Innovation, Creative Class and Immigration

A real nice article by Christopher Newfield in the Huff Post, discussing immigration & innovation and also the difference between focusing on engineers & start-ups and creative class people. Read here

Frugal Innovation

Disruptive innovations create jobs, whereas efficiency innovations destroy them

An article by Rip Empson describing a talk held by Clayton Christensen at BoxWorks 2012 about disruptive and incremental innovation. "Understanding the customer is the wrong thing to do — it’s confusing,” he said, before citing Peter Drucker’s assertion that customers rarely buy what companies think they are selling.

Read the whole article here: 

Why Lada Gaga is Right on Music Innovation

"No, music wasn’t born this way, but Lady Gaga is helping to re-define it just the same. So what’s happening and why does it matter to you? – Here’s the score: Lady Gaga recently announced that her new album wouldn’t be an album at all, but rather an app, and by the way she isn’t the first famous musician to do this, she’s just the most famous so far. This changes things."

Clinton Bonner explains the role Lady Gage play in innovating the music industry. Introducing a music experience in many different facets (online, gaming, social, etc). 

Read further here...

In Praise of Copycats

"'Critics called it "Bogle's folly.' In 1976, John Bogle introduced the first index fund through his new company, the Vanguard Group. The idea was based on research for his senior thesis in economics at Princeton, in which he showed that, on average, professional money managers failed to beat the rate of return of the overall market. (The thesis, written in 1950, earned him an A+.). Wall Street veterans initially scoffed at the fund, which tracked the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Who would be content with hitting the market average? But the critics were quickly proven wrong. Vanguard grew explosively, and it is now the largest mutual fund company in the nation. Mr. Bogle's ideas have been widely copied by rival firms. Until recently, competitors were free to copy financial innovations—and as a result, index funds are now a huge business for Wall Street..."

Read the rest of the article here

Open Innovation Past and Present: an Exclusive Interview with Henry Chesbrough

On Innovationmanagement.se an interview with Henry Chesbrough is held:


"Though intensely talked about, open innovation remains a subject matter that both fascinates and creates apprehension among business professionals. In the following interview, Henry Chesbrough, the father of open innovation according to Wikipedia, has sat down with IM.se to discuss a few key aspects of this largely new and challenging innovation model: its evolution, its applicability and most importantly, its essential role in facilitating knowledge creation for the future. He teaches at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and Esade Business School in Barcelona.

 Prof. Chesbrough, could you give us a brief synthesis the Open Innovation movement’s evolution over the last 10 years?

To put my response into context, when I wrote the first book in 2003, I ran a Google search on the term open innovation. The result: 200 page links that said “company X opened its innovation office at location Y”, but really no meaning to the two words together as a phrase. By contrast, when preparing for a talk last month, that same search generated 483 million links, most of which addressed this new and very different model of innovation. Moreover, there have now been hundreds of academic articles written on the open innovation approach, and there is even an annual PhD conference that trains dozens of new scholars each year who are writing dissertations on the topic. So yes, it had become a movement in its own right..."

Read the rest of the interview with Henry Chesbrough here

An other article about Henry Chesbrough his comments at the World Innovation Forum

How David Beats Goliath

"When Vivek Ranadivé decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team, he settled on two principles. The first was that he would never raise his voice. This was National Junior Basketball—the Little League of basketball. The team was made up mostly of twelve-year-olds, and twelve-year-olds, he knew from experience, did not respond well to shouting. He would conduct business on the basketball court, he decided, the same way he conducted business at his software firm. He would speak calmly and softly, and convince the girls of the wisdom of his approach with appeals to reason and common sense..." Rest of article in The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell on underdogs and their chance of success, through designing a new strategy. A valuable lesson for innovation, in which pressure is a good reason to start innovating and how small firms might disrupt large firms through re-inventing the way the game is played. Also read the book David and Goliath or see the interview about his book here

Nirmalya Kumar: India's invisible innovation

Rathenau - Onderzoekscoördinatie in de gouden driehoek

Een Rathenau publicatie geeft een mooie inkijk in het verleden van coordinatie van wetenschap en technologiebeleid in Nederland. Er worden vier belangrijke (generieke) aanbevelingen gedaan:

1) Versterk het eigen leervermogen;
2) Creëer meer stabiliteit;
3) Vereenvoudig het instrumentarium en
4) Stel realistische doelen

Het klinkt als goedkoop en logisch, maar bezien vanuit een historische blik zijn dit zeer nuttige aanbevelingen. Lees het gehele rapport hier

Companies do'nt innovate, people do!

One trend in innovation is the recognition that innovation is done by people, not organisations. This means that innovation can come from any person, no matter who or where. Unemployed people, are not necessary a burden for society, but a rich potential source of new ideas (see: Protomo)

Why not see people in prison as a source of new ideas? The Last Mile tries to teach inmates about life outside prison in terms of Twitter, Smart Phones etc. What new perspectives and idea can people from prison have on modern life? 

Four principles for the open world

Don Tapscott sums in his TED talk very much up what openness means in the world today. He identifies four principles:

1) Collaboration (Find talent outside, everywhere)
2) Transparency (Sunlight as disinfectant)
3) Sharing (putting value in the commons to lift all the boats)
4) Empowerment (knowledge = power, access to knowledge for everybody. Also for freedom)

 Watch:
 

‘We zijn te ver gegaan met valoriseren’

'Het topsectorenbeleid is een recept voor hoe het níet moet en met valorisatie zijn we te ver gegaan, vindt emeritus hoogleraar klinische biochemie prof.dr. Piet Borst. “Een valorisatieparagraaf in veni-, vidi- en vici-aanvragen van NWO: absurd.”' Klik voor het hele interview in TU Delta met prof.dr. Piet Borst over het nieuwe Nederlandse topsectoren beleid, derde geldstromen en samenwerking tussen universiteiten en bedrijven.

Real Life Clock

Interview with Clay Christensen

Clay Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and the world's most influential management guru according to the Thinkers50, lays out his landmark theory.

Cruijff & Innovation

A blog posting by Kurt Peys from Innovatie Centrum Antwerpen in Belgium, in which several famous quotes from Johan Cruijff is compared with the process of Innovation. Lovely to read (in Dutch):

"Tussen voetbalspel en innovatie blijken verrassende overeenkomsten te zijn. Wie kan het ons beter uitleggen dan the king of oneliners, Johan Cruijff?

Dat Johan Cruijff verkozen is tot beste Europese voetballer van de 20ste eeuw, is u allicht wel bekend. Het is dan ook logisch dat een uitgebreide wikipedia-pagina zijn biografie en sportieve verwezenlijkingen uitvoerig beschrijft. Wie wel eens afstemt op een Nederlandse sportzender zal ook al wel begrepen hebben dat Cruijff niet afkering is van een gevatte oneliner. Het is dan ook niet verwonderlijk dat er een uitvoerige wikiquote-pagina bestaat waarin de meest pertinente oneliners staan samengevat." Click here to read more...

image by Cover Mechanics designed for VPRO Gids

Being cool counts

Running a city isn’t what it used to be.
While mayors continue to be responsible for maintaining public safety and delivering public services, the 21st-century global economy has generated a new responsibility: staying ahead of the competition...

Click here for the rest of the story, by Bloomberg about running a city. He strikes some really good points about the need of attracting talent and the ways to do that. Seems he has been listening to Richard Florida.

image by Peter Arkle from New York Magazine

Rate of Diffusion Accelerates

A single graph says sometimes more than 1000 words. Click on the image to enlarge.

Stephen Shapiro

Learning from history

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

An episode of a history program ('Andere Tijden') on Dutch TV gave a good insight in some unforeseen consequences for regional policy makers. The issue in the '60 in Southern Netherlands is that the state owned coal mines are unsustainable. By closing the mines and attracting a new large investment of Dutch car manufacturer DAF with a new large plant, it seemed that large unemployment could be prevented. Everything looked perfect from the perspective of a policy maker: out-dated unsustainable mining was replaced by an industry of the future: high-tech car manufacturing, providing good jobs and a new better industry for the long term future. Furthermore, special training courses were introduced to provide training for the new skills needed for the mining-laborers.

Things went different then expected: mining workers were used to working in large groups with lots of freedom and individual responsibility, and were placed along the assembly line with no freedom at all. Furthermore, the culture of 'loyalty, friendship' from the mines was not present in the car factory. Many former mine workers quit their job at DAF, searching for something else.
Also the DAF cars were not so popular. They started to be cheap and reliably, but soom other car manufacturers became just as cheap. Furthermore, their technological invention of automatic gear shifting was not so popular: it was an invention, but not an innovation. This was partly blamed by marketing the car with automatic gear shifting for woman, who at that time were not driving cars often. This also meant that for men, the car was less popular (because it was a 'woman's car'). After many take-overs, the factory will soon be closed. It never proved to be the savior of the region, which still suffers from the closing of the mines many decades ago.

Lessons learned:
* Culture is important, don't expect that people from one factory, will easily also work in another one, even if training for new skills is considered
* Technological invention is not the same as innovation
* Investing in new 'high tech industry' as a long term sustainable job provider is risky. New industries are in development and companies come and go easily (see Solyndra in USA nowadays)

The Future of Finance

Met dank aan Wouter de Heij

TEDxBerkeley - Carl Bass - The New Rules of Innovation

Although he does not say anything new in his talk, Carl Bass gives a very nice and easy to listen summary on our current understanding of innovation.

If only he took the conclusions he made himself about innovation is happening by individuals and innovation is about changing for the better and more value, needed to solve the grand challenges one more step further the conclusion that innovation goes well beyond companies is becoming obvious.

Innovation is NOT Knowledge [Dutch]

Als zelfs de (zelfbenoemde) politieke partij van innovatie met open ogen stapt in de valkuil en de lobby van de kennis sector, is er dan nog hoop? Zie het artikel op de website van D66 dat gaat over het stimuleren van innovatie en tegelijkertijd over investeren in kennis. Zucht...

Innovation in Indian style

Some lessons from this 15 minute TEDx talk about innovation at TEDxGolfLinksPark from designer Aradhana Goel, Director for IDEO India.

Innovation is about the outcome. Being the first is irrelevant, the process is almost irrelevant. Its about the right mindset. Therefore, copying is meaningful and legitimate.

Things change so fast (in India), that predicting the future is futile. It is about controlling the present to be in the future at all that counts.

And many more insights about why innovation and innovators in India are different from the western world. This helps us understanding that it is not about following the examples of successful leaders in the west (Apple, Google), because that will create more followers. To innovate means to be different. And it seems that also the climate and the rules for innovation differs based on the environment one is in. See the video:

10 Myths of innovation

Here a list of innovation myths that I really like. The list is created by Scott Anthony and Josh Suskewicz. Many 'experts' of innovation I know still believe in several of these myths.

1) Innovation is random
2) Only creative geniuses can innovate
3) You're either an innovator or you're not
4) Innovation happens in the R&D lab
5) We will win with superior technology
6) Innovation is all about improved performance
7) Our customers will be a critical source of innovation insight
8) Game changing innovation is done only by entrepreneurs
9) We will win by targeting the biggest markets
10) Innovation requires big bets

For the whole list and introduction, click here

image by Flickr user crabchick

Do Innovation Consultants Kill Innovation?

Are companies more innovative than ever before? Judging from the vast number of Fortune 500 companies professing their commitment to innovation, the answer is yes.

But we sense that the more a company talks, thinks, and strategizes about innovation, the less real, big innovation it produces. Take the electronics maker Philips, which introduced one of the world’s first electronic razors, the compact cassette, the CD, and many other game-changing inventions. In more recent years, Philips has been a fixture at innovation and design conferences, presenting impressive strategies, road maps, and processes. The company commands impressive sales--its market cap is about $15 billion--but most people would be hard-pressed to think of a recent exciting breakthrough from the Dutch company. Nokia, also a self-proclaimed innovation leader, is another example of a company that has been very good at innovation strategizing but not so good at following through on its promise.

See remaining article here...