Bring Ideas 2 Market

Evolution of the Mobile App

2011-05-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

Lessie Hampton provided me with source material from the Blog Ego TV: the evolution of the mobile app. The chart below brilliantly displays some relevant and valuable statistics on mobile apps. I highly recommend taking a look at this blog page.

Via: Online MBA

http://www.egotvonline.com/2011/04/20/the-evolution-of-the-app/

Using Mobile Applications to Start a New Business

2011-04-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

The following analysis covers over 50 applications available for the iPhone and iPad. The survey was conducted in April 2011. The star rating system is based on the size and usefulness of the content and not application design or technological innovation. There are several categories of applications, namely, books, forums, evaluators, start-up templates and legal docs., tutors, and basic start-up information. The category called fluff is related to apps that are not worth buying or downloading based on their scarce content.

Click to enlarge

The vast majority of the applications are mobile versions of books or slide shows. There are a few real apps allowing the user to enter data into an interface. It makes it more compelling to buy and iPad when the content is more than 500 pages.

The best apps fall into opposite ends of the spectrum, namely those that are comprehensive or apps that are highly specialized. The specialized applications give you the sense that you are learning street smarts not only text book widget analogies.

The companies with the largest share of apps are Magnicode Inc., PTAJ Marketing and Reimund Lube. The best free apps are SBA. It is an app that connects you to experts from non-profit organizations. For those who do not want to spend days reading on their iphone, there is an app called ecorner. It provides a wealth of videos from experts.

In the paid category, the best ones are comprehensive books provided by tri Active and Simply Magazine. Hopefully you have an iPad to read them. The main advantage is that the price of the mobile app is less than if you bought the physical book.

In the near future, I hope to provide you with a similar analysis for the Android platform. There are a lot of free applications worth downloading from the app store. However, when paying for these apps, the prices vary substantially and you do not always get what you pay for. I encourage you to send me your feedback on my analysis and look forward to active and numerous discussions on my BringIdeas2Market discussion forum found on Linked-In.

Top Mobile Shopping Apps

2010-11-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Before the advent of smart phones, users relied on the internet to buy things online from sites, such as Pricegrabber.com, Nextag.com, Froogle.com, Yahoo shopping, Shopping.com, MySimon.com, Buy.com and many others. Each one of these sites evolved out of a specific customer need, such as finding the best price, getting a product discount or a coupon from a retailer. Other sites developed as online communities, whereas buyers share their experiences with other buyers. In short, the original purpose of a shopping app is usually the strongest feature of the app in its current form.

Comparing mobile apps with the online experience

This analysis will focus on the mobile shopping apps from the App Store of Apple, Inc. Some of the apps reviewed are also available for other devices using the Android operating system. Many of the apps are only available on mobile devices and therefore have better adapted to the needs of mobile users. For example, The DealMap is only available for mobile devices and is stronger than most apps in offering coupons and discounts and ranks fourth. PriceGrabber.com is the leader online, but falls to 3rd place in the mobile arena. The app Shopping.com is in 12^th place online, but moves to 2nd place for mobile devices. Nextag is in 6^th place online, but leaps to 1st place as a mobile app.

Innovation

The best mobile shopping apps available are those that combine the ability to shop locally with GPS and also include features typical of an online shopping experience. The mobile environment brings to the user experience, a location based capability that the internet cannot provide, namely instant updates based on a shopper's location when moving from one location the another. Basically mobile apps leverage GPS that is built into the mobile device. Bar code scanning is also an innovation that is very useful and reduces the number of clicks needed to find an item. Some apps even provide voice recognition to find an item or recognition by taking a picture from the smart phone. This technology is not revolutionary, more evolutionary and packaged neatly into a small device, namely the smart phone. In short, Nextag is the leader in the mobile shopping app category, followed by Shopping.com and PriceGrabber mobile apps. Froogle (Google) provides innovation, but fails to deliver on the basics. The next step in the innovation path is to add mobile payment processing that eliminates the need for cash or credit card transactions that a mobile app called Squareup, Zong or Obopay provide.

Methodology

The research behind the analysis is extensive and unbiased. Twelve categories were used to analyze the mobile shopping apps. Within each category, many elements were used for determining the 1 to 10 point score, with 10 being the highest score achieved in a given category. The maximum score by element is shown at the bottom of the second chart. The maximum amount used to rank mobile apps with integrated local shopping is slightly biased towards apps that provide both online and local shopping. The assumption is that shoppers want to do both: buy online and buy in-store when shipping costs are too high or the store is close-by to pick-up the product. The other option available to the shopper is to simply pick a brick ’n mortar store and see if in-store pickup is available. The list of apps reviewed here are available for the Apple i-Phone, but not necessarily for Android devices.

Reviews of Top Mobile Shopping Apps

The chart below shows in detail the rating of each mobile shopping app reviewed. The last row shows the maximum score by evaluation criteria.

Mobile apps listed by ranking

1- Nextag

Nextag has the next best product filter after the Shopping.com mobile app. This app’s only weakness is not providing coupons and discounts. However, its bar code reader is outstanding and provides a full range of GPS enabled features, such as finding stores that sell the scanned product on a map and by distance from ZIP or current location. Comparing prices by local retailer is simple and straightforward.

2- Shopping.com

This app is close to the leader for its well adapted filter to narrow the product query to exactly what the shopper is looking for. Unfortunately, the feature set is a bit hollow, because many other shopping apps offer a greater range of features, such as coupons, discounts and the ability to shop locally.

3- Pricegrabber.com

This app will probably improve significantly over time of more of its online capabilities are carried over from the Internet version. This app’s only weakness is not providing coupons and discounts. Unfortunately, unlike its rival Nextag, the bar code scanner feature does not provide local shopping capability.

4- The Dealmap

This app provides a lot of features geared to local shopping. It offers many coupons and discounts, but needs improvement in basic areas, such as ease of use, product filtering, price comparison and seller reviews.

5- Shopper

There are two versions of this app, a free light version and a paid version. This review focused on the paid feature rich version. Despite paying for this application, it lacks many key features that other competitors offer for free, namely user and seller ratings, and price comparisons. Thanks to its wonderful bar code scanner, this app rises in the rankings with lots of features and the ability to shop locally in an efficient manner.

6- Amazon

Unquestionably, Amazon provides one of the best user experiences and has been at the forefront of website design and usability. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement particularly in social networking, and shopping locally. Despite these flaws, Amazon beats the other apps with features not covered in this analysis, such as purchase history and account management tools.

- Bing

This app is similar to its counterpart Froogle only better than its rival. Unfortunately, this app lacks the depth of features and design polish of the shopping app leaders, namely Shopping.com mobile app Nextag and Amazon. It remains a search engine with the ability to search for products in the same way as the Froogle mobile app. The app provides a bar code scanner that is more difficult to use than its competitors.

- Froogle

This app is similar to its counterpart Bing only weaker than its rival. Unfortunately, this app lacks the depth of features and design polish of the shopping app leaders, namely Shopping.com mobile app Nextag and Amazon. It remains a search engine with the ability to search for products in the same way as the Bing mobile app. Google could simply add a social networking feature to give it more relevance. It stands out in innovation, by offering the user the ability to use their voice instead of typing to conduct a product query.

9- eBay Deals

eBay Deals has a wonderful look and feel. This app serves up well what it was designed for, namely to provide the shopper with a long list of deals by category. Obviously, a large sub-group of shoppers simply love to find a deal regardless if the deal fills a need that has been lingering for a long time or an impulsive response. However, for those who have a set goal and want to find the particular product quickly and simply, this app does not provide an efficient means to reach this specific goal.

10 Yahoo Shopping

This app has been around for a very long time and provides the depth of features online but falls short in comparison with its offerings in the mobile arena. Not surprisingly, this app carries over its features weaknesses on the Internet to the mobile sphere. In short, the key areas needing improvement are discounts, the ability to shop locally. Typical features specific to mobile shopping that are needed are bar code scanning and shopping lists.

11 eBay

eBay fills a niche that no other shopping app delivers, namely a simplified auction process. The eBay mobile app displays the time before the particular auction expires, and gives the user a sense of urgency and need to act swiftly. This is acceptable if the product sought is relatively inexpensive and little research is required. However, with large purchases many users probably prefer to research the product itself, look at user and sellers reviews before emptying their wallets to purchase large ticket items. Of course, there is a minority of buyers who become excited with clinching a deal and taking the risk. For the rest of us, an app that provides more research tools and feedback through social networking before spending their hard earned dollars.

12 Coupons

Like the name implies, this is a great app for shoppers looking for coupons on products that are basic staples of everyday life. Unfortunately, little control is offered to the user to find a specific product.

13 Groupon

This app really focuses on finding the best deals and leveraging social networking to spread the word on a particular deal.

14 Shopping Nexus

This app is a disappointment and fails to deliver in almost every aspect an only covers some of the basics.

15 The Find

The Find really focused on social networking and provides high value. The app lacks user ratings and coupons for the deal hungry shoppers. The look n feel really expresses the needs of the user community. The app just needs to improve a little more on the basics and it can easily reach the leaders in the group.

16 Woot!

This app offers strengths in discounts and social networking, but needs to provide a more complete solution in other areas of the buying experience. Brand filtering and reviews would make it a more competitive choice.

17 MA Mobile

This site works very slowly and needs to works to become competitive in the mobile shopping app category.

Overstock

Overstock found a niche in offering designer brands at warehouse prices online. It eventually evolved into something bigger and is getting better over time. It is at the bottom of the list, because it lacks key features, such as seller reviews, product coupons and retailer discounts.

References

Downloaded and reviewed mobile apps from App Store from Apple.

My Social Networking Blog

http://socialnetsavvy.blogspot.com/

mobile payment sites

Newspapers

The San Francisco Chronicle, "Big credit card firms eye mobile market", D2, Saturday, Nov. 20, 2010

The Next Level rebuttal to The New Yorker article from James Surowiecki

2010-10-15T23:18:00.000-07:00

After reading James Surowiecki's article on the October 18th issue of the New Yorker magazine, I had to set the record straight. Although I have never worked at Netflix, I have a lasting impression of the company, when I interviewed for a position there last year. I learned about Netflix's corporate philosophy, business models, business acumen and partnerships. The HR department is more open than most in sharing the company's inner workings. Surowiecki's assumptions is that Netflix is now entering a crowed field of competition, where the likes of tech titans Google, Apple and Amazon will eat its lunch and spit out the crumbs. What the author of the article fails to observe is the actual business models that Netflix and its competitors are operating under. Basically, its competitors are providing a similar service, yet in a sort of a la carte business model. Whereas Netflix has one simple flat rate business model. The large and powerful WalMart tried to win against Netflix a year ago and lost, because the a la carte business model fails against a flat fee system with an endless supply of movies. I think the Achilles heel of Netflix is not its competitors, but its supply of movies from the movie studios. Basically, only a few studios have bought into the streaming media platform. Eventually, when they finally do decide to follow this new distribution model , they will choose the player that offers them the greatest financial returns regardless of the distribution efficiencies the partner is offering.

Another scenario is the movie studios will form their own e-distribution consortium and cut out Netflix altogether. They have deep pockets and simply need to team up with a tech savvy partner to make things happen. In this business, it is not the distribution model or technology that sets the rules, but the owner of the content. In this case, the movie studios still have the upper hand. Yes Blockbuster was slow to adopt new technologies as the author explains, but he missed the crux of the business relationships, namely the alliance with the content providers. In this case, few movies studios are partnering with Netflix. In short, it is currently, handicapped by its lack of depth and breadth of movie offerings, because only a few of the movie studios have fully invested their chips into this new business model.

In summary, if competitors such as Google, Apple or Amazon can wrestle more deals with the movie studios, then they will become more of a threat to Netflix than in the current competitive landscape. Netflix is a great company and its is chalk full of smart people, but as an investor, I would push them to make more deals with the studios, before allocating a larger portion of my stock portfolio to their brand.

Job Search Engines Reviewed 2010

2010-09-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

The number of job search engines has multiplied over the years. Unemployed individuals as well as people looking for better opportunities have flocked to these job search engines. The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with a short list of top search engines that provide the best search capability while ignoring other resources, such as resume distributors, free resumes critique services or career counseling.

The results of this analysis are based on reviewing over 20 different job search engines on the web. They include: Beyond, Jobster, Job.com, Snag-a-job, InnovaHire, Linkup, CareerBuilder, Monster, Linked-In, Simply Hired, Job Fox, Job Hits, JuJu, YourJobStop, JustJobs, TeleportJobs, Hotjobs, Linked-In, GoJobs, AllWebJobs, GetWikiJobs, VentureLoop and TheLadders.com, to name a few.

The top 3 job search engines

1- Indeed The creme de la creme in terms of searching capabilities and filtering. The number of matching results has declined over the last two years, but this is from a poor economy and not a poor product. I absolutely love this tool for several reasons. This search engine provides many features that competitors fail to match, namely a salary estimate filter, employer sites only, job types and additional filters once the results are posted. No other job search engine provide this power in one place.

2- JobFox is my second choice. It has a very different approach to Indeed.com. In short, it asks a lot of detailed questions about a user's work experience and skill set, then uses sophisticated algorithms to match jobs. It provides a 5 star ranking of jobs, that best fit the user's profile. Unfortunately, it does not take into consideration the management hierarchy of the job matches. For example, if I am a business analyst, it will match with a lot of director positions. In addition, if the user has recently changed careers, it will find the several matches based on a previous career, even if the new career is totally different. For example, I changed careers from IT to Marketing, but the vast majority of job matches are in IT.

3- SimplyHired is a wonderful, simple to use job search engine with similar features to Indeed.com. Unfortunately, the search results are poor in comparison to Indeed. Nevertheless the search features are a close match to its rival Indeed.

Popular, but they do not have key search features or generate poor matching results

Hotjobs lots of visibility, but could not handle the same number of filter keywords I used for Indeed. When I significantly reduced the number of keywords, the search results were nevertheless very scarce.
CareerBuilder users get too many calls from recruiters looking for insurance salesman and bottom fishing job recruiters. User cannot specify employer-only posted jobs
Monster does not provide a salary range in its search tool
Linked-In great for networking, but it lacks key filtering capabilities. has a poor record of removing old job listings
Dice not useful for non-technical applicants

Less Popular, but similar features or results

Beyond search engine features not as complete as Indeed
Jobster lacks salary or job type filter
Job.com lacks many advanced search features
Snag-a-job it only caters to hourly paid jobs
InnovaHire provides job search in multiple countries, but filtering non-existent
Linkup employer only jobs, but lacks key search features
Job Hits search results are VERY scarce
JuJu lacks salary or job type filter
YourJobStop simply an aggregator of (Indeed, Monster, Simply-Hired and Yahoo Hotjobs) with no upfront filtering
JustJobs lacks salary filter
TeleportJobs lacks salary or job type filter
GoJobs outdated website, slow to generate search results, advanced search same as basic search
AllWebJobs simply too specific to IT categories
GetWikiJobs simply too specific
VentureLoop focuses on startups and therefore not for people with well established careers
TheLadders.com not free, a typical fee is $30 per month. I tried their service and failed to land a job after several months on their subscription before the recession really hit the job market hard. Users receive a lot of useless emails not related to job search.

The bottom line is to get search results that most closely match the jobs you want and filter out the jobs you are not interested in. In addition, a job seeker looks for salary information upfront, and is able to differentiate between temporary and full-time employment. Social networking is a plus. In some cases, having industry as a filter is very useful, if the potential candidate is highly specialized and can only work in specific industries, such a rocket scientist or aerospace engineer.

Despite all of the tools available on the web, having the qualifications or certifications often gives the candidate the competitive advantage over his/her peers applying for a particular position regardless if they have advanced degrees. Most jobs are found on employer sites and web search engines that do not provide this filter need an upgrade.

If Linked-In could merge with Indeed.com and JobFox, then would-be candidates would find their job search nirvana. Until then, I will use three websites: Indeed for job searching, JobFox for experimenting with something cool (but yet unproven) and Linked-In for social networking.

Good luck readers in your job hunt :-) Hopefully, my research provided you with some valuable insights on which tools are best to use.

Priceless: a very useful tool for bringing your idea to market

2010-05-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

Whether you are a consumer or a newly minted business person trying to sell your idea to a venture capitalist, the information in the book Priceless authored by William Poundstone is a valuable tool to help sell an idea. The author covers a wide range of economic theories, but also provides plenty of concrete examples on how businesses can increase their market share or improve their bottom line. The book merges economics and psychology and shows how marketing/sales techniques are used to overcome the consumer's best intuition and motivating them into buying a given product or service.

If your prefer reading just the practical example then skip ahead to part. If however, you are and economics buff and enjoy a good dry academic analysis of a given topics then you should read the first three sections. Scattered throughout the book are cool visual tricks that even the most stoic engineer in physics can enjoy.

Source: Priceless, William Poundstone, Pbl., Hill and Wang, New York, 2010

The New Age of Thinkers

2009-07-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

I currently work at Cisco, a highly successful technology company that sells routers, tele-presence and even furniture. I admire Chamber's goals in making the company not only the best among its peers, but the best company in the world. I share his vision in making this happen. However, my aspirations for the future go beyond the confines of Cisco's corporate walls to the larger landscape of companies big and small.

This takes me back to the title of this article "The New Age of Thinkers". Looking over the long term, the quality of the education system in most industrialized countries is declining relative to developing nations. Nevertheless, there are sufficient masses of people to execute upon a corporate directive or mission statement. There will always be masses ready and able to improve and fill the supply chain, to sell more products or create new widgets. I am sure that execution over innovation has been given more emphasis than in the past few years.

Unfortunately, since the global economic downturn many companies have put their innovation initiatives on hold to focus on customer driven revenue boosters. In the current economic climate, this sounds like a good idea. However, over the long term without innovation a company cannot leap-frog its peers or revolutionize an industry. What is sorely missed these days is an emphasis on thinking as well as doing. I am not simply talking about generating new ideas to bring to market, but a deeper and more all-encompassing perspective. With each passing day, the amount of information we must review, edit and forward is increasing exponentially. Those of us who are lucky to be employed are doing more in less time, such as multitasking during meetings and communicating through many channels all at once. As a result, productivity is increasing, more slides, spreadsheets, and customer visits are taking place in a work day, but at what cost?

For the past several decades, employee evaluations were and are based on how many projects were completed, on sales quotas reached and cost savings. Shareholders do not care how innovative a company or its impact on humanity; so long as a company generates profits one quarter to the next and rewards its shareholders, things are good. I think that companies that promote thinking as well as doing will perform better over the long term, because employees will find meaning in their roles beyond dollars and cents. Thinking should not be narrowly focused in strategic organizations, such as the strategy and planning, or senior management. There is room for every level within the organization to bring a voice to the mission and corporate directive of a company.

In short, this new age of thinkers should belong to a wider span of people within the organization to bring innovation, a new purpose and vitality. As the economy recovers, we will need more thinkers with a broader purpose that brings companies and nations together. Execution can always be outsourced or automated, but a company that recognizes its great thinkers will easily overcome its competitors in ways that cannot be easily reproduced or without a lot of resources to deconstruct or reverse engineer the new innovative process.

Managing Organizational Change Initiatives for Greater Innovation

2008-09-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

If an organization's senior management wants to foster greater innovation, they must master change management. The DICE model improves chances for success. The four key factors are duration, integrity, commitment and effort.

Duration refers the time to execute the change initiatives. The time between reviews is more critical for success than a project's life span. The rule of thumb is eight weeks, if the review period exceeds this time frame then obstacles will surface. The review interval depends on the project's complexity and the comfort level the senior executives have in their implementation team to execute the project without review or supervision. Milestones and assessing their impact, allow executives to identify gaps, and evaluate risks. Most importantly, corrective action and preventing recurring problems from occurring are needed.

Integrity refers to the extent to which senior management can rely on the implementation team to achieve success. Selecting high caliber staff for the implementation team is not enough. Senior management must allocate the team more time by freeing up less important tasks and they need to worry less about day-to-day operations faltering. Research suggests that high performing staff tend to go the extra mile to ensure day-to-day tasks are completed. The best people to run these implementation teams are highly motivated, problem solvers and results-oriented, but do not crave the limelight.

Commitment refers to senior management backing of the change initiative and those most affected by the change (systems, ways of working or processes). The backers do not have to be from the top echelons of the hierarchy, but have strong organizational influence. Top level commitment is vital to gain the commitment from employees most affected by the change. In addition, senior management must communicate effectively the need for change. (Successful communication is based in part on delivering a consistent and unified message from all senior management.

Effort refers to workload of implementation team members. Those building the team must avoid allocating an increased workload greater than 10%. Going beyond this benchmark will adversely affect the outcome of the change initiative. The measure of effort is not only measured in the additional hours of hours worked, but also the outputs achieved overall.

By scoring each factor, the implementation team and senior management can better predict the successful outcome of the change initiative. The first factor is measured on the review intervals. The second factor is measured on the skill-set, motivation of implementation team members and time available for them to execute the project. The third factor is measured on the consistency and effectiveness of message and resources allocated from senior management to the change initiative. Finally, effort is measured by the % increase in team member workload and their resistance to it. Each factor has a score of 1 to 4. The lower the score, the better the outcome. Scores between 7 and 14 indicate high probability of success. Scores more than 14 but less than 17 indicate a great amount of risk. Finally, score above 19 indicate failure.

There is some degree of subjectivity when calculating these scores, and this presents a basis for debate among senior executives. The trick is to establish a set of rules or methodology to achieve greater harmony among individual interpretations from senior managers.

source: The Hard Side of Change Management, H. Sirkin, P. Keenan & A. Jackson, HBS Press, Reprint R0510G, ISBN 978-1-4221-0280-0

The Post American World and Innovation

2008-08-18T18:59:00.000-07:00

After reading Fareed Zakaria's book The Post American World, I thought it best to comment on this great book and how it relates to innovation. Mr. Zakaria provides a well researched history of the rise of third world countries and more specifically of China and India. He also compares the United States with the superpower of the 20th century namely Great Britain.

Having a degree myself in History specializing in economic and political history, I relished his explanation of the rise and fall of the British and American empires. The author filled in my world view of history from an Asian perspective. He descriptions of China and India paralleled an article I read in Foreign Affairs.

Zakaria misses the mark when explaining America's rise to power. The eduction system in its current state is a recent phenomenon. The author says that the American education system encourages students to think instead of simply memorize fact and figures about history and science. This in turn, creates a foundation for a more vibrant entrepreneurial class and the birth of new industries flourishing from a greater pool of creative minds. He says that after Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1896, the British Empire had already reached its peak. The British educational system focused on aristocratic interests, such as literature and ancient history, instead of science and technology. The United States focused on more modern subjects that gave it a competitive edge moving forward in time. However, the author fails to understand the evolution of the American education system. In short, for many decades, it followed the same path as Britain in terms of memorization as a methodology until the early 1960s. Starting in the sixties many countries like the United States and Canada embraced a new methodology, namely reasoning and creative thinking to solve problems.

In terms of innovation the author overstates the impact of the American education system on the United States rise to power economically. Even as the education system in the U.S. changed towards a more thinking based methodology, some large institutions, such as Princeton maintained their focus on literature and the classics.

A country's education system does have an impact on its capacity to innovate. Yet Japan and the United States both rose to power economically despite having very different education systems, one focusing on memorization and testing the other on thinking and creative problem solving. A better explanation in my point of view is not the structure of the eduction system ,but the surrounding environments to support an entrepreneurial spirit. For example, the province of Quebec has a large entrepreneurial class and provides subsidies for higher learning and to start a business. Many students start their business in Quebec for these reasons. However, heavy taxation discourages many entrepreneurs from staying in the province once they make it big. The same applies to the educated elite, unless they go into politics, they tend to move or expand their businesses to the United States or elsewhere in Canada.

The point I wish to make is that the United States rose in power, because there were more opportunities for newly educated students to start their businesses after graduating. How students were taught was less important than what they did after graduation. Whereas Britain still had a strong aristocracy where inherited wealth was more common than wealth based on entrepreneurship. As a key source of innovation, entrepreneurship requires a large pool of opportunities, such as easy access to credit, a legal system that favors new businesses and a large enough population with access to higher education. Unfortunately, a heavy tax system encourages the inevitable long-term exodus to geographic areas with lower taxes, such as Ireland, and many developing countries. Margaret Thatcher's poll tax favored large land owners (often with aristocratic titles) as opposed to citizens from lower classes with smaller dwellings. This raises the question of Britain's decline in competitiveness thanks to its unfavorable tax laws.

Source:
The Post-American World by author Fareed Zakaria , Publ. W. W. Norton, May 5, 2008, 288 pages, ISBN-10: 039306235X, ISBN-13: 978-0393062359

Awakening the sleeping giant at Beijing

2008-08-09T03:43:00.000-07:00

After watching the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, I realized that China can longer be considered a second rate power in terms of innovation. We saw an innovative blend of cutting edge technology with ancient cultural traditions.

The US currently leads the world in terms of innovative design shops like IDEO and innovation management consulting, such as Innnosight. However, China has a large pool of young creative minds with innovation at the center of their execution excellence. Frankly, I predict that in less than a decade, China will overtake the US as the the world leader in manufacturing, but also as an innovative force.

In the past, we looked at China as a great low cost manufacturing base where developed nations used it to build their innovative designs. Now China has shown its potential as the world's next leader where developed countries, such as France, Great Britain and the US will follow.

China will become a leader in cultural and artistic expression that the world will watch closely. The Beijing Olympics showed the world China's innovative architectural designs, use of a 480 LED screen, fireworks and lighting effects to inspire all of us.

A Systems Approach to Major Innovation

2008-07-28T20:06:00.001-07:00

Gina Colarelli O'Connor in her article argues that authors of recent literature on Innovation have focused too much attention on identifying repeatable processes to build major innovation capability. Instead the author proposes the application of system theory as the foundation for creating this innovation capability within the enterprise. I agree in part that system theory is useful to identify the big picture and all the players needed to build major innovation capability.

In my experience too many organizations have focused on the technology and the resources and little on the types of innovation needed. Repeatable processes are fine for incremental innovation. Senior managers thrive to identify repeatable processes, because they are obsessed with metrics and building efficiencies into these innovation processes. However, disruptive innovation requires a different set of organizational blueprints. System theory is fine for defining the system and all of its working components.

What is lacking in today's literature on innovation is not repeatable processes or system theory, are four key elements: 1- motivation, 2-community adoption, 3- a rewards program that harnesses the initial motivation of passionate evangelists (change agents within the organization) and finally 4- timeliness. There is no point in building a complex system and have repeatable processes, if the ideas that are brought to market are too late and therefore have no positive impact to the organization's bottom line.

Details

1- Motivation is needed among the senior leadership ranks, but also the rank and file. Motivation cannot exist over the long term without a rewards program to sustain it.
2- Community adoption represents getting feedback of idea generators and reviews from the ranks of customers, business partners, suppliers, employees and new potential customers with unmet needs.
3- The rewards program need not be elaborate or expensive to be effective. Recognition and a sense of accomplishment complement any monetary reward for a passionate dedication to the task of building and sustaining innovation capabilities. Idea reviewers need to have their role as reviewer recognized on their performance reviews and not simply having their bosses delegate this task to them.
4- Timeliness is not equal to being first to market, it means being the first player with the greatest impact in the marketplace. Learning from a competitor's mistakes helps solve problems along the way. In short, proper execution is more important than being first to market with a new idea or killer application.

Newer technologies of web 2.0 and collaboration change the building blocks of what is needed to bring ideas to market quickly. Wikis are a great tool to quickly capture new ideas from a large community. At Cisco, our team has developed the entire ideation system using wikis as the technological infrastructure. This is what is needed to leverage the strengths of social networking and collaboration.

Source:
Major Innovationi as a Dynamic Capability: A System Approach. Gina Colarelli O'Connor, The Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 25, Number 4, July 2008

Innovation at J&J, Cisco, IBM, P&G and Google

2008-06-05T05:14:00.000-07:00

Well it is time to compare innovation best practices at some top innovators. I recently attended a Cisco meeting where John Chambers discussed the future vision of Cisco and innovation/collaboration. I finally have the knowledge to present a comparative analysis between several large companies namely, J&J, Cisco, IBM, P&G and Google.

Ideation:
In terms of ideation or front-end innovation, I think that IBM and Cisco are ahead of the field. Although, I do like P&G for their use of innovation scouts that track innovation around the world and bring it in-house. The reason why I think that Cisco and IBM are the best in ideation is based on extensive research I did earlier this year that focused on technology and processes used for ideation. Google is a great company when it comes to innovative software ideas and allowing all employees a certain amount of time to work on their pet projects. However, this does not go far enough. In addition to allowing employees to work on pet projects, innovators also need a sponsor and funding. Cisco and IBM are ahead in this respect with their tool and processes, because they have set in place a pot of money and sponsors that are ready and willing to fund projects quickly and effortlessly to bring ideas to market faster. J&J has the corporate office of science and technology (COSAT) that looks at innovative ideas and shares them across the family of J&J companies. In this case, the company has senior executive that regularly tunes into the discussion forums and blogs to discover was is going on at the ground level and then help along people with good ideas. The company also has ideation tools to capture ideas internally and externally, but the review process at the affiliate level requires more work. Google does not have a formalized ideation process and things are quite kaotic. If they followed the lead of IBM and Cisco, their innovation process would become more focused and market driven.

One thing that struck me after attending the Cisco general meeting was that collaboration and innovation are built into the DNA of the company. The company actively focuses on developing new business models. It does not focus too much on what the competition is doing, but more on a building a long term vision on its place in the world and what it can do to improve it. The company easily embraces new technologies across many different areas of the company. Software vendors have an easier time getting something implemented at Cisco than at J&J or P&G. There are drawbacks to this approach in that with all this experimentation with technology, Cisco loses the ease of integration with existing systems. In short, one area of the business does not know what the other area of the business is doing. As a result, Cisco has multiple platforms delivering the same solution. Cisco uses four or five different platforms to deliver blogs, wikis and discussion forums. There are multiple project management platforms from Microsoft, Oracle, and HP. The solution, widespread use of benchmarking and shared best practices. It is easy to compare products based on features and scalability, but managers should also look at what has been a success in the past and where they can we improve processes. Cisco needs to enhance communication across different parts of the business in terms of shared best practices and benchmarking. It also needs to bring in more of the fun factor that Google embraces in order to attract more young innovative minds.

Management Practices & Innovation:
Cisco is very innovative by moving away from the command and control management style to a more collaborative framework based on cross-functional committees. I think this is a forward looking concept for the 21st century. However, this process also requires a change in performance evaluation as well, and Cisco has shifted its recognition and reward system to focus much more on team success and less on individual contribution. This works better for fostering innovation over the long term, because under-performers are eventually rooted out from the team. Over time, team members become dissatisfied with an individual player and eventually do not want to work with them on any future project. When I did my MBA a few years ago, our team would not put the name of an individual who did not contribute to the team project assignment. The same applies to a corporate environment. I think that J&J has a more established system of rewards and recognition for individual contribution and team effort, but performance evaluations are still too heavily focused on individual contribution and reflect of more a command and control management model. Cisco is constantly pushing the envelop on worker productivity. Everyone including myself feel their jobs to be rich and challenging, because innovation and collaboration is part of Cisco's DNA.

Web 2.0 for the enterprise

2008-03-30T07:16:00.000-07:00

I am currently working for Strategy and Planning at Cisco and certainly feel that my job is on the cutting edge of Web 2.0 technology. Our team is responsible to developing and promoting Web 2.0 technology solutions at Cisco. These solutions are what we hope will make Cisco more innovative and strengthen its leadership role as a promoter and user of Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise.

Only a few companies that are using web 2.0 technologies for the enterprise comprehensively, such as HP, Microsoft and IBM. This means using Wikis, Blogs, RSS and collaboration tools as an integral part of all its business processes within its organization and also with its business partners and customers. Other companies, such as VMware and Dell are also using web 2.0 technologies to manage ideation or collect customer information through online forums and wikis. For example, VMWare uses online forums and monitors the discussions between its Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and its customers. A community manager collects information that could be helpful to VMWare Sales and IT Departments from these online discussions. Dell for its part is using its IdeaStorm to collect ideas from the public to create better products. In short, these companies are leveraging the knowledge of many to improve products and services that a few internal employees working on the problem would not easily come up with.

A lot of companies use the client-server model to deploy ideation solutions, such as Imaginatik and BrainBank. I used to think that these software solutions were the best available until I joined Cisco. I believe that an enterprise can easily create its own solution quickly and easily with newer web 2.0 technologies. Through clever coding, a developer can create a better alternative to these products within only a few weeks while leveraging the collaborative nature of web 2.0 technology. Other companies are using services, such as Innocentive and NineSigma to solve technical problems using help from experts outside the organization. I think that these companies will also be replaced by web 2.0 collaborative technologies that eliminate the need for a middleman.

Blog Carnival January 15th

2008-01-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

Topic: Starting an Online Business

Jose DeJesus MD presents Online Business - A Source Of Success For Many posted at Physician Entrepreneur

Chas Masterson presents Search Engine Myths Exposed! …Actually Myth-Busters Exposed. posted at Chuck Masterson.

Fred Black presents Honesty posted at Fred Black: Internet Business Blog..

Kenton Newby presents Google Analytics Goodness…Can You Believe This is Free? posted at KentonNewby.com.

Gley Yahya presents How to Start an eBay Business posted at Work At Home Start Up Guide, saying, "Few years ago I was considered as a power seller on Ebay (I stopped working on eBay. Reason I stopped work, due to bad events). My secret to being a Power Seller was “Building Trust in The First Place”. To help you start an ebay business and reach the same level as quick as possible, I've developed a step-by-step guide you can use to learn how to start an ebay business the right way and become part of… The "Best" Of eBay Power Sellers – The Ones Who Actually Make Big Money on eBay!"

Benefits of Web 2.0 Collaboration at Cisco

2007-12-13T10:23:00.000-08:00

Cisco has embraced social networking as a means to improve collaboration with the main goal being faster innovation. Cisco uses wikis, blogs, video blogs, discussion groups, and there is an internal version of MySpace providing personal profiles, job histories, personal interests and videos of individual employees. Cisco has setup a wiki based I-Zone that has generated at least 400 new business ideas. Input from 10,000 employees was added to these ideas helping solidify each business case for moving forward. The best and most popular ideas are then reviewed during quarterly leadership development programs. There are currently three ideas from the ideation funnel that are being developed. (1) As a result, "Cisco grows one new emerging technology business unit about every 3 months" (2)

In addition, Cisco uses telepresence technology showing if a person is reachable by phone, cell, IM or telepresence. In the UK the cost of a one screen room is about 40,000 pounds, and 150,000 for a three screen room. Since the business was first launched, Cisco has sold over 150 telepresence rooms into corporate giants, such as SAP, BT and NTT. Competitors like Hewlett Packard have equivalent technology, but Cisco's is the simplest and most effective. Today, a large company like Cisco has saved 150 million US dollars in travel costs alone. Environmentalists will also be happy with this technology, because fewer air travel miles equates to a large reduction in CO2 emissions into the upper atmosphere thereby reducing global warming.(3)

The hope is that these technologies supporting telepresence will eventually converge with Cisco's social networking platform (similar to MySpace). Cisco is also working on integrating social tagging that are aggregated into a tag clouds. These clouds will reveal to onlookers the current hot topics being discussed across its 63,000 employee base. A future benefit of using this social networking technology is the ability to locate experts on a chosen topic. (1)

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems best summarizes his vision of using web 2.0 for driving enterprise growth

Next wave of corporate productivity gains should be paced by web 2.0 driven collaboration tools that use the network as the platform to enable users to connect "any device to any content over any combination of networks". John Chambers, May 22, 2007

Of course using Cisco technology, such as video routers for telepresence are the key ingredients needed to accomplish this new vision for corporate America. It is a winning formula for growing the size of the pie (web 2.0 collaboration) and Cisco's piece within in it.

Sources:
1- Collaborative Thinking, Perceptions on collaboration and social software by Mike Gotta, Cisco: Learning Internally Before Delivering Externally, November 05, 2007, http://mikeg.typepad.com/perceptions/2007/11/cisco-learning-.html

2- Who2E2, Cisco, Tony Branfort ,
http://who2e2.com/category/tools/social-network/

3- Human Productivity lab, John Chambers, virtual-world master, November 19, 2007 Chris Payatagool,

http://www.humanproductivitylab.com/archive_blogs/2007/11/19/john_chambers_virtualworld_mas.php

Blog Carnival November 19th

2007-11-19T09:50:00.000-08:00

Using Brainstorming to Improve New Product innovation

Carlo presents Brainstorming New Marketing Concepts posted at Carlo Selorio's Internet Entrepreneur's Journey.

Chris Russell presents Brainstorming - An Art to Master in Effective Decision Making posted at Productivity Planner, saying, "We make lots of choices, which we later regret in life. This is where brainstorming comes into picture. It supports your thinking and helps you get the best out of the situation. Brainstorming facilitates you to expand your thinking and not to restrict anything that comes to your mind. There are few benefits of brainstorming..."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of bring ideas 2 market using our carnival submission form.Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Google Phone - Future Impact

2007-11-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

Ingredients of Google's future success
On November 5th, Google unveiled its Android project, a new Google enabled platform for mobile phones. Google has stuck to its world class expertise in software and avoided to get into the hardware business. In short, Google has developed an alliance with 33 partners. A short list of this alliance includes handset makers LG & HTC, service providers Sprint Nextel, NTT DoCoMo & T-Mobile, semiconductor firms Intel and Qualcomm, software firms eBay, and engineering firms Noser Engineering. For full list read WSJ source (6). Google's key strategy is to increase its ad revenue base by introducing a new channel to funnel advertising dollars into its coffers. Over the long term, handset makers and wireless carriers may offer a free mobile device supported by Google generated ads. In the short term, Google's initial goal is to carve out a user experience as close as possible to surfing the Internet with a PC.(4)

Some obstacles to Google's Plan
Large competitors like Microsoft, Palm and RIM already offer software platforms for cell phone technology. Nokia Corp. has already developed an open platform for its high-end phones. Consequently, it has a large community of developer creating software for its open standard.(8) Some carriers have voiced concerns over privacy and security risks, such as sensitive information falling into the hands of third party developers. This partly explains why some carriers have dragged their feet and not signed on. Most notably absent from the current alliance are AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Nevertheless, Google is offering a new mobile standard that will work with many types of phones from multiple vendors and not only on Nokia phones using Nokia's new open platform.(8)

Impact
Google will shake-up the wireless industry with disruptive innovation by helping to make free phones with much faster Internet access (hopefully at PC-type speeds) paid with ad revenues.(3) Google will likely share its ad revenues with wireless carriers thereby offsetting reduced fees charged to consumers. These new phones will be made available during the second half of 2008, most likely from T-Mobile USA.(8) Just like Facebook did to social networking with its widget enabling platform, Google plans to provide a similar environment for third party developers of mobile applications. It is just a matter of time before we see map based mashups for mobile phones.

The new operating system is a real breakthrough for developers. They will have access to new information, such as a user's location, communications history, contact list and whether a signal showing if phone is on or off. In addition, developers will be able to use Google ready-made applications, such as search and e-mail.(8) Software developers from the company With great anticipation, companies like Slide have already begun to develop applications for mobile platforms in addition to Facebook and MySpace. The new Google mobile platform will also make it easier for new media companies to provide a greater amount of content for this platform. Phones running on this new platform should be able to provide greater customization to users and multi-player games.(7) We have yet to see if its recently unveiled OpenSocial social networking platform with work well on a Google enabled phone next year.(5)

Consumers around the world will benefit because they will have use of a free phone. In the case of Africa where Internet access is scarce, this may open up a new means for people to surf the web in a cost effective manner. In short, the Google enabled phone could provide Internet access to millions of people currently dependent on very expensive Internet access or unreliable sources of access.

Unlike today's iPhone from Apple, next year's Google enabled phone will have branding on the inside and outside the phone. This will follow in parallel Intel's marketing strategy used over a decade ago with it Intel-Inside logo on PCs and laptops.

In conclusion, many sceptics say that the new Google enabled phone is not revolutionary, but time will tell if this evolutionary leap will nevertheless delight customers and improve Internet access levels to millions of people around the world. In my book, providing Internet access to millions of individuals globally who never had access before is but one small step to bringing humanity closer together.

Sources:

Wired Magazine, Google Testing Free Ad-Supported Phone, By David Becker August 03, 2007 1:21:57 PMCategories: Phones, http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/08/google-testing-.html
Wired Magazine, Google: No Phone. Not Yet.
By Rob Beschizza March 21, 2007 10:55:12 AMCategories: Phones, http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/03/google_no_phone.html
Wired Magazine, Google Phone to Offer "PC-Type Speeds"
By Charlie Sorrel November 05, 2007 5:37:54 AMCategories: Elsewhere in the Tubes, Elsewhere in the Tubes, GooglePhone, http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/11/google-phone-to.html
TechCrunch, Breaking: Google Announces Android and Open Handset Alliance
Erick Schonfeld, http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/05/breaking-google-announces-android-and-open-handset-alliance
Economist.com, Google and mobile phones, What, no phone? Nov 8th 2007, From The Economist print edition, http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10104875
WSJ.com, Members of Google's Mobile Alliance
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUPNovember 5, 2007 10:20 p.m., http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119429018415782841.html
WSJ.com, What Will Google Mean to Phones?
Search Titan HopesTo Entice Others toDevelop FeaturesTo Exploit the Mobile Web
By JESSICA E. VASCELLARONovember 5, 2007; Page B1, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119422150390881955.html
WSJ.com, Google, BiddingFor Phone Ads,Lures Partners
By KEVIN J. DELANEY and AMOL SHARMANovember 6, 2007; Page A1, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119427874851482602.html

Blog Carnival - bring ideas 2 market - November 3, 2007

2007-11-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

Kimberly Clay presents A Lesson From Nike... posted at Kimberly Clay's Internet Marketing Wealth Building Blog.

Alan Evans presents Reliable Market Research - Ask the Right Questions posted at Small Biz Rocks.

Alvaro Fernandez presents http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/10/30/cognitive-fitness-harvard-business-review/ posted at SharpBrains, saying, "On the birth of a new market: cognitive fitness."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of
bring ideas 2 market using our carnival submission form
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our
blog carnival index page

New LinkedIn Group - BringIdeas2Market

2007-10-23T01:43:00.001-07:00

Welcome members to the BringiIdeas2Market Group on LinkedIn. October 22nd, 2007 was the launch date of this new group. As membership and funding increases, I will eventually move site of BringIdeas2Market Group to a new location. I currently have parked seven domain names and the most likely domain will be http://www.bringideas2market.org.

Thanks,

Yves Bourgeois,
BringIdeas2Market Group Manager

Scientific Excellence and Sources of Innovation

2007-10-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

In the latest issue of Wired Magazine, Melinda Wenner provides readers with a geographical map of the locations where most of the prizes for scientific achievement are won. The scientific prizes identified on this map are: Nobel, Fields, Lasker(clinical) Turing and Gairdner. Based on this map, the top ten institutions are 1-MIT, 2-Stanford University, 3-University of Washington Seattle, 4-Columbia University, 5-Harvard, 6-CAL Tech, 7-Princeton University 8-Rockefeller University, 9-University of Pennsylvania and 10-UC of San Francisco.

The United States is currently the world leader in receiving these prestigious awards. However, it is only a matter of time before other countries dramatically increase their share of these awards. While the number of PhD graduates has stagnated in the U.S., China generates many more science graduates per year.

Today there is a parallel between innovation and scientific excellence. It is expected that as other countries win more awards, their role as innovator will increase proportionately. Of course there are other factors that also contribute to high innovation scores such as easy access to capital and a captive market for the new product or service. Nevertheless the long term trend seems inevitable for the U.S. unless the government and industries, do more to encourage scientific excellence through grants and education funding.

Source: Wired November 2007, p. 99-100, Melinda Wenner, (Wired source: Bruce S Charlton, Newcastle University Medical Hypotheses), http://www.wired.com/

Blog Carnival on Innovation - First Edition

2007-10-19T10:39:00.001-07:00

Next Friday will be the first Blog Carnival Publication on Innovation. The deadline for posting your article is Friday October 26th at noon, PST. Articles will be posted by 5pm PST the same day.

Moving Towards Open Innovation

2007-10-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

In the October 13th issue of the Economist, there is a wonderful insert that covers innovation. When an organization looks outside its walls for new ideas that add value we call this open innovation. (see Henry Chesbrough books Open Innovation and Open Business Models) Many large organizations use tools to capture ideas from the outside. For example, Johnson & Johnson has an idea portal where non-J&J employees can contribute ideas. P&G has new idea scouts located across the globe to bring new ideas into P&G and then commercialize them. As we see on this chart, most new ideas do not come from R&D departments, but from other employees within the organization. (1)

When I worked at a J&J, I was involved in creating a software tool that captured employee ideas for further review. Most of the obstacles to innovation do not come from the software itself, but the process needed to collect, review and promote ideas into a the first stage of the new product development life-cycle. Another tool many large organizations use are venture capital funding organizations. These entities search for new promising start-ups or business partners with strong market potential. Finally, many large organization work with their suppliers, universities and outside inventors to generate new ideas that will (its is hoped) add value.

In order to remain competitive, most organizations must increasingly rely new sources of ideas that are outside its corporate walls, in essence open innovation. Open innovation has provided impressive results for Proctor & Gamble. It had a healthy top line revenue growth of six percent a year between 2001 and 2006. (1)

In emerging markets, many companies prefer not to apply for patents, but keep them as trade secrets in order to remain competitive in a highly fluid marketplace. speed to market becomes more important than traditional methods used in developed markets. (1)

User driven innovation as advocated by Eric Von Hippel is becoming ubiquitous. For example, a user not happy with the closed network access of the iPhone opens it up and tinkers with it in order to use it with another mobile network. He says that open innovation is most effective when the user is involved in the development process. Otherwise, we are "just talking about a market for intellectual property rights, it's still the old model" (1)

Mr. Von Hippel provides an interesting addition to Clayton Christensen's theories of disruptive innovation. Clayton Christensen says that an organization must be weary of the consequences of always catering to the demands of the most profitable customers. To much attention to these customers will create products that over-reach the demands of core customers. In a nutshell, Von Hippel suggests that an organization can look to its customers for disruptive innovation. However, these customers are not the most profitable ones, but new customers and disgruntled customers. The most critical users can help firms quickly filter out bad ideas. Finally, looking at your most profitable customers has always been a best a good source for incremental innovation.

Source: 1- INNOVATION, The love-in, Oct 11th 2007,From The Economist print edition, The move toward open innovation is beginning to transform entire industries, p. 12-15, http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9928227

Software Rating Tool

2007-10-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

On October 8th, Intel unveiled a new web site called CoolSW. It allows visitors to nominate and vote on products from new software start-ups. It aggregates voting information and is modelled after the site Digg. Software is divided into five categories, Enterprise, Digital Home, Mobility, Healthcare and Other. There are currently 667 titles under review.

On the FAQ page there is a reference to what they define as cool.

Q. I'm unclear what you mean by "innovative" or "cool." What is your definition of an innovative company?
A. Our definition of cool isn't important - yours is. If you think it's cool, post it. If a lot of members agree with you, you'll see the vote count go up. Part of the fun is seeing if you can find or point to "the" application that gets peoples attention. If you get good at picking winners (check out the "Coolest Users" section), who knows what could happen!

Source: CoolSW web site, http://coolsw.intel.com/

Finding the Right Innovation Partners

2007-10-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

There are several tools available to assist organization in finding the right innovation partner, I have talked about two of them in previous article on my blog, namely InnoCentive and NineSigma. Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab in the September issue of PDMA Visions magazine reveal several more.

YourEncore
This organization connects over eight hundred retired scientists and engineers from 150 companies with client businesses. The typical arrangement is for a short-term contract with compensation based on the pre-retirement inflation adjusted salary of candidates. In short, this is a low cost and low risk problem solving mechanism.

Yet2.com

This is an online marketplace for intellectual property exchange. Instead of simply solving technical problems as practiced by NineSigma and Innocentive, Yet2.com brokers the technology transfer both into and out of organizations. Yet2.com provides the introduction of parties. Afterwards the two parties work together contractually adding to the possibility of technology licensing.

Source: HBR Reprint, Web-based "Open Networks" may help your company find the right innovation partners, http://www.pdma.org/visions/sept07/npd-trends3.php

Managing Failed Ideas

2007-10-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

In the September issue of PDMA Visions Magazine, Mukund Karanjikar provides great insight into the the process of generating ideas and feeding them into the new product development cycle.

In short, what the author proposes is to create a repository of failed ideas or recycle bin and attach it to the new product development process. Periodically, a member of the product development team would review failed ideas in the repository and see if any now show market relevancy based on changes in external variables.

In addition to keeping a repository of the failed ideas, it would also be useful to keep a directory of individuals who contributed these ideas. Therefore, if the idea(s) become relevant again, the new product manager can easily refer to the source of the idea(s) for more detailed information not entered into the repository. In many cases, the creator of the ideas can become a valuable ally in promoting the ideas across the organization. This in turn facilitates access to funding and buy-in from needed corporate sponsors. Finally, this repository should not only capture ideas that were generated internally, but also have ideas from partners, vendors, customers and many other third parties.

Source:

Managing failed Ideas... Could this have been the next iPod(R)?

http://www.pdma.org/visions/sept07/npd-trend2.php

Market of the Mind

2007-09-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

The current trend in high tech research is to use more lower cost offshore resources. In the article Market of the Mind, the authors Tom Abate and Ryan Kim describe current trends using specific examples from R&D labs of Silicon Valley companies, such as HP Labs, SRI International and Xerox PARC.

The recipe for high-tech R&D used to be simple - take equal parts curiosity and talent; combine with healthy dollops of time and money; be patient waiting for products and profits.
But no more.
Global competition and shorter product cycles are forcing R&D labs to change how they invent the future.
Today, for instance, Palo Alto Research Center - which by Silicon Valley legend gave Steve Jobs the inspiration for point-and-click computing - will begin a program to invite entrepreneurs into the think tank to develop breakthrough products more quickly - for a price.
In a different response to the same pressures, HP Labs, the research arm of Hewlett-Packard Co., will run fewer research projects more closely aligned with its business needs.
And SRI International, the 60-year-old knowledge factory spun out of Stanford University, is opening offices in other states, so as not to put all its eggs in one basket.

Obviously, this new direction in R&D spending applies to other industries as well. In addition to letting small start-up pay for in-house expertise, other companies are using third parties using a global vetting specialist, such as NineSigma to send a request for proposal RFPs.

In addition to narrowing the scope and number of research projects, companies are beginning to segment the first stage of the product life cycle. For example, some companies are creating intermediates stages, such as capturing ideas through ideation, then reviewing and screening for the most promising ideas and finally, validating the best ideas for product risk, commercial success and technical feasibility. The end result are fewer projects cancelled mid-stream and more projects reaching the marketplace. More and more companies are using software, such as Accept (see http://www.acceptsoftware.com/company/index.html) ) to help them identifying and solve product life cycle bottlenecks.

What is more revolutionary are companies pursuing collaborative projects with other companies in areas outside core competencies yet bringing new products to market while avoiding to compete in it.

He [lab director Prith Banerjee] said HP Labs also will pursue more collaborative projects with other companies. In one example, he said, HP could work with Intel on areas outside each company's core technology, allowing both companies to succeed without competing.

Finally, globalization from a corporate perspective is a good thing. However, for the researchers involved this necessitates greater flexibility and a greater need to have flexible work hours to collaborate within different time zones and work schedules. Greater collaboration between corporations, universities and research entities will continue to increase. What is important for senior management of R&D is to understand are the different options available and knowing which one is best suited for a given product or service, such as collaboration with other companies, sending out RFPs, finding new revenues streams to fund in-house development, or purchasing intellectual property through exchanges or acquisition.

Source: The Market of the Mind, San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, Sept. 21, 2007.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/09/21/BU3MSA9VO.DTL

Return of the Easy Rider

2007-09-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

In the BusinessWeek article return of the Easy Rider, the author Jay Greene explores the U.S. cycling industry and how Shimano steered it into a new direction by teaming up with the IDEO, a design consulting firm of Palo Alto based in California.

The new "Coasting" bikes are a daring attempt by the bike industry to get some of the 161 million Americans who don't ride back in the saddle. Bike sales in the U.S. have been flat for nearly a decade, hovering between $5.5 billion and $5.9 billion since 1999, according to the National Sporting Goods Assn. Worse, the number of people riding bikes is falling. According to the sporting goods group, 35.6 million Americans over 7 rode a bike at least six times last year, down from 43.1 million in 2005 and 53.3 million in 1996. "We lost a lot more cyclists than we thought," says David Lawrence, senior manager for product development and marketing at Shimano America Corp., the Japanese bike component manufacturer behind the Coasting gambit. "It wasn't sustainable."

[...]

With IDEO, Shimano developed a concept for a new bike that had a familiar look and was easy and fun to ride. In fact, riders of Coasting bikes never have to shift gears. To keep things simple, the bike uses Shimano's automatic shifting technology. There's a tiny computer on the seat post or tucked under the bottom bracket that triggers a gear change when riders hit 7 mph, and again at 11 mph. The processor is powered by the rotation of the front wheel. In addition to the back-pedaling Coasting brakes, some bikes come with puncture-resistant tires and a chain guard to keep the grease off cyclists' pants.

[...]

Trek, Raleigh, and Giant did, finally, embrace the Coasting concept, if not all the features of the prototype. Since the spring, when Shimano rolled out a 15-city marketing campaign, the three manufacturers sold out of the roughly 30,000 Coasting bikes produced. They're making more as Shimano moves into other markets in the fall. It plans a media bash in New York's Central Park in mid-September.

I have faith in the outcomes that IDEO generates for its clients. Consequently, after reading this article I went and did some research on the web about this new cycling concept. ( See http://coasting.com/publish/content/coasting/sac/en/home.html )

By looking at each of the coasting bikes, one can see the similarities in technology and design. The main difference come with the lesser components, such as the seat, handlebars and accessories. Each Brand uses the same small computer in the shape of a small metal box above the crankshaft or near the stearing column.

After personally reviewing each of the Shimano coasting bicycles in stores, I chose the Giant Suede DX for myself and the Suede for my spouse. Each of the bicycle rides like a dream and reminds me of a simpler time during my youth when bicycles were easy to ride and unemcumbered by gears and complex braking systems.

We now have a three year old and we enjoyed riding with him on a beautiful Sunday afternoon to the park. In accordance with the statistics mentioned in this BW article, my old Moab mountain bike has remained in the garage collecting dust since my son was born. Consequently, I am part of the baby boomer generation that prefers quality time with the kids as opposed to previously single tracking Uvas Canyon in California.

In conclusion, sometimes you have to experience great innovative designs yourself and not simply present theoretical models and statistics to appreciate outstanding results. In this case, on behalf of Shimano and IDEO. Kudos to you both!

Most of us have learned to love new design concepts from creative innovators, such Sony for its Walkman and the Apple for its iPod. It is wonderful to see the continuation of design excellence today as in the recent past.

Source: Return of the Easy Rider, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_38/b4050078.htm

Together We Innovate

2007-09-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

In the September 15th issue of the Wall Street Journal, the authors describe five solutions to improving innovation

1- Get The Right People Talking

There are many ways to get the right people taking, in this article they mention a technology used at a conference where individuals are identifyiong based on their skill-sets and interests. Electronic name tags were used to help broker introductions between strangers with the same interests. For example, the badge would light up when a person met some one with similar interests.

There are other ways to encourage match-ups between experts and people with similar interests. For example, Tacit ActiveNet software allows people to share ideas based on the stored content within their emails. This facilitates the interaction between experts, through the simple posting of a question looking for answers. The software also allows an individual to can the network for expertise using the bios of each individual. Therefore, the same objectives can be achieved virtually.

2- Rapidly Test And Refine Ideas.
Michael Clem developed the spiral development model that allows a researcher/scientist to test their product in rapid succession throughout the product lifecycle.
The spiral development model is a risk-driven process model generator that is used to guide multi-stakeholder concurrent engineering of software-intensive systems. It has two main distinguishing features. One is a cyclic approach for incrementally growing a system's degree of definition and implementation while decreasing its degree of risk. The other is a set of anchor point milestones for ensuring stakeholder commitment to feasible and mutually satisfactory system solutions. (see http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crossTalk/2001/05/boehm.html)

3- Think Twice About Leadership
The authors suggest that a person with broader experience across many functions would be more valuable than a technical expert to drive decision making regarding new product concepts, because they have broader knowledge and greater connections throughout the organization. Brainstorming is an effective tool to bridge the gap between people in different functional areas. However, the authors fail to see the root problem. In short the organization should encourage people moving into different functions to broaden their knowledge of the business. An IT person could move in to marketing or R&D to broaden their knowledge. Therefore, when new ideas bubble up within the organization, the people making the decisions will have a broader view of the organization.

4- Make Collaboration Easy
The authors talk about the difficulty of transferring people between projects that often curtails innovation. This problem ties into the product portfolio management process where the portfolio manager must assign resources to each project. Project priorities may often conflict with the greater good of the organization. How does senior management address this problem? The solution is to simply build-in extra buffer time for each stage of the project lifecycle, because most often resources are overstretched from the outset. As priorities change, the portfolio manager and quickly reallocate a resource without critically damaging the timeline of the project that is temporarily losing a resource. In the end, more products will reach commercialization and risk will be more evenly distributed between projects/products. In addition, functional leaders must think of the greater good of the organization and not simply focus on their own fiefdoms. Rewards and recognition must focus on cross functional teamwork not simply the product launch or a particular functional achievement. Functional leaders must also allow their subordinates to work on project that have little value within the functional area, but are of greater value to the organization as a whole. If the functional leader is reluctant to allow this, then they may have insecurities about their own performance, they are not willing to admit.

5- Consider Energy
The energy within the organization starts with the corporate culture. Google is very successful at attracting young energetic people from all cultural and ethnic backgrounds. There success lies in the freedom of everyone regardless of rank to share their ideas and promote them within the organization without fear of failure or reprimand for trying out new and risky ideas. Their philosophy is that with more ideas you get better ones. Not all ideas will be great, but a few will be outstading and therefore the ideas of lesser value. The acceptance of risk and risk taking is an essential ingredient to creating buzz and excitment in the workplace. In addition, HR must work fervently to hire these bright young minds and energize the base. This means greater tolerance of differences between the generations, and a meritocracy based on teamwork, performance and creativity. If you see playing cards at a table during lunch hour, maybe it is time to shakeup the corporate culture.

Source: Together We Innovate, http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118841662730312486.html

Innovation a la Google

2007-09-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Today I visited HQ and was in for a culture shock. The place is like a college campus and I had to struggle to see anyone with gray hair. The crowded free flow of people reminded me of a shopping mall during the Christmas season. However, instead of hurried individuals, everyone was relaxed and comfortable. The people there were certainly too laid back for the average New York stock broker or private equity analyst. There were a lot of wide open spaces and many open meeting rooms that reminded you of an aquarium, because they always had glass walls to easily look in without hearing their conversations. I was also impressed by the colorful decor and bright cheery atmosphere. Everything was modern and yet unassuming. Little things that displayed technological efficiency, such as the guest typing in their information using a keyboard and then entering their signature into a digital pad to generate their visitor's badge.

The average age of workers here was approximately 22 years old. The campus was a microcosm of the humanity and although everyone spoke English, every corner of the earth was represented. This was definitely not Sweden, Japan or a Basque enclave. Everyone blended in, which is reflective of the equality of minds in this company. Here engineers dominate the decision making process and managers must endure multi-millionaire workers that come to work everyday because they enjoy it and not for the bi-weekly paycheck. Therefore, motivation comes from within each individual and not from some distant layered corporate hierarchy. Ideas as well as physical spaces change in an organic fashion without concern to biases or pre-conceived ideals. Therefore, schedules are more in flux and managers understand the benefits of everyone loving their work and where they work (a la Google).

There were many things reminiscent of the dot boom era. For example, employees can bring their pets, there are several recreational areas, that include such amenities as a pool table and a box full of soft balls to sit in.

Every part of the campus had mini cafeterias where employees could get a healthy snack and then go back to work. The campus has several cafeterias each with its own theme. I ate at the vegetarian cafe. The food was wonderful and free. This made me wonder why they had a banking teller machine on campus if everything is free. I was most impressed by the fact that the campus had two jacuzzi pools for employees to enjoy. These small pools had a lifeguard on hand at all times. My friend remarked that the amount of cubic inches per gallon of water was the smallest for any life-guard to supervise!

I believe that no other company in the U.S. has this particular amenity at its main offices. Everywhere I turned there was another surprise waiting to be uncovered. When I stepped outside, I saw a rock band playing music like it was a weekend after final exams. My friend said that they had this event on a weekly basis. The California climate certainly amended itself well to this type of event.

While briefly listening to the band I noticed from the corner of my eye another surprise, namely a farmer's market on campus where employees could buy fresh produce and return to their desks healthy and happy. I also noticed that there were very few obese people on campus and this is a reflection of the youthful and healthy lifestyle most people from Google live by. Although fit and young at heart, I somehow felt slightly out of place among such a youthful ambiance of Gen-x and Gen-Y ers.

Tech support was another wonderful thing at Google. Instead of making a call to tech support and waiting for at least an hour before the techie arrives at your desktop to fix the problem, Google has a mini-tech support area called Tech Stop for each building. The employee simply shows up asks for assistance and their problem is solved within minutes. If they want an accessory, such as a handsfree phone piece, they simply fill out an electronic request at their desk and then pick up their item at the tech stop that is a few feet from their desk. This allows employees to remain product planning out the next Google gizmo.

The physical work environment encourages everyone at Google to be creative and display something unique that they could identify with. Offices were small in comparison with a traditional lawyer's office. I saw Mike Schmidt's office and it appeared smaller then the cube space that I occupied at a previous job. Consequently, status is based on knowledge and technical savvy and not based on your position within the corporate hierarchy. This encourages greater team participation and a freer flow of ideas, because people are not concerned with one's title so much. This is a very similar to the environment at IDEO, except on a much larger scale.

At Google technology and technologists rule. Google has done everything right to maximize the creative energy of its tech savvy staff, particularly engineers and researchers. For example, upon walking into the main lobby I noticed a play area that I thought was built for visiting children, but I discovered to my surprise that it was designed for engineers. This creative space allows engineers and researchers to tinker with ideas and share them visually with their peers. IDEO uses the same tools and sells creativity kits to its clients.

In conclusion, what I learned from my experience is that corporate culture has an enormous impact on achieving success in innovation. I think that Google has given me a perspective of a leading innovator of the 21st century. Obviously, a medical device company, public tranportation operator or hospital cannot operate under the same level of regulatory freedom, but they can improve their own work environments by adapting and encouraging their organizations to attract the free spirit and youthful energy that Google embodies. In short, greater innovation starts at the hiring process, where the recruiters should look for individuals with creativity, adaptability, intelligence and a can-do attitude. Finally, the organization must adapt its work environment and policies in order to attract these candidates and remain competitive in the 21st century.

Why 'Good Enough' Is Good Enough

2007-08-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

Stephen Baker in his article Why 'Good Enough' Is Good Enough (1) talks about new technologies that are no longer fail safe. However, the author forgets that failing technology is nothing new. There were major power blackouts in New York City in 1965 and 1977. (2) For decades people took electricity reliability for granted. Local governments failed to build backup systems and as a result the city came to a halt.

In the United States, many established industries of the previous century, such as transportation, food and drugs and construction are heavily regulated. This level of regulation stifles innovation. In industries that cannot create a life or death outcome on our lives, like entertainment/media, the internet and many business services, the regulatory weight is much less. However, Congress needs to move forward and re-examine many regulations controlling these industries and be more accepting of 'good enough' technologies. (picture of MEM on left)

Medical devices are becoming more dependent on data stored or transmitted by microchips or MEMS. As a result, the regulatory framework of agencies like the FAA and FDA must change. If a medical device is transmitting data to another non-medical device, for example a insulin pump and a blood glucose monitor to a cell phone, then the FDA must be open to 'good enough' technologies where backup systems can replace primary comunication systems. As a result, medical device companies will be able to experiment with a greater variety of communication technologies.

It is only a matter of time before coronary stents or other implants will have bio-sensors that transmit data with microchips or MEMS. Certainly, 'Good Enough' technology to transmit the data will allow for greater product innnovation.

Sources:
1- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_36/b4048048.htm?chan=search

2- http://blackout.gmu.edu/events/tl1977.html

Protecting Innovation

2007-08-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

In the August issue of Popular Science magazine, the author Dan Koeppel discusses the perils of China's product cloners. Here is a picture of the iPhone Clone from China. In some respects the clone has more features than the original. For example, the clone, the clone is available over several networks and is not tied to the AT&T network. The author goes on to describes that the entire company can sometimes be cloned in China with a different warranty call-in number for customers. Obviously this type of activity goes well beyond the intellectual protection of patents and trademarks.

What can a company do to eliminate or at least reduce the cloning threat?

Supply Chain:

Launch new products simultaneously in as many markets around the world as possible. This will prevent cloners entering untapped markets first.

Use RFID tags and 2D bar-coding on product packaging and also on the assembly line.

Use databases for tracking and tracing product shipments and detect counterfeit products.

Keep local investigators on the payroll to uncover fakes being produced in developing markets. Also encourage field sales personnel to report suspicious activity.

Manufacturing

Use encryption technology for key components and information.

Keep blueprints and other vital documents secure physically and electronically.

Create a recommendation system for product suppliers (similar to eBay's vendor recommendation system)

Embed distinctive codes and watermarks and other secret markings on into products and on packaging to better identify the original products from the fake ones.

Have a 24/7 production line to eliminate fakes being produced off-hours.

Trade Shows

Remain vague regarding product suppliers and critical product information at trade shows to thwart corporate espionage.

Ban use of digital cameras at product information booths.

Information Management and Production Facilities

Apply best practices of major defense contractors regarding physical and electronic data security. For example, monitor emails with attachments and by key word in subject line.

Control access to buildings and only allow employees to use encrypted information devices, such as USB drives and portable devices.

Government

Send lobbyists to government demanding greater sanctions on countries that are legally lax towards product cloners and counterfeits.

Publicize the destruction of cloned products and bring public awareness to the problem and the consequences, such as the introduction of unsafe products into the marketplace.

Encourage local governments to increase inspection at ports of entry to discourage product diversion.

This is just a short list of many activities a business must do to reduce the threat of product counterfeiting and cloning. Eventually, senior management takes notice when the top line sales figures begin to sag significantly, because of product diversion and counterfeiting.

(reference: see Clone Home http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/e7e48a137b144110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html)

Innovation and the economy

2007-08-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

In the article of August 4th,the author describes Britain's rank in the world economy as a knowledge based powerhouse. See (The Economist,
The good, the bad and the ugly , pg.47)

In the graph to the left we see R&D spending as a percentage of GDP per country. Is the Economist using the correct measurement of innovation by country? Each year, China is currently generating at least three times more college graduates in science and engineering per year than the United States. Many of these scientists are migrating to the US and other developed countries. Yet despite this brain drain, there will be plenty of graduates remaining in China, for this country to quickly catch up to the innovation leaders. Innovation is not simply spending in R&D, but also the number of people that can tackle scientific and engineering problems and provide solutions.

In addition, what about disruptive innovation? Which countries excel in this type of innovation. For decades, China was simply copying what more developed economies did. Now they are generating home grown talent in product design and marketing as well. Our current leaders in innovation will not maintain their lead for much longer. For example, Canada and Sweden with their small populations, they will need immigration policies that attract even more engineers and scientists, if they want to maintain a significant position on the list of innovation leaders.

For several decades, the company Sony was representative of innovative leadership. Now it has fallen behind competitors, such as LG. Part of the blame is Japan's ageing population: there are fewer young minds filling the ranks with creativity and energy. Another key to a achieving a higher innovation score over the long term is to have a young vibrant population to generate many ideas and the energy to follow through with them. Spain and France have been successful in slowing the aging of their populations through more effective policies. For example, the French government makes it easier for working mothers to have babies, through all kinds of subsidies and tax advantages for working mothers and families. Spain has maintained a vibrant economy through immigration policies that bring in many entrepreneurs from other countries.

In short, innovation should be measured using population age, immigration and education policies, the number of annual graduates in science and engineering and finally the number of disruptive innovations that have a global impact. For example, the ipod changed the game in music listening, production and delivery worldwide.

Countries can spend a lot in R&D as a percentage of GDP, but how many innovative products with global presence are derived from this spending in R&D? Samsung was known as a good product copycat and then transformed itself in into a technology leader, then later to be replaced by LG in many respects. They same pattern applies to many countries. In a matter of decades, China will transform itself from being a product copycat into a technology leader.

Eight Rules To Brilliant Brainstorming

2007-07-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

BusinessWeek provides us with a list of eight rules to achieve effective brainstorming. Based on my experience as a facilitator of brainstorming sessions, I have added my comments and recommendations for each rule. See http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_39/b4002412.htm)

1. USE BRAINSTORMING TO COMBINE AND EXTEND IDEAS, NOT JUST HARVEST THEM Andrew Hargadon's How Breakthroughs Happen shows that creativity occurs when people find ways to build on existing ideas. The power of group brainstorming comes from creating a safe place where people with different ideas can share, blend, and expand their diverse knowledge. If your goal is just to collect the creative ideas that are out there, group brainstorms are a waste of time. You may as well stick to a Web-based system for collecting ideas. Even an old-fashioned employee suggestion box is good enough for this limited task.

Combining and extending ideas is good, but training the participants on how to generate new ideas is also important. If sustaining innovation is the outcome sought then there are several tools that can facilitate the brain storming sessions, such as TRIZ (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triz) or the Systematic Inventive Thinking technique. (See http://www.sitsite.com/app/homepage.asp) Sometimes removing a component or process of a product is just as important as adding new features or or stylistic characteristics. In addition, the participants must have a clear understanding of the problem.

2. DON'T BOTHER IF PEOPLE LIVE IN FEAR Groups bring out the best and the worst in people. If people believe they will be teased, paid less, demoted, fired, or otherwise humiliated, group brainstorming is a bad idea. If your company fires 10% of its employees every year, people might be too afraid of saying something dumb to brainstorm effectively.

The brainstroming session facilitator should assist participants in identifying their own role (based on the Ten Faces of Innovation described by IDEO founder Tom Kelley). This allows the facilitator to find a good representation of each role within the brainstorming group. Not all ten roles are necessary to have an effective brainstorming session, but the facilitator should seek an equal representation of the roles.

3. DO INDIVIDUAL BRAINSTORMING BEFORE AND AFTER GROUP SESSIONS Alex F. Osborn's 1950s classic, Applied Imagination, which popularized brainstorming, gave sound advice: Creativity comes from a blend of individual and collective ``ideation.'' This means building in time for people to think and learn about the topic before the group brainstorm, as well as time to reflect about what happened after the meetings. When I studied the IDEO team as they developed a new hair-cutting device, engineer Roby Stancel told me that he prepared for the session by going to a local hardware store to look at all kinds of cutting machines -- lawn mowers, hedge clippers, and weed whackers -- to inspire him before the group session.

What IDEO does is send a group of people outside their facility to the central location where their target customers are. In preparation for the brainstorming session, the team will observe and record and then return with their insights and ideas to share with other members of the team. Their objective is to record customer experiences not just how a customer uses a particular product or service. A good brainstorming practice is to provide creativity tools to assist participants in visualizing their concepts. IDEO provides a tool chest of small objects, such as LEGOs, small levers, different fabrics, bendable wire, buttons, small toys, etc... Creativity is not simply an exercise in abstract thought, but also includes sensory feedback with different objects to stimulate the brain.

4. BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS ARE WORTHLESS UNLESS IDEAS LEAD TO ACTION Brainstorming is just one of many techniques that make a company creative. It is of little value if it's not combined with observing consumers, talking to experts, or building prototype products and experiences that provide an outlet for the ideas generated. I've worked with ``creative'' companies that are great at coming up with ideas, but never implement them. I once studied a team that spent a year brainstorming and arguing about a simple product without producing a single prototype, even though a good engineer could have built one in an hour. The project was finally killed when a competitor came out with a similar product.

The idea review process that comes after the brainstorming session is a crucial part of the total process. The organization requires buy-in from senior management to allocate people who will be made accountable for bringing an idea to market. Simply having a database full of ideas is not enough. Reviewers job descriptions and performance reviews must include the task of reviewing ideas and bringing the best ones into the marketplace. Functional representation is less important than commitment to bring an idea through the entire product lifecycle and being held accountable for it. In many cases, the organization will rely on its engineers within the R&D department to come up with all its new product ideas. Instead, everyone within the organization can participate in the brainstorming process. Selecting the appropriate reviewers is also important. An accountant may have a different perspective about an ideas than a marketing person. This is why many organizations include a voting mechanism in the idea review process. The ideas with the highest number of votes receive the most attention. The organization should use different mechanisms to collect and review ideas, namely brainstorming, ideas portals that collect ideas internally and externally.

5. BRAINSTORMING REQUIRES SKILL AND EXPERIENCE BOTH TO DO—AND ESPECIALLY—TO FACILITATE Not everyone can walk into a room and lead a productive brainstorming session. It is not a job for amateurs. In all the places I've seen brainstorming used effectively -- Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), SAP's (SAP ) Design Services Team, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, the Institute for the Future, frog design, and IDEO -- brainstorming is treated as a skill that takes months or years to master. Facilitating a session is a leadership skill that takes even longer to develop.

In many organizations, the brainstorming process reaches a level of effectiveness and consistency. However, many participants struggle with the next step, namely translating the idea into a working business model. When an organization becomes very large, the steps to take to convert the idea into intellectual property that is patentable can be overly complex. The most innovative companies have kept their lawyer and bureaucrats at bay. The invention disclosure form is no more than three pages and the technical expertise required to describe the patentable idea is simple enough for a non-engineer or non-scientist to complete. Within a large organization, you usually find the smaller innovative affiliates that were recently acquired having the simplest processes for invention disclosure and patent submissions. Eventually over time the bureaucracy sets in and the smaller nimble organization must comply to the more complex standard procedures, thereby killing its innovative momentum.

6. A GOOD BRAINSTORMING SESSION IS COMPETITIVE—IN THE RIGHT WAY In the best brainstorms, people compete to get everyone else to contribute, to make everyone feel like part of the group, and to treat everyone as collaborators toward a common goal. The worst thing a manager can do is set up the session as an ``I win, you lose'' game, in which ideas are explicitly rated, ranked, and rewarded. A Stanford grad student once told me about a team leader at his former company who started giving bonuses to people who generated the best ideas in brainstorms. The resulting fear and dysfunction drastically reduced the number of ideas generated by what had once been a creative and cooperative group.

Reward systems cannot work correctly, unless they are applied to the entire ideation process. In other words, a person should be rewarded for generating ideas, reviewing ideas and improving on ideas submitted by others. Rewards should apply to total participation and not simply generating the best ideas in a brainstorming session. The largest reward would be divided equally among participants with benchmarks and metrics encouraging continuous improvement.

7. BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS CAN BE USED FOR MORE THAN JUST GENERATING IDEAS Brainstorms are places to listen, learn, and educate. At IDEO, they support the company's culture and work practices. Project teams use brainstorms to get input from people with diverse skills throughout the company. Knowledge is spread about new industries and technologies. Newcomers and veterans learn about who knows what. The explicit goal of a group brainstorm is to generate ideas. But the other benefits of routinely gathering rotating groups of people from around an organization to talk about ideas might ultimately be more important for supporting creative work.

Fortunately, there are many collaboration tools available to organizations to assist in virtual brainstorming, such as Tacit Activenet software. (see http://www.tacit.com/home.asp) and IBM Lotus Sametime (See http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/category/uc2/index.html). I think that many organizations need to reach out to their vendors, suppliers and partners and conduct brainstorming sessions with them as well. The goal is to improve the entire value chain and not simply a product or service.

8. FOLLOW THE RULES, OR DON'T CALL IT A BRAINSTORM This is true even if you hold only occasional brainstorms and even if your work doesn't require constant creativity. The worst brainstorms happen when the term is used loosely and the rules aren't followed at all. Perhaps the biggest mistake that leaders make is failing to keep their mouths shut. I once went to a meeting that started with the boss saying: ``Let's brainstorm.'' He followed this pronouncement with 30 minutes of his own rambling thoughts, without a single idea coming from the room. Now, that's productivity loss!

The participants in brainstorming teams at IDEO treat each other with equality of thought and respect. Levels of formal authority are ignored and each participant is encouraged to participate and not simply listen to the highest ranking members of the team.

The Innovation Sandbox: Low cost disruptive innovation

2007-07-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

The author of article titled The innovation Sandbox describes the key ingredients required to bring low cost disruptive innovation to the masses of a developing country, such as India. The lessons learned in this article can be applied to most developing countries. However, some of the barriers to entry that the author fails to mention are political corruption, inadequate access to basic resources and a legal and political system that does not protect intellectual property as found in most developed countries. Nevertheless, a successful new business can be built on a series of key ingredients. They are summarized as follows.

The first key ingredient is specialization. It allows the new business to make use of limited resources. In the West, an organization often hires highly paid generalists to do several complex tasks very well. What the new business venture requires in developing countries is a large group of highly specialized people that learn their skill by doing the same procedure repeatedly day after day. As a result, focusing on a particular procedure helps build expertise faster, than with a new business venture organized around many generalists.

The second key ingredient is pricing. In this case there is a different set of assumptions. The product or service must be affordable, yet generate a profit for the business. A ceiling for costs and customer needs determines the price structure and business model. Fine-tuning existing business models applied in developed countries will not work in developing countries.

The third key ingredient is capital intensity. The use of capital equipment must be maximized. To this end, the new business will maximize this resource by using it 24 hours a day instead of an as-needed basis. The business should only buy equipment required for the specialized procedures. More expensive capital equipment is chosen if it can reduce variable costs over time. For example, a machine that uses digital media instead of physical media will inherently eliminate the need for physical media management and distribution costs. Instead of acquiring expensive components or finished products from developed countries, the business should leverage local resources and build things locally, since it is located in a region with low cost manufacturing. For example, in many developed countries products are based on decades old technology, but there is a limited number of suppliers or manufacturers. These old technologies can be adopted in the host country at a fraction of the cost of the imported product. A prime example, is low cost agricultural equipment from India entering developed markets where John Deere and Caterpillar were dominant players.

The fourth key ingredient is talent leverage. When entering a developing market the new business should focus on hiring staff locally with the needed skill-sets instead of staff with high priced credentials from Western schools. Today, many large multinationals are realizing that in-house e-training is a cost effective alternative to using more traditional four year schools. By disaggregating processes into smaller ones, the business can thereby standardize the product or service offered and reduce inconsistencies. In short, the new business should foster an environment of rapid learning from inside and outside the business: from suppliers, customers, governments and other collaborators and partners.

The fifth key ingredient is workflow. Processes becomes compartmentalized so that small highly specialized teams can oversee a specific process or procedure. Through more focused training, individuals lower on the value chain will gain greater responsibility, because the business has off-loaded certain lower value tasks from more expensive highly skilled people. Consequently, a new business can then allocate its more higher credentialed people to activities with the greatest value add.

The sixth key ingredient is customer acquisition. The success of the new business is based on volume. The business will use different techniques to bring in a high volume of customers. The goal is to provide high accessibility and affordability to the masses of customers who cannot afford existing products or services. In other words, provide products or services to non-consumers as described by Clayton Christensen in his book, the Innovator's Solution. When defining who your customers are, the new business must go out and observe its potential customers and use ethnography to better understand the local culture. The new business cannot rely on local potential customers to articulate their needs, but should instead rely on keen observation of their needs.

The final key ingredient is values and organization. The overall culture is one of service, humility, kindness and equality. This is similar to the IDEO model for design teams where authority and status are unimportant to generating new ideas and working together as a team with a common goal or purpose.

The Innovation Sandbox: To create an impossibly low-cost, high quality new business model, start by cultivating constraints. Prahalad, C.K., Strategy + Business Issue 44, (See http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/06306?gko=3c799-1876-18051820)

2007-07-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

Great Innovation often starts with creative thinking.

Innovation Sourcebook

2007-07-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

Associate professor Vijay Kumar of the Chicago's Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology has developed a database of over 250 case studies of corporate innovation and will appear at the Innovation Exchange. Users can visualize and compare data to see patterns. In the future the tool will include live chat and wiki features to encourage engineers, manager and designer to exchange ideas. See http://trex.id.iit.edu/~davidm/assets/McGaw-ID-Innovation.pdf

Smart Spenders: The Global Innovation 1000

2007-07-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

In the Booz, Allen Hamilton report Smart Spenders: The Global Innovation 1000, the authors identify a small group of companies of high leverage innovators who outperform their respective industries. In short, these high performers spend less than their peers on R&D, but are able to generate better overall financial results. (See http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/06405?pg=all)

Here is a summary of their findings:

Deep pockets can be dry wells. In other words, money simply cannot buy more effective innovation.
Patents generally do not drive profits. Many companies boost their R&D spending in order to generate more patents. Unfortunately, there is no direct statistical correlation between R&D spending and and overall financial performance.
Less than 10 percent of the 1000 companies in their study are identified as high-leverage innovators.
Masters of the innovation value chain have a competitive advantage. They spend less money on R&D but are able to achieve better financial results through ideation, effective portfolio management and product development, and speed to market.

The latest trend in R&D spending is moving parts of existing research centers or new ones to lower cost areas around the world. (See chart below)

The True Measure of a Good Idea

2007-07-04T20:24:00.000-07:00

Dev Patnaik of BusinessWeek discusses the difference between mere invention and world changing innovation. See article (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2005/id20051221_059094.htm)

The U.S. Patent Office is filled with applications for inventions that will never bring an additional penny to anyone besides the patent lawyers who filed them. Always novel, and occasionally interesting, these inventions are not innovations...You can measure the quality of an innovation by the effect it has on the world as well as on your bottom line. When Xerox's (XRX ) Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) invented the graphical user interface, it created an invention. When Apple (AAPL ) incorporated PARC's work into the Macintosh, it was an innovation.

For several decades, many companies thought that generating a large quantity of intellectual property was a valid metric for innovation. Fortunately, revisionist thinkers realized that the number of patents does not always translate to greater revenues. Some inventions remain on the shelf without ever reaching commercialization.

In fact, some inventions have a large socio-economic impact and most do not.

Take, for example, the difference between a hovercraft and disposable diapers. The hovercraft is unquestionably an impressive invention. It's a task of literally biblical proportions to create something that walks on water. The technical barriers alone required years of work. Yet despite the hurdles that were overcome in its creation, the hovercraft has not made a significant socioeconomic impact. Most of us don't take a hovercraft to work every day. Big invention. Small innovation. Compare that with disposable diapers. It's true that Pampers and Huggies are the result of decades of research into absorption technology. Still, the basic idea is pretty straightforward. With all due respect to diaper technologists, the disposable diaper is, at its essence, a few sheets of paper and plastic taped to a baby's bottom. However, disposable diapers are a massive innovation. They've changed how we take care of our children, how we go on trips, what we buy, and the effect we have on the environment. Disposable diapers help to make child-rearing a possibility in this otherwise hectic world of dual-income households. Small invention. Huge innovation.

Clayton Christensen's theories on disruptive innovation help companies find inventions with huge potential by better observing the customer and then identifying new business models or markets. The need for creativity is important in identifying a solution, but not in observing the customer or finding new markets.

Innosight's is a consulting firm can assist companies to focus their processes of invention to achieve greater commercial success:

generate ideas using jobs-to-be-done customer research(e.g. using client data and customer surveys)
identify areas of growth (e.g. low cost disruption or new untapped markets)
evaluate ideas against success patterns
take ideas to market with emergent strategies(e.g. invest a little at a time and reshape the strategy from customer and market research)
create or reshape innovation processes(e.g. through innovation training/coaching. DVD or web based or through workshops.)
balance portfolios(e.g. help prioritize projects, because companies need both sustaining and disruptive innovation and resource allocation that fulfills the objectives of each)
develop a shared vision regarding innovation (e.g. changing a company's innovation vision can take six to eight months or longer, before all the key pieces are set in place).

Innosight helps build capability within the organization, whereas some consulting firms simply provide expertise without building capability. As a result, the client must return to the consulting firm again and again in order to innovate. A best practice is for the client to ask for employee training and build upon its innovation capability, whether it is IDEO, Innosight, McKinsey or Deloitte.

Some consulting firms offer different techniques, such as Systematic Inventive Thinking. This technique allows a company to focus on generating great ideas for inventions of significance in a systematic manner. Unfortunately, if there is no input from the customer, then the invention might have a wow factor with no market potential. Ethnography is gaining momentum in defining the voice of the customer(VOC).

Many companies focus on studying their best customers. This is sufficient for sustaining innovation, but not disruptive innovation. To achieve disruptive innovation a company should look to create new products/services and apply ethnography techniques to customers not currently using the product thereby allowing the company to form new markets. In short, what is needed is to identify jobs that need to get done among these potential customers. "Innovation isn't always about big ideas. It's about ideas that have a big impact."

Technical Innovation: Pixar's Ratatouille

2007-07-01T20:08:00.000-07:00

Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. Ratatouille continues Pixar's legacy of technical excellence and brilliant animation. There is a new episode of the Ratatouille video podcast available online. You can find the video on the Pixar
Planet forums: JV
Pixar News. The new episode
titled The Technical Ingredients shows some of the technical innovation involved in creating Pixar's new film. They explore dynamics for wet cloth, water movement, and hair. Take a look at the new video.

Other animation studios are good at entertaining audiences and generating substantial profits. Luckily, Pixar goes beyond these metrics and reaches new levels of technical excellence with each film. Following in the tradition of many 2D Disney animations, Pixar is creating classics for future generations to enjoy. In this case, Pixar may generate fewer movies per development cycle than other studios, but the studio will generate more income over the long term, because of the timeless quality of their movies.

In summary, many business metrics, such as technical innovation, theater ticket and DVD sales and large entertainment value fit the purpose of public companies with quarterly sales/income targets. Hopefully, the influence of Disney shareholders will not bring a reduction in quality to Pixar films for sake of pleasing financial analysts on Wall Street looking for short-term gains. Disney does bring with it merchandising magic to the Pixar brand, but keeping the magical quality of Pixar movies will only add to the Disney brand and maintain the halo effect over its other products.

Non-Destructive Creation

2007-06-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps says that Joseph Schumpeter was wrong: Entrepreneurship can generate stable growth. See article http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/07203?pg=all

The author sumarizes Phelps theories about the economic impact of foster and encouraging entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurially minded business leaders are successful not because they set an unchanging goal and then labor to achieve it. Rather, they succeed as agile seekers looking for many different ways to identify and capture opportunity. Business institutions and governments could serve society better by enabling these seekers more effectively — not just in their technological research, but in taking innovations to market.

Phelps suggests that countries would benefit if educational institutions provide more training in entrepreneurship and offer a broader skill sets than what most institutions offer today.

Phelps’s second observation is that business education could do much more to promote uncoordinated, effective entrepreneurial exploration by its students. General theory and ideas are important in business training, but so is practice in seeking, identifying, and capturing opportunity. Such practice can take the form of case studies of entrepreneurs and managers making the leap from creative ideas to commercially viable innovations. (See Nick Bloom and John Van Reenen, “

Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries,” Centre for Economic Policy Research discussion paper no. 5581, March 2006.)"

I agree with Phelps that our educational institutions can to more to instill creativity and techniques on evaluation business opportunities. However, there are also other things that governments can do to promote entrepreneurship.

1- Remove/reduce regulatory barriers and high taxes (Think most European countries and few entrepreneurs)
2- Promote immigration and diversity (creater the distance from home country the greater the motivation to succeed)
3- Foster cooperation between entrepreneurs/inventors in different countries. (more cooperation --> more ideas --> better ideas -->new markets)
4- Change the cultural landscape through advertising and other promotional measures with the message: inventing and/or building something is COOL for our younger generations. Instead of playing Wii or PS2 discover, explorer share with others then invent/create. (Being a doctor or lawyer is OK, but being an inventor/entrepreneur can change the world).

The Next Cultural Revolution

2007-06-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

In the June issue of Fast Company, the author Eric Chen describes the emergence of a new creative class in China (see "The Next Cultural Revolution, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/116/features-the-next-cultural-revolution.html

China is not content to serve as factory to the globe. Call it economic foresight, or cultural pride, but despite the stratospheric growth of its economy--10.7% last year--China knows that cheap labor alone can't sustain the boom. While a flurry of activity (and, yes, a government five-year plan) has stressed scientific and technological innovation, look a little closer and you'll see that creativity in art and industry--in design, fashion, media, and the like--is fast becoming a driving national mission.

Many companies in western countries seek new markets as a process for new-market disruption. They target countries that are part of the (BRIC), namely Brazil, Russia, India & China. What we learn from the article is probably happening in the other member countries of the BRIC: namely a growing creative class. Today young talent from these countries can assist innovative companies large and small to enter these markets. Companies no longer have to hire design and/or ad agencies from New York, Paris or London, they can look up local talent to do the job more cheaply and effectively. The BussinessWeek Design Directory can help you find local creative talent by country or specialty. See http://designdirectory.com/

Made to Stick

2007-06-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

In the June issue of Fast Company, there is a wonderful article about the maturity of marketing and the need to generate buzz before a new product is launched. "Many companies today seem to believe that word of mouth is something marketers conjure up after a product launch...Conversations can't be 'snapped on' after the fact. You have to plan for them" To this end, the authors of Made to Stick describe innovative techniques to increase word of mouth advertising that effectively stir conversation among new consumers. See article http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/116/column-made-to-stick.html.

I believe that this marketing technique has a much higher ethical standard, as opposed to when companies pay secret advocates to introduce product benefits into casual conversations with their friends, neighbors and co-workers. This is an insidious marketing method that breaks down the fabric of trust between friends and family.

I think that applying the savvy marketing techniques described in the book Made to Stick can certainly bring a market boost to the process of introducing new products and services as defined as disruptive innovation by Clayton Christensen.

Sustained Disruptive Innovation Process

2007-06-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

Above is a slide showing the model of a sustained disruptive innovation process. The first stage is called ideation and should be made available to everyone within the organization and not simply R&D. Many organizations rely on their internal R&D resources. However, there are organizations that can help things along, such as NineSigma (see http://www.ninesigma.com/) and Innocentive (see http://www.innocentive.com/). These organizations can shorten the development time from a few years to a few weeks through a broad RFP process that takes a few weeks. Efficiently capturing ideas means that there is a filtering process that eliminates poor ideas from the more valuable ones. This process must have buy-in from the Executive Board and reviewers must have this process as part of their job description not something done through delegation from above. There are also organizations, such as BrainBank (see http://www.brainbankinc.com/) and Imaginatik (see http://www.imaginatik.com/ that help an orgnization develop an ideation tool that provides metrics. These organizations also provide assistance in developing the idea review process that works in the backend of the user interface. Licensing, purchasing investing and acquiring are all methods to introduce new technology quickly.

The second stage usually involves the participation of the Marketing Function, Operations and R&D. At this stage a cross-functional team determines the technical and operational risks. Many organizations struggle with process, because there is a conflict among the functions. Each carries a different objective and mission. A common purpose should be the driving force is enabling better collaboration. For example, if a team member is a better fit to work on another promising project and wants to move, the functional leader needs to build in some slack into the resource and time schedule to allow greater flexibility for the move. Another problem is that many organizations take on too many project with resources spread too thin, this prevent the efficient movement of resources between projects when the marketplace requires a changes in priorities. Fortunately, many organizations have tools in place to capture lessons learned from past failure. However, they also need a cultural environment that embraces risk and the acceptance of failure that provide longer-term successes through repetitive experimentation. Finally, voice of the customer (VOC) is vital in selecting the ideas that best fit the customer's needs. When developing new products, focusing on the customer instead of the competitor is essential for disruptive innovation. Kainsei Engineering Methodology is just one method of methodically capturing voice of the customer. Another process is customer shadowing and systematically translating the customer experience into product/service requirements.

The third stage is what most organizations think they have a handle on, but often fail repeatedly. Simply put, many large organizations do not respond to market changes quickly enough. They try to develop everything in-house or acquire new technologies. Instead, organizations can run virtual companies that are put together quickly through partnerships and ventures, but stay together only long enough for the project to reach commercialization. This provides a framework for effective speed to market that is most needed. The web is making this a reality for more and more companies. Unfortunately, the protection of intellectual property is slowing somewhat the greater preponderance of this development model.

Innovation Agility

2007-06-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

In the summer edition (Issue 47) of Strategy + Business there is an article titled Innovation Agility see http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/07208?gko=e0831-1876-26242491&tid=230&pg=all the authors review Toyota's' product development process and systems and say that it 'focuses on carefully building and nurturing a set of six capabilities that are precisely orchestrated to enable the launch project to succeed. (See Exhibit 1.) The six elements form an internally consistent, self-reinforcing system:'

1. Structure and Organization: ..."Toyota relies not on positional authority and compliance but on its culture — with a shared goal of program success instilled broadly through the enterprise — to make it all work."

2. Development Process: ... "when Toyota’s managers conceive of a program, they investigate multiple approaches up front. At least one of these approaches is a fallback plan"... "the knowledge gained while investigating the new solution is not just thrown away. It is systematically captured, ready for use on the next program."

3. Extended Enterprise: ..."Toyota’s suppliers, who happen to have the soundest financials of
any Tier One suppliers in the world, are highly motivated partners in the company’s R&D efforts."

4. Institutional Learning:..."Toyota depends heavily on capturing and sharing the knowledge and experience of its people."

5. People Development:..."The company takes great time and trouble to develop its best people."

6. Culture:..."which centers on a number of core values, including personal accountability, continuous improvement, collaboration, and elimination of waste."

In regard to the first capability, Toyota's structure and organization is something that would be difficult to duplicate in the United States or Europe. Positional Authority is very strong and often used to direct strategy and process development. What organizations in Europe and the United States could implement instead are tightly fit cross-functional teams of different levels of authority that work together as a team and leave their functional authority behind. In the book the ten faces of Innovation, the author Tom Kelley from IDEO describes the ten roles needed to have a successful team for innovation initiatives. Having tools to help individual identify their role within the team e.g. anthropologist, hurdler, director, set designer, etc. would certainly allow the organization to find a balance of different individuals and how they can contribute. In other words, follow the example of IDEO where each participant is equal and are valued instead by the contribution of new ideas that are actionable and have the buy-in and where everyone on the team participated in the review process. Many organizations tend to give different levels of importance to each functional areas instead of provided equal weight in the decision making process.

In response to the second capability the authors describe the capture of lessons learned from investigating new solutions. Many organizations in the U.S. and Europe share the common practice of capturing lessons learned for future projects. Unfortunately, many organizations do not institutionalize this process across ALL functional areas. Fortunately, there are many software programs that exist to facilitate this process and make it more common across functional areas. The leaders of each functional area are responsible to embrace this process and make it a fait accompli within their sphere of influence.

In response to the third capability, U.S. and European companies are beginning to leverage the knowledge of their supplier as a customer feedback mechanism to improve their products and services through CRM software. However, what needs to happen is to apply CRM technology to B2B platforms not only B2C. In short, implement B2B portals that include extensive CRM functionality to capture more customer information.

In response to the fourth capability institutional learning, organizations in the U.S. and Europe need to approach this in a practical manner. Over the last two decades many organizations have experimented with knowledge networking capturing the knowledge of thousands of individuals that required a lot of time and resources to keep the process alive, because a lot of effort was required to capture and manage the information. Those who ran the program run up against complacency and diminishing returns. What needs to happen instead is to use better technology and then evangelize the process explaining that the NEW process is not like those of old (knowledge networking). For example, some of these tools look at email as the central repository of knowledge and then leverages this knowledge to connect subject matter experts together. For example, the software called Tacit ActiveNet http://www.tacit.com/products/ provides this level of functionality to organizations. Very little effort is required on behalf of the user to make the system work. The user simply creates a profile and then the software does the rest. To this end, ideas are automatically exchanged between individuals sharing the same expertise or have the same interests through posting questions on the system.

In regard to the fifth capability, many organizations have well developed programs. Unfortunately, like many governments that subsidize education they do not understand that the person being educated needs access to opportunities once they graduate or complete their certification program. In many cases, if the opportunities are lacking then the employee will look outside the organization. The organization will have wasted valuable resources subsidizing or developing its personnel, because they leave the company shortly after obtaining higher education. In many cases, there is a brain drain towards centers of job opportunities. In short, the organization must develop opportunities alongside its education programs so that employees with new education or skills can apply them internally and not apply to top innovators like Google, Apple or 3M.

In regard to the last capability, culture "which centers on a number of core values, including personal accountability, continuous improvement, collaboration, and elimination of waste", there a few key elements missing that are needed to foster disruptive innovation, such creativity, accepting risk, and diversity. Japan is a very homogeneous society with few foreigners, whereas the United States and Europe are hosts of a vast diasporas of languages, ethnicity and cultures. Diversity brings strength to an organization through differences of thought and ways to approach a problem. Therefore, to promote innovation an organization needs to promote diversity.

In summary, following Toyota's product development process and its corresponding capabilities is not a panacea, but a starting point to developing a process that best fits the organization over the long term. Toyota places strong emphasis on depth and length of experience of its senior engineers. Toyota's product development process is excellent for incremental innovation, but lacks some key elements for disruptive innovation.

As technology advances more rapidly, speed to market and/or developing new markets also becomes an essential driver to successful innovation. Sometimes packaging the product with the right technology and services and having all the right market elements in place is all that is needed for a successful product launch like Apple's iPod. Apple did not create most of the iPod's technological components in-house, but partnered with other companies to put together the best existing technologies into a solid package that fits many consumer unmet needs. Apple did not simply try to better the competition instead it created a new marketplace and created a new product to fit into it.

Lessons from Apple

2007-06-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

In the Economist article Lessons from Apple the author provides some key lessons learned on Innovation:

... innovation can come from without as well as within. Apple is widely assumed to be an innovator in the tradition of Thomas Edison or Bell Laboratories, locking its engineers away to cook up new ideas and basing products on their moments of inspiration. In fact, its real skill lies in stitching together its own ideas with technologies from outside and then wrapping the results in elegant software and stylish design. The idea for the iPod, for example, was originally dreamt up by a consultant whom Apple hired to run the project. It was assembled by combining off-the-shelf parts with in-house ingredients such as its distinctive, easily used system of controls. And it was designed to work closely with Apple's iTunes jukebox software, which was also bought in and then overhauled and improved. Apple is, in short, an orchestrator and integrator of technologies, unafraid to bring in ideas from outside but always adding its own twists.
...the importance of designing new products around the needs of the user, not the demands of the technology. Too many technology firms think that clever innards are enough to sell their products, resulting in gizmos designed by engineers for engineers. Apple has consistently combined clever technology with simplicity and ease of use. The iPod was not the first digital-music player, but it was the first to make transferring and organising music, and buying it online, easy enough for almost anyone to have a go. Similarly, the iPhone is not the first mobile phone to incorporate a music-player, web browser or e-mail software. But most existing “smartphones” require you to be pretty smart to use them.
... smart companies should sometimes ignore what the market says it wants today. The iPod was ridiculed when it was launched in 2001, but Mr Jobs stuck by his instinct. Nintendo has done something similar with its popular motion-controlled video-game console, the Wii. Rather than designing a machine for existing gamers, it gambled that non-gamers represented an untapped market and devised a machine with far broader appeal.
... to “fail wisely”. The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson is not to stigmatise failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.

In short, what should your organization do to emulate Apple to achieve success in innovation? In response to the author's remarks, here are my insights to the above quotes:

1- If a company has difficulty channelling its creative efforts outside its walls, it can hire the expertise of organizations such as NineSigma or Innocentive.

Nine Sigma enable your organization to tap a global network of innovators for new solutions, technologies, products, services & opportunities using an relatively inexpensive effective & efficient anonymous request for proposal (RFP) process. NineSigma boasts a 30 to 40 percent success rate of proposals that lead to a deal. RFPs are published online for 4 weeks. The requestor can target a wide range of solution providers or a small group depending on the specific requirements in their RFP. In discussion with a customer of NineSigma, for one out of 5 projects sent out for bid, there were over sixty responses, approximately 15-20 for each project & one response for a single project. All responses came from places outside normal channels that the op. co currently deals with, e.g. universities, consultants, etc... A summary of the responses is provided the 3rd week after publication of the RFP. It is easy to Implement: NineSigma provides excellent coaching in writing & vetting RFPs. They are easy to work with & provide great resources as well. See http://www.ninesigma.com/

Another organization called InnoCentive® is an exciting web-based community matching top scientists from around the world to relevant R&D challenges facing leading companies. They provide a powerful online forum enabling companies to reward innovation through financial rewards. See http://www.innocentive.com/

2- Good design is of greater importance then most companies allocate resources to. However, if your organization does not have sufficient resources internally, there are excellent designers available to tackle your new product design. BusinessWeek has a design directory to help you find the perfect design team. See http://www.designdirectory.com/public/advanced_search.asp

3- For the task of identifying new markets or new business models, an organization must be willing to allocate a team of senior officers to come up with a new business model that will bring disruptive innovation quickly. This sometimes takes several months to achieve and not an additional bullet point on the Board's weekly agenda!

However, what is even more important is not to lose key people while you are doing this new master plan. The CEO should not lose sight of the mavericks and other talented people to complete the new project. It is certainly not a good idea to restructure your organization before or during the work of tackling a new business model.

Some key people can change roles and greatly contribute to the new business model. Nevertheless, if a restructuring takes place ahead of the new business model being put in place, some key people will leave the organization with the perception that the company is not doing well. After restructuring, not all the needed resources will be available and this will delay your entry into new markets or establishing new business models.

4- Failing wisely also requires an organization that is willing to hire the creative inventors (not just scientists) in the first place. If the organization is trying to become more innovative, it has to change its perception of exactly who can do the job! Then the organization can embrace more risk taking, because it has key individuals who enjoy taking risks to actually accomplish their passionate endeavors.

The art of innovation can be taught, and there are many gurus like Clayton Christensen of Harvard and Tom Kelley of IDEO to help you make your organization more innovative. The trick is to learn enough from the experts to become proficient in training your your people yourself!

see: http://www.economist.com/opinion/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9302662

Six Sigma: So Yesterday?

2007-06-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

In an innovation economy, it's no longer a cure-all

In this BusinessWeek this article, there is finally validation of something I suspected all along. See http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/07_24/b4038409.htm?chan=gl

'But as its popularity endures, the notion of Six Sigma as a corporate cure-all is subsiding. Once a company has done the requisite belt-tightening, "the strategic needs of a business change," says Robert Carter, a consultant at defense contractor Raytheon (RTN ). Kick-starting the top line becomes paramount; the best way there apart from an acquisition is innovation. At Raytheon, Carter is leading a Six Sigma effort to promote innovation. But while "most Six Sigma practitioners are very strong on the left brain, innovation very much starts in the right hemisphere," says Carter. Even he, a Six Sigma expert, acknowledges the "define, measure, analyze, improve, control" mind-set doesn't entirely gel with the fuzzy front-end of invention. When an idea starts germinating, Carter says, "you don't want to over-analyze it," which can happen in a traditional DMAIC framework.'

So what is the solution? An organization caught up with extensive SixSigma programs needs to address the fundamental dichotomy and implement disruptive innovation programs with as much effort and funding it has placed on process excellence to train more and more Black Belts. Instead, the organization needs to create programs that embrace greater risk, whereas repeatable failures bring disruptive innovation. Think of Thomas Edison and the thousands of small failures he endured before he invented the filament for the light bulb. This certainly is disruptive innovation in its purest form.

In addition, the organization must tackle the fuzzy front-end with ideation and collaboration programs that promote creativity, serendipity and sharing of knowledge between R&D and every corner of the organization. R&D does not have all the answers or a stronghold on innovation. Finally, everyone needs to be involved and accountable to review ideas and bring them to commercialization. Eventually, those great ideas need to be brought to market in a repeatable and sustained fashion. This means that senior management must incorporate innovation time into everyone's development plan and performance evaluation. This is a culture shift for many large organization who think that they can continuously downsize to please Wall Street and still have the resources left over for the next acquisition (innovative start-up), instead of focusing on organic growth. In short, large organizations sometimes think that giving more cash to R&D will simply fix the problem. What is necessary is a culture shift where EVERYONE embraces innovation in their own way.

For starters, several companies such as Google and Intuit allow their employees to spend ten percent of their time on innovation projects not related to their current functions or responsibilities. Other companies have put in place ideation programs that collect ideas from everyone, and these ideas are then reviewed and promoted within and finally to the marketplace. As a result, a few golden nuggets eventually really pay-off in top line growth, something many large companies crave after repeated downsizing and cost cutting to improve the bottom line and please Wall Street.

List of Innovative Companies

2007-05-29T19:29:00.000-07:00

The World's Most Innovative Companies
Their creativity goes beyond products to rewiring themselves. BusinessWeek and the Boston Consulting Group rank the best.

Online Extra: Quiz: Take The Innovation Challenge
Think you know what it takes to innovate? Here are 12 questions that could change your world view

Online Extra: The Top 100 Most Innovative Companies Ranking

Online Extra: Slide Show: Innovation: Looking At The Big Picture
Behind the list of companies on the leading edge, our survey results offered an intriguing picture of changing attitudes

Online Extra: Slide Show: Innovators in Our Midst
From 3M to P&G, the Top 25 pioneers in the BCG/BusinessWeek survey aren't just limited to high-tech

Online Extra: Slide Show: Inside The Rankings
Survey-takers explain the attributes that put the 25 Most Innovative Companies at the top of the heap

Online Extra: Slide Show: Innovative Writing on Innovation
The BCG-BusinessWeek 2006 survey of Most Innovative Companies noted five big themes. Here's our best writing on the subjects

Online Extra: 25 Innovators, 6 Industries
A look at the best of the best, broken down by industry

Innovation Directory

2007-05-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

ABC DEF GHI JKL MNO PQR STU VWXYZ

CORDIS
The "Innovation and SME Program" stands at the cross-roads of the Community's policies on Research, Innovation and SMEs. It promotes Innovation at Community level and encourages SME participation under FP5.
The program supports European businesses to innovate, to develop, market and integrate new technology and to manage change more effectively. More specifically, it supports European SMEs to fully participate in FP5 actions and to optimize their advantages from such participation.
The program also aims at contributing to a more innovation friendly environment in Europe, improved conditions for the creation and development of new companies, the diffusion of new technologies, the emergence of new economic activities and at fostering the "innovation culture" in Europe.
Council on Competitiveness
In 1986 the United States was facing one of its most dire economic challenges since the end of World War II: the country slid from being the world's largest creditor to its largest debtor; its position as a global leader in technology and innovation was declining; and American industries were losing market share to international competitors. To meet this mounting challenge, two-dozen industrial, university, and labor leaders joined together to found the Council on Competitiveness, a forum for elevating national competitiveness to the forefront of national consciousness.
After nearly two decades, the Council continues to be guided by this mission: to set an action agenda that drives economic growth and raises the standard of living for all Americans. The only national organization whose membership is comprised exclusively of CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders, the Council's viewpoint and findings are cited widely in debate and discussion at the national, regional and local levels.
Enriched by this unique convergence of talent, perspective and influence, the Council is strategically poised to shape economic agendas-on regional, national, and world stages-that anticipate and respond to the demands of a competitive environment for global trade and commerce.
Benchmarking U.S. Competitiveness. Understanding the country's economic competitiveness requires continual assessment of economic data and trends from around the world. Since its creation, the Council has remained a leader in producing definitive studies of the U.S. competitive position, benchmarking efforts that identify key weaknesses and strengths in the U.S. economy. The Council's Competitiveness Index has been replicated around the world, and-as the U.S. partner of the World Economic Forum-the Council has been tapped to release the U.S. results of the Forum's annual Global Competitiveness Report. The Council's newsletter, Competitiveness Watch, provides intelligence and data on national and international economic policy developments.
Supporting National and Regional Innovation. Investment in knowledge creation and innovation is critical to prosperity in an advanced economy and boosts the productivity growth that underpins a continually rising standard of living. Council members work directly with national decision makers, including the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Council of Economic Advisors, to raise the visibility of innovation issues to a first-tier economic imperative. The Council's Center for Regional Innovation helps educate leaders from universities, business, labor, and state and local government on the most effective ways to fuel innovation-driven economic growth through benchmarking, best practices, workshops and training programs. The Council also works on a variety of initiatives to build the education and training programs that create cutting-edge skills and raise worker productivity.
DEF
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EBN
EBN is the leading European network gathering 160 Business and Innovation centers (B.I.C.s) and similar organizations such as incubators, innovation centers and entrepreneurship centers EBN was created about 20 years ago by the European Commission and European Industry leaders. EBN is a Brussels-based team of 10 people co-ordinating the activities of the members and providing services to them, including implementation of international projects/contracts with the EC.
Eureka
EUREKA supports the competitiveness of European companies through international collaboration, in creating links and networks of innovation. The objective is to bring high quality research and development efforts to the market and to use the multiplying effects of co-operation. The aim is to advance and improve the quality of life. EUREKA is tackling the challenge of a swiftly changing business environment and offers a platform for short-term as well as strategic collaboration. It offers flexible and dynamic support, quality label and expertise for market-oriented R&D projects.
EUREKA offers a frame for co-operation to small and large companies alike and operates through its network of members from Iceland to Turkey, from Portugal to Russia, while always remaining open to global co-operation.
Europa
At this site you can find booklets, brochures etc. that explain as simply as possible what the European Union is and what its main policies are. These publications are written by the European Commission to help and inform the general public.
They are published in the 11 official languages of the European Union and can be viewed in full at this site.
GHI
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Harvard Business School (Working Knowledge)
Welcome to HBS Working Knowledge, a collection of cutting-edge management information that keeps you at the forefront of today's fast-changing business environment. You will find a wealth of resources and data that reflect the intellectual capital of Harvard Business School as well as insights from industry leaders worldwide. We invite you to make it an integral part of your continuing education and career development. HBS Working Knowledge provides timely business information on thirteen diverse management topic areas (see the Topics menu at left) and features interviews with Harvard Business School (HBS) professors and industry leaders, the best of HBS publications, and coverage of HBS campus speakers and conferences. New features, book recommendations, and Web site reviews are added each week.
Innovating Regions of Europe
More than 100 regions throughout Europe have developed, with the support of the European Commission Enterprise and Regional Policy DGs,innovation policies. They have set up regional partnerships and analyzed the regional needs in terms of innovation support. Regional innovation strategies are to be found here.
Innovation Hub
The Innovation Hub owes its origin to the notion that Science and Technology are, by nature, communal activities. The swiftest route to progress, we believe, is the route of progress through partnership.
In March 2001, in a bold bid to position Gauteng as South Africa's "Smart Province", the Gauteng Provincial Government launched an initiative called Blue IQ.
Through Blue IQ, the Gauteng Provincial Government is investing R3,7 billion in 11 major projects in smart industries, value-added manufacturing and tourism to alter the composition and trajectory of the provincial economy.
The Innovation Hub is one of those projects, at an investment of over R300 million by Blue IQ to cluster knowledge age companies and established corporates in an environment that will catalyze the economic activity of Gauteng.
Through partnership, through progress, The Innovation Hub will strive to attract local and foreign investment to the region, while fostering a spirit of learning, entrepreneurship, and global competitiveness through the power of Science and Technology.
A Mandate for Progress
The Innovation Hub is being developed to:
Establish a high-tech hub in Gauteng
Develop an infrastructure to implement and stimulate high-tech business, in a conducive and mutually beneficial environment
House other essential components, such as incubators, venture capital funders and professional service suppliers, to form the basis for a world-class "innovation corridor" in the province
Locate the hub in the Pretoria area, on a "knowledge axis" between the University of Pretoria in the west to the CSIR in the east.
Innovation in Canada
With more than 1,700 links available, our Innovation Resources put knowledge into the hands of businesses. Browse by region or by subject to find links to the information you need to help you protect your ideas, find partners and financing, build that prototype, market your idea and, if all goes just right... improve your bottom line!
The Government of Canada is committed to developing a shared vision and initiatives that will position Canada among the most innovative economies in the world. The Government of Canada wants to engage Canadians in Canada's Innovation Strategy—to identify ways Canadians can work together to meet the national goals and objectives outlined in the Strategy and establish long-term commitments to improve innovation performance across all sectors of the economy.
Innovation Magazine
INNOVATION is a world-class publication highlighting the recent work of Singapore-based researchers, their collaborations with external organizations, as well as the latest breakthroughs in science, technology and medicine from around the world. The magazine's readers include researchers from national and international research organizations and universities, CEOs and top-level business decision-makers in science and technology companies, major R&D firms, government bodies, and other interested individuals.
INNOVATION provides the bridge that links the esoteric technicalities of R&D to everyday's life. It presents the significance of current work being undertaken by researchers in a style accessible to the educated layperson. The quarterly magazine is jointly published by the National University of Singapore and World Scientific Publishing.
Innovation Network
InnovationNetwork focuses on helping organizations develop a core competency of innovation. From our beginning in 1993, we have tried to help people understand the complex scope of innovation and that innovation is a discipline, not just a word or passing fad. Innovation is about creating the future and requires the hearts, minds and energy of people working together to create something of value.
When IN was founded, little information was available about innovation processes, so our focus was to provide ways for people to share information, techniques and experiences in the field of innovation. People around the world, from organizations large and small, public and private, have shared information in meetings, virtual and real. Over the past ten years, thousands of people from hundreds of organizations in dozens of countries have participated in action learning processes: InnovationConvergence (our annual gathering), InnovationUniversity (an intense, in depth learning process for innovation leaders), as well as other events and workshops.
Innovation Relay Center Scotland
IRC Scotland is your local link into a Network of over 300 European technology support organizations committed to helping their local industry base find partners from elsewhere in Europe to grow their business. IRC Scotland works with our academic and industrial organizations to help identify and acquire innovative new technology, find market entry partners for their own innovations or enter into joint development partnerships across Europe. We also help Scottish organizations find suitable development partners and secure European funding for R&D projects. Our advisers work with organizations across all technology and industry sectors and our services are free to clients.
Innovation Tools
InnovationTools is a new Web site designed to help busy executives to be more innovative in their businesses. In today's fast-moving world, the need for fresh ideas and innovative solutions has never been greater.
At the same time, the number of tools and techniques to help people generate productive and valuable ideas has been steadily growing. But chances are, you haven't been aware of many of these resources, because they're not easy to find. Our goal is to help you to learn more about the tools, strategies and techniques you can use to be more creative in your business -- and have more fun in the process.
This Web site is the brainchild of Chuck Frey, a creative thinker with 20+ years of experience in PR, marketing, business strategy and information services.
IRC Scotland
IRC Scotland is your local link into a Network of over 300 European technology support organizations committed to helping their local industry base find partners from elsewhere in Europe to grow their business. IRC Scotland works with our academic and industrial organizations to help identify and acquire innovative new technology, find market entry partners for their own innovations or enter into joint development partnerships across Europe. We also help Scottish organizations find suitable development partners and secure European funding for R&D projects. Our advisers work with organizations across all technology and industry sectors and our services are free to clients.
ISIS Innovation
Isis Innovation is the technology transfer company of the University of Oxford, commercializing the research generated by University researchers and owned by the University.
Isis Innovation Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Oxford; it was established in 1988 and in 1997 started a major expansion phase. The University assigns its intellectual property to Isis (where there are no pre-existing exploitation arrangements) and Isis then evaluates, protects, and markets the intellectual property. In 2002, Oxford University Consulting became part of Isis, matching business consulting needs with University researchers.
Isis provides researchers with commercial advice, funds patent applications and legal costs, and negotiates exploitation and spin-out company agreements, and identifies and manages consultancy opportunities for University researchers. Isis works on projects from all areas of the University's research activities: life science, physical science, humanities and social sciences.
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London Innovation
London Innovation is a London Development Agency (LDA) initiative, supported by the London Science and Industry Council and the organizations who form our Innovation Partners. The LDA is London's business-led economic development agency, working for the Mayor to deliver the economic aspects of a program for renewal. www.lda.gov.uk. The LDA is focused on promoting innovation and knowledge transfer within the London economy.
Supporting Innovation
To date the LDA have supported innovation through the creation of specifically targeted funds such as 'the regional innovation fund' and 'the clusters fund'. Notable projects that have been supported include: The London Bioscience Innovation Center, The London Business Incubation Center, Center of Excellence for Manufacturing and Engineering and the Knowledge Dock.
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National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the U.S. Government, established by the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended, and related legislation, 42 U.S.C. 1861 et seq., and was given additional authority by the Science and Engineering Equal Opportunities Act (42 U.S.C. 1885), and Title I of the Education for Economic Security Act (20 U.S.C. 3911 to 3922).
The Foundation consists of the National Science Board of 24 part-time members and a Director (who also serves as ex officio National Science Board member), each appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. Other senior officials include a Deputy Director who is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, and eight Assistant Directors.
OECD
The Center for Educational Research and Innovation carries out studies and promotes an international dialogue about education across OECD countries. As part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, based in Paris, it is a focal point for information and discussion on trends in education systems throughout the industrialized world. CERI has promoted research and innovation in education in OECD countries for nearly 30 years. Its activities aim to:
Encourage better links between research, policy innovation and practice. Enrich knowledge about educational trends internationally. Actively involve educational researchers, practitioners and government officials in cross-national discussions.
CERI’s main methods of work involve:
Carrying out studies on key educational issues, using a combination of its own staff and outside experts from around the world.
Hosting seminars and conferences to develop and disseminate findings.
Helping to develop international indicators of education systems.
Helping to inform discussions between education ministries through the OECD committee system - including meetings of education ministers.
CERI’s work is directed by a Governing Board on which all the 30 member countries of the OECD are represented. A small staff in OECD headquarters in Paris is supported by the very active involvement of networks of educators, innovators, researchers and decision-makers in different countries.
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Patent Cafe
PatentCafe.com, Inc. is a network of information, e-learning, global patent data, online retail, community and ASP / enterprise software properties serving the online Intellectual Property (IP) community.
Since the launch of its first property in 1996, it's become the Web's most comprehensive provider of Web-based IP software solutions (ASP), information, products and services. Recognized worldwide, it services nearly 3/4 million inventors, patent attorneys, corporate counsel, intellectual property managers, academia, and R&D labs through 7 Web properties each month.
PatentCafe provides the broadest collection of patent data, news, advice, software, books, legal, insurance and financial products, intellectual asset management tools, patent analytics management tools, and educational support materials, on or off the Web.
Today, PatentCafe is one of the most recognized IP brands in the World, and its properties are among the most linked and most highly-regarded portals within the IP community. It has been profiled by CNN/fn, Knowledge Management, London financial Times, NY Times, Bloomberg / Washington Report, National Law Journal, Design and Product Engineering News, LA Times, Forbes, and more than 100 other major media sources.
PatentCafe.com's commercial Internet properties provide valuable IP data for litigation support and valuation, revenue opportunities for attorneys, business solutions and broad-based information. Its audience includes engineers, inventors, authors and entertainers, IP managers and entrepreneurs, educators, technology licensing professionals, patent and corporate attorneys, and intellectual property experts, allowing them to develop, manage, enforce and commercialize their intellectual property assets.
PatentCafe.com, Inc. is a privately held corporation funded by internet.com Fund II / Jupitermedia (Nasdaq: JUPM), Gray Cary Fund, the venture capital arm of the technology law firm, Gray Cary Ware & Friedenrich, LLP, and certain private investment firms.
PHRMA
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents the country's leading research-based pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, which are devoted to inventing medicines that allow patients to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. The industry invested an estimated $33.2 billion in 2003 in discovering and developing new medicines. PhRMA companies are leading the way in the search for new cures.
RAND
For more than 50 years, the RAND Corporation has pursued its nonprofit mission by conducting research on important and complicated problems. Initially, RAND (the name of which was derived from a contraction of the term research and development) focused on issues of national security. Eventually, RAND expanded its intellectual reserves to offer insight into other areas, such as business, education health, law, and science. RAND's innovative approach to problem solving has become the benchmark for all other “think tanks” that followed.
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US Patent & Trademark Office
The Patent Electronic Business Center is the e-commerce home for patenting with the USPTO. Here, you will find links to the systems that will enable you to do business with the USPTO electronically. Today, you will find applications and information that support the following activities:
Submitting a patent application
Checking the status of a patent application
Registering to conduct business with the USPTO securely
Help
The USPTO is quickly adding electronic business systems to serve you better. Stop by the Patent Electronic Business Center frequently to see how we are changing.
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Wharton School of Business (Knowledge)
In a world where markets change in nanoseconds, knowledge is a source of competitive advantage. Knowledge@Wharton is an Internet-based guide through this volatile environment.
Knowledge@Wharton is a bi-weekly online resource that offers the latest business insights, information and research from a variety of sources. These include analysis of current business trends, interviews with industry leaders and Wharton faculty, articles based on the most recent business research, book reviews, conference and seminar reports, links to other web sites and so on. The web site presents information in layers so that users can pursue their interests to whatever depth they wish. An in-depth searchable database of related articles and research abstracts allows access to information through simple mouse clicks.
Knowledge@Wharton is easy to use. Its editorial content is divided into 14 sections, covering areas ranging from Finance and Investment to Business Ethics. Moreover, information is organized at four levels. The top layer provides brief summaries; the second offers short articles written by professional business journalists in plain, jargon-free prose; the third consists of academic papers; and the last layer links to related web sites. Among Knowledge@Wharton's most useful features is its search engine, which allow both simple and advanced searches. The database can be searched by keywords, author names or other criteria (see Search). A series of icons helps users navigate through the results and quickly find relevant information.