iMedia

"What's very dangerous is not to evolve"

In touting his new hit product, Kindle, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos may indeed be channeling his inner Steve Jobs. The device might do for text what the iPod has done for music. But there's a much bigger lesson to be learned, according to Fast Company: "What's very dangerous," Bezos concludes, "is not to evolve."

Seminar: Developing viable business strategies

Today, Dr. Jeryl Schreiner, founder of  IdeaFoundry, in Pittsburgh, is leading a seminar for 60 clients of KSTC and the ICC offices. The seminar, being held in Louisville, is focused on the development of a viable business strategy. In her tools, Dr. Schreiner is helping high-tech companies from around the state integrate all aspects of strategy development - business model, product, positioning, sales, operations.

Matt McGarvey, VP, KSTC. 

Serious games manufacture great experiences

In this brief iMedia Kentucky interview, game designer Jane McGonigal describes the explosion of opportunities in games designed and carried out in real life, not on-screen.

Like smokestacks of another age, such games signal the 21st production of another valuable resource, good experiences. Experience design is valuable to schools, manufacturing, health care, tourism and travel or any industry, really, where happy clients and customers are needed.

Collaborating via games can also help develop new scenarios and contribute in general to the knowing enterprise. And, finally, software derived from good game design, as she points out, is used in businesses to improve teamwork.

Jane McGonigal recently spoke a the 2008 IdeaFestival in Louisville, where she described alternate reality games as "happiness engines".

"Permission-based" innovation

Seth Godin famously came up with the phrase "permission-based marketing" to capture how the business dialog had become a two-way street. Businesses and organizations could no longer simply flood individuals with information and expect a significant return in an attention-challenged word.

Similarly, having successfully captured a significant share of the browser market from Microsoft, the open source organization Mozilla has an idea about how to make innovation a participatory process. In a "best of" McKinsey quarterly interview (free registration required) Mozilla Foundation chairman and former CEO Mitchell Baker had this to say about innovation:

The Quarterly: How do you think about your role in enabling innovation in the communities?

Mitchell Baker: Sometimes, just giving people permission does wonders. Consider our quality control process. We have a public process for finding, tracking, and correcting bugs in the code we’re developing, and thousands of people are involved. When several people within the community began to take leadership in that effort, someone who worked with me said, 'All we need to do is tell these people it’s OK.' So that’s what we did. We said to the leader, 'You’re awesome; keep doing what you’re doing.' And after that, he became our release driver. There are more people like that than you would expect.

Baker also describes how up to 40 percent of the code that makes its way into the browser comes from volunteer community.

Wayne

The future of the MBA

Harvard considers the future of the MBA, the "degree it invented," and finds that it's in danger of becoming irrelevant to businesses and companies seeking top talent.

Google's Eric Schmidt on Innovative Public Policy: Pay for Performance

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently appeared at the New America Foundation, and according to the foundation, talked about "technology, economic growth and open government." Intangible Economy points out that one of his proposals would incent Detroit's automakers.

Build more fuel efficient cars, get cash. I immediately thought of the auto bailout hearing that just ended and wondered if that proposal was legislatively doable. Schmidt also talked about cash incentives "to get people to study math and science," according to a Twittercast of the event. I can think of one very innovative program in Kentucky that proposes to do just that. 

Competition: Rx for a broken health care system?

As recently mentioned, the X-Prize Foundation is in the midst of developing a prize - that is, the structure, guidelines and judging criteria that such a prize would have - to address the serious shortcomings of the health care system in the United States. We can all agree that health care technology, research and acute care is the best in the world. Similarly, most would agree that gross inefficiencies, an absence of cost transparency, poor incentives and communication and the lack of a minimal level of health care security for families and individuals characterize the system as well.

For its part, Wellpoint, which is sponsoring the prize, has committed to trying out the selected finalists' entries in state health insurance marketplace.

The X-Prize is soliciting input from a variety of people and videos from interested (and well known) individuals are now available online. But a number of others have left comments on the X-Prize Health Care blog as well. Check out all the input.

Innovation Principles: You are what you focus on

Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans, was a guest speaker at the recent Detroit National Association of Seed and Venture Funds conference, and he spoke on his experience in leading an innovation-based company. According to Dan, the Quicken Loans corporate culture is one of innovation and constant improvement. Here are a few of Dan’s philosophies (paraphrased) under which the company operates and which are enforced on the job daily to create an atmosphere of innovation and constant improvement. I encourage everyone to incorporate these principles as a means to be more efficient, particularly in times of economic downturn.

1. Innovation is rewarded. Execution is worshipped. Employees are strongly encouraged to make suggestions on how to improve the company or process improvement ideas. Employees are rewarded for their innovation.

2. Obsessed with finding a better way. Everyone in the company is encouraged to e-mail the CEO at any time with problems and potential solutions to the problems. “What you focus on, you become.” The CEO is encouraged to consider and implement employee solutions.

Creativity loves constraints: Resource development

Creativity loves constraints. The IBM-sponsored blog Global Innovation Outlook notes how Singapore, a tiny city-state with absolutely no freshwater resources whatsoever has nonetheless managed to thrive as a "hydro-hub" of the world, boasting "some of the most sophisticated technologies and systems designed to collect, treat, and reuse water supplies."

Today, through a so-called 'four-tap' approach, Singapore boasts sufficient water supplies for its more-than 4 million citizens and multi-billion-dollar industries. It uses a water catchment system that collects rainwater from nearly half the land area of the island, recycling facilities that produce NEWater (a branded product for both potable and industrial use), some of the largest desalination plants in the world, and a continuing but diminishing import strategy from its neighboring Malaysia.

The lesson for Kentucky? Resource development sometimes has little to do with the resource. It has much to do with how you think about the resource.

Regional Development Conference: Entrepreneurs are "new Main Street"

At the SSTI conference in Cleveland, David Wilhelm says that:

"the technology entrepreneur has nothing to fear from the economic meltdown. They are not 'sub-prime.' The sub-prime rage was actually not friendly to the venture community. The rest of American society should their lead in creating sustainability. We have to move away from sub-prime approach to the environment and lead the way in green technologies. Eighty percent of Americans say that the federal government should do more to encourage the innovation economy. This is the new Main Street."

Wilhelm is the founder and President of Woodland Venture Management, a company dedicated to the proposition that entrepreneurial vision and managerial talent may be found anywhere, including the hills of central Appalachia and the prairies of the Midwest.

Matt McGarvey