to a bunch of consumers and executives to come up with their "The End of Advertising as We Know It" report (full report, PR summary). Key findings:
by: John Caddell
For as long as there have been luxury brands, they have been trying to expand from their original niche to related - or unrelated - product areas. Remember Pierre Cardin cologne? It was a mainstay of TJ Maxx, a US discount store, back in the 1980's.
Continue reading "Luxury Brand Names - Extensible Everywhere?" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
"ComScore released a study of online sales of "In Rainbows," a new record album from the band Radiohead. During the first 29 days of October, 1.2 million people worldwide visited the "In Rainbows" site, with a significant percentage of visitors ultimately downloading the album. The study showed that 38 percent of global downloaders of the album willingly paid to do so, with the remaining 62 percent choosing to pay nothing."
Continue reading " Study: Radiohead Promotes Music with Free Music" »
by: Alain Thys
In America, brands experiment in Second Life and There, hang out on Laguna Beach or even set up their own not-so-little universe. Korea has Cyworld and China is building one of the most ambitious virtual worlds on the planet (or should I call it an e-commerce enabled mass-customisation system with virtual world storefront ?)
And meanwhile, Europe sleeps.
Continue reading "Call for Interest: It's Time European Brands Got Serious about Virtual Worlds" »
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.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I had the great pleasure to speak at the same conference as Professor Henry Chesbrough. The event took place in Dublin and was organized by Enterprise Ireland. It was great to follow Henry's talk on Open Innovation and Open Business Models, two terms he coined in two different books.
Continue reading "Professor Henry Chesbrough on Open Innovation and Open Business Models" »
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: David Armano
I recently had a chance to catch up with BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum who was a good enough sport to go ahead and share a his "innovation gym" story with us on video.
by: Dominic Basulto
The other day, the Wall Street Journal featured one of the most inspiring stories about innovation that I've read in quite some time. Shai Agassi, once a fast-rising senior executive at software giant SAP, left the company in March under mysterious circumstances and dropped off the grid, only to re-surface this week, flush with $200 million in VC funding and a radical idea for disrupting the automotive industry.
Continue reading "Radically Re-thinking the Automotive Business Model" »
by: John Caddell
"We need to document our processes!"
I heard this again and again at various companies I worked at over the years. And that's a fine goal, to document processes. But the thinking--that if processes are documented then we will be able to perform high-quality work and be successful--is flat-out wrong in many circumstances.
Continue reading "HBR Article Demonstrates that Leaders Need to Manage Complexity" »
by: Dominic Basulto
A big hat tip to Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney, who have just released The Global Brain. The book provides a roadmap for innovating faster and smarter in a networked world. Here's a blurb from the book's website:
To innovate more effectively, you must harness powerful new sources of creativity from both inside and outside your company.
Continue reading "The Global Brain and Networked Innovation" »
by: danah boyd
In business, the economic concept of "externalities" has tremendous salience. In short, an externality is a cost that a third party must bear due to the actions of others. For example, air pollution is considered an externality of manufacturing. In theory, as protectors of the public good, reasonable governments should regulate corporate externalities through imposed taxes. (In reality...) More and more, discussion of environment externalities is a core part of business.
by: C. Sven Johnson
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my primary interest in tracking the intellectual property issues currently plaguing the music and movie industries, waiting in the ebook wings for book publishers, and even frustrating hordes of bloggers whose content is appropriated and used to create spamblogs, is that at some point their problems become my problems; becomes the problem of anyone who designs and fabricates real products for a living.
Continue reading "The Looming Dark Horizon: When the IP Mess Hits Industrial Design & Co." »
by: Dominic Basulto
The current issue of Popular Mechanics has assembled a great list of the 10 Most Brilliant Innovations of 2007. At the top of the list, of course, is the new surface computing interface from Microsoft:
Continue reading "The Ten Most Brilliant Innovations of 2007" »
I will be speaking at the "Innovating the Business Model" conference organized by Enterprise Ireland, today, Wednesday 24th of October.
Continue reading "Conference Talk: Innovating the Business Model (Dublin, Ireland)" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
I’ve just given Kinset, a 3D virtual shopping application, (Link) a spin. Before I offer my opinion, let’s start off with what it’s supposed to be. From the website:
by: Alain Thys
When listening to the case of TNT Post's sustainability efforts at Marktplein 2.0, I could only conclude that no good deed goes unpunished. And as it's a situation which many companies going "green" may be facing soon, it's one to start thinking about today.
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: 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
After lengthy case histories of some new-management examples (W.L. Gore, Whole Foods Market and Google), Hamel gets down to helping us imagine what the new management model might look like. In Chapter Eight of "The Future of Management ," "Embracing New Principles," he lays out models for highly-resilient, self-organizing systems, so that by example we could create some rules and practices for new corporate managment. The systems are:
by: John Caddell
"Making innovation everyone's job" is a section heading in "The Future of Management." The question is why isn't this done? Hamel (and his co-writer Bill Breen; I've been negligent in not crediting him earlier) give three reasons:
by: John Caddell
What's wrong with today's style of management, anyway? It's earned trillions of dollars of profits. It's slimmed-down, delayered and re-engineered thousands of companies. It supports hundreds of graduate schools emitting newly-minted MBAs every year (including your author).
by: C. Sven Johnson
There’s an opinion piece over on BusinessWeek penned by Geoff Vuleta that got my attention a few days back. In “One Vision for the Future of Chrysler” (Link), Vuleta discusses how embracing sustainability initiatives could be good for Chrysler. So far so good.
Continue reading "Sustainability Scapegoats: Industrial Designers?" »
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: Joel Makower
Last week's Live Better Sustainability Summit, held just outside of Bentonville, Arkansas, was yet another in what seems to be an accelerating series of "whoda thunk" moments. Bentonville, of course, is hometown to Wal-Mart, which sponsored the event, a daylong conclave that brought together more than a thousand people to a nearby convention centerContinue reading "Blog Action Day: Wal-Mart's Sustainability Summit" »
Design Reaktor Berlin is a multi-disciplinary research project of the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK)/Berlin University of the Arts. Their aim is to encourage innovative cooperation between small and medium-sized companies and young designers.
by: Eliane Alhadeff (via Business & Games)
Architectural Wonders Allowing Anyone to Create a Working Virtual World. Virtual-worlds platform developer Multiverse Network is set to announce a partnership Tuesday that will allow anyone to create a new online interactive 3D environment with just about any model from Google's online repository of 3D models, its 3D Warehouse, as well as terrain from Google Earth.
Continue reading "Serious Games Set In Your Favorite Google Earth Locations" »
Here day Nr.4 (last day) of a course I was teaching at a Masters class on "Modeling Business Models" at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hochschule Luzern).
Continue reading "Course (in German) on Modeling Business Models - Day 4 of 4 half-days" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko (via Business & Games)
This ad for Toyota Tacoma set in the World of Warcraft has been airing for a few days and has hit the front page of Digg and just about any WoW forum. The spot is a riff off one of the most famous WoW player moments, Leeroy Jenkins (wiki). The ad is not unlike the famous Coke spot made to look like it was set in the world of Grand Theft Auto.
by: Michael Hoexter
A few posts back in this series I reviewed the state of mobile energy storage in the form of batteries and ultracapacitors, which are in the process of getting smaller and more powerful. However, if you don’t need to move around while using energy, the amount of energy stored per unit weight and volume becomes less of a challenge, therefore the separate category of stationary energy storage.
by: C. Sven Johnson
Core77 alerted me to an article by frog design’s SVP of Creative, Mark Rolston, that initially sounds a heck of a lot like what I’ve been discussing here over the past few years, but manages to fall short in some critical ways. The article, “Defining The New Singularity” (Link), is still worth a read… if you haven’t been keeping up with things here. And don’t mind the way he’s casually butchering the term “singularity“; which in my opinion should have remained intact given the subject matter and potential for confusion.
Continue reading "Frog’s Rolston Gives Industrial Design a Singular Sales Pitch" »
(Image from StrawberryFrog's global Cap Gemini Ernst & Young campaign)New study shows importance of advertising to economic growth
A new study commissioned by the World Federation of Advertisers and the French Advertisers Association (UDA) has given one of the most comprehensive insights yet into the importance of advertising to economic growth.
Continue reading "New Study Shows Link Between Advertising and Economic Growth" »
by: David Polinchock
Richard Hytner presented on the Saatchi Lovemarks approach. Rolf Jensen (www.dreamcompany.dk), futurist, said the highest paid profession in the 1st half of the century will be storytellers.
by: C. Sven Johnson via Business & Games
Well, there’s been so much buzz about the possibility Google is creating a multi-user virtual world it’s kind of hard to miss. What’s equally hard for me to miss is the apparent surprise being registered by so many people. Hello? Are Google and Microsoft investing time and money in creating 3D representations of the Earth so that we can simply be impressed? so that we can download their applications and wander around them in social isolation like some modern version of The Omega Man… minus vampires? C’mon, already.
Continue reading "A Collection of Virtual World News Items" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff via Business and Games
Mechdyne Corporation is the world’s largest company dedicated to consulting and development of immersive, networked and collaborative visualization systems.
Mechdyne’s subsidiary Fakespace Systems Inc. applies the skills acquired over 18 years of innovation and market-building experience to offer the industry’s broadest range of large-scale and immersive displays and interaction technologies.
Continue reading "FakeSpace: Serious Games As Doors Into Virtual Worlds" »
by: David Armano on Design Research Conference Day 2
It's day 2 at the deign research conference in Chicago. Steven Herbst of Motorola drove in interesting point home with a video from a focus group. You have to be careful when putting folks in a "lab environment"—essentially asking them for their opinions. Watch the video and make your own conclusions.
Continue reading "Use Caution When Asking People What They Want" »
Here day Nr.3 of a course I am teaching at a Masters class on "Modeling Business Models" at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hochschule für Wirtschaft HSW Luzern). Apologies again for those who don't read German. On the 21. September I will be presenting the last set of slides in German.
Continue reading "Course (in German) on Modeling Business Models - Day 3 of 4 half-days" »
by: John Caddell
Lessons learned practice involves examining projects for things that went wrong or could have gone better. The old name, postmortems, has been retired, I guess, because it was too graphic or too negative. Too bad. The best lessons-learned stories are from scrutinizing worst practice.
Continue reading "Lessons learned captured in stories at Lawrence Livermore " »
by: C. Sven Johnson
I’ve been wanting to post an entry regarding an interview with luxury brands consultant, businesswoman and author Uche Okonkwo over on the Mass Customization website (Link), but as I’ve been out of sorts lately I’m only now getting back to it.
by: C. Sven Johnson
Couple of interesting bits today. Over on C|Net there’s nanotech-related news. In “IBM prints with molecules” (Link) we have a follow-on by what sounds like the same group of scientists to an earlier demonstration of a nano-scale “mass production” process.
by: Guy Kawasaki
One of the challenges that geeks, inventors, hobbyists, hackers, burners, and artists who are trying to change the world face is finding a place to do their work. Ideally, it would have lots of equipment, supplies, and other geeks. Until the last year, they would have to set up their own workshop or beg for space at a machine shop. Now they can go and hang out at TechShop
in Menlo Park, California.
by: Dominic Basulto
What do you get when you combine the elegance of haiku with the addictiveness of sudoku? A brand new Asian import that is sweeping the corporate world known as Pecha Kucha.
Continue reading "20/20 vision for corporate innovators: Pecha Kucha" »
This Friday I continued teaching a Masters class on "Modeling Business Models" at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hochschule für Wirtschaft HSW Luzern 1). Apologies to all those whore are less interested in this content that is in German. However, there are some new example as to distribution channel design and new reflections on customer segmentation.
Continue reading "Course (in German) on Modeling Business Models - Day 2 of 4 half-days" »
by: Dominic Basulto
If you're looking for a thought-provoking, concise guide to modern innovation, I would suggest checking out Scott Berkun's The Myths of Innovation. In each chapter, Berkun presents a commonly-held assumption about innovation (e.g. "the best ideas win," "innovation is always good") and then dissects this assumption step-by-step using a mix of business case studies, historical examples, and anecdotal evidence.
Last Saturday I started teaching a Masters class on "Modeling Business Models" at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hochschule für Wirtschaft HSW Luzern). It was the first half day in a series of 4 half day lectures. (NOTE: The course and all the following slides are in German).
Continue reading "Course (in German) on Modeling Business Models - Day 1 of 4 half-days" »
by: David Armano
CM colleague Matthew Milan pointed me to this visual from Xplane's Dave Gray. It's a thought starter, that's for sure. The visual defines Generalists as being best at defining the problem or goal. Specialists are best at solving the problem or "executing the plan".
by: David Polinchock
Learned about a new blog today and this was the first post on it. Love stories like this and wish more brand managers took this kind of knowledge to heart.
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: David Polinchock
You know, I wish I could remember where I first read about this, but what a cool idea. Totally changing the idea of what a library is and does. I love the idea of the library as an "idea store" too. Not a repository of information that is sometimes hard to navigate, but a place for you to get ideas.
Continue reading "Idea Store - Created and Managed by Tower Hamlets Council - Home" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff (via: Business & Games)
Skillsmart Retail is a genuinely enjoyable game. Although its target audience ranges between 14 to 19 year olds, I've seen some senior retailers and marketers having a great playful time as they go through the various quizzes and game levels.
Continue reading "Serious Games Delivering Retail Career Key Messages" »
by: C. Sven Johnson (via Business & Games)
A few days back additional details were revealed about Sony’s new “Home” virtual world. Since then I’ve been trading comments over on Raph Koster’s blog (Link); some of which might be of interest.
by: Dominic Basulto
The TED Conference Blog provides a list of 100 websites that you should know and use, grouped into categories such as e-commerce; curiosity & knowledge and graphics, music & arts:
Continue reading "From the TED Conference: 100 innovative websites" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
Confession time. I’d started writing a piece on “Reverse Product Placement” last February with the intent of selling it the same way that David Edery (via the Harvard Business Review) was selling his short article on the topic. Only my position, after reading about* his article and giving the idea some additional thought, was that his definition is flawed; that true reverse product placement was, as I recently described in another post, something else and what he was talking about was more like futures product placement.
by: Dick Stroud
Not a posting that is specific to the 50-plus. If this vision of the future is correct then it will certainly be relevant to the older age group.
The article in the New York Times starts with the non-contentious statement: “It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital”. Well that is what the chairman and chief executive of Digitas thinks. This is the advertising agency that was recently acquired by the Publicis Groupe.
by: C. Sven Johnson
Via a post on the Mass Custom website comes word of a pretty good article over on Design News, “Rapid Manufacturing’s Role in the Factory of the Future” (Link).
by: Roger Dooley
Would wine thought to be from California taste better than wine from North Dakota, even if it was poured from the same bottle? It’s no surprise that the answer is “yes” - in Preschool Branding we described how even young children say branded food tastes better than identical unbranded items.
by: Dominic Basulto
When it comes to design and innovation, the overwhelming consensus amongst practitioners is that "simplicity" is better than "complexity." When Apple designed the iPod, simplicity of design and operation was a foremost consideration.
Continue reading "Forget simplicity, how about a big dose of chaos?" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
I had originally intended to include news of the New York Public Library’s temporary installation of an Espresso book-on-demand machine (aka PerfectBook 040) in the post preceding this one, only this news really deserves its own entry. It’s not that print-on-demand is a new development. It’s that print-on-demand is a new development for so many people.
By: Guy Kawasaki
I introduced you to Matt May in January. He’s the author of The Elegant Solution
. He added a new manifesto called Mind of the Innovator: Taming the Traps of Traditional Thinking. Here’s an excerpt for you:
by: Dominic Basulto
In the most recent edition of its "Serious Innovation" newsletter, Swedish innovation consultancy Idélaboratoriet highlighted the innovation habits of leading-edge Swedish innovators.
by: Dominic Basulto
Is anyone else getting the feeling that Google is turning its attention away from Microsoft to focus on a potential rivalry with Apple? Nearly a month after Apple announced its groundbreaking new iPhone, Google casually leaked rumors to the press of an upcoming Google Phone release.
by: John Caddell
An article in the current Journal of Product Innovation Management starts out with this rather bland statement:
Continue reading "For a Nimbler, More Stable Alliance, Share Less" »
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: Joel Makower
Where are we, exactly, in the trajectory of green business? Things seem to have changed decidedly in the past six to twelve months, as more and more companies do more and more things. But what should we make of it?
Continue reading "Have We Reached a Green Business Tipping Point?" »
by: Alexander Osterwalder
I was invited to Australia by La Trobe University to give a talk to business people in Melbourne on the topic of business models. The talk took place within the context of a research program I am involved in. Below you can find the slides of the 40 minutes talk.
Continue reading "Workshop on Business Models in Australia" »
by: Dominic Basulto
Last December, Newsweek predicted that 2007 would become "The Year of the Widget." In many ways, this prediction is turning out to be an accurate one.
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: Dominic Basulto
If you enjoyed the Design for the Other 90% exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, you'll enjoy this... MIT is putting together an event for innovators in developing nations:
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: C. Sven Johnson
Joel Greenberg has a blog entry (Link) worth reading regarding Suzanne Vega’s upcoming concert inside Second Life. Some of what he’s getting at has come up here before (reLink). And of course scarcity is something I’m often thinking about, given my particular interests.
by: Dominic Basulto
This video clip from 1973 is an oldie but goodie. New York Magazine recently profiled sculptor Richard Serra, who is currently the subject of a new 40-year retrospective exhibit at MoMA.
by: David Armano
Tomorrow I'm off to Toronto to attend "Summer Event". Every year, Critical Mass holds a 2 day "festival" complete with creative exercises, music and lots of beer. I am going to be part of the "speaker series"—so I had to come up with something to talk about.
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: Dominic Basulto
In an interview with Geoff Colvin of FORTUNE magazine, Xerox's "inventor-in-chief" Sophie Vandebroek discusses how she is leading an "innovation revival" at one of the most storied innovators in the history of U.S. business.
by: John Caddell
"Smart World," the new book by Richard Ogle, describes how breakthroughs happen thusly: rather than turning inward, in lonely contemplation, creators turn outward, and look toward hotspots--emerging and long-lived trends--and draw capabilities from distant, seemingly unrelated areas to create vitally new combinations.
Continue reading "Frank Gehry and breakthrough creativity" »
by: Dominic Basulto
One result of the popularity of Wikinomics has been the number of collaborative wikis that have been launched by organizations and corporations in order to share ideas around the world.
Continue reading "Nokia and Vodafone: Mobile Knowledge for Social Change" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Scott Berkun worked on the Internet explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999. He is the author of a recently released book called The Myths of Innovation
In his most recent book he explores (or, more accurately, “explodes”) the romantic notions of how innovation occurs. Join me in this Q and A session as he explains the real world of innovation.
Continue reading "Ten Questions with Scott Berkun, Author of "The Myths of Innovation"" »
by: Dominic Basulto
It's not only innovative technology companies like Apple and Microsoft that are rolling out cool new touch screen applications. Ralph Lifschitz Ralph Lauren recently announced plans to roll out a touch screen application that completely re-defines what it means to do a little window-shopping.
by: Dominic Basulto
Every now and then, there's a paradigm shift within an industry or field. Sometimes the change is subtle, other times, it is in-your-face obvious. The roll-out of the Microsoft Surface computer within months of the Apple iPhone launch signal a paradigm shift in the way that we interface with our digital devices.
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: 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: Michael Hoexter
A quick post to call attention to two recent electron economy related news items:
1) You’ve probably read in your local paper, on the web or on TV about the MIT researchers that have figured out a way to light up an electric light bulb without plugging it in by beaming power to the light over a distance of 7 feet.
Continue reading "Electron Economy News: Witricity and a Market for Used EV/Hybrid Batteries" »
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 expe
