Monthly Archives: December 2010
What would happen if a group of inventors of new circuit boards and machine parts aggressively published detailed descriptions of their inventions? These same inventors would open source the hardware behind their inventions, making publicly available all the schematics, detailed description of needed parts and software, drawings and “board” files – basically all the information anybody would need to identically re-create the product or object. Next time somebody tried to patent something similar, perhaps borrowing from open sourced designs, a wealth of prior art would appear in the USPTO search, making it impossible for an company, university or individual to claim ownership of the intellectual property. This idea was presented at the first ever Open Hardware Summit recently by John Wilbanks, VP of Science at Creative Commons. The world of product development and IP management is changing. The Internet has opened up a huge collaborative space, speeding …
Magic happens through: Creativity Misdirection Showmanship Engaging storytelling Illusion Magic also happens through: Discipline Planning Rehearsal Process Repetition Magic happens through exploring big ideas with a whole brain approach! When you do that well, it’s magic!!! Don’t miss an article (2,050+) – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group! Mike Brown is an award-winning innovator in strategy, communications, and experience marketing. He authors the BrainzoomingTM blog, and serves as the company’s chief Catalyst. He wrote the ebook “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” and is a frequent keynote presenter.
Innovation management is a requisite step toward the positive growth of any organization. Recently, the focus has been on a specific part of innovation management being dramatically affected by the much buzzed about ‘social revolution’. Yes, the seemingly rigid, straightforward, top-down traditional Project Management process may be in the midst of a major transformation- due in part to major evolutions in the software that helps facilitate this process. Every day, the social revolution touches almost every aspect of our personal and professional lives. Standard practice now seems to be that one must either read comments on Amazon or a group forum, post a tweet, join a LinkedIn discussion and tap friends on Facebook before buying a product online. Social is not going away. Businesses are starting to realize that in order to maintain competitive advantage they need to figure out not only what ‘social’ means, but how to effectively leverage … Continue reading
In its simplest form, the status quo can be represented as two forces of the same magnitude applied in opposite directions. They compensate each other, such that nothing move. Then imagine a small lateral force being applied that tilts the two opposite forces from their axis. All of a sudden, the equilibrium (or status quo) is disrupted and movement starts. What’s more, the two formerly opposite forces now literally join forces (at least partly) to add to the momentum created: what used to create status quo now accelerates the movement. Here is a simple example: Bill is a maths teacher. He works full time for a decent salary. His passion though is sailing. He sails during his holidays, but that can only be a few weeks per year. On the one hand he’d like to have more time for it, but on the other hand he needs to earn money. … Continue reading
Zombies, or the concept of the undead, seems really potent right now. We’ve had a number of movies featuring zombies lately, and a new well-received TV show on AMC highlights the zombie phenomenon – The Walking Dead. I’m not sure why there’s a sudden resurgence of interest in zombies, but I am sure that zombies are damaging your innovation capabilities. Remember that on TV and in the movies, zombies are people who are undead – not really living, and not really dead. They seem to resort to cannibalism and pursue the living. Most zombies move lethargically and don’t really threaten the living until there are a large number of zombies crowding our heroes, which is when the fun begins. Everyday objects like chain saws or electric guitars become the equivalent of light sabers in zombie movies. But in real life, especially in your innovation efforts you face …
When it comes to organizational sacred cows, strategic planning sits very close to the top of the list for most organizations. We all know the drill. Take the senior management team off-site for a weekend. Evaluate last year’s performance. Conduct the basic SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. Set some goals for the upcoming year. Pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. Play a couple rounds of golf. Return to the office Monday morning and get back to the business of running our businesses. This process may vary from company to company, but the basic model remains the same. Well, I say the time has come to put this sacred cow out to pasture. Back when the world moved a lot slower and markets didn’t change overnight, the traditional strategic planning model served us quite well. It got business leaders to rise above the day-to-day minutia … Continue reading
