Monthly Archives: June 2009
Laser FocusIf law enforcement officers were business people, they would never struggle with questions like, “Who is my Perfect Client?” or, “Will I run out of customers if I focus on a select niche?” They would just know with confidence who they’re after. Take this extreme example from my past.It was early January of 1993 when Officer Harlan Graham of the Iowa State Patrol pulled me over north of Decorah, IA. Having wrecked my car the week before and now traveling seven miles over the limit, I was an easy target.As I sat in the squad car and the officer wrote up a collection of what he assured me would amount to nothing more than warning tickets, lights began to flash and an eerie whine sounded from a box on the dash. So I did what I do: I began asking questions. “What’s that?”"That’s my radar,” came …
The operational model for charities in this country is an ideal candidate for disruptive innovation. It strikes me as odd that charities, the organizations that really have the least to spend on marketing, spend such inordinate amounts of money and time on marketing to raise money. Does spending lots of money on fundraising actually work?Let’s stop for a moment and look at how AIP defines acceptable charity performance:Spending 60% or more of a charity’s budget on programs, and spending $35 or less to raise $100 in public supportGroups included on AIP’s Top-Rated list generally spend 75% or more of their budgets on programs, and spend $25 or less to raise $100 in public support.Unfortunately, many charities don’t even meet the acceptable charity performance definition:”It is sad that cancer charities, one of the most serious and popular giving categories, perform so poorly – half of the cancer charities that AIP rates … Continue reading
Hello all,Next week I will be attending the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations in New York City (June 8-9, 2009) and live blogging and tweeting. The star-studded roster of speakers will include:- Peter Diamandis – X PRIZE Foundation- Reid Hoffman – LinkedIn- Dean Kamen – DEKA R&D Corporation- Arianna Huffington – Huffington Post – Marthin de Beer – Cisco Emerging Technologies Group (ETG)- Matt Bross – BT Innovate- Judy Estrin – JLABS, LLC- Don Tapscott – Author “Wikinomics”I will also have my video camera and hope to record some video segments for my blog.If you’d like to be interviewed on camera at the World Innovation Forum about the innovation efforts at your company, please contact me. If you live in the UK, I am especially interested in interviewing you for potential Survival of the Fastest segments.Or if you’d just like to meet-up at the event, then please also contact … Continue reading
Innovation has been defined many ways by many different people.In January 2009, innovation was defined forty different ways in under 140 characters for a Twitter contest.These of course aren’t the only possible definitions for innovation, but here is a video of my innovation definition (along with an example):”Innovation transforms useful seeds of invention into solutions valued above every existing alternative.” – Braden KelleyWhat is your innovation definition?Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)
During Clayton Christensen’s talk at the World Innovation Forum about innovation in education and healthcare, Dr. Christensen made a point about how technology will move more of education out of the classroom and onto the Internet.He was mostly speaking about augmenting home schooling, but also about school leavers earning their equivalency online, and online advanced placement courses for kids at schools who might not have the resources to provide these courses.This sparked some humorous debate amongst those in the Bloggers Hub at the World Innovation forum about the possibility of teaching kids 140 characters at a time via Twitter.Well, teachers are not exactly doing that, but they have been using Twitter in the classroom since at least January 2008.At the University of Texas at Dallas, History Professor, Monica Rankin has been using hashtags for classroom discussion in the hopes that it would lead to increased student involvement. Here is a … Continue reading
