#innovation (52 links)
Despite the fact that innovative cultures are desirable, and that most leaders claim to understand what they entail, they are hard to create and sustain. That’s because the easy-to-like behaviors that get so much attention are only one side of the coin. They must be counterbalanced by some tougher and frankly less fun behaviors: an intolerance for incompetence, rigorous discipline, brutal candor, a high level of individual accountability, and strong leadership.
By contrast to hierarchies of authority, networks of competence place subjective concerns like culture, mindsets, values, and narratives as the primary drivers of everything that happens in the organization to ensure the coherence and direction of the organization's activities.
- TfL's AI Tube Station experiment is amazing and slightly terrifying takes.jamesomalley.co.uk
U.S. companies such as DuPont and General Motors moved from a functional to a multidivisional structure in the early 20th century. By the latter half of the century the vast majority of large corporations had followed suit. Apple proves that this conventional approach is not necessary and that the functional structure may benefit companies facing tremendous technological change and industry upheaval.
Its fundamental belief is that those with the most expertise and experience in a domain should have decision rights for that domain. This is based on two views: First, Apple competes in markets where the rates of technological change and disruption are high, so it must rely on the judgment and intuition of people with deep knowledge of the technologies responsible for disruption.
Sentiment building. "We're now at the stage where we should be getting the next wave of disruptive surprises. But – guess what? – they're nowhere to be seen. Instead, we're getting an endless stream of incremental changes and me-tooism. If I see one more proposal for a photo-sharing or location-based web service, anything with "app" in it, or anything that invites me to "rate" something, I'll scream."
- The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic theatlantic.com
Worth it. Overdue. Helps explain noticeable burn-out type feelings. "There are organizing principles for what is considered a "good" idea. These ideas are supposed to be the right size and shape. There is a default spreadsheet that we expect ideas to fit onto. But maybe it's time that changed."
"Unless the web fragments again, and it’s once more us against them, I think we’re on the road to efficient and productive normalcy. Which is great in almost every way except that it’s just not as fun. The web is on its way to becoming a commodity [...] I haven’t given up. I just wonder sometimes how long we’ve got before we all have to stop being hackers and be software engineers." What's next?
- Redefining talent within the advertising agency « Mike Parsons mikeparsons.net
"The future stars of advertising will be the consultants, craftsmen and traders." Pronouncement.
- Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research slideshare.net
- Aniomagic - button schemer™ aniomagic.com
Helps you easily make interactive arts and craft. You can quickly make a bracelet that changes color when shaken, a pet collar that blinks in the dark, or a dress that twinkles when you get a phone call. Weave it into tapestry, or make a custom bike light.
The procession of technological discoveries is inevitable. When the conditions are right — when the necessary web of supporting technology needed for every invention is established — then the next adjacent technological step will emerge as if on cue. If inventor X does not produce it, inventor Y will.
- Tools of Engagement: The New Practice of User-Centered Design, by Robert Fabricant - Core77 core77.com
We have been operating under the assumption that the primary challenge is to convince businesses to focus on fulfilling user needs with higher quality products, with more meaningful experiences. But what if the 'users' themselves are the problem? What if users represent not a coherent set of needs but a messy mix of desires and influences? What, ultimately, is the role of the designer in sorting through these desires to determine which should drive our design decisions? And what frameworks, other than intuition, should we use to make these judgments?
"Over the past 2 months the city government, in cooperation with business groups and non-profits, has turned a corner of one of the busiest intersections in San Francisco into a public plaza. The 17th Street Plaza project took 72-hours to implement, and is carefully called a “reversible trial.” Like the phrase “reversible pilot”.
- mySociety » Blog Archive » Say hello to Mapumental mysociety.org
Mapumental is the culmination of an ambition mySociety has had for some time - to take the nation’s bus, train, tram, tube and boat timetables and turn them into a service that does vastly more than imagined by traditional journey planners. In its first iteration it’s specially tuned to help you work out where else you might live if you want an easy commute to work.
- Launch a Business, Not a Side Project | Think Vitamin thinkvitamin.com
I’ve seen a lot of web apps launched recently which haven’t succeeded. They’re not failing miserably, and they’re not wild successes. They’re just kind of puttering along, sapping just enough resources to be a problem, but not succeeding enough to really take off. The majority of these apps were built by small web design firms or freelancers who bought into the dream without really understanding how much time it takes to make an app succeed.
- metacool: 1: Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world metacool.typepad.com
The signature behavior of people who routinely achieve innovative outcomes is that they constantly seek to experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world.
The social sites we visit today are not just friend networks - they're also built around objects that connect people with shared interests. These social objects could be anything from a photo on flickr to a video on YouTube or a track on Last.fm.
- Method Cards - Case Studies - IDEO ideo.com
A collection of 51 cards representing diverse ways that design teams can understand the people they are designing for. They are used to make a number of different methods accessible to all members of a design team, to explain how and when the methods are best used, and to demonstrate how they have been applied to real design projects.
- Guardian opens APIs and data | Media | guardian.co.uk guardian.co.uk
"The Guardian launched its 'Open Platform' with APIs for all of its content and a sets of data collected by its editors." Brave. Ace.
- Rescue Team Management, Incident Logs, Analytics: Decisions For Heroes. decisionsforheroes.com
Makes me wish I was a hero. "A collaborative rescue team management tool to record and analyse rescue operations. Instead of archiving information as paperwork, we act as a platform, generating real-time profiles of members, available resources, and activities. Decisions for Heroes uses this data to deliver live and intelligent information to the field."
- innovation playground Idris Mootee: Radical Service Innovation Will Transform Best Buy's Geek Squad Into Geek Army Over The Next Five Years. mootee.typepad.com
This is the time for business model transformation. Many product categories are not giving them the margins/volume they needed to support a growth strategy. Blueray DVDs and flat screen TVs cannot power Best Buy forward, the future is not in gadgets, it is in service innovation.
The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, which will publish the “Social Media Futures” report compiled by Future Foundation next week, has warned that advertising agencies face growth of just 1.2 per cent a year by 2016 if the industry fails to tackle the changes to the media created by sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
The famously baffling metropolis is home to an experiment in ubiquitous computing that could transform the city
A global firm of designers, engineers, planners and business consultants.
- Show Us a Better Way showusabetterway.com
The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated.
Who says big ideas are rare?
- Seesmic: Why it's so important to just frackin' start calacanis.com
Bottom line? As an entrepreneur you have to follow your nose and don't worry if you dump or change your original model. Evolution is the revolution. However, it you don't start you can't iterate.
- 2gether08 2gether08.com
2gether Festival London July 2-3: "will bring together over 400 radical innovators practical visionaries from a wide range of fields to focus on how using digital technologies we can generate real social benefits."
- Five Ways to Boost Creativity or Kill it Altogether | Slow Leadership slowleadership.org
Slowing down is essential to any kind of creativity — even if it makes you unfocused, inefficient, undisciplined, or unsystematic too
- We need a Wikipedia for data - Bret Taylor's blog bret.appspot.com
I think we should create a Wikipedia for data: a global database for all of these important data sources to which we all contribute and that anyone can use.
- Inside Innovation with Colin Stewart » Blog Archive » 11 innovation lessons from creators of World of Warcraft - OCRegister.com innovation.freedomblogging.com
The following lineup of innovation lessons emerged from a video game conference, an interview, and several experts’ comments.
- Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Semantic Web is open for business | The Semantic Web | ZDNet.com blogs.zdnet.com
[A] wide-ranging dig into the past, present and future of the Semantic Web
- Kevin Kelly -- The Technium kk.org
When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. Well, what can't be copied?
- Logic+Emotion: Innovation + The "Un-Agency" darmano.typepad.com
Idea generation is an addiction... an engaging, brain-spinning indulgence that must be practiced in moderation.
- creativegeneralist.com creativegeneralist.com
An outpost for curious divergent thinkers who appreciate new ideas from a wide mix of sources. Completely random and updated regularly, inspiration drawn from - and relevant to - the larger creative world.
The Group calls itself a "place for anyone to share their experiences, frustrations and successes in driving change inside large organizations." Monthly meetings, the first being this week, will combine guest speakers and open discussion.
I've been thinking about a number of new product ideas lately. In doing so, I've been trying to come up with a way more structured way of evaluating them. Here's a first attempt at defining that.
- Nokia - Beta Labs nokia.com
- Are Big Ad Agencies So Clueless That Corporations Should Avoid Them? businessweek.com
I've been spending much time with ad agencies and focus groups lately and can only conclude that--with some exceptions--they are mostly clueless.
Buy advertising ideas for your company by +9000 creatives worldwide. Faster, Better, Cheaper.
- Secrets to Amazon's success - (37signals) 37signals.com
"High Scalability offers some secrets to Amazon’s success based on interviews and writings of early employees." Some great tips in here.
Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas?
- George Dinwiddie’s blog » Studying patterns for Fearless Change blog.gdinwiddie.com
3×5 notecards for studying the patterns in the book, Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas
- Meet Charlie - what is Enterprise2.0? » SlideShare slideshare.net
A visual and entertaining example of web2.0 within the corporation
- We’re in this Together: Home together.com
We’re in this Together is offering you easy access to products and ideas (we call them ‘Solutions’) that really can reduce your impact on the climate.