innovationguy.com

Over the last two days I was pointed to two interesting on-line moneymakers. They were interesting in how they make money. One sells something that is ubiquitous and in most caes considered a nuisance, while the other harnesses the power of a distributed crowd to provide a service at a very low cost.

The first example is http://www.prairietumbleweedfarm.com/ where Linda Katz of Garden City, Kansas sells, you guessed it, tumbleweeds on the internet. The original post I ran across is over at Unusual Business Ideas That Work. This excerpt from the linked article pretty much explains the origin of the business.

“It all started as a joke,”says Katz, 49. She asked her son to build her a family Web page so she could communicate with friends and give it the tongue-in-cheek name Prairie Tumbleweed Farm. Never mind that she didn’t even live on a farm, but in a subdivision. Nevermind that you can’t cultivate tumbleweed, which spreads its seed as it tumbles in the wind. For authenticity’s sake, Katz added a price list ($35 for a big weed, $25 for a midsize one, $20 for the small economy model)

So tongue-in-cheek or not, Katz created a business when she wasn’t looking for one. It turns out that her buyers range from people looking to decorate their houses, to movie studios, to academic researchers, to people in love with Westerns, and even for tumbleweed Christmas trees (picture at right by erissiva). Seth Godin has a comment on this site on how this site emerged totally from organic search engine traffic.

The second site is www.pickydomains.com where they have an original take on making money off the domain name trade. Most people make money (some say a lot) by speculating on domain names. Some companies can hire consultants for thousands of dollars to come up with a catchy and traffic-driving domain name. Pickydomains takes the “power of the crowds” approach. As a person/entity wanting to use their service, you pay $50 and a list of requirements for your domainname. For example you would provide the basic site type, hyphens/no-hyphens, .com or other, mandatory keywords, etc. Pickydomains would post this to their list of users, a large list. The users would submit possible solutions. If the users’s submission is chosen, pickydomains shares half the $50 fee. PickyDomains also can buy any ones the customers don’t want, but they think are worth something. If they don’t provide something you are interested in, they refund your fee. This is a great example of having a crowd solve a problem that it is difficult to solve as an individual or a small group. Interesting business idea. If you do to the site you can see some exmples of successful wins. The one comment I have is that this service is too inexpensive. Just like the previous post Here, people expectation are linked to evironment and pre-text.

I have been doing quite  a bit of driving lately and have been using the opportunity to go back and listen to some of the older killer innovations podcasts that were put out before I discovered Phil McKinney.   If you are interested in creativity, innovation, or how to bring new ideas life and are not a listener, you should be.    He is not a consultant, or guru, or professor,  or someone trying to sell a book.  He is the real deal and does this in a business setting for a well known and large corporation.   Listen and you will see.

If you are new and really want to dig in quickly to, then a recent post on his site lists the 5 most downloaded podcasts.   One of my personal favorites is the Sept 11th 2006 podcast that is a recording of a talk given at Reuters.  It really captures very succinctly some of what he has developed over many years as an innovation champion.

As someone who has lead an “innovation team”  in a corporate setting,  I wish I had known about him before undertaking that endevor.    Give him a listen,  If you don’t find it useful, write me an email.

Here a a couple of interesting links.

1. Scientists at NIST show DNA wrapped SWCNT of 200nm or less enter ex-vitro lung cells where longer ones don’t.  Not sure if this is like saying 200nm DNA stands enter lung cells, while longer DNA stands don’t?  Another confusion in the the debate on the safety of “nanomaterials”.  How does your company deal with  EHS and nanotubes?
2. I had a long drive this past weekend and was listening up on Phil McKinney’s Killer Innovations Podcasts from 2006.  This one on “Listening Skills and Rules of Future Forecasting”  was one that I enjoyed.
3. Ditto on the Podcast  “Observation Skills and Contradictions”  deals with a quick exercise for improving observation and the most concise and true-ringing explanation of TRIZ I have seen anywhere.
4. So how do you really test how building behave in an earthquake?  You build one on top of a giant shaker table and deck it out with sensors.  Pretty Amazing.
5. Inkblot Earth has a post about The first person killed by a robot.   Not the science fiction of Asimov, but  interesting.
6. Endless Innovation has a post from Design Sojourn about 7 ways to unleash your creativity  originally from IDEO.   (three level link action).  Those IDEO guys are great,  I got to meet a few through work.
7. Again with IDEO,  The 10 Faces of Innovation changed my outlook on how people work and what drives them.

I just made a post recently about Glowing Bacteria and how it is a good example of “convergence problem solving”. Basically where you are leveraging advances in adjacent fields with your core piece or expertise of technology to really do something beyond the scope of any of the individual pieces you are combing.

I think this advancement is a great example for a creavity excercise I call “List Combination”. This is a great example of convergence for one application. Where else can I use this same solution to make money in another application or field? (Something we all wish we could do more of?)

It basically works like this. In this case I have a new technology which might turn out to have a short list of useful attibutes (lets us use 3, while this technique works well with less 3 or 4, you’ll see why later, any more you can’t get it done).

• It allow you to spread out a liquid or paste
• Detect something you usually can’t see
• Does it quickly in a remote location (with a device you can carry).

S o here is the excercise. Start by making a couple of lists of answers to questions based on your 3 attributes. Be careful and general in your question definition. In my case I would use.

1. What can I spread a paste or liquid onto?
2. What would I like to detect that I can’t see?
3. Where (or in what context) do I need to know something is present?

Now make a list of answers to your questions. Set a target # that you want to work with for each list (example start with 25). It is really important to set a target for the list length, because you have to make it high enough to get out of the context you have already created in your mind. This is really effective if you can get someone to help you that you haven’t told the example technology to yet.

The next step is to build the three possible 2-D matrices where Lists 1-3 are your axis. So cross lists 1/2, 2/3, and 1/3. I do this in Excel . Basically start picking cells at random and decide if the juxtaposition you have created for each X & Y combination makes sense. If so put a X or a green color in the box. For those you don’t like or don’t make sense color them grey or red. Do this for all threee matrices separately. Then take the green squares and list out your combinations or your short lists of only the green cells.

At this point you will have 3 lists of pairs based on your three lists. Now iterate through these combination lists with whatever 3rd axis you didn’t do in teh combination. So these are the three: (If I have 4 attributes, I choose to do only the best 2 combinations I see and combine those, 6 combinations to start with is too many)

1. Intersection of List 1 & 2, with List 3
2. Intersection of List 2 & 3, with List 1
3. Intersection of List 1 & 3, with List 2

Given this activity you should be able to generate 3-5 good adjacent markets or uses for this convergence technology that you can then go and explore in detail. I really like this because of the juxataposition that occurs as you do the list comparisons. Set your lists big enough that you have to get outside your first assumption. And this really works in 2 or 3 man teams. Sometimes those crazy combinations get you very far away from what you were thinking.

Good luck and think about this next time you have to look at the “Where else can I take this Convergence Technology?” type of problem.

If you use this to solve a problem, let me know by dropping me an email or comment.

Disclaimer: I cannot remember seeing an example of this anywhere but can’t be sure that someone else didn’t come up with this method 1st as it seems pretty intuitive.

The Innovation index

• Is your company on it?
• Do you agree with the list?
• Who is missing?

How is the Innovation Index doing today?

I guess the list originated from this Business Week Article.

I think everyone knows someone that thery would call a creative or innovative person. Hopefully you have had the experience of working for an innovative/creative boss also.

I was thinking to myself there are a lot of lists of “what leaders do”, or “traits for a leader” or ” the Successful Manager”, but I haven’t really seen one for the  innovation manager.
That is until I ran across this list that Sanjay Dalal has up on his website “Top Ten Creative Leadership Traits”.

So what are the top ten characteristics and traits of Creative Leaders?

1. Great at generating many ideas – innovative, game changing and even commonplace.
2. Always looking to experiment with good ideas. Sometimes, trying out a few times.
3. Unwavering belief in their creativity and innovation, coupled with originality in thinking.
4. Smart and bright with a positive self-image. More often, they are not born geniuses.
5. Passionate, expressive and sensitive to their teams, colleagues and surroundings.
6. Demonstrate superior judgment, and do not make quick decisions (although have a gut feel).
7. Non-conformists and independent, requiring less social approval than most people.
8. Innate ability to understand and solve the problem, and manage the consequences.
9. Born dreamers with strong imagination; however, manage to keep things in perspective.
10. Create and launch game changing products meeting a high level of quality and design.

One thing that I don’t see captured here is the ability to motivate and inspire his team.  This is an essential part of the equation.  The good leaders can do this  with what seems like  little effort.  Some people call it charisma or presence, but if it more than just like-ability.  It is that trait that will cause people to get behind someone and unify towards a common targeted goal.

Do you know a creative leader?  Did they have some of the traits on this list?

Here are a couple interesting articles thrown together here for your clicking pleasure.

1.  Guy Kawasaki has a great post talking about some studies on which is more effective:  a raise or a bonus?
2. Innoblog  has a great post on Cisco pulling an  “if you can’t beat em buy em” move purchasing WebEx for $3.2 billion.     Seems to me a great example of a large company  co-opting a disruptive technology for themselves.
3. Innoblog has another post on  an example of entering your market with a more expensive product/service positioned against non-use as opposed to fighting the dominant and lowest cost supplier in an already developed market. For those of you familiar with “The Innovator’s Solution” or “Seeing what’s next” will recognize this as an example strategy from these texts.
4. Seth Godin Points to Amazon adapting the citation model so popular in the science citation index.  Which books link to your favorite book and which books does your favorate reference?
5. Endless Innovation points to this article on Wired blog about the history of the computer mouse.  Interesting to remind yourself how that ubiquitous interface we all use started and developed to what it is.

Hugh MacLeod from GapingVoid fame has a whole series of articles on “How to be creative.”  You really should check them out if you haven’t read them  before.  Although the Hugh was approaching this from a artist point of view, there is some universality to  some of these comments that each person can adapt as needed.   One that happened to strike a cord with me today was:

“6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”……..”

This really is very qutie striking. The engineer and scientist in me likes the order and rules that we build up to explain the world, control our environment, and make the future.   We  didn’t start out with models, or rules,  or equations, we had to be trained.  All of us started out as uncontrolled little minds that didn’t know or care for the rules.   We dripped of “outside the box” thinking and creativity, but over time had to learn the proper way of things.

S o what does this have to do with you or your career or innovation?   Well a couple of things.   One is the importance of stepping out of your training and experience to imagine what might be possible if you ignored the rules temporarily.   What opportunities do you miss because you use the current paradigm that everyone accepts?  Have you ever had a situation where an answer was simple and elegeant, yet it was counter-intuitive to the “right way”?    What happens when you remove the lens through which you view reality and replace it with someone else’s?

Second is to leverage those fresh perspectives when you have a chance to come across them.  One great example of this is the finding yourself in a situation where you have a fresh employee to your company or a fresh new team member?   Take this blessing and use it.   Give them enough information to see the problem and then step away.  Let them identify the problem details and come up with those solutions that you would never think of due to your “training”.

After reading the article do any of you have a favorite.  “guest author” spot up for grabs.  Just shoot me and email.

This is pretty simple but at the same time quite stimulating.   I ran across this app that looks to be a front-end for images.google.com.   It is called the “Google Image Ripper“.

I am not sure of the original motivation for building it but I find it fabulous for random association generation.  For example search for a word that you think you have an idea of what a search would return.  Here are some simple exaples.

•  Paint
•  Flower
•  Water
•  General Electric

I don’t know about you, but you see some of what you expect,  but ever 4-5 images you get something that doesn’t make sense at first glance.  Why is that here?  Where is article for the image?   What story can I tell about the image?  What does the image tell me?

Next time you need a new direction or perspective, give it a try.   This also works with Flickr or some of the other photo sites,  but I really like this clean interface.

I can’t really improve on Guy’s post linking to this interview with Eric Schmidt of Google.  Check out the original podcast over at iinnovatecast.com.   Good stuff in the interview on disruptive technology, managing innovation, and non-traditional organizational structures.  Worth the listen.