Last fart of the ferret

I rather identify with this excerpt from The Economist’s skunk works Inside Project Red Stripe back in 2006, the story of which is now available online and as a book.

“Taiichi Ohno, father of the Toyota Production System and an inspiration to many Systems Thinkers. In an interview with an Economist journalist (and which I have never been able to trace), he reportedly likened creativity in a survival culture to the last fart of the ferret. When a ferret is cornered it emits a powerful stench like a skunk, and employees, he said, when facing closure of the company, would come up with some of their most creative ideas. [Incidentally, if you search for 'last fart of the ferret', Google will rather coyly ask you if you meant 'last fruit of the ferret' - a delightful possibility which, sadly, produces no results if you accept the suggestion.]”

I knew necessity was the mother of invention but not that a ferret's fart could save so many company's from closure, surely worth knowing in these stressed times?

The blog is well worth a read for the multitude of questions it poses and if anyone out there thinks corporate innovation does not need deep thought, careful attention and active management to make it happen then think again.

Can China innovate – you bet it can!

This article from Strategy & Business of Booz & Co. (“China’s Long Road to Innovation”) suggests that China will find it very hard to evolve from a global manufacturer to a global innovator.

“Ultimately, Du and other Chinese experts question whether Chinese enterprises and companies can ever innovate technologically. One issue is culture. In Western and Japanese companies, researchers are allowed to develop ideas rather than being told which ideas to pick, and they are allowed to fail. These conditions require a delicate balance between a company’s top management and its technical talent. But in Chinese companies, which tend to be very centralized, individual initiative and risk-taking are rarely rewarded. Chen also argues that Communist Party control of the economy is a disincentive for innovation. “The party wants all the good ideas to be its ideas,” he says.”

So What?

Is the Chinese problem deeply rooted or can at least private firms create the necessary space and culture to innovate as we do in the West? Or will Chinese firms find an alternative way to innovate that leverages their strengths and minimises their weaknesses, just as their Japanese and Korean neighbours appear to have done? Who says the Western approach to innovation is THE way rather than one of many, an approach adapted to the ego-centric culture of the West?

It is so easy to forget that many innovations we now take for granted originated from huge government initiated and funded post-war programs, from NASA moon landing and nuclear power to jet aircraft and telecoms. I for one will not dismiss the Chinese as destined to fail at innovation, especially in a world where original research is ever more scare and under-funded, no more so than in the USA.

China has formidable potential to innovate whole new industries just as the US has done before it. The problems stated in the article are only tactical and just as Chinese entrepreneurs now have the space to make money (unimagined 20 years ago) so Chinese researchers can have the envronment and motivation to innovate – and probably very quickly once the problem is fully recognised.

I would suggest the US and Europe should be seeking to re-invent themselves to compete rather than continuing to look at China through a lens that only distorts rather than reveals and assumes THEIR way is THE way.

Thames Valley Innovation Conference 2008, Reading, UK.

The third annual conference on innovation hosted by TVEP but the first for me. This one-day event (a part of the Thames Valley iFestival running until the end of November) had a distinctly technology-focused agenda, as is to be expected given the high-tech corporate inhabitants of the Thames Valley.

Unfortunately I missed the Keynote session but I learnt something from most of the sessions and stayed until the end, unlike most delegates. The exhibition was not great though Bemoko are worth a call if you want simple business apps delivered via mobiles. Apparently they had built a conference site for the hosts but it had not been promoted so a lost opportunity to demonstrate innovation there!

There was not a great deal of networking opportunities given the format of the event but it was good to chat with guest speakers from O2, (Dr Mike Short, VP of R&D), Microsoft (Andrew Watson, Senior Director) and Syngenta (DR Mike Bushell, Head of Site) about the challenges of global R&D, the mobile industry and open innovation.

Andrew Watson of Microsoft provided some insights as to how they encourage and channel innovation and besides an ideas exchange I was intrigued to hear of their “Think Week”. Once a year Bill Gates (I ugess not any more) and Steve Balmer dedicate a week to sifting through formal written submissions from any staff member with ideas they want to suggest. I guess the main aim is to by-pass potentially obstructive management whilst providing access to the leadership. Knowing a submission is going straight to the top apparently ensures there are few time-wasters and submissions are generally well conceived.

My attempts to unearth some best practice secrets as to how to manage a large distributed global R&D organisation drew a blank with wide scale agreement that it was indeed a challenge! Syngenta kept the model as simple as possible with only a handful of sites with each specialising in a research focus thus minimising required interaction between sites. Key start-up, knowledge transfer or other major activities were achieved via a dedicated expat, usually someone wishing to return home to the new site and therefore having a strong interest to make the project a success.

?WhatIF! were the star turn and Harry Hobson and Andy Reid did a great job in enlightening the crowd as to the value and need for creativity in the innovation process - and a few ways to help it along. ?WhatIf! work with Samsung, Nokia, Vodafone and other technology firms so I will be exploring via Harry how best to partner on farming innovation lightning.

The SME presentations were as enlightening as the corporates and especially Malcolm Duckett of Speed Trap (web site monitoring) and Alex Pratt of Serious Readers (specialist reading lights), both of which in their different ways demonstrated the need for tenacity and flexibility when pursuing ideas and overcoming inevitable setbacks.

If you are in the area I would recommend attending this event if it runs next year as planned but the organisers need to find better ways to network participants and develop a clearer focus for the programme presentations.

Conference site at http://www.theinnovationconference.net/.

Internet of Things, Internet of the Future- Nice 2008

A little late I know but the Autumn conference season really does stretch my capacity. I could only attend the first day of this two day event in Nice in October but most of the presentations are available from the above title link.

So What?

I am not deep into RFID or related technologies but I guess I was a little surprised as to how slowly things are developing in the area given the bout of promise a few years ago. Not only are technologies fragmented but are a lot of legal and regulatory issues regarding confidentiality and privacy in a world rendered transparent by emerging tracking and identification technologies. This conference was as much about those as it was about technology in general or the future of the Internet in particular.

The usual challenges of developing accepted standards raises its head and its clear self-interest groups are still battling to get their way given the enormity of the opportunity in the long term. But will the vision of a truly connected world with more devices and objects than people connected to the internet come about? IPv6 may enable this but there a lot more issues to be addressed and from this conference it is clear that most have nothing to do with technology.

How long should tags on goods be active and how do we know they have been de-activated? Should the consumer have access to the data stored? Who does the data belong to and how is the data shared? The list is a long one so don’t expect to see the Internet being taken over by ‘things’ for a while yet and it may be that there will be many alternative networks vying for the right to host the connectivity of things.

An example of Living labs at Workspring by Steelcase

Springwise brought this Workspring Living Lab to my attention earlier this week. Based in Chicago, this commercially available meeting space will double as a lab to test new products from office furniture manufacturer Steelcase.

As Herman Miller made apparent with their ground-breaking Aeron ergonomic chair back in the early 90’s, there is much more to an office chair than keeping your bum off of the floor, as my bum will gladly testify.

So What?

Wikipedia defines a Living Lab as a “….new research paradigm integrating both a user centred multidisciplinary research approach and a user community driven innovation based on real life experiments.”

Living Labs first arose in the Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) space and are particularly strong in Europe where the EU is promoting via several initiatives and a map of them is avalable at OpenLivingLabs.

In essence they are a half-way house for innovations that are ready to escape the laboratory but are not yet sufficiently developed to survive in the real world. A Living Lab is a place where innovations can be monitored and evaluated in a realistic but controilled environment whilst being used by end users. The observaions and feedback generated can then be used to adpat and further develop the innovaion as well as maybe better positioning the innovaion in the marketplace.

Living Labs are another step in the evolution of innovation as it migrates from a closed and R&D dominated focus to a more open and connected paradigm more closely focused on satisfying real needs and attuned to real users from day one. They are another way to engage users and customers earlier in the innovation process and this is very important for the increasingly complex products and services that require a high level of user acceptance in order to succeed, such as mobile data services.

Maybe office furniture does not immediately fall into this category and this Steelcase initiative is more about marketing than innovation (or innovation in marketing?) but either way we are going to see more of these "middle-space" or "bridging" initiatives both within and outside of ICT.

Nokia and Open Innovation

Open innovation and Nokia Philosophy, Dr. Bob Iannucci, CTO of Nokia and Head of Nokia Research Center. from DevilsRejection on Vimeo.

This is a great introduction to Open Innovation. Though presented from the context of Nokia it is very relevant to a much wider audience and especially the ICT universe.

FYI, Bob is no longer CTO at Nokia though still works in an advisory role.

42 minutes, recorded in Espoo, Finland earlier this year.

Innova Lyon 2008

Unfortunately I could not accept the kind invitation of the French EU Presidency to attend Innova in Lyon last month.

The Innova conference website now contains most of the presentations and a quick scan does not reveal much new, as is mostly the case at these “acado-governmental” gigs; the innovation is elsewhere and closer to the edge.

Eric Von Hippel was there and his presentation is worth a scan if you are not familiar with the work or want an update from of the father of ‘user-led’ innovation theory.

So What?

One buried gem I did enjoy is Gary Waterworth Owen’s of the Centre for Sustainable Design in the UK and his presentation on Lifecycle thinking. This is something close to my heart and the sustainable innovation focus on which How To Farm Lightning is trying to build.

In his presentation Gary notes that there are 4400 US patents for mousetraps, less than 20 have made money but there are still 400 new patent applications per year. This is in stark contrast to the untapped opportunities the world presents for innovation given our preoccupation with the front-end of the product life-cycle and almost total neglect of the back-end. This results in huge waste, inefficiency and pollution and also raises deeper questions as to our values and the way we choose to live.

Innovating in a recession....

I posted a comment on this NESTA post on innovating in a recession. Here is the concluding advice and the full comment can be seen at http://blogs.nesta.org.uk/connect/2008/10/is-a-recession.html?cid=136170255#comment-136170255

"So, my advice is:

1.Spend more time with your existing customer’s and get to know how they are impacted by the downturn and current plans to deal with it - look for new insights.

2.Use these insights to identify new ways to help them beyond current offerings and lower prices and explore areas that they may have previously rejected but may now be open to.

3. Re-visit your strategy and re-orient it towards the new market conditions – success will go to the agile and the courageous and this may be a better time to change direction than you think."

Brendan at www.HowToFarmLightning.com

Posted by: Brendan 24 Oct 2008 11:24:28