John Seely Brown – “Rethinking the innovator’s dilemma with modern tools.”
Here’s what JSB says about himself on his website: In my past life as the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). I was deeply involved in the management of radical innovation and in the formation of corporate strategy and strategic positioning of Xerox as The Document Company. Today, I'm Chief of Confusion, helping people ask the right questions, trying to make a difference through my work- speaking, writing, teaching.
I fell in awe of him some time ago but really connected with him when I read the first sentence of his foreword to Henry Chesbrough’s Open Innovation book: “As a student of innovation for more than twenty years, I still find it amazing just how difficult innovation continues to be.” If JSB finds it difficult, I think it’s ok for the rest of us to be stumped by it from time to time.
JSB titled his slide presentation “Idea Sparkers” and that’s what he seemed to be doing – nudging us a bit to think about things in a new way. Here are some highlights from his talk -- read further for some interesting thought stimulators. Plus his website has a wealth of ideas to stimulate further thinking.
The decline of companies and the relationship to innovation.
Keys to survival in a rapidly changing world.
Games - a trend to be aware of.
Organizations: machines or fabric?
Identity.
The decline of companies – average life expectancy of S&P 500 companies in 1925 was 75 years, in 2004 it’s 15 years. JSB relates it to innovation and thinks part of the problem is our ability to see new patterns. He says: “The best way to look forward is to start looking around. The future is already here, just not evenly distributed.”
Keys to survival in a rapidly evolving world:
Need to learn how to manage discontinuity
Sensing the periphery (looking around)
Learning to unlearn
Interpreting trends and shifting value propositions
Games – a trend to be aware of
JSB talked about the world of games which now has a bigger economic footprint than Hollywood. This is a world that is below the radar of most adults, yet the statistics are phenomenal:
America’s Army (the official game of the US Army) has over 2 million registered players and over 226 million missions have been played.Everquest – one of the “Massively Multiplayer Online Games) resides on 4000 servers in San Diego and is responsible for 30% of the ISP traffic in Southern California. Another MMOG in Korea has 3 million registered users and often has 1 million simultaneous players.
In some places, gaming is replacing television, and, in this world of gaming, the community activities on the periphery of the game are often as important as the game itself. Game parlors are forming where people go to play the game within a community. Applicants wanting to be game players are sometimes interviewed in person.
Organization – machine or fabric?
The view of organizations is changing … is it a well-oiled machine or a social fabric … or both? There are the aspects that are authorized (policies, procedures) and the emergent which comes from the interactions and relationships of people. IT supports the authorized but seldom supports the emergent. It does not nurture communities of practice. Social software that connected people, enhanced awareness, supported the vetting of ideas and built community would be helpful.
Some tools that support the emergent are:
Blogs – personal journals which, because of their comment functions, also serve a collaborative, community function
Wikis (from the Hawaiian term wiki-wiki meaning quick) – project or community journals. See BusinessWeek article: Wikis Winning Ways
Social networks such as Linked-in
Idea markets which have proven to be a more accurate prediction tool than any other methods. Examples: Presidential elections; New technology
Some organizations are letting employees buy options on how well a new product will do as a way of gather deep knowledge and more accurate predictions.
Identity
There is a new wave of amateurism (doing something for love) – building identity through creating something and having it consumed or read by others. This is
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