The Institutional Innovation Manifesto - Umair Haque. If you want to be a 21st century company (or economy), if you want to survive and thrive during this Great Stagnation, you’ve got to to have the courage, foresight, and determination to step up to a higher rung on the ladder of innovation. It’s time to master what I sometimes call “I-squared”: the art and practice of institutional innovation.
Institutional innovation (magnificently discussed in John Hagel and JSB’s shudderingly awesome Power of Pull) is an arduous, difficult, and frustrating challenge for most — because, all too often, institutions are a little bit like art: the more you try and define them, the more elusive they get. The reason is that they’re culturally bound, socially specific, and, above all, messily human, so reducing them to an entry in Wikipedia is bound to result in disaster.
So many can’t get to grips with institutional innovation because, well, they often can’t figure out the blazes the fuss is all about to begin with. But you know them when see them. The IPO.
HOW TO: Develop Ideas That Will Disrupt Your Industry. Luke Williams, a fellow at frog design and adjunct professor at NYU Stern, is a leading consultant on innovation and the author of DISRUPT: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business. For more disruptive thinking tips visit: disruptive-thinking.com. In 2003, Jonah Staw was having dinner with some friends in a trendy restaurant in San Francisco when the discussion turned to what he calls “disruptive business ideas.”
Suggestions were flying left and right, and at one point, someone asked, “How crazy would it be if some company started selling socks that didn’t match?” Everyone thought it was a terrible idea — not particularly practical, certainly not useful, and difficult to own — and they moved on. Everyone, that is, except Jonah, who couldn’t get the idea of mismatched socks out of his head. There are all sorts of examples of companies that have been launched on the strength of their "disruptive thinking.
" So, what was the problem that the solution addressed? 5 Different Ways To Generate Ideas Using Brainstorming Apps. Physical brainstorming may sound like a carefree slam-bang talk session, effective brainstorming hardly is. One way to notch up effectiveness is to take it online. Online brainstorming can be done using anything from email to chat meeting rooms, and even Twitter. But why keep it that simple when you have a galaxy of brainstorming software apps out there. Way back we covered quite a few of them in 6 Excellent Brainstorming and Mindmapping Sites. Since then, there have been quite a few of them that have featured in our directory.
Let’s dig some of them out and see the different ways they can help us to pick our own brains. Text2 Mind Map Text2 Mind Map saves you a lot of the plotting and drawing work by taking a list of structured ideas and converting it all into a linked mindmap. Wridea Great ideas need to be managed and Wridea provides you an online place to do just that.
Scribblar Whiteboards are great for chalking out ideas on virtual drawing surface. [NO LONGER WORKS] Think Solvr. Free Online Idea Management and Collaboration Service | Wridea.com. Social Networks And The Innovation Bank. Complex Adaptive Leadership. Making Room for Reflection Is a Strategic Imperative - Umair Haque. Business is, above all, busy. And maybe it’s too busy. Let’s face it. Most of us spend most of our time chasing the immediate reward, the short-run “objective,” the near-term “goal — in short, the expedient and the convenient. But maybe business’s obsessive focus on doing hasn’t defused any of the following conflagrations, and is, instead, dumping Molotov cocktails on each: customers as detached, distrusting, and “disloyal,” investors firing back at boardrooms, regulators with bloodlust a-burning in their eyes, and about a trillion low-cost factories who can do it all faster, quicker, and cheaper anyway.
What most companies (and economies) don’t do is to stop doing — and that’s a self-defeating problem. We seem to be clueless about making room for deep questioning and thinking: reflecting. So throw Frederick W. The catch is that most companies don’t know how to reflect. Why. What. These aren’t, of course, the only questions worth reflecting on — nor perhaps even the best ones. Simplify. Your personal homepage. 12 in Share 18 We all need to be creative and innovative nowadays, as a person as well as a company. At least that’s what we understand from the media and from all those consultants. But does it really matter to be creative? Do we all need to be able to come up with remarkably original ideas?
MP3 technology? So what was it then that made Apple’s product and business model such a big hit? Steve jobs believes that great artists steal ideas (Interview with Steve Jobs (1994) about the creation of the Apple Macintosh) and use them for their competitive advantage. Sources: Wikipedia. The # openinnovation Daily. Six Principles for Making New Things. February 2008 The fiery reaction to the release of Arc had an unexpected consequence: it made me realize I had a design philosophy. The main complaint of the more articulate critics was that Arc seemed so flimsy. After years of working on it, all I had to show for myself were a few thousand lines of macros? Why hadn't I worked on more substantial problems? As I was mulling over these remarks it struck me how familiar they seemed. This was exactly the kind of thing people said at first about Viaweb, and Y Combinator, and most of my essays.
When we launched Viaweb, it seemed laughable to VCs and e-commerce "experts. " And yet, mysteriously, Viaweb ended up crushing all its competitors. The initial reaction to Y Combinator was almost identical. I can't measure whether my essays are successful, except in page views, but the reaction to them is at least different from when I started. I'd noticed, of course, that people never seemed to grasp new ideas at first. You shouldnt focus on why you cant do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be o. Misfit Entrepreneurs. By Dan Pallotta | 3:14 PM July 20, 2010 Imagine Walt Disney at the age of nineteen. His uncle asks him what he plans to do with his life, and he pulls out a drawing of a mouse and says, “I think this has a lot of potential.” Or Springsteen. In a concert he once told the story of how he and his dad used to go at it — how his father hated his guitar. Late one night, Springsteen came home to find his father waiting up for him in the kitchen.
Someone interviewed me a few months back for an entrepreneurship project, and he mentioned that in his conversations the thing that stood out most was the willingness of great entrepreneurs to be vulnerable. Vulnerability. There’s a misfit in each of us, and it’s the most delicate, precious thing that we have. Ironic that all those enterprises were begun by entrepreneurs trying to do something different. I used to visit the merry-go-round in Griffith Park in Los Angeles where Disney once took his daughters, asking himself, “Is this all there is? A New Ark for Humanity: Floating Hotel Could Defy Rising Sea Levels - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International.
It's called "The Ark", but looks more like a ship sitting upside down on the water. A new design by Russian architect Alexander Remizov challenges the tradition of land-based hotel living and would provide a refuge in the future -- should the world face a modern-day flood of Biblical proportions. Remizov designed the hotel as part of a program on architecture and disaster relief through the International Union of Architects (UIA).
He collaborated with a German design and engineering firm and the Moscow-based scientist Lev Britvin, who, according to Remizov, has developed energy-saving solutions for space stations. They are now searching for investors to make the design a reality. The building of the hotel could be fast and simple, Remizov told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The self-sustaining structure would be built around a central pillar, connecting wind generators and heat pumps on its roof with the basement, where solar, wind, and thermal energy could be stored and turned into electricity. When you innovate you've got to be prepared for people telling youtaht youare nuts. Exponential Innovation & Institutional Demise « George Benckenstein. Innovation refers to incremental, radical, and/or revolutionary change. Change in thinking, products, processes, and/or institutions & organizations.
It's fueled by creative people on an unending journey to make things faster, smaller, cheaper, cleaner, simpler; people who put their heart and soul into their craft without regard. Institutions or organizations are deliberately and intentionally created by people. The development of functional institutions in society in general may be regarded as an instance of emergence; meaning, institutions arise, develop and function in a pattern of social self-organization, which goes beyond the conscious intentions of the individual humans involved. We live in exponential times. Why Create An Institution? How do we get anything done - traditionally speaking? Institutional Extinction? We've seen the imploding of institutional imperatives coming to fruition for awhile.
Institutional failures are happening all around us. This graph is powerful, no? Start with an Idea - Dan Pallotta. Innovation Practice. How Not to Manage Innovation - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org. By Umair Haque | 6:05 PM May 14, 2009 Welcome to the zombieconomy — where things happen backwards. Case in point: today’s best example of how not to manage innovation comes from those who should be masters of radical innovation: venture investors. The venture industry is in crisis because of an ongoing inability to grow and nurture meaningful innovation. I’ve come across many examples recently — a tweet from an investor asking “where is Twitter’s ROI?”
, or sessions I’ve run where investors have focused on business models, while failing to build a fuller strategic understanding. Let’s use Jeremy Liew’s recent analysis — a fun read — of Apple’s iPhone Apps Store to outline how not to manage innovation. Focus on short-run numbers. The point? Apply surface economics. The point? Be strategy-blind. The point? Fail to see the right context. The point? Never have an ideal. The fundamental error above is simple.
The best way to learn is to learn from other people’s mistakes. Trends: An Interview with Seth Godin : Innovation :: American Ex. Innovation. Innovation playground Idris Mootee. 2013 was a good year and a very busy one for me. Having been on the road for over 120 days; delivered some great projects and worked with some of the smartest and most creative people around the world was all fun and also exhausted. Now is the time to think about what the future holds? I really don’t know what to write these days, I want to write about a lot of things from economics to politics and from luxury brands to consumer electronics and from rethinking management to education, so much to do and so little time. I hardly find time to write for my own magazine these days. 2014 will be a year of big change or beginning of one for many.. Innovation is hard to come these days and most innovations today are mostly incremental in nature. Sony was once the most loved and most innovative company.
Sony used to be the synonymous with Japan and innovative products. And for Sony, my advise for you is to stop behaving like a Japanese company. You don’t have a strategy. Innovation Zen.