June 2007 Archives

Business Week has published an insightful article on 3M's innovation framework.  It was noted in a number of sites on innovation, but it deserves amplification. 3M's Seven Pillars of Innovation lists the following points:

1.  “From the chief executive on down, the company must be committed to innovation.”  

2. “The corporate culture must be actively maintained….The philosophy of William L. McKnight, its inspirational leader from 1929 to 1966, is passed along by old-timers like Larry Wendling to every new scientist or engineer. In a nutshell: ‘Hire good people and let them do their job in their own ways. And tolerate mistakes.’”

3. “Innovation is impossible without a broad base of technology.”
4. “Talk, talk, talk. Management at 3M has long encouraged networking -- formal and informal -- among its researchers. Wendling calls this 3M's secret weapon.”
5. “Reward employees for outstanding work.”

6. “Quantify efforts. 3M tallies how much of its revenue comes from products introduced in the past four years to judge whether its R&D money is being spent wisely.”
7. “Research must be tied to the customer. Employees spend a lot of time with customers to understand what their needs are so they can go back to the labs to come up with valuable products.”

Good advice if applied, 3M has had lots of practice.

Rolling Your Own Online Office

Nice article that reviews collaboration tools and how to use them to coordinate distributed teams.

MIRANDA JULY

I am procrastinating right now, but I wanted to mention a wonderful story that I read this morning by Miranda July in the New Yorker.  The story, "Roy Spivey" is not listed on her website yet, and I wonder why, after reading her site, I have not heard of her yet.  She is a prolific writer, performance artist, actress, and film director.  "Roy Spivey" is about her meeting with a celebrity on a plane.  It is a short story, so I won't spoil it by saying much about it; just how much I liked it.

Investor's Business Daily: Annual Innovation Effort Helps IBM Focus Its R&D

IBM brings together 400 researchers, consultants and business leaders from around the world to evaluate trends opportunities and issues around innovation.  They use the information gathered from these meetings to inform their research agenda and it also publishes a Global Innovation Outlook.  In this article Dick Anderson, general manager of global media and entertainment, summarizes the findings form the meetings.

 I would like to try Zurfer, the location-based photo browser from Yahoo! Research Berkeley on my Verizon Treo 700w.  The site says that you need a "beefy" smart phone.  Is the treo beefy enough?  I wonder.  Let me know it you have any luck implementing this on your phone.

Dr. Gary Bradt and Bridge Consulting International have teamed up to deliver executive education in business leadership and change management. This is because we share an understanding that organizations that learn to embrace change and capitalize on the opportunities it always creates, win. Those that don’t are doomed to fall behind and forever play a game of catch up. The challenge is to persuade people to let go of their old ways of doing business so they can create and grab on to the new.

Dr. Gary Bradt provides an inspirational yet practical and powerful new way to think about change: The Ring represents the opportunity that change always creates. The Rubble represents the disruption, fear and uncertainty that change almost always stirs up.

In his book, The Ring in the Rubble, Gary describes how discovering the ring isn’t always easy for individuals or organizations. Working through the emotion and disruption that change creates sometimes requires extra help. Bridge Consulting is a premiere leadership development company with offices in London, Boston, New York and Atlanta. Our goal is to teach top level executives to apply innovative processes and genuine thought leadership to improve business performance. Dr. Bradt’s exclusive principles for leading and implementing change can be learned and applied successfully with Bridge’s custom leadership development programs.

I will be publishing more about Bridge's leadership development offering on this blog as we gain traction in the market.

My brief hiatus from blogging is over.  I discovered Second Life and was distracted for a bit.  My client introduced it to me as an interesting UI for interacting with potential customers.  My assessment, however, is that it is primarily a social medium without much business utility at this point.  The graphic elements in the game are seductive and the social interactions that ensue are interesting, to say the least. Because of this, it can become an incredible waste of time that can be good for procrastinating, but not much else.