In his new book The Design of Business, Dr. Roger Martin explains that the vast majority of companies rely far too heavily on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo. Analytical thinking looks to the past for proof of concept before moving forward. While most companies wish they could come up with the next breakthrough innovation or create an entirely new product category like Facebook, by only practicing analytical thinking they get disappointing results. The vast majority of businesses want “reliability” – clearly defined processes that are easily repeatable and produce the same results. According to Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, to innovate and win, companies need to practice design thinking.

To innovate, companies need to employ more of the characteristics of great design: a deep understanding of the customer or user, creative resolution of opposing goals and tensions, rapid and collaborative prototyping, and continuous modification of ideas and solutions. It means seeing possibility and exploring problems where solutions cannot be found in past experience or proven by data.

Dr. Martin claims businesses need more “validity” – creating the right and best outcomes through more exploration – and less reliance on reliability. Three powerful forces emphasize reliability over validity: the demand for proof of the correctness of a new idea, an aversion to bias, and time/resource constraints. These factors reinforce the bias toward reliability and repeatability over exploration and validity.

Intuitive thinking, or “the art of knowing without reasoning”, is the world of originality and invention. Explaining that neither analysis nor intuition is enough, Martin urges reconciling the two modes of thought, asserting that the most successful businesses will balance analytical mastery and intuitive originality “in a dynamic interplay [he calls] design thinking.”

In 2007 BusinessWeek named Martin one of the ten most influential business professors in the world. an interview with Dr. Martin can be read here.

I came across a wonderful article through a Linked-In group called OnStartups that illuminates the process of pricing a product. Click here for access to the article.

The article summarizes the key points of a free e-book called “Don’t Just Roll the Dice”.

Policymakers should consider the impact of reform proposals on innovation.  For example, proposals that increase spending on diagnostics and therapeutics could encourage such innovation.  Expanding price controls, government health care programs, and health insurance regulation, on the other hand, could hinder America’s ability to innovate, say Whitman and Raad.

Source: Glen Whitman and Raymond Raad, “Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation,” Cato Institute, November 18, 2009.

For text:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa654.pdf

In diesem Baumhaus würd ich gerne mal ein paar Tage Urlaub verbringen, wenn nicht sogar komplett einziehen. Dieses Haus ist der Oberwahnsinn…blöd nur wenn’s brennt…

——————

——————

Computer spielt Tetris – und zwar auf hypnotisierende Art und Weise…das populärste Game der Videospiel-Geschichte in Perfektion gespielt…8mal gleichzeitig nebeneinander auf den Bildschirm gezaubert!!

(via)

——————

Scroll Clock – eine Digitaluhr angezeigt, mithilfe von sich verändernden Scrollbalken

——————

100 Examples of Brilliant Tilt-Shift Photography – sehr schöne Bilderserie welche mithilfe von Tilt-Shift erstellte Bilder zeigt. Irgendwie wirkt unser Planet mit all seinem Leben in dieser Machart sehr “spielzeughaft”!! Aber sehr beeindruckend…auf der Seite findet ihr übrigens noch weitere sehenswerte Sammlungen von Bildern!!

Carpe Noctem!!

Ever wish you could control things with your mind? Be the ultimate couch potato by not even having to pick up the remote. Operate your computer with mind power instead of mouse power? Well the fine folks at Intel are working on that. I just read an interesting article on physorg.com about what Intel is working on right here in Pittsburgh.

“Intel believes its customers would be willing to have a chip implanted in their brains so they could operate computers without the need for a keyboard or mouse using thoughts alone. The implant could also be used to operate devices such as cell phones, TVs and DVDs. While it seems unlikely many people would volunteer for the Intel chip implant at present, it could have applications for people who are unable to move, such as quadriplegics.

The chip is being developed at Intel’s laboratory in Pittsburgh, USA. It would sense brain activity using technology based on FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). The brain sensing chips are not yet available, but Intel research scientist Dean Pomerleau thinks they are close.”

To read the entire article, head over to physorg.com

-jp

Are you a juggler? Do you always have at least three balls in the air at all times.  For me that is just the way I am made up.  Multiple businesses, family, writing projects, community involvement activities and other stuff are in constant motion.

Some people look at jugglers in awe.  Other’s shake their heads in dismay.  But for a juggler, it’s a natural state – there is no other way.

Recently I got to spend three days at Kolbe Corp with the wonderful Kathy Kolbe and her team. Together with others being certified to use the Kolbe Method, I learned about the instinctive talents that we all have and how the combination of those talents help us get things done as individuals and on teams.  I also learned another word for my juggling abilities – it turns out that my particular combination of talents is termed an Innovator. Go figure.

For me, getting that ball up in the air is as natural as breathing, but keeping it there, circling with all the others takes more.  It takes the discipline to make sure the balls don’t  drop.

So, if you are a juggler like me, here are some tips on the things I do to keep things moving in the right direction and avoid that embarrassing drop.

• Make lists of what needs to be done for each project and check them off as they are completed and by whom.  (Your list may be on a piece of paper, a white board, a planner, or a PDA – but however you do it – record it, schedule it, and check it off when it is done.)
• Do the annoying little ‘must do’ things first.  Get them out of the way and then reward yourself with the more exciting projects.
• Build a great team and delegate.  Know what you are good at and what you are not.  Find others who compliment your natural abilities to get things moving with other who are great at gathering facts, creating systems, and implementing solutions. Work with them to create a team that can’t be beat.

Even though others may believe that you can not possibly handle one more thing – always be on the look out for the next great idea, project or opportunity.  It’s where your energy comes from.  Don’t let other people make you believe you can’t when you know you can. You are a juggler, it’s what you do.  So, do it well.  The stage is yours.

Thanks for stopping by.  Stay Tuned…

Joan Koerber-Walker

HONG KONG — While Internet advertising revenue growth in the U.S. has stalled since the global downturn set in, some hope remains for China’s highly trafficked Web sites.

“For 2010 we’re estimating about 20% growth for online advertising,” says Ben Cavender, a senior analyst at Shanghai-based China Market Research Group. “That’s compared with the U.S., where it’s under 5% a year.”

China’s largest Internet portal, Sina Corp., is optimistic about online advertising–and rightly so. Forecasting advertising growth in 2010, Sina, which Forbes Asia named one of the “Best Under A Billion” companies, posted third-quarter profits Tuesday that beat some analysts’ expectations.(by Hana R. Alberts,Forbes, 11.17.09)

Read More

As an industrial designer, I am infatuated with product manufacturing videos. And being that I just bought some new IKEA furniture last week I was pumped to find this National Geographic video of IKEA’s Poland manufacturing facility showing how they put together their honeycomb structured panels for furniture. I’ve always known what they were made of, I just haven’t seen it in production until now. Check it out:

<embed src=”http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/satellite/satelliteEmbedPlayer.swf” bgcolor=”#000000″ flashVars=”videoRef=07455_00&autoStart=false&shareURL=http%3A%2F%2Fchannel%2Enationalgeographic%2Ecom%2Fseries%2Fultimate%2Dfactories%2F4543%2FVideos%2F07455%5F00″  allowFullScreen=”true” name=”flashObj” width=”496″ height=”279″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” swLiveConnect=”true” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash”></embed>

(found via Core77!)

-jp

When you get a new idea, its hard not to be excited about it. When you develop a new product, its natural to want to get it to market as soon as possible. While new ideas need advocates, there is also a need for prudence.

Albert Einstein, the great physicist known as the father of the modern era, developed a number of new and exciting ideas. One became known as the Theory of Relativity, a development that changed the world as we know it.

Despite the scientific acclaim for his work, Einstein refused to accept his own equations as valid until they were verified by empirical observations. For his Theory of Relativity he designed three specific tests to prove his new ideas about time and motion. Einstein believed all three of the tests needed to be successfully completed to fully validate his work.

It might be said that Einstein “test marketed” his new “equation” to be certain that it could withstand the rigors of his “customers”, the scientific community. Today, in both the business and scientific community, it is all too frequent that the originators of new ideas, so certain of their validity and so financially pressed, rush them to the marketplace with premature announcements and claims.

The physical proofs that Einstein demanded required certain natural conditions that were not immediately available. No instantaneous gratification here. It was five years before the last of Einstein’s verification criterion were met for the Theory of Relativity.

The essence of the methodology that Einstein applied to validate his equations can be successfully applied in your business. Accompanying the development of new products, plans, and programs, there should be established what Einstein referred to as “verifiable empirical observations”. In other words, make sure the darn thing does what it’s supposed to do before you go to far.

That all seems simple enough. But “verifiable empirical observation” indicates that there are too many “things” out there that don’t do what they’re supposed to do. If it happens in your business, it will cause a lot of unnecessary problems.

Its hard to be both an advocate and a skeptic of your own new idea, we’re not all Einsteins. There is a natural tendency to become so enthused with your own new idea that you want to rush its implementation. The “pride of authorship” combined with the economic pressures to earn a return on your investment can become a powerful force.

However, your new idea will be best developed by an advocate that brings it to maturity prudently. Taking the time to “prove” a product by establishing specific performance and sales objectives for it provides a number of long lasting benefits.

Some products that have been rushed to market should have had their introduction slowed down sufficiently to have been introduced to broader markets in more optimal condition. In addition to the direct costs, such as rejects, returns, and service, associated with premature product introductions, there are a great many indirect costs arising from the damage to morale, reputation, and confidence..

Other products that have long languished in mediocrity should have been mercifully terminated. Einstein held out for five years for all three proofs to validate his theory. There are few businesses that wouldn’t benefit from eliminating a product or service that hasn’t met its expectations. The problem is that the expectations were never reduced to objective standards and there is a reluctance to admit failure. Learn to cut your losses.

Other, perhaps, valuable and potential lucrative products that were prematurely terminated might have been given the developmental time they needed. Without objective standards to prove a new product or idea, early, but tangential negative feedback can make new product advocates reluctant to champion a new product. It is not unusual for a product developed by one company to be abandoned and later made a success by another company.

Organizational structures have a tendency to grow cumbersome over time. When you get an idea that you think will improve your organization, you want to implement it immediately. The changes are made with enthusiasm and optimism, but the “equations” aren’t always held up for verification by empirical observation

Organizational structures get changed to met specific needs. If the changes that were implemented don’t produce the desired results or no longer meet the current needs, they should be held invalid and reversed.

To be an “Einstein” means more than just coming up with bright new ideas. It means having the patience to verify the value of those new ideas, products, and plans. Because its your business, be an Einstein.

You see them here, you see them there, you see them everywhere. Well, I ran out of them the other day so I had to make a trip to my local stationary store for a resupply.

“Them” is the ubiquitous “Post-it” note pads. As I looked over the vast selection of shapes, sizes, and variations in which this simple little product was now offered, I couldn’t help but admire what the 3M Corporation had done in developing a major product line out of a sticky little note pad.

To learn more about the continuing stream of product innovations, I called 3M and was fortunate enough to speak to Judy Boroski, a manager for 3M’s office products division.

I began the conversation by complimenting Judy on 3M’s success in building a successful product line out of such a simple little product. Mistake #1. Judy replied that 3M preferred to look at the product as a “sophisticated piece of technology that was easy for the customer to use, but difficult to develop and manufacture”.

Don’t laugh, it’s true. Judy was right. I had made a mistake I so often accuse others of making. Once accomplished, success always looks easy from the outside. It’s never as simple as it looks.

The unique adhesive that makes “Post-its” work was developed by Dr. Spencer Silver. After discovering the “adhesive that didn’t act like one”, the problem became one of what to do with it.

The first product applications were unsuccessful, but Dr. Silver kept it alive giving technical symposiums in the hope that the right application would eventually be found. Persistence is a virtue that can pay handsome dividends. If you believe in your idea, don’t abandon it when met with early resistance.

In 1974, Art Fry, another 3M manager, heard about Dr. Silver’s adhesive. Art, who sang in a church choir, was frustrated when the little slips of paper that he used to mark the places in his hymnal would fall out. An adhesive that would stick but wouldn’t stay, could be used as a page marker.

Art’s story as the “product champion” of the “Post-it” note has been well chronicled elsewhere, but I learned several interesting new insights in my conversation with Judy Boroski.

It took three years before 3M was ready to test market. The initial results were mixed. 3M recognized that normal advertising and promotion weren’t particularly effective with this new product.

If you have an innovative product, traditional promotional channels may not always be the most effective. Sometimes, the method you choose to reach the customer can be as important as the product or service that you are providing.

Understanding the “pass along” value of the “Post-it” product, the key to its promotion became sample distribution. While it was difficult to describe the product’s value, it was easy to see after you had used it.

The product was finally introduced nationally in 1980. That’s six years after Art Fry’s first application.

Simple product? In those same six years that “Post-its” were being prepared for market, a revolution took place in the computer industry. It wasn’t much more than six years from the time that John Kennedy announced our objective of placing a man on the moon to Neil Armstrong’s famous step.

The vast selection of “Post-it” products gives testimony to 3M’s ability to maintain a stream of innovative adaptations to the original product. They have obviously watched their customers carefully. When a need arose, 3M has been there with the product adaptation.

Could your business profit by introducing custom applications of existing products?. That’s the successful strategy behind the development of the “Post-it” business. Are your products being used for purposes that you hadn’t anticipated? Perhaps there’s a whole other market that you haven’t exploited as yet.

When the “Post-its” first came out, I began cutting them into smaller sizes for shorter notes and to use a page markers. I was gratified to see that within a year or two of their introduction, 3M began offering smaller sizes. They may be slow, but were responsive.

Among the stream of “Post-it” innovations, the special page marker “Post-it” is one of my favorites. Now knowing that Art Fry’s original application for the “Post-it” was as a page maker, I can’t believe that it took over ten years for a page marker “Post-it” to be introduced. That’s nearly as long as the spacecraft Voyager took on its mission to Neptune!

Because its your business, don’t overlook the possibilities for special applications of your existing products. Just don’t take forever to do it.

Y’ulz, I am an entrepreneur. Did y’ulz know that? Sometimes I can’t ‘touch you’ via blogging because I am ‘running this town tonight’.

N E wayz…

I hav a dream. And that dream is to cre8 my vry own facebook appy. It will be called FUCKVILLE, and its appeal is quite logical y’all. Basically, various small, lonely animals will wonder in and out of your fbook profile, and you will be offered the chance 2 ‘fuck them’.

A screenshot of how the average user will interface with Fuckville.

What do y’als think? Am basically pitching it to my VC bros as ‘the ultimate facebook app, a rollercoaster ride of sex, sheep and fuckery’. Think it’ll be a hit y’ulle? Am going to do a spot market research poll (for my FLYSWAT analysis later, pls leave your answer as a comment):

Will FUCKVILLE be a hit appy?

a) You’re a fucking genius Alex. Fucking fuck.

b) Of course it will. You can make an app out of anything and the laggards on the facebook adoption cycle will lap it up because they’re lower middle-class worker ants who drive third-hand hatchbacks and aspire to being head supervisor at the forklift company and playing Fuckville will allow them to ‘take back their time’ (via looking like they’re working)

c) No ways. Fucking sheep is sooooo 2000-and-late

d) If you release this app into the armies of spammy app-lapping tards on facebook I will kill myself and leave this blog post open on my laptop so ppl know why I did it.

e) There is already an app like this, except they call ‘fucking’ “farming”. Perhaps the similarity is intentional?

Appreciate your help on my individual journey to entrepreneurial greatness. If you would like the once-in-a-lifetime chance 2 be a part of this ’sure thing’ y’als can drop me a comment telling me the top 5 ‘animals people like 2 fuck’ & I will get back 2 you based on the acumen displayed in your insights. Thanks 4 helping me ‘work night and day’ 2 make the internet ‘a more fun place’ for y’ulz.

International Business Machines and a handful of other major marketers, including casino operator Harrah’s Entertainment and software giant Microsoft, are experimenting with developing ad campaigns based in part on what consumers are chatting about on the Web.

For decades, advertisers have relied heavily on sometimes-dated consumer surveys and focus groups to provide grist for their ads. Now, some are using new technologies to scan the Web for key words to find out what consumers are—and aren’t—saying about their brands. (By EMILY STEEL, The Wall Street Journal, NOVEMBER 23, 2009)

Read More

You’re in a long line outside an airport, waiting for a taxi and wondering how many people in front of you are going to the same place.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could pair up?  Save time, money and reduce carbon emissions – what’s not to like about that idea?

Well, there are a handful of websites that will help you do just that.  The one that first caught my eye is Taxi2 (www.taxi.to).  Your travelers can use it to find share-ride partners before a flight, or on the spot in the baggage area or taxi line.  It’s in beta mode,and does not yet have a mobile app, so expect it to get better with time.  It’s a co-venture with Virgin Atlantic Airways, and is currently free.

Other websites that help find shared taxi or limo riders are:

• Cab Easy – Less airport-specific, more urban areas.  Global in concept.
• Hitchsters – Limos, not taxis. Serves the NYC and San Francisco airports
• Ride Amigos – Ride-sharing in many forms.  Offers corporate programs.

Taxis are nearly impossible to source, so if you’re looking for ground-based savings, shared-ride services can make sense.  Yes, security is a question.  Each of these firms addresses the issue to some extent.    If you’re concerned about security, perhaps you could try a service like Ride Amigos where your employees agree to share rides only with fellow employees.

Or if you’re looking at a bigger picture, maybe you can use a service like Goose Networks to set up a car-pooling program for your entire employee base.  One way or the other, there’s help out there for controlling ground transport costs.

Please note: The term “Enterpriser” is not officially recognized in the English language, but for the purposes of this article it is used to describe someone who beings a business/enterprise in a certain mindset. This is used to compare the mindset with that of an entrepreneur. All will become clearer as you read the article.)

Over the years, many people who are employed will have the “employee seizure”, decide enough is enough, sack the boss and decide to start their own business.

But…

What is their goal?

Their ambition?

Their mindset?

Do they want to create just another job for themselves? Do they want to change the world? Do they want to be financially free?

The outcome will depend on whether you are an enterpriser or an entrepreneur.

What’s the difference between an ENTERPRISER and an ENTREPRENEUR?

Well let’s start by looking at what both words have in common with each other.

They are both the most OVER- and MIS- used words in business.

And that’s where the similarities stop.

Allow me to use an anecdote to illustrate what I mean.

I have a friend who “fired the boss” a few years ago, and set up his own car repair garage.

“I’m going to be free now Mo.” He told me…

“Free from the boss, free to choose my own working time, free to make my own money, free to do it my way… I’m going to be rich and have people working for me…”

I went to visit him recently, to see how he was getting on…

I found him in his portacabin office, hidden deep inside his Garage in Lambeth, London. He looked stressed, behind mountains of paper work, he was working out his VAT returns.

Not much work was happening on the garage front either, I caught sight of the painter having a cigarette and a cup of tea, talking into his mobile phone.

“Mo, this is so bloody stressful!” He told me, his bleary eyes confirming the sincerity of his words.

“I bloody hate this… I hate it, I hate it, I HATE IT!!!”

“Why?” I was shocked, as I know he is a great mechanic and a positive guy!

“I spend all my time in here, doing bloody paper work!! I have no time to do what I love, fix cars! It’s like I’ve been castrated!”

“WHOA! Easy there!!” No man is comfortable when the subject of castration is brought up!

That is when I began to realise something… The very thing that was supposed to set him free… had in actual fact locked him up and thrown away the key. When he went to unlock the garage in the morning, it was like he was voluntarily locking himself into his own prison cell.

He could no longer do what he loved, because of his “employee” mentality… He had just made another job for himself…

He was an enterpriser.

An enterpriser is someone who sets up a business, but he is also THE business. The business is so over reliant on him, that he cannot run the business, he is too busy trying to keep the business afloat by trying to do EVERYTHING in the business.

In short, the business would fall apart if he was to even be away for a day…

The enterprisers business is solely (and fatally) DEPENDENT on them… It could not function without them…

But what about the entrepreneur?

What makes them so special? So successful?

Entrepeneurs BUILD businesses. Like vehicles. They bring it all together, all the parts, they hire people to do the finances, hire people to do the labour, hire people to run the business day-to-day, whilst they focus on the over arching business strategy and direction.

In short, the business can run INDEPENDENT of them. If they were to disappear tomorrow, the business will keep running…

How do they do this?

That’s a whole book in itself, but in short, there are 3 key attributes…

PLANNING

SYSTEMS

and RESOURCEFULNESS

> Planning

Before firing the boss, the entrepreneur will plan. Plan how the business will be put together, who and what is needed, and what can be afforded. If something is needed, that cannot be afforded, then a way to do that function will be found. Further planning needs to be done on your idea too. Are you just making another job for yourself, or is there a real market for your business? How are you going to get to that market?

> Systems

By implementing systems, or a way of doing things, the business can have a standardised way of doing things. A way that can be taught to somebody else. A way that is not over reliant on one particular person. Look at McDonalds… they make burgers ALL over the world… but there’s a set system on how they make it… It means a vast array of different people, from all over the world, can be hired and trained, and will produce the EXACT same burger regardless of what continent you are in. An added benefit with systems is that you can begin to quantify the cost and value of your business functions, and look to maximise their value by tweaking the systems.

> Resourcefulness

How good are you at obtaining the full value of a resource?

Resources are EVERYWHERE!

There is never a shortage of money, people and capital. There is just a shortage of leaders who can be trusted to use them effectively.

If you cannot afford to hire an accountant, then can you outsource it? No? Can you sell the dream to a friend or acquaintance who is an accountant to forgo a short-term benefit, in view of a much higher long-term benefit? This will be absolutely key to the survival and blossoming of your business…

I must stress, this is an extremely SHORT and succinct article on a mammoth and diverse topic, which is only to stimulate and provoke your thought before you start jumping up and down and firing the boss.

I also must add a special mention for a fantastic not-for-profit organization here, called The Entrepreneurs Club (E-Club) who I have been working with for a while now, building my knowledge and pushing my mindset in the Pre Start Up Paradigm of Business. These guys have really helped me mature and liberate my thinking around Business and Entrepreneurship.

Here’s the street interview that first introduced me to E-Club, I hope you get some value from it…

I am in no way affiliated to them in a business sense, but I have been honoured to be invited on aboard their Entrepreneur Mastermind Program, and I have gained real value from it.

Check them out, and drop me a line if you want to discuss this article and it’s contents further…

Until next time, May peace be upon you all…

*Mohammed Ali

Mohammed Ali | Create your badge

I’m just returning from the Global Forum for Health Research meeting in Havana, Cuba. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Innovating for the Health of All.” As a veteran of the biotechnology industry I thought I knew something about innovation. After all, innovation has been the engine behind the emergence of biotechnology worldwide from a cottage industry in the late 1970s to a vital force for improving health care and building national wealth. But I encountered a new and puzzling use of the term innovation, in the form of “social innovation” to address global health needs.

To understand social innovation in the context of global health, I spoke with Rakgadi Mohlahlane, a senior researcher at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, whose focus is HIV medical education in Africa. She described one of the problems that she is passionate about addressing: how can one design programs for HIV therapy for residents of remote African villages? In South Africa, it is estimated that 5.2 million individuals are living with HIV among a population of 27 million people. The country has one of the world’s largest HIV treatment programs with about 5 million people taking antiretroviral (ARV) therapy, but it primarily reaches urban residents and has not penetrated into more remote, isolated settings.

Why does this problem require “social innovation?” Providing ARVs isn’t just a matter of sending pills along with instructions for use. First, the knowledge that someone is HIV-positive is profoundly transforming for the individual, for their family, and for their community contacts. And while testing is an essential first step in controlling the epidemic, it’s a step approached fearfully and is often avoided by individuals who may be HIV-positive. Infection is still a cause for social opprobrium, which is perhaps even more intense in small communities where it is difficult to find the refuge of anonymity. Second, there is an intense need for culturally appropriate medical education—on the value of knowing one’s HIV status, on the complex management of this disease, and on the appropriate precautions for both HIV-positive and HIV-negative individuals. Third, implementation plans have to take into account the dearth of medical professionals who can provide oversight of patients to stay on chronic therapies or make adjustments to regimens. ARVs can have serious side effects; regimens can be complicated; and poor compliance can result in the development of drug resistance. How do you effectively support a patient in an isolated village of 600 people who must take a chronic therapy for the rest of his or her life?

Think of the challenge of developing an HIV testing and treatment program for a rural and scientifically unsophisticated community in Africa. And then multiply by the tens of neglected diseases and hundreds of different community, religious, and social contexts around the globe. And that’s how I came to understand the need for social innovation in the context of global health.

– David Cook is the Vice President of Business Development at BIO Ventures for Global Health.

When I first started as an industry analyst in the 1980s IBM software was in dire straits. It was the era where IBM was making the transition from the mainframe to a new generation of distributed computing. It didn’t go really well. Even with thousands of smart developers working their hearts out the first three foresees into a new generation of software were an abysmal failure. IBM’s new architectural framework called SAA(Systems Application Architecture) didn’t work; neither did the first application built on top of that called OfficeVision. It’s first development framework called Application Development  Cycle (AD/Cycle) also ended up on the cutting room floor.  Now fast forward 20 years and a lot has changed for IBM and its software strategy.  While it is easy to sit back and laugh at these failures, it was also a signal to the market that things were changing faster than anyone could have expected. In the 1980s, the world looked very different — programming was procedural, architectures were rigid, and there were no standards except in basic networking.

My perspective on business is that embracing failure and learning from them is the only way to really have success for the future. Plenty of companies that I have worked with over my decades in the industry have made incredible mistakes in trying to lead the world. Most of them make those mistakes and keep making them until they crawl into a hole and die quietly.  The companies I admire of the ones that make the mistakes, learn from them and keep pushing. I’d put both IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle in that space.

But I promised that this piece would be about IBM. I won’t bore you with more IBM history. Let’s just say that over the next 20 years IBM did not give up on distributed computing. So, where is IBM Software today? Since it isn’t time to write the book yet, I will tease you with the five most important observations that I have on where IBM is in its software journey:

1. Common components. If you look under the covers of the technology that is embedded in everything from Tivoli to Information Management and software development you will see common software components. There is one database engine; there is a single development framework, and a single analytics backbone.  There are common interfaces between elements across a very big software portfolio. So, any management capabilities needed to manage an analytics engine will use Tivoli components, etc.

2. Analytics rules. No matter what you are doing, being able to analyze the information inside a management environment or a packaged application can make the difference between success and failure.  IBM has pushed information management to the top of stack across its software portfolio. Since we are seeing increasing levels of automation in everything from cars to factory floors to healthcare equipment, collecting and analyzing this data is becoming the norm. This is where Information Management and Service Management come together.

3. Solutions don’t have to be packaged software. More than 10 years ago IBM made the decision that it would not be in the packaged software business. Even as SAP and Oracle continued to build their empires, IBM took a different path. IBM (like HP) is building solution frameworks that over time incorporate more and more best practices and software patterns. These frameworks are intended to work in partnership with packaged software. What’s the difference? Treat the packages like ERP as the underlying commodity engine and focus on the business value add.

4. Going cloud. Over the past few years, IBM has been making a major investment in cloud computing and has begun to release some public cloud offerings for software testing and development as a starting point. IBM is investing a lot in security and overall cloud management.  It’s Cloud Burst appliance and packaged offerings are intended to be the opening salvo.   In addition, and probably even more important are the private clouds that IBM is building for its largest customers. Ironically, the growing importance of the cloud may actually be the salvation of the Lotus brand.

5. The appliance lives. Even as we look towards the cloud to wean us off of hardware, IBM is putting big bets on hardware appliances. It is actually a good strategy. Packaging all the piece parts onto an appliance that can be remotely upgraded and managed is a good sales strategy for companies cutting back on staff but still requiring capabilities.

There is a lot more that is important about this stage in IBM’s evolution as a company. If I had to sum up what I took away from this annual analyst software event is that IBM is focused at winning the hearts, minds, and dollars of the business leader looking for ways to innovate. That’s what Smarter Planet is about. Will IBM be able to juggle its place as a software leader with its push into business leadership? It is a complicated task that will take years to accomplish and even longer to assess its success.

It looks like that this week the Spanish Government is to approve the so called Law of Sustainable Economy in order to change the Spanish production model.

It seems however that the two main factors to achieve this goal have less to do with innovation and future-oriented economic sectors than with new ways of working in organizations (more collaborative and cross functional) and with leveraging the value of people (their responsibility and ability to improve). At least, these are the conclusions of a workshop hold  in the Madrid Science Park on November 18th.

This workshop was attended by representatives of SMEs, companies like Oasis Hotel Group, entrepreneurs, representatives of the Central State, local governments and Universities, while a majority of the participants were SMEs with a will to change.

Among the more interesting findings we can describe the gap between the discourse on sustainable model, innovation and training versus the actual practice of business in Spain and the great difficulty in SME environments to implement the recommendations of the discourse.

As one participant said “it is more difficult to maintain a hairdresser shop than to manage an international finance department. What may be regarded as an exaggeration relates to the fact that large companies already have resources to cope with complexity, while local SMEs in traditional sectors (those who want change in Spain) do not manage complexity, but the uncertainty.

The workshop was designed to check if the speech production model change is applicable to real cases.

So when the participants defined the most important variables when adressing the change of their production model, they were asked to design plans to be implemented in real life by three micro SMEs among workshop attendees.

It was very interesting to note the great difficulty in translating the theoretical recommendations into concrete plans of. And they were by no means that theoretical! It should be noted that these recommendations do not emerge from a panel of academic experts, but from the comparison in the workshop of more than 10 reported cases of organizational transformation by their very protagonists: companies that have already reinvented themselves.

Especially important to me seemed comments from the public sector representatives, in the sense that they should be tied to the reality of SMEs if they want their policies to succeed, and that change means changing the dynamics within the real existing organizations.

Another significant finding was that the technology does not plays such pushing role as it used to be during the boom of new technologies It is  rather the ability of people to use technology to build competitiveness what matters. As for innovation, what can be said about a word that works as a perch were each one hangs his own piece of clothe? The important aspect on innovation is not so much whether it is technological, organizational, commercial, etc.. as if it is able to put the organization on a more competitive position, building on the employee’s self-reliance and capacity to improve.

Finally, three organizations left the workshop with an action plan in their hands, that will be monitored and advised by ValueCreation to see if in practice it is possible to make the much desired change in the production model in traditional Spanish SMEs and organizations, as well as to identify and what are the key elements of this process.

This recent tragedy at Fort Hood was only the latest in a series of crises that would likely have been prevented if the U.S. Government had adopted a logical holistic system design when I first began making the argument more than a decade ago. Since that time we’ve witnessed trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives lost; 9/11 and two wars, Katrina’s turf battles and incompatible communications, the mortgage bubble and global financial crisis, and now the Fort Hood massacre. The current trajectory of systems design and function isn’t sustainable.

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”  – Thomas Jefferson

While this particular tragedy is still under investigation, patterns are emerging that are very similar to previous crises, including 9/11. So let’s take a closer look at this event relative to what is currently possible with organizational design and state-of-the-art technology in order to better understand how to prevent the next crisis, for it will surely occur unless prevented by a logical holistic system design.

Crisis prevention by organizational design

It is true that some crises cannot be prevented, but it’s also true that most human caused crisis can be, particularly those that are systemic, including all cases cited here. In fact many tragedies are reported to have been prevented by intelligence agencies today without our detailed knowledge, some of which would undoubtedly help inform our democracy if declassified, but we are still obviously missing preventable catastrophic events that we can ill afford to endure as a nation; economically or otherwise.

“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exist.” – Eric Hoffer.

In each of the cases mentioned here, including Fort Hood, actionable evidence was available either on the Web or within the content of digital files residing on agency computer networks, but were not shared with the appropriate individuals or partners in the decision chain, usually due to careerism, turf protection, and justified fear of retribution.

It is difficult for leaders to understand that members in a hierarchical bureaucracy are often punished by micro social cultures for doing the right thing, such as sharing information or taking action to prevent tragedy. A good report from the field on 9/11 is Coleen Rowley’s Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2002.

Interests are not aligned: Denial does not a better system make.

“The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime.…” – Albert Einstein

The reality is that interests of the individual and that of the organization are often not well aligned, so therefore system designs need to reflect this reality with intentional realignment. However, in the case of the Fort Hood massacre, red flags were so prevalent that many of us are asking the logical question: “How explicit must a threat be before the systems will require action?”

Red flags were hidden from those who need to know.

In the case of Fort Hood, as was the case with 9/11, the U.S. Government apparently again experienced a data firewall between agency cultures, supported in previous cases by fear-induced interpretation of regulations and defensive micro cultures within agencies. The Washington Post reported that an FBI-led task force was monitoring emails of the suspect Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, some of which were shared with a Washington field office, but were not shared with the military, to include apparently Hasan’s supervisors who clearly were in the camp of ‘need to know’. A properly designed architecture as described in our recent hypothetical use case scenario for the DHS would have automatically alerted those in the decision chain who were pre-determined to ‘need to know’ when certain phrases are present, including the base commander and security officer in this case who may have prevented the tragedy in a manner that did not compromise the subject’s rights to privacy or freedom of religion.

“The status quo is the only solution that cannot be vetoed.” – Clark Kerr

One such semantic phrase for example that should probably be immediately shared with base commanders and counter terrorist experts would be: “communicating with known terrorists”. No one in the chain of command, including criminal investigators, should be empowered to prevent that information from reaching those in a position to prevent tragedy, whether a national security threat or localized. Indeed, logic suggests that local surveillance might be necessary in order to define the threat, if any.

Crisis Prevention by Technical Design

Among the many academic disciplines influencing modern enterprise architecture are organizational management, computer science (CS), and predictive theory, which manifests in the modern work place environment as network design, computer languages, and mathematical algorithms. The potential effectiveness of these disciplines depends primarily on three dynamically interrelated factors:

1. Availability and quality of the data.

“A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”  – James Madison.

The problem reflected in the decades-old phrase GIGO (garbage-in garbage-out) used in computer science influenced the holistic semantic design of Kyield more than any other factor. Rather than attacking the root of the problem at the source and investing in prevention, CS in general and consumer search in particular have teetered at the edge of chaos by combining clever algorithms and massive computing power to convert unstructured data (GI) to relevance (GO). While search and conversion of unstructured data has improved substantially in the past decade, it cannot compare to a logically designed QIQO (quality-in quality-out) system. Evolving to a QIQO environment from GIGO in organizational computing requires a holistic solution that is focused on prevention, improving work quality, and enhanced innovation.

It became apparent during several years of extensive applied R&D shortly after the commercialization of the Internet and WWW that embedding intelligence in files would result in far more functionality and efficiency, particularly within enterprise networks.

Without availability of high quality data that provides essential transparency while protecting privacy, the potential of enterprise computing is severely hampered, and in some cases has already become more of the problem than the solution. Once essential data is collected containing carefully tailored embedded intelligence, the task of preventing crises can be semi-automated.

2. Interoperability through data barriers.

“It doesn’t work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps.” – American proverb.

Unlike other industries in previous technical revolutions, the U.S. has generally embraced a laissez-faire approach to technical standards, resulting in proprietary standards that are leveraged for market share. Unfortunately, the result in technology has been much like that in finance, although largely invisible with costs of inoperability transferred to customers. Unfettered innovation can have tragic consequences. In the network era, inoperable systems have increasingly contributed to some our greatest challenges; including crisis prevention, cost reduction and inefficiencies in healthcare, and reduced innovation and productivity in the workplace. So in our case, even though voluntary standards are less than ideal, we’ve embraced the W3C standards for public transactions.

3. Data constructs and analytics

“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.” — Edward R. Morrow

Once the essential data is collected, many of our great current challenges in organizations become within reach:

• Red flagging can be automated while protecting jobs and privacy.
• Realignment of interests between the individual and organization.
• Accountability and meritocracy is far more achievable.
• Original work by individuals and teams can be protected.
• Information overflow can finally be managed well.
• Creativity and innovation can be enhanced.
• Predictive and ‘what if?’ modeling /algorithms are much easier.
• Formerly essential unknowns about the org become known.
• The organization can become more adaptive to change.
• Cultural management and continuous learning is manifest.
• Rich visual metrics of formerly unknown patterns become routine.

Crisis Review

To his credit Secretary Gates has called for a system-wide review of the Fort Hood tragedy, which will coincide with reviews by the Army, White House, and Congress.

However, it would be irresponsible not to emphasize that the underlying stresses that likely contributed to this tragedy are directly related to not preventing previous crises. The result of previous failures to adopt logically functional systems is that now our macro-fiscal situation in the U.S. is so degraded that future prevention requires a much greater effort than would have been the case a decade ago.

Preventing systemic crises and related security (economic and warfare) are the foremost reasons for our government agencies to exist, and was the primary motivation for creating Kyield, even if the holistic design provides many other side benefits. The system problem has now been solved by design; but it has yet to funded and adopted.

“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” – Thomas Jefferson

INNOVATIVE THOUGHTS: EDUCATING OUR WAY INTO THE FUTURE

by Sarah Firisen at 3 Quarks Daily:

The conclusion I draw from these premises is that not only are we not educating our children to be creative, innovative, inventive leaders for the 21st century, we are not even improving our ability to compete in traditional left-brained-based activities with other countries.  When it comes to educating our children, we not encouraging creativity we are actively discouraging it, devaluing it. Children start kindergarten or preschool as creative little people who love to learn and to explore the world around them. And slowly, but surely, this is driven out of them wherever, whenever possible by our education system.

More here.

Firisen’s post connects with with Sir Ken Robinson’s ideas about education and creativity and with the previously posted series Physical Education and Success Unexpected: Learning What Can’t Be Taught. More on related issues will be examined in the upcoming series Invisible Cities (about the relationship between community and innovation) and Flying as Well as Creeping Things (about the role of language in novel thinking).

Over the last couple of months I have been writing about a handful of US Economic Indicators.  While I have reviewed these over the last few years of my life, I had not done so on a regular basis.  This inconsistent and let’s call it a casual curiosity lead to never really understanding the implications behind the numbers.  Sure I could talk about them, but I could not leverage them.  While not an expert by any means, I can see a lot more now than I did when I started this blog series.

This is similar to ad-hoc analysis without purpose.  We do something once and create a little hype.  When we don’t have any vehicle to take advantage of the newly found ideas, the idea dies as does the learning.

Think about the process of how you handle ad-hoc analytics within your organization:

• Do you have the right minds constantly looking for new issues?
• Or, do you put the right minds on solving issues when they arise?
• Can you name your best analytical minds?  Are they assigned to thought leadership and problem solving?
• Do you use your analytical minds to challenge the knowledge levels of others?
• How do you foster new thinking?

Consistency breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds knowledge

The last 5, 10 or 15 years have seen unparalleled changes in the way we interact as human beings. The Internet has broken down so many barriers and the pace of change has been incredible – it is the quickest evolving, if not the most important, technology in the history of the world (in terms of speed of reaching such vast numbers of people). It has destroyed old business models and made new ones and development on each ‘version’ of the web (the original internet, Web 2.0, the semantic web, the real-time web) has jumped light years.

And yet we are still stuck with the same interface through which we work ever since the personal computer became a viable option for the home. The monitor, keyboard & mouse setup is old and needs to be revised – the QWERTY keyboard itself was designed to slow people down. If computing and the Internet has changed the rules of what is possible then imagine what would happen if we designed a device to fully exploit it’s potential.

There are a few companies working on this. One of the most powerful forces in the market of course is Apple who, ironically, are most responsible for the current operating structure with the original Macintosh. They have reinvented the way we use mobile devices with the iPhone and everyone is waiting patiently to see what happens when, rather than if these days, the iTablet is released. But there’s also smaller companies working on this issue like Litl who have designed a new style of netbook. Their device aims to take the netbook to the next logical stage – to being a multi-functional home-entertainment device. And it looks good to boot.

Will it sell? At the price point they’ve originally set, somewhere in between a netbook and a MacBook, I can’t see it being snapped up in huge quantities by consumers. But it’s a start to a change that is so necessary. We need to change the perception of how we work with internet-enabled devices. It is amazing to me that even today, internet-enabled TVs are not more widely available when more content is uploaded online every week than has ever been made in the history of television.

The ‘Internet of Things’ is an emerging space and we can expect to see a huge number of advances in the next decade as more than just our laptops are connected. There are massive opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs to build successful companies and great products and I think it’s those people with greatest imagination and looking further into the future that can make the most of the possibilities. I look forward to watching the revolution unfold.

(reposted from my blog at www.iesetech.com)

The Creativity World Forum 2009 will be held in Germany in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, for the first time . It will have an interdisciplinary, international character that seeks to surpass traditionally defined spheres and encourage more lateral thinking. The event also plans to invigorate cooperation between creative industries in different countries. It will take place from 12/1/2009 – 12/3/2009 in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

Internationale Veranstaltung für kreative Talente und Entscheider
Das Creativity World Forum 2009 bietet in einem Kongress am 1. und 2. Dezember Redner/innen und Panels auf internationalem Top-Niveau, ein hochkarätiges künstlerisches und politisches Rahmenprogramm und zahlreiche Gelegenheiten zum Networking und knüpfen neuer Geschäftskontakte.
Die Ausstellung und Vorträge finden vom 1.12.2009 – 3.12.2009 in Ludwisburg, Deutschland statt.
Creativity World Forum

© Flavia Westerwelle

TransDomo,LLC
Klaus Westerwelle
33 Market Point Drive
Greenville, SC 29607
Phone: 864.908.0690
Email: info@transdomo.com
Transdomo
Westerwelle