Monthly Archives: April 2011
(This post continues the summary of fabulous stories and interactions at the 3rd Open Innovation Summit at Baldwin Wallace College’s (BW) Center for Innovation & Growth: Practical Challenges of Global Open Innovation featuring P&G on April 21st.) Craig Vogel, President of Live Well Collaborative (LWC), talked about being an Open Innovation partner of P&G, focusing on the over 50 population. Craig, a design guru, is also Assoc. Dean of Research & Innovation at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) and an Industrial Design professor in the UC’s School of Design. LWC’s purpose is, through discovery and sharing of insights, to create innovative products & services enhancing the quality of life for over 50 year old consumers. They do this through a unique model of working with UC’s schools of DAAP, Medicine, Nursing, Business and Engineering and companies like P&G, General Mills, Hill-Rom, Boeing, Citi, … Continue reading
The volume of social media channels available to engage with is exhausting. And they keep coming. As an individual or a business, there’s no way you can keep up with them all. And the good news is, you don’t have to. Take a step back, and answer these two questions: Where are my customers? Where am I most comfortable? The first question is, by far, the most important. If your customers aren’t on Twitter, for example, don’t worry about it. But if your customers are on Twitter, you’d better figure it out. Your social media ROI will increase significantly if your social behavior mirrors those you’re trying to influence, engage and sell to. But it’s also important to engage in channels you’re comfortable with, at least after an initial getting-to-know-each-other period. If the channel doesn’t feel like a good fit, if it’s not something you’ll commit to sticking with over … Continue reading
Mindset may the most overlooked strategic issue in business today. Getting yourself and your people into the right frame of mind is becoming a crucial determinant of competitiveness, thanks to two huge business trends. The first trend: For decades organizations have been growing flatter, with fewer layers of management and increasingly dispersed decision making. It’s a strategy that has reduced costs while making organizations more nimble and responsive to customer needs and market shifts. This deliberate move away from centralized control has weakened the power of the few in favor of the many, so that issues can be best addressed by those closest to the problem. The second trend: We’re now in the midst of a similar move to democratize the generation of new ideas, inside organizations and even extending outside. It’s driven by the need for innovation and the realization that to be effective, innovation must tap into many … Continue reading
For my last article for the American Express OPEN Forum I thought I would go out with a bang and attack a controversial topic, something that people are starting to believe as an empirical truth. Something that I don’t believe has to be true. It seems like most people are starting to believe that it is inevitable that formal innovation efforts begin with high energy and wane over time. And that this is true even if you’ve built robust innovation processes and have strong support for innovation at all levels of an organization. I must say that what many people are portraying as inevitability is a myth, and falls prey to the age old quote: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” The reason why we have this myth is that people misinterpret a key artifact of most formal innovation processes as a representation of reality. The artifact in question … Continue reading
Earlier this year an AdAge study gave grist to my intuition that TV will continue to be unstoppable in our lifetime. TV is the only medium touched by the Web that isn’t crushed by it – it rolls it in, integrating technology and absorbing and colonizing new media as it’s introduced. As a device, a format and a host (of news/sport/drama/entertainment, gaming, social media, web, advertising), TV is here to stay. Even as television and the Internet merge, what we have always known as television will continue as a vital cultural, political and entertainment medium. Whether you’re watching television on a TV or pc or tablet or mobile, whether live or downloaded, it’ll still be television. YouTube streamed 8.5 billion videos in January alone. Is this television? You betcha! The distinctions are in fact immaterial, and the language needs to shift. We call it sisomo – sight, sound and motion … Continue reading
I have been an innovation consultant since 1986 and have worked with hundreds of organizations in more than 15 industries. The products and services of my clients have all been different — as have their acronyms, mission statements, and cafeteria food. But they all have one thing in common — and that is a pronounced tendency to undervalue the power of appreciation. Sure, they give out gold watches and Employee of the Month awards, but the simple act of acknowledging and appreciating each other on a daily basis is in woeful short supply. The reasons are many. Too many managers have come to believe that the expression of appreciation will be counterproductive, leading to a self-satisfied workforce — a workforce that will be entitled and unmotivated. The perceived lack of time is another reason. Most people’s plates are so full these days that the time and attention it takes to … Continue reading
