John Winsor

The Future of Innovation

Alice Rawsthorn penned a wonderful piece, entitled Reinventing Innovation in the New York Times yesterday. Here's an excerpt.

A recent recruit to the endangered list is “innovation.” Once hailed as a panacea, it has been so diminished by hyperbole that it risks seeming irrelevant. (“Transformation” is the fashionable favorite to replace it.) Yet just like “design” and “contemporary,” “innovation” is losing credibility as a word at the very time when it is needed most urgently.

As the economic and environmental crises deepen, there is a growing recognition that many aspects of our lives need to be reinvented. Politicians routinely call for the “redesign” of society, and urge businesses to “innovate” their way out of recession. This readiness to embrace change — even radical change — coupled with advances in science and technology, is unleashing a stream of innovations.

It's worth a read.

Siftables: The Best Technology at TED

David Merrill from MIT gave the coolest TED talk about a new technology he's developed called Siftables. They are little computer blocks that interact with each other and other devices. They could have the potential of making computing that much more engaging.

Be a Heretic

Ever sense Martin Luther nailed The 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in 1517 and ushered in the Reformation the term “heretic” has had religious connotations, being someone who’s opinion was a deliberate departure from accepted church doctrine. The business world needs more heretics, especially today. The marketplace demands more people who seeing outside the standard paradigm in an industry and have the courage to change it. The paradigm represents the way to get things done. It’s easy to go with the flow and follow the crowd.

But look around. Innovation always happens at the edges, where someone uses strategic intuition and breaks the mold to think the opposite. Dick Fosbury shocked the track and field world in the 1968 by doing the opposite and high jumping upside down. Instead of following the current paradigm and jumping stomach-first over the bar, he jumped back first. Fosbury broke the world record by almost 30%. Such gains don’t come from following the crowd.

Advertising Kills Bad Products

Historically, many companies have overlooked the fact that the product itself was often the most powerful brand-building tool they have. And, advertising agencies and branding experts seduced them into thinking that marketing was the only way to connect with consumers. At the same time, many companies have underestimated consumers’ ability to recognize innovation. Today the ability to innovate is not only the best marketing tool but the best way to grow revenues and profits, especially in uncertain times. But, innovating means taking risks. Most products are marketed to reach an old market. Good product design has the ability to create a whole new market.

Think About Chemistry

Lot’s of times innovation is assigned to a cross functional team. Instead of thinking about what specific people should be on each team, think about what functions the team needs to get done, then about he chemistry of the team. Often times it’s an intuitive thing. You’ve been there. A team with too many leaders is just as hard to deal with as a team with no leaders at all. Sometimes, getting the right chemistry is more important that getting the people on the team.

Take Work Home

It sounds awful. Yet, that’s what it takes these days. No longer can you close your computer and turn off your Blackberry when you pull away from work. Unfortunately. Yet it’s hard for a lot of people to erase the line between work and life. Think about it. It’s all the same anyway. The thing that gets in the way is the word “work.” Someone could work as a graphic artist and build engines as a hobby or work as an engine builder and have a hobby as a graphic artist. It’s all semantics. What’s important is the passion. If you’re passionate about what you do and what you make, the lines between work and life will blur without even trying. Be more passionate instead of thinking about working harder.

The Power of the Story

Video is making stories so much more human. So much more powerful.

Tough Times Call for More Innovation

It seems counter-intuitive to be more innovative when the economy shows signs of trouble. Yet, over half of the 2008 Inc. 500 companies had one thing in common. They all started in the few months following 9/11. People decided to forget about the uncertainty that the events of that day caused and go start something. Creative people forget about the uncertainty and focus on innovation. When the macro environment changes radically, as it is today, it’s easy to get gripped with fear and focus on efficiency. But, efficiency is for accountants and not for leaders and innovators.

The worst thing to do is to get locked up by fear and go into hibernation. If you pull in your horns waiting for things to get better they won’t. They’re going to get better but only for those companies who can but fear out of their mind and move forward aggressively.

Disruptive times create opportunities for companies. In the 1970’s both Microsoft and Apple were founded in the middle of an economically turbulent time. Likewise, Palm transformed an entire industry by shifting from being a software company to a hardware company. They invented a whole new industry in the middle of a recession.

What Chrome Means

Umair Haque pens an interesting piece on the power of Google's Chrome and what it might mean for other companies as they think about their strategy.

Spread Out Innovation

Many companies establish “skunkworks” or special units to be their innovation engines. This only adds to the siloization of companies. But, that’s risky. If the economy becomes uncertain a special unit that focuses on the future and might not be pulling in the kind of revenue that other divisions do and be forced to shut down or scale back to hit corporate goals. The other risk is having all of the big thinking held by a very few people. If they leave so does the innovation practice. The key is to embed innovation throughout the company, empowering everyone from the CEO to the receptionist to be more innovative and apart of their daily routine.