Post(s) tagged with "Innovation"
McKinsey Innovation Report – what stands out
Paul Hobcraft, innovationexcellence.com
The one aspect within the report I find really shocks and disappoints me:
The concern lies in the number of dedicated employees on innovation, 35% of executives (out of 2,927) have ten or fewer full-time equivalents working within their function and 30% saying at least 51 full-time equivalents dedicated and working on innovation.
So much for that dedication for innovation…
Innovation Isn’t Tied to Size, but to Operating Rules
You can find plenty of people who disregard bigger enterprises, stating they are not the future. Plenty of people — including here on Harvard’s blog — espouse the theory that big companies can’t innovate.
This argument is both old and wrong. Joseph Schumpeter, the noted economist, said — in 1909 — that small companies were more inventive than large ones. But then, in 1942, Schumpeter reversed himself and argued that big companies had more ability and incentive to invest in new products. Today, there’s a similar bias; people assume that small companies are creative and big firms are slow and bureaucratic. A look at any performance measure shows that innovation can come from either size, and that both arguments are oversimplifications.
The key for every firm — regardless of size — is to figure out how to consistently create value in a demanding, ever-changing market. That is hard no matter what size you are, no matter what industry you’re in.
Full Story: HBR
Spectators at re-enactment village get wifi access from donkeys | Springwise
With internet access becoming more of a necessity than a luxury these days, we’ve seen a number of startups trying to boost wifi coverage outdoors, including pavement hotspots and even park wifi powered by dog poo. Now a re-enactment village in Israel is providing connectivity to tourists from the animals that carry them around the park, through its Wi Fi Donkeys service.
WIFI from a bit surprising angle…
Source: springwise.com
DARPA is funding the creation of 1,000 Makerspaces in high schools across the country to get American kids interested in making things again.
“We have to move from an engine of bureaucracy to an engine of innovation,” said Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter, announcing this week that at least 1,000 high schools around the country will be opening up Makerspaces over the next four years.
What is a Makerspace, you ask? “It’s a place where you get to do things,” Dale Dougherty, founder of O’Reilly Media’s Make magazine and creator of Maker Faire, told Co.Exist. “I think it’s sort of a mashup of a shop class, a computer lab, an art class, and maybe a bio lab.”
It’s sort of a mashup of a shop class, a computer lab, an art class, and maybe a bio lab.
The national Makerspace project is the brainchild of Dougherty and Saul Griffith, many-tentacled inventor and founder of Squid Labs, Instructables, and Howtoons, and is sponsored by a grant from DARPA MENTOR, the defense department’s research arm related to advancing manufacturing and reviving the nation’s strategic interest in making things; the organization is already sponsoring Makerspaces for adults, so this is a logical extension. There’s some pretty heavy national goals riding on this initiative: getting American kids excited about science, math and technology again and fostering a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. “I feel we’re at this point in time where people are looking for some substantial change in education,” says Dale. “And I want to be that new thing.”
DARPA is funding the creation of 1,000 Makerspaces in high schools across the country to get American kids interested in making things again.
“We have to move from an engine of bureaucracy to an engine of innovation,” said Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter, announcing this week that at least 1,000 high schools around the country will be opening up Makerspaces over the next four years.
What is a Makerspace, you ask? “It’s a place where you get to do things,” Dale Dougherty, founder of O’Reilly Media’s Make magazine and creator of Maker Faire, told Co.Exist. “I think it’s sort of a mashup of a shop class, a computer lab, an art class, and maybe a bio lab.”
It’s sort of a mashup of a shop class, a computer lab, an art class, and maybe a bio lab.
The national Makerspace project is the brainchild of Dougherty and Saul Griffith, many-tentacled inventor and founder of Squid Labs, Instructables, and Howtoons, and is sponsored by a grant from DARPA MENTOR, the defense department’s research arm related to advancing manufacturing and reviving the nation’s strategic interest in making things; the organization is already sponsoring Makerspaces for adults, so this is a logical extension. There’s some pretty heavy national goals riding on this initiative: getting American kids excited about science, math and technology again and fostering a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. “I feel we’re at this point in time where people are looking for some substantial change in education,” says Dale. “And I want to be that new thing.”
Innovation Excellence | Better Ideas Through GamificationAs the late management guru Peter Drucker maintained, “Innovation is the specific tool of the entrepreneur.” A big challenge for every business, though, is how to drive engagement in innovation beyond the startup phase.
Innovation expert Stefan Lindegaard believes social-media gamification is the answer. “Social media has a key role to play in helping engage people once you’ve got their initial attention,” he writes in his new book, Social Media for Corporate Innovators and Entrepreneurs: Add Power to Your Innovation Efforts. “Many people might visit your community page or Like your Facebook page after seeing a tweet, for example, but how do you sustain that initial interest so they come back again and again and become active, committed members of your community? One increasingly popular strategy is gamification.”
Baby Boomers are starting companies at a faster pace than ever before, according to a March report by the Kauffman Foundation and younger workers lack the disposable income and job prospects they once had. This means we may be witnessing a passing of the innovation baton to members of the older generation. As older Americans begin to define the debate around innovation, then the generation gap will soon make its presence felt in innovation hubs like Silicon Valley.
- Innovation in New Markets do not come from “overarching strategies”
- It comes out of opportunity, chaos and rapid experimentation
- Solutions are found by betting on a portfolio of low-cost experiments
- With a minimum number of constraints
- The road for innovation does not go through committee
Steve Blank shows us an interesting example of how organizations approach innovative business development in his own university. And concludes with the above lessons…
Of the nine startups that demoed, five companies aim to tackle problems in health care ― from ensuring that instant messages in the hospital are securely transferred, to making health care costs more transparent.
It becomes more and more clear that the wave of entrepreneurial innovation have come to health care. The main problem now is the traditional perception of health care, organizational models and incredibly complex web of regulations which shows a much slower speed of change.
This is really something that echoes a problem I have been pondering for years: I really agree with Drucker on the issue and I been for many year but why is strategic insight so under valued and overlooked? When discussing the need for real insights the whole discussion usually ends with a lunch-to-lunch exercise in the woods… because “we have already planned that and we don’t have more time to spend”. The message about the importance of investing time and energy looking for a strategic insight simply doesn’t get through!
In the research ECSI have found a four suggestions to why might be that way:
- Insight is confused with innovation = wrong expectations of what it is
- Insight has no owner = pieces of it are spread
- Schumpeter’s bias = we seems to believe insight is an individual property
- Lack of internal integration = thinking and doing is usually not connected
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P A Martin Börjesson
To be able to see the future emerge we have to throw a wide net to catch the weak signals. In this tumble I collect things I find valuable for my work as scenario planner, strategist and futurist - for more info about me go to www.futuramb.se.
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