Monthly Archives: April 2011
Important for CEOs to Maintain and Reset Focus by Idris Mootee The recent news about Cisco deciding to get rid of the Flip video business came as no surprise to me. When I first heard that Cisco was purchasing Pure Digital (maker of the flash-based camera Flip) I was wondering what was the strategic logic behind it. Not sure how much $590 million paid could be recovered. Looking back, it was not difficult to play out the scenario that HD video feature would eventually be equipped in every smart phone, point and shoot camera and even watch and even keychain. Why Cisco wanted that company? What were they planning to do with it? John Chamber’s decision to get rid of that business was a very smart one. There is nothing worth keeping and it brings up the question of whether it was a white space move or unrelated and unstrategic … Continue reading
Blogging Innovation is looking for the Top 10 Innovation Presentations, and we have up to $3,700 worth of prizes up for grabs. To give me a little more time to identify the TEN BEST and to give you a little more time to submit your favorites, I’ve pushed out the deadline and announcement 48 hours. What are your favorite presentations or documents available on slideshare? Nominate a slideshare presentation or document to be included on the Top 10 list and be entered into the prize drawing for some great prizes worth up to $3,700: 1 All-Access Pass to the Front End of Innovation USA (May 16-18, 2011 in Boston) – $3,700 value 2 signed copies of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire by Braden Kelley – priceless You can submit a nomination any of these THREE ways: Commenting on this blog post with the URL of the slideshare presentation or document Sending … Continue reading
There I was, two weeks ago sitting in an auditorium on a Sunday attending TEDxCMU. It was an inspiring and emotional day with twelve fantastic talks from local and national presenters. One of the talks was by Luis von Ahn, a CMU professor. It only took me a minute to realize that I was in the presence of an amazing innovator, and that I had the privilege of being one of the first people to hear about his latest project. All the confirmation I needed that what I witnessed was important came nine days later when TechCrunch went public with what it knew about his project: Meet Duolingo, Google’s Next Acquisition Target; Learn a Language, Help the Web. You see, von Ahn had previously developed a crowdsourcing project for labeling images, which Google bought. Then he came up with reCAPTCHA, where the action of completing a …
The ideas funnel has been with us a long time. We put our ideas into the funnel and then through a process of elimination out ‘pop’s’ finished products. Henry Chesbrough’s famous depiction of the Open Funnel has continued that concept, that ideas enter the more ‘open’ innovation process and go through a more ‘staged gate’ or equivalent process to emerge as the finished product or even spun-out- all well and good. In the past few weeks the funnel has been constantly coming back in my life. It has been bugging me. Recently I was at a European Innovation Conference and we got into a roundtable discussion on managing ideas and up pop’s the fuzzy front end and the funnel and putting ideas through this. To be provocative I said “well ideas are actually in the middle of the innovation process” and we got into a significant debate on this and … Continue reading
Following as Waiting or Betraying In any field requiring constant innovation, the value of leadership is taken for granted. Consider Edison’s invention of the light bulb, Durand’s patenting of the tin can, or Kellogg’s discovery of flaked corn. An intrepid pioneer, bold and undaunted, does something new and it catches on. This is conventional wisdom. When something catches on, when an invention is adopted, and when other people start following and help the inventor makes his idea into a workable prototype, a website, a mass-produced item, and then brings it to the market, invention becomes innovation. This has long been acknowledged, but brings our initial question back in another form: how does this process start? The Shirtless dancer and what Sivers forgot When Derek Sivers first presented the idea that the leader is actually less important than the person who first follows, it was adopted very fast, which is no wonder … Continue reading
It seems that every time I take some time off (whether it’s a long weekend or paternity leave), I bring a fresh perspective about my work back to the office. I tell myself in the days beforehand I’m going work smarter, seek better balance, avoid more distractions, and so forth. With the best of intentions, these objectives too often fall by the wayside once I’m back in the heat of the battle. I’ll do some of them, sometimes, but it’s too easy to fall back into my old habits. In the hopes that this time will be different, I wrote down six habits before I left (and I wrote them to myself). Here’s what I’m working on: 1. Focus on what’s important (not merely urgent) Every day there are distractions, fire drills, emails and voicemails that need or want responses. Some of these are important, but most aren’t both important … Continue reading
