« September 2006 | Main | November 2006 »
Jonathan Vehar, Senior Partner with New and Improved, kicked off Convergence 2006: Innovation Immersion with a quiz. See how well you would do at matching the following companies with their "unique" innovation tagline.
Ford |
The Art of Innovation |
Siemens |
Innovation Improving Driving |
Nortel |
The Spirit of Innovation |
Yokohama |
Imagination at Work |
GE |
A Trendsetter in Innovation |
IBM |
Making Innovation Easy |
3M |
The Innovators’ Innovator |
Answers below.
Roger von Oech, whose book Whack on the Side of the Head was one of the first popular books in the field of business creativity, now has a new blog. One of his first topics is about creating his new "Ball of Whacks" in China which is very interesting.
The Ball of Whacks is a fascinating "creativity workshop" as Roger bills it ... mesmerizing to both kids (as shown by Reyna in this photo ... possible choking hazard for kids this age, however) and adults. The magnetic action creates a satisfying sound and kinesthetic feel.
Available from creativethink.com
Tomasz Rudolf with Innovatika in Poland asks the following: I am wondering.... If you could ask employees of the company 3 questions to assess the climate for innovation, what would they be?
I think that's a great challenge for us. Below are 3 questions I came up with ... what would your 3 be? Remember, these are questions we would ask "employees of the company."
A distant view of Business Innovation Factory 2: Nothing new is created without energy ... lots of energy. Energy to find new solutions, energy to overcome obstacles and resist the naysayers. The energy it takes to try something new when there are safer options available. Learning how to engage your own energy and that of others is central to all change processes. And, the source of that energy is passion.
We recently led a months-long collaborative effort to identify a set of innovative thinking competencies that would form the structure for a self-directed, action-learning program. The ability to engage energy, our own and tht of others, gradually surfaced as the core around which all the other competencies circle.
The storytellers in this group display that intense passionate that brands innovators – Josh Koppel’s mission for TuneBooks is to save album art from extinction while Clay Rockefeller works to save historic community districts by turning them into vibrant and commercially healthy places where artists live and work.
Jim Lavoie wants to reinvent the way people work together by creating a unique culture and language. And Jane Fulton Suri has a passion for learning about the deep needs of people by watching their simple, everyday actions – what she calls “thoughtless acts.”
Read their stories below.
Day 1, Group 3 Storytellers:
Jim Lavoie, CEO of Rite-Solutions
Clay Rockefeller, community activist and co-founder of The Steel Yard
Jane Fulton Suri, chief creative officer, IDEO
Josh Koppel, founder, TuneBooks
A distant view of Business Innovation Factory 2: A few years ago, I started hearing people talking about “customer-centered” innovation as if there were some type of innovation that wasn’t focused on customers. Each of these storytellers has an intense connection with customers. Diane Hessan’s company creates vibrant customer conversation communities, one of which helped Kraft create a new $100 million product line. She states that the world of marketing is “moving from a process of persuasion to a process of conversation.”
Larry Keeley debunks the infamous “think out of the box” cliché, stating that “almost everything about the way innovation is taught and practiced and asserted is wrong. We say it's time to ‘think out of the box,'’ but this is only likely to yield a vast array of bad ideas that we then spend months analyzing before we discard." Keeley recommends that innovation start with a sound diagnostic of customer needs, met and unmet.
Mark Hellendrung is reviving an old brand of beer that resonates with his Rhode Island customer base. He is an avid Rhode Islander and states, "Someone also said to me once, if you want to be happy in life, figure out where you want to live first, and then find a job." His product is as much about Rhode Island as it is beer.
Liz Lerman, who has been likened to Gandhi as well as Woody Allen, designs performances for the “dancer in everyone.”
Read their stories below.
Day 1, Group 2 Storytellers:
Diane Hessan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Communispace
Mark Hellendrung, CEO of Narragansett Beer Company
Larry Keeley, CEO of Doblin, Inc.
Liz Lerman, the Founding Artistic Director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange
Today is the first day of the Business Innovation Factory 2, a gathering with a storytelling focus. A star cast of innovators will be briefly sharing their stories, leaving the participants, moderators and a brew of bloggers to synthesize the themes and learnings. I was invited to participate as one of the bloggers … an interesting invitation since I’m not actually at the conference and will not be hearing the stories.
However, determined to bridge this gap, I have teased out some of the stories with the help of the conference site, google, a host of business magazines and an even bigger brew of bloggers.
As I dipped my toe into the BIF-2 story pool, my first connection was with something I find myself saying frequently, “Innovation is never “either/or;” it’s always “both/and.” That’s what makes it such a complex, wonderful, and frustrating mix. It is never one thing. It’s always an intermingling of black and white in a way that yields not a dull grey but rather an endless kaleidoscope of dramatic patterns.
As a start, innovation is both --
The first group of storytellers represents the innovation spectrum from a popular new toy to advances in the interface between brain and computers and from visionary journeys through the human body to helping unknown musicians connect with potential fans. Inspiration for these innovations ranged from the platypus, a unique creature that combines aspects of different species to the question of how the brain creates action and from Greek funerals to being a struggling rock band muscian. This small group includes artists and scientists, process champions and mindset changers. Their stories are worth reading at the links below.
Day 1, Group 1 Storytellers:
Alexander Tsiaras, founder and CEO of Anatomical Travelogue, Inc. whom some consider to be a modern day Leonardo DaVinci
Ivy Ross, V.P. for product design & development for the Gap’s Old Navy and leader of Mattel’s remarkable Platypus Project that led to the Ello Creation System, a building system for girls.
John Donoghue, co-founder Cyberkinetics and the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor and director of the Brain Science Program at Brown University
Tim Westergren, Chief Strategy Officer & Founder of Pandora.com
This group of storytellers have deep familiarity with those crazy ideas. In 1912, the world could not imagine the Titanic sinking. In 1973, the world could not imagine finding the Titanic which was thought to be lying at the bottom of 12,000 feet of icy water. Bob Ballard was bold enough to think that it was possible and spent twelve years in the discovery process before pieces of the past started to reveal themselves.
Thirty years ago, Richard Saul Wurman took on the challenge of making the world understandable through design and technology; for the past twenty years Mary Pat Ryan has consistently reinvented the way media is delivered to consumers and Jeneanne Rae is redesigning the field of innovation with her research in service innovation.
The stories of their bold ideas and even bolder implementation are worth reading at the links below.
Day 1, Group 4 Storytellers:
Jeneanne Rae, co-founder and president of Peer Insight
Mary Pat Ryan, Executive Vice President of Subscriber Sales and Operations for Sirius Satellite Radio
Bob Ballard, founder of the Jason Project, discoverer of the Titanic
Richard Saul Wurman, BIF-2 Co-Host, founder of TED
Wouldn't it be great if seeing music being created was just as stimulating as listening to it. Animusic lets us do just that ... check out one of the sample music clips available.
Aqua Harps is a very peaceful interlude.
About.com states: You just have to experience Animusic for yourself. It almost defies explanation. They began with synthesized music and added perfectly choreographed animation of imaginary instruments of all sorts. I have shown it to a range of people from 5-year-olds to adults and every single person has been totally fascinated by it.
How could this change the way you think about your project, product, service or process?
Wouldn't it be great if t-shirts entered the 21st century?
Today's t-shirts: colorful graphics
Tomorrow's t-shirts: dynamic and animated
Will everyone become a walking 30-second commercial renting out their t-shirts to the highest bidder? How else might clothing with LEDs fit into your innovation thinking?
Wouldn't it be great if the weather and surf were always perfect? At this clorinated, Ocean Dome (and world's largest water park) you never have to worry about Mother Nature interfering with your pleasure.
If someone can create an indoor beach, what might you do with your innovative thinking?
From Ron Gluckman: Inside a huge dome that could house six football pitches, the world’s largest artificial sea washes over the biggest indoor beach, fringed with fake palm trees and other eye-popping innovations that have given a holiday make-over to old Mother Nature.
This evocative 21st Century resort shows that even paradise has room for improvement. In Ocean Dome, once every hour, on the hour, the surf is always up. Every afternoon is a carnival. Mechanized parrots squawk from branches of the dome’s ingenious rain forest, which remain lush and tropical without rainfall or humidity. Best of all, in Ocean Dome, you can lull for hours on crushed marble pebbles without a worry about beach vendors, bugs or sun burns.
Instead, perfectly-timed waves whip equally well-groomed surfers along in 28-degree, chlorinated, salt-free water to the sanitized shore where they drip-dry in Ocean Dome’s perfect climate, which remains a delightful 30 degrees, day and night, 365.25 days each year.
When the Beach Boys grow too old to remember the Good Vibrations of the faraway California shore, they could hardly do better than to be dispatched here, to this safe, self-contained beach paradise, where the sun never sets and the fun never stops; provided you have sufficient beach cash - specially-designed Ocean Dome payment tokens in the form of computer-coded plastic tags.
God didn’t dream up this beach; the Japanese did.
David Batston at the Wag states: A new survey in the United Kingdom has revealed that the vast majority (92%) of British workers would prefer to work for a company that enables volunteering. The study, from the employer perspective, found that benefits linked with employee volunteering include higher workplace morale, less absenteeism, and increased worker productivity. [more ...]
Recent Comments