The Knowledge. Code for America codeforamerica.org Founded by Jennifer Pahlka, this US organization works with developers to look at how big, open data can enable cities to run better, provide better services and create jobs. They recently did an open data project where they put a huge hunk of Portland’s data – bus schedules, everything – online and developers have been holding regular hackathons to turn that data into apps and information that enables consumers and citizens to live smarter, better lives. iTunes apple.com/itunes I’m not interested in iTunes for iTunes, but it’s a great example of how Apple has created a new ecosystem that all of us are now able to feed, cultivate and harvest innovation in.
Don Tapscott dontapscott.com I’ve been extremely influenced by Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, and more recently, Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. Tesla Motors Teslamotors.com Henry Chesbrough openinnovation.net Bhutan grossnationalhappiness.com. A Small Businessman's Guide To Innovating Like The Pros. One of the fundamental errors many would-be innovators make is assuming that the hardest part of innovation is coming up with an idea. That’s actually the easy part. No matter how much work you have done, no matter how careful your analysis, the only thing you can be sure of is that your first idea is wrong in some meaningful way. Ask any venture capitalist or successful entrepreneur. They will tell you the gulf between the first idea and the right idea is often wide.
Or listen to the words of the great American philosopher and boxer Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.” Like it or not, you are going to be punched in the face. So how can you take your punches yet keep standing? The best businesses emerge out of trial-and-error experimentation. Use simple tools to develop your hypothesis Here’s a seemingly simple question: How do you know your idea is good? So how do you know if an idea is good? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What about the numbers?
The collective innovation process and the need for dynamic coordination: general presentation. Innovation, notably technological (but also organizational and commercial) is now recognized as a collective process, and not just as a physical and social phenomenon stemming from the genius of an inquiring and ingenious mind. The innovation process is complex, combining scientific and technical potential enriched constantly with high-skilled human resources and also with technological, organizational, financial, relational and commercial competencies. The “interactive” model proposed by Kline and Rosenberg (1986) shows that innovation proceeds by feedback between R&D, design, manufacturing and marketing services.
In other words, the genesis of innovation is the result of systemic linkages between knowledge and the market (Laperche, Uzunidis, Von Tunzelmann, 2008). Global competencies are developed for the adaptation of the firm to its environment and for the innovative process. First of all, neither innovation, nor networks are Deus ex machina. How Big Companies Are Becoming Entrepreneurial. Editor’s note: Dan Schawbel is the managing partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and management consulting firm. He is also the author of Me 2.0 and was named to the Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 list in 2010. Subscribe to his updates at Facebook.com/DanSchawbel. You probably believe that big companies are anti-entrepreneurial because you assume they are slow growth dinosaurs that resist change, but history teaches us otherwise. Corporations have been run entrepreneurship-type programs for many years, like the fabled Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works” – a small group of employees working on revolutionary products such as famous aircraft designs including the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird.
Today, companies are starting new entrepreneurship initiatives because they need fuel for innovation, desire top talent and need to sustain a competitive advantage. Intrapreneurship is on the rise In the past, we heard of intrapreneurs or individuals that behave like entrepreneurs in major companies. The Innovator's Blindspot: Even Your Best Ideas Will Fail If Your Partners Don't Innovate Too. The following is an excerpt from The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation. There is a blind spot that undermines great managers in great organizations even when they identify real customer needs, deliver great products, and beat their competition to market. Philips Electronics fell victim to this blind spot when it spent a fortune to pioneer high-definition television (HDTV) sets in the mid-1980s. The company’s executives drove a development effort that succeeded in creating numerous breakthroughs in television technology, offering picture quality that customers loved and that the competition, at the time, could not match.
Yet, despite sterling execution and rave reviews, Philips’s high-definition TV flopped. Sony suffered from a similar blind spot, winning a pyrrhic victory as it raced to bring its e-reader to market before its rivals, only to discover that even a great e-reader cannot succeed in a market where customers have no easy access to e-books. Buy The Wide Lens here. Let’s Debunk 4 Myths About How Great Companies Innovate. The following is an excerpt from Relentless Innovation: What Works, What Doesn’t--and What That Means for Your Business by Jeffrey Phillips.
In the United States alone there are hundreds of large, successful firms with recognizable brand names that we encounter every day. We constantly hear innovation success stories about firms like Apple and Procter & Gamble, but we rarely hear about innovation in their direct competitors, Dell and Unilever, much less about innovation in any of the thousands of firms worldwide that compete in these markets. In every region and industry the same pattern is repeated: A small handful of firms are recognized as consistent innovators, used as case studies and examples, while we hear little or nothing about innovation in the vast majority of the other firms in those industries. Several possible factors spring to mind, including the executive management, the nature of the industry, or the capabilities of a firm’s research and development teams. W. L.