innovationguy.com

I was browsing around google images today. I always enjoy seeing what comes up visually with certain search terms. I was looking at “innovation” this time. Actually a word a do a lot of searching about and thinking about. I ran across this image below at loosetech.com .

This image caught my eye as I have always been a fan of mind-mapping type concepts. This particular image is by Brandy Agerbeck, a Chicago artist and graphic facilitator. Here is the specific link to her gallery of graphic facilitation. The except describing this work is:

This is a drawing summarizing 3 speakers talking about Innovation: Craig Sampson of IDEO, David Ormesher of Closerlook and Robin Cook, participant in the Innovation University. I drew this in real time during the talk using black pens in a variety of line widths, a silver pen and two oranges.

One thing I really like about this type of work is how it captures the essence of a subject talks. You can really see the relatedness of the conversation that went on that day. Compared to what I usually use for capturing the contents of a talk/presentation/meeting, this type of real-time graphic captures ten times the data and meaning. Below two other examples of graphic facilitation by the same artist: a talk by Tom Friedman of “The world is Flat“, and a talk by Tim Hurson about “Think Better”

If you are interested in mind-mapping or topic-mapping or more information on this, I ran across this link that give some great examples.

It you work in a materials business like I do you probably have noted the emergence of eco-friendly or green products pushed in the marketplace. Working in a company that has had a eco-slant for quite some time now it is interesting to see the up-tick in awareness in green/eco. I am still a little cautious of green for green’s sake, but have had an awakening per se recently after listening the Ted Talk below. The talk in question was by John Doerr entitled “Seeking Salvation and profit in greentech”.

John Doerr is quite a legend in the VC community and has helped to fund many startups that are now in the common venacular (Amazon, Netscape, Google, and Compaq for instance) as a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. His Bio is is here is you are interested in learning more. He goes so far as to say that “going green may be the “biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.” His theme of the talk centers around the situation that our actions have put us in and that he absolutely thinks that we must correct the problems we have created in the past century with mismanagement of our environment. What is really refreshing in his talk is that he does not think that legislation alone will bring the change needed. He urges that the real solution to our plight is the combination of greentech and business acumen. Greentech that also saves money is the key to widespread adoption. He cites a few early examples of this. Listen to the talk and see what you think. Then analyze in what areas of your business can you create and sell solutions that not only make sense from a financial point of view but also from an environmental point of view?

While browsing TEDTalks in anticipation of the 2008 installment, I ran across this gem by Richard St. John. I thought it was one of the most concise statements of what I have heard from many people I respect. Richard aggregated this view by interviewing 500 successful people over a 7 year period.

1. Passion (Do it for the love not the money)
2. Work (Hard work, be a worka-frolic)
3. Good (Get damn good at something)
4. Focus (x-ray vision focus)
5. Push (through shy-ness and self-doubt)
6. Serve (others something they value)
7. Ideas (have them)
8. Persist (through the Criticism, Rejection, and Pressure)

I was reading over at endless innovation this post which points to a presentation by Amy Smith at TED.

I found the presentation to be quite refreshing and eye-opening. She specializes in designing solutions for the other 90% of the world. Engineering solutions to common, but life-threatening problems in developing countries. Highlighted in the talk are designs for cleaner burning cooking fuels made from local resources that achieve equivalent performance to wood based charcoal.

For those of us that develop products or design something for a living, it was a kick in the teeth. Many of us work very hard to solve difficult problems (sometimes very niche I must admit) with some of the very latest technology at our disposal. This is a reminder of:

#1 Try to solve those problems that are important.

#2 Get your head up out of “the way” things are done and look at what works.

#3 Look at how to match your resources, methods, and economics with the environment and situation at hand.

TEDTalk - Ideas worth spreading.

Guy Kawasaki has a great interview with Jeffrey Pfeffer (Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University) related to his book What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management. What really struck me as interesting was how true some of sentiments rang with me. I few Questions and Answers that really hit home are quoted below.

Question: What can companies do to get smarter?
Answer: Companies learn just like people learn—by trying new things and seeing what happens. That requires, first, a tolerance for failure, since by definition, learning means doing things you aren’t very good at.Second, it requires structured self-reflection—after-action or after-event reviews so that instead of having one year of experience repeated 20 times, people and companies actually accumulate learning over time.”

Question: What are the characteristics of a good work week and vacation policy?
Answer: We live in a world where ideas and innovation are paramount. But people can’t be creative if they are exhausted. And when people work when they are tired, they make mistakes. If we have learned anything from the quality movement, it is that the cost of finding and fixing mistakes is greater than the cost of preventing them. So, give people time off. And, by the way, the younger generations want a life as well as work. Work-life balance is a great way to attract—and retain—great people.

Question: What are the characteristics of a good incentive plan?
Answer: Incentives should be large enough to provide an occasion for celebrating success but not so large as to distort behavior. And incentives can include recognition and things other than money. Companies get themselves into trouble all the time by being too clever with their incentives.
Stock options did reward leaders for getting the price of the stock up—it’s just that it was often for a short period, and was accomplished by distorting earnings. Be careful what you pay for—you might just get it.

Question: What role should budgets play in the management of an organization?
Answer: Budgets should be general guidelines. As hard and fast rules, they become subject to “gaming.” People delay doing sensible things, push expenses around, hide sales, etc. And also, budgets often just reward the best forecasters and negotiators. It is possible to make “budget” as you lose market share and go broke, as long as the targets are set low enough.

Think about your organization and how these questions and opinions line up with what your company does or does not do? How would some of this advise go over at your company? Is it unconventional or down-right heresy? Have some of the effects mentioned by actions in these questions come true at your organization?

I have a couple of interesting links that people may be interested in.

• My friend forwarded this transcript of a pre-commencement lecture given by Narayana Murthy (chief mentor and chairman of the board, Infosys Technologies) at the New York University (Stern School of Business) on May 9. The theme of the lecture was the great impact that chance events played in shaping his life. Quite a good lecture. It really got me thinking as to the random events that lead to long friendships, family, professional success, and perception altering moments.

• I got a note in my email today with links to 3 new TED Talks.
  • John Doerr: Seeking salvation and profit in greentech
  • Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo on SeaDragon and PhotoSynth (AMAZING)
  • Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: How to help Africa? Do business there

• Also some interesting articles in SmallTimes this month. NanoDynamics is planning an IPO.

• The rankings for the top Schools with Nano programs according to SmallTimes is out. ( or the quick view for the impatient).
• The SmallTimes mergers and acquisitions summary this month seem to have quite a few interesting tid-bits.

  • Xradia with it’s minaturized microscope offerings with some new funding.
    
  • NaturalNano Funding deal is in there (Notice the much improved website with their new money).
  • SolarDiesel with a huge buyout deal on the plans to builds the worlds largest biodiesel plant.
  • Arrowhead Research Corporation continues its end-run to gobble up all the SWNT patents it can find with the purchase of C Sixty Inc. and CNI

• This story from Seth Godin about alignment is concise and to the point.

“When there’s a gap between someone doing her job and doing the right thing, then management has failed.”

The team over at iinnovate.com always surprise me with the quality of their guests for their interviews. This latest interview with Carly Fiorina formerly CEO of HP is no exception.  Min Li Chan and Min Liu ask some very good questions which dig out some great answers and advise from Carly.

Carly gives some really great perspectives in this interview.  Here are a couple of my favorite questions:

When asked asked what element of being a CEO was most challenging at HP she Carly stated:

“The most challenging part about being CEO of HP was that we had to transform the company. It was a great company with a great history, but it was also a company that was lagging further and further behind when I arrived. ….. <stats on missed financials, lack of innovation , etc>… We had a great deal of change that needed to be done, and change is always very difficult.  It [change] is always resisted and particularly difficult with a large, tradition-bound company like HP was.   But that is also frankly the challenge and joy of leadership. Leadership is always about changing things. ….”

When asked how to preserve innovation and a sense of entrepreneurship in corporate America as companies  grow above 10,000 employees mark she stated:

“… So it is a challenge for every company.  The pressure for Corporate America boils down to the fact that the  focus on profitability sometimes causes people to cut costs as opposed to investing in innovation.  This is where leadership is so imporatant.  If the leadership doesn’t decide that innovation is a value worth celebrating then eventually it will whither.   If leadership doesn’t decide that instead of cutting that expense, they will make that investment in the future, then the investments won’t get made…..   I think it is about the culture of a place. Whether risk-taking is really celebrated and rewarded, and if you are going to celebrate and reward risk taking, you have to let people make mistakes.  Not every bet is goign to pay off and you have to deal with that…. There is no silver bullet, but it starts with a believe that innovation is the life-blood of a technology company….”

When asked about the trend of startup aquiring as the major source of innovation for a tech company and whether this was dangerous she replied.

“I think it is a trend which offers some advantaeges to startups…. It is dangerous when taken to extreme…. Every company gets to a place where the old answers don’t work anymore and then the only thing that works is for people to be creative and try new approaches to old problems. If you have outsources all your creativity, all your ability to take risk, all your ability to think about a new idea, then you are not going to be able to solve the problem you need to solve….”

Her talk on how medieval studies (college major) helped her and what a CEO is suppose to do she stated:

“That set of studies, more than anything, taught me how to think…. It [particular class in her major where she was required to read thousands of pages and condense them to 2 pages every week] taught me that to really undestand something you really have to go through all the detail of it, but then to be able to communicate something, to be able to prioritize action around something,  you have to get it down to the essence.   It taught me how you distringuish between the truly important and the merely interesting….”

When asked why she thought that anyone wanting to be a CEO should take on a sales role as some point in their career she stated:

” I think the human dimension of business is really important…. but beyond that, what selling is really about, if it is done well, is talking to people in a language they understand, that is meaningful to them.   If you are going to be successful in selling something to someone else, you have to speak to them in language that is familiar to them and in terms of things that are important to them….. Those are skills that any executive needs to have: How do communicate effectively. How do  speak to people in language they understand.  How tp speak to them in terms that are important to them….”

Interesting insights on some relevent topics to anyone in business. There is much, much more in the interview, well worth the listen.

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.

I ran across this podcast interview with Heidi Roizen of Mobius Venture Capital. Julio from iinnovatecast.com put together some great questions for Heidi ranging in topic from what is web 3.0 going to look like?, how to hire great people?, how to manage your list of contacts and build great relationships?, and how to balance work and life?. Some very interesting discussion on what she sees as chief motivators for employees and what has been most satisfying in her carreer. Her insights on women in technology and VC are great. Heidi offers some interesting perspective as she has lived both sides of the street in that she has been at the reigns of a sucessful startup and now funds those hopefully successful startups. For more insight from Heidi check out this interview over at PodTech.

Guy Kawasaki has a post on the TEDTalks from this years TED2007 being up on for your listening and viewing pleasure.  Looking at the speakers and the topics, this looks to be an interesting set of talks for anyone interested in trends and how the world is changing from the perspective of those that are changing it. I was not previously aware of TED (If you are not either, check it out here), but I will be working my way through these and some of the older talks. Note that both audio and video are posted. I will probably do a summary of a couple of these, so watch here for more.