Thomas Kuhn: the man who changed the way the world looked at science | Science | The Observer Fifty years ago this month, one of the most influential books of the 20th century was published by the University of Chicago Press. Many if not most lay people have probably never heard of its author, Thomas Kuhn, or of his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but their thinking has almost certainly been influenced by his ideas. The litmus test is whether you've ever heard or used the term "paradigm shift", which is probably the most used – and abused – term in contemporary discussions of organisational change and intellectual progress. A Google search for it returns more than 10 million hits, for example. And it currently turns up inside no fewer than 18,300 of the books marketed by Amazon. The real measure of Kuhn's importance, however, lies not in the infectiousness of one of his concepts but in the fact that he singlehandedly changed the way we think about mankind's most organised attempt to understand the world.
the other side of INNOVATION - Research The only effective way to study the management of innovation initiatives is to compile in-depth, multi-year case histories. Doing so is time-consuming and expensive. It requires in-depth interviewing, followed by the meticulous process of synthesizing hundreds of pages of interview transcripts and archived documents into meaningful narratives. The Other Side of Innovation is based on an extensive ten-year study that produced the most extensive library of case studies about executing innovation initiatives in the world. Several of the case studies are summarized in this book. Subject companies include: 3M Corporation Analog Devices, Inc. 3M Corporation Vijay Govindarajan; Julie Lang Length: 4 pages Publication date: 2002 Case No. 2-0002 3M's strategy was rooted in innovation. 3M's 30 Percent Rule, where 30 percent of revenues must come from products introduced in the last four years, clarifies and drives its innovation mentality. This is not your grandfather’s tractor!
Innovation from the Edge Some time ago, Mathew Ingram of Gigaom asked in a post why it is that the NY times and other newspapers don’t create new innovations, like daily deals . The question inspired an impressive variety of comments, from those who denounced newspapers as “old fashioned” and “change averse” to those who pointed out that a newspaper’s primary mission is journalistic. Whatever your sentiments about newspapers, clearly the problem isn’t exclusive to them. Why didn’t Yahoo invent the search engine? Corporations are not People Most people assume that large organizations simply don’t want to innovate because they like the status quo. I don’t want to say that doesn’t happen, but if that were so, it would be an easy problem to fix. An alternative explanation is both more likely and more interesting: people within organizations pursue worthy individual actions that result in poor global outcomes. It is a mistake to anthropomorphize organizations. The Innovation Ecosystem The Cybernetics of Action
Mathematicians will lead the next consumer tech market disruption This is a guest post by Duncan Smith, head of product development at Cambridge Consultants When we think of how the best consumer technology is developed, the devices that make major breakthroughs in consumer experience, we tend to think of engineers or product designers -- whether it is the Jonathan Ive-designed iPod or James Dyson and his vacuum cleaners. What we won't think of is a mathematician. However, as we look to the near future of consumer technology, mathematicians are going to be behind the next generation of "must have" devices and services. As an engineer I grew up using mathematical modelling as a tool for good design. Of course user experience and technology are still important to innovation, but they are fast becoming "hygiene factors" -- necessary but not sufficient to thrill consumers. This is because the next big consumer technology breakthrough will require complex mathematical solutions rather than just inspired design and applied technology expertise.
It Took Less Than 10 Years for IT Not to Matter Way back in May 2003, Nick Carr published the article “IT Doesn’t Matter” in the Harvard Business Review. For those of you who don’t remember it, Carr’s piece was a doozy and then some. He argued that companies paying top dollar for the latest and greatest technological equipment were spending a lot to buy a very limited competitive edge, if any. The chief executive officers of the largest technology companies reacted to this proposition as you might expect. Ignoring all the nuances in Carr’s argument, they viewed it as a wholesale attack on technology. Carly Fiorina, then CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), called Carr “dead wrong.” In truth, it has taken just about 10 years for Carr’s view of the world to reach mass adoption. Most of the people I talk to these days are like Siobhan McFeeney, who heads up information systems management for the AAA in Northern California, Nevada, and Utah. Salesforce—the granddaddy of the software-as-a-service companies—went public in 2004.
C. M. Rubin: The Global Search for Education: In Search of Innovation "We reinvented the notion of a film festival and we were disruptive mainly out of necessity." -- Craig Hatkoff "Educate to Innovate," President Obama's campaign for excellence in science, technology, engineering & math, is a call to action that our education system embrace a specific type of orientation. Innovation requires educators to think about a 21st century education incorporating both critical and creative thinking beginning with the earliest years of a student's education. Disruptive innovation definition: A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. Following on from my interview with Dr. I had the pleasure of connecting with Clay Christensen (Kim B. "In the history of access to knowledge, we're at an inflection point that is rivaled only by innovations like the printing press." -- Clay Christensen C.
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. 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. 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. Corporate entrepreneurship contests Colleges aren’t the only ones starting their own entrepreneurship contests. Amazon Web Services has the “Start-Up Challenge,” which is a competition for start-ups that use its Web, e-commerce and cloud-computing technology to build their infrastructures and businesses.
Top 20 Innovation Articles – August 2012 Drum roll please… At the beginning of each month we will profile the twenty posts from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Innovation Excellence. We also publish a weekly Top 10 as part of our Innovation Excellence Weekly email. But enough delay, here are August’s twenty most popular innovation posts (each receiving 3,300 – 6,300 page views): BONUS – Here are three more strong articles published the last week of the month: If you’re not familiar with Innovation Excellence, we publish 2-6 new articles every day built around innovation and marketing insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Editor’s Note: Innovation Excellence is open to contributions from any and all innovation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have a valuable innovation insight to share with everyone for the greater good.