Monthly Archives: March 2009
The World Innovation Forum will take place May 5-6, 2009 in New York City.May 1, 2009 is the last day of the $410 discount.I will be a featured blogger at the event, and as a special service to my loyal readers I have negotiated an extra $200 discount when you register using the discount code – INNOVATE.Speakers will include:CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN & Disruptive InnovationWorld-renowned for his work on innovation and disruption, sought-after consultant and best-selling authorVIJAY GOVINDARAJAN & Innovation in a Global WorldOne of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation FRED KRUPP & Eco-InnovationPresident of the Environmental Defense FundDAN ARIELY & Predictably IrrationalBehavioral economist and best-selling authorCK PRAHALAD & The New Age of InnovationOne of the world’s most recognized thinkers on strategy and author of the bestseller, Competing for the FuturePAUL SAFFO & Future & TechnologyStanford University Professor, Technology Futurist and Forecaster.Founding Chairman of the Samsung Science BoardHere is … Continue reading
I had the opportunity to meet interview Scott Wurtele, CEO of IdeaConnection when he was down from Canada this week. I also had the opportunity to meet his lovely wife Wendy Wurtele, VP of Design for the company.They started IdeaConnection part-time a couple of years ago and began focusing on it full-time about eight months ago when they sold their last online business LawyersandSettlements.com. Scott and Wendy also started and sold WorldBid.com – which counted Alibaba.com as a competitor.I sat down with Scott to discuss his latest venture, IdeaConnection, a company looking “To give businesses access to the world’s most creative and innovative minds, who work collaboratively to solve problems and develop innovations.”IdeaConnection offers individuals the opportunity to sign up to solve problems for pay, and corporations the opportunity to submit challenges to hand-picked teams of diverse experts. At the same time IdeaConnection is also using crowdsourcing to build up … Continue reading
Trickle-Up Innovation is a topic you will hear more and more about.Innovations currently tend to be commercialized in the developed countries and then distributed in the developing world. Trickle-Up Innovation turns that model on its head by commercializing products or services in developing countries and then adapting them for the developed world.Trickle-Up Innovation does not displace the traditional dissemination patern, but instead provides another option for innovators to consider when looking at commercializing their ideas.One reason that Trickle-Up Innovation will find increasing adoption is the fact that innovative products and services tend to initially be adopted by those with the greatest pain.Another reason that companies will expand their innovation strategies to include Trickle-Up Innovation is the fact that often the breakthroughs that drive innovation come from working with extreme users.Extreme users and those with the greatest need for an innovation are equally likely to be found in the developing world … Continue reading
Business Strategy Innovation just published a white paper to its web site on”Effective Conversational Marketing.”Here is an excerpt:”IntroductionWhat is conversational marketing?Conversational marketing is relationship marketing for the social media age. Thinking about your marketing efforts in terms of a conversation changes the approach and better integrates social media. Relationships are something that are formed, but conversations are ongoing and evolving and require both sides to participate.How Social Media Fits InIt seems like I can’t get through a day right now without hearing somebody in the media or on the street talking about social media. I think it is great that social media has captured people’s attention, but will having more communication channels improve conversational marketing?Only if properly integrated into the conversations between consumers and companies.To do this, social media must be established both as part of your on-going conversational marketing programs (on-boarding, loyalty, retention, etc.) and also integrated into your … Continue reading
You may have seen a video I posted about a wearable computer designed by some MIT students. I just came across a TED talk from Pattie Maes that explains the details of the innovation you saw in that video, while also showcasing more of what the technology is capable of and what the device costs to build with off the shelf parts. It’s definitely worth a look: Do you think people will want to wear something like this around? (post a comment) @innovate
I came across an article on TechCrunch that got me thinking. I have been writing for a while now that the main functionality of Twitter, really is just a product feature that can and is being copied Facebook, Plaxo, Windows Live, and probably everyone else out there. For Twitter to survive they have to find a way to turn it into a platform. Finding a way to create value-added search is probably their best bet. After all, what is the number one thing that people share, other than what they are having for breakfast? Links… Links tweeted by Twitter users are more valuable because they (for the most part) have been added to the search database by people who found their content to have value. One of the biggest challenges that traditional search engines like Kumo and Google have is that they have to warehouse everything, and most of the … Continue reading
