Education innovation is on everybody’s mind, because anyone who looks at the sorry state of American education knows that something needs to be done.
Business innovation is on everyone’s mind who holds or wants a job. Without considerable across-the-board innovation, not just products, but process as well, American business and, therefore the country, is in deep doodoo.
Parenting could use some innovation, especially in terms of curtailing the hovering and we’ll-fix-it mentality of too many of today’s parents. We need to find better ways of giving kids the chance to learn about initiative, responsibility, accountability and consequences, so their intangible side can grow to adulthood in conjunction with their physical side.
I’ve been writing about all of the above for years, sharing links to research and stories of what’s being tried, following innovation that does succeed and it got me to thinking.
What’s stopping us? We have the ideas and in many cases they have been tried and have worked.
Why aren’t more of them being implemented on a wider scale?
The same reasons that have always retarded or curtailed innovation.
The frequency of the ubiquitous “prove it” typically spoken by the “we’ve always done it this way” crowd. To those looking for new approaches, answers and products, “prove it” are not only the most dreaded two words, but also the most stupid. Just think what would have happened if the Apple board had insisted that Steve Jobs prove that the world wanted an iPod.
The not-invented-here syndrome has extended itself to schools, as can be seen in this comment with regards to teaching Singapore Math (although it’s been proven to work).
“…there has also been skepticism from school board members and parents about importing a foreign math program.”
So the next time you find yourself chafing at the lack of innovation or the slowness of implementing it, first look in the mirror and if you don’t find the culprit there look for the person or group that is crying for proof or bemoaning the source.
It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and endless hours, and you often forget that running really hard does not necessarily equate with running in the right direction.
It doesn’t always start with a formal business plan or even with a specific idea. Innovation strikes in different ways as you will see.
Robert Croakis CEO of Silly Bandz, the hottest new kid craze.
Croak is an opportunist who has found the greatest opportunity of his life. “I’m the luckiest guy alive right now. I don’t think you’re going to find anyone who has a reason to be happier than I am,” he says. “I have the hottest toy, the hottest fashion product on earth. All the right people like Silly Bandz. Everyone asks who my publicist is. I don’t have one. We don’t advertise. All we do is viral marketing. This is happening on its own.”
Tod Dykstra, founder of Streetline Networks, watched cars circling the block in San Francisco looking for cheap parking.
Streetline’s system lets parking authorities identify crowded streets and jack up parking-meter rates block by block. The idea is to encourage drivers to stop circling and get off the streets—either paying for a municipal garage or heading to a less crowded neighborhood. San Francisco and Los Angeles are now installing Streetline technology.
Many people believe that entrepreneurs are all risk takers with a horror of working for large companies, but that isn’t true. What is true is that they go through many of the same efforts and traumas as the more traditional ones.
Gary Martz is a senior product manager at Intel, who proves that the three skills Tjan describes are just as applicable in-house as outside.
Intel nearly killed off WiDi… “They literally laughed me out of the room.”
Anil Duggal, a physical chemist at GE’s research labs, had to go to the Feds for funding when Jack Welch was GE’s boss, but it was a different story when Jeff Immelt took over.
First, Duggal had to develop a genius for getting funded. The idea of manufacturing lighting with a method akin to newspaper printing was a tough sell. In the late ’90s, he managed to buttonhole U.S. Energy Dept. officials visiting GE to look in on other projects. The $1 million grant that resulted helped keep the project going. Then in 2001, Jeff Immelt, still new in the role of CEO, challenged GE engineers and scientists to strive for breakthrough ideas. Today, OLED and LED research get about half of GE’s R&D budget for lighting.
As you can see, a common thread that runs through these stories is that entrepreneurs see things differently from the rest of us. They see what is and needs to be, or should be, or could be.
Ben Huh saw the potential of a site called I Can Has Cheezburger, raised some money and $10K of his own savings to buy it and then used the concept to create the 53 sites that make up Cheezburger Network.
“It was a white-knuckle decision,” he said. “I knew that the first site was funny, but could we duplicate that success?”
Innovation and how to make it happen is the highest priority item on any company agenda—and if it isn’t it should be.
Just how do you make innovation flourish?
Collaboration ranks high on the list of required actions; as Saul Kaplan, founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory, says, “It is humans and the organizations we live in that are both stubbornly resistant to experimentation and change.”
“What if” drives innovation according to Jeff Dyer, a professor at Brigham Young University, who started out thinking that creativity and innovation were hard-wired, but decided after six years of research that they aren’t, “One key characteristic among the visionaries? The tendency to ask questions — a lot of them — and to challenge the status quo — plenty.”
Bruce Nussbaum, who writes about design and innovation for Business Week, talks about Diego Rodriquez, who writes Metacool blog, and has developed his own set of 17 Innovation Principles; he illustrates number 12, cultivating innovation instead of managing it, using a conversation with Porsche’s head of design Michael Mauer, “One of my major goals is to give the team freedom in order to have a maximum of creativity,” to which Rodriquez says, “This feels very much to me like a “cultivation mindset”. … He is a curator, a director, a cultivator. As you can see from the stunning new Porsche 918 Spyder pictured above, his approach speaks for itself.”
Next, Scott Anthony, Managing Director of Innosight Ventures, talks about what stops innovation. “You can almost always find compelling ideas and well-developed plans. … The hard part is in the doing, in taking the requisite steps to translate an idea that looks great on paper into profits.”
Now two looks at innovation in action at opposite ends of the spectrum.
According to Dan’l Lewin, corporate vice president of strategic and emerging business development at Microsoft, “Innovation is overused as a word.We are at the juncture of where… it’s time to be thinking about how to accelerate, and accelerate using technology as an enabler not an automater.” This approach seems to involve investing in startups where innovation flourishes and buy the results.
Then there is true innovation, the kind based on real-world experience and need as exemplified by Michael Wielgat, a Chicago Fire Dept. lieutenant with 22 years of experience. He invented the “Hero Pipe” to help firefighters battle high-floor blazes. He’s been working on it since 2005, bootstrapping the effort. “Homeland Security has invited Wielgat to apply for a grant to continue development of his invention. He could use the money. He’s tried to get funding before from other sources, but has been turned down, he says, because they supported only fire departments or nonprofit organizations.”
Back around 1998, I was at a VC/entrepreneur event and in the course of a conversation I commented that I’d been working with startups for 20 years. A young idiot (as opposed to an old idiot) scornfully informed me that I couldn’t have been since startups were a result of the Internet and the web.
I guess idiocy still flourishes since I was recently informed by a thirty-something idiot that startups and innovation are a function of the web.
But innovation is actually the provenance of minds that think outside of conventional parameters, with or without tech.
They are minds that see beyond what’s being done now to what could be done, sometimes with a new product, but just as often with a new process.
Brothers John and Brendan Ready are two such minds. Their lobster fishing profession may be hundreds of years old, but that hasn’t stopped them from innovating not the catching, but the sales process.
They created Catch a Piece of Maine where you can buy an annual partnership for $2,995 per season to all kinds of variations from live lobsters to just the meat.
The Ready brothers have been lobstering since they were 16, started their seafood business around 2004 ago (at ages 22 and 25) and thought up this great value-add in 2007.
To my mind it’s the best of an all-around win, the Ready’s grow their business, the lobstermen earn more in a very hard profession, and the buyers have something totally unique to share among friends, clients and business associates.
Entrepreneurs, you got to love ’em—at least most of the time.
Two great interviews today; just two because one if fairly long.
First is Dany Levy, founder and editorial director of DailyCandy in an interview conducted by Anthony (Tony) Tjan, CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of Cue Ball, a venture and early growth equity firm.
Daily Candy is “a daily email newsletter that provides readers with an essential nugget of hip, insider advice about “what to do today,” began in New York and soon spread to a dozen other U.S. cities and London.” Levy took in one majority investor 2003 and the company was recently acquired by Comcast for $125 million.
There is both a written interview and a video, but Harvard doesn’t provide embeddable code, so you’ll have to go there.
Next, Henry Blodget interviews 25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg who “started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. Five years later, it has 300 million users and $500 million in revenue, and it’s worth something north of $6 billion.”
Many wonder what someone that age know about running a company that size, but Zuckerberg makes the case for not only hiring those smarter than you, something every has heard, but also listening to them.
Below is the full interview, the short version is here, if you prefer, but the full interview is well worth watching.
I do love writing rhymes for holidays and special friends. And when I read them again a year or decade later I’m always amazed that I don’t die of embarrassment.
As you all know, I’m a corporate culture addict; I follow stories on culture the way most people follow celebrities. I have three to share today.
As anyone who follows business news knows Alan G. Lafley, CEO pf P&G for the last nine years is stepping down. Read this McKinsey interview with Lafley from 2005 and compare it to what he did. This is a guy who walks his talk. Then take a look at this short comparison by Bruce Nussbaum of Lafley and Bob Nardelli and decide which one you’d rather channel.
Want to read a short short story about changing corporate culture? Good, because here is one.
Last is a fascinating story on how to innovate from the outside in. Which leads you to Innocentive and the opportunity to innovate on your own and get paid for it. Don’t laugh, real creativity doesn’t have a job title, nor do colleges offer degrees in ingenuity.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
What does it take to be an entrepreneur? According to Anthony Tjan, Founder/CEO of venture firm Cue Ball, you need to be an 
Entrepreneurs, you got to love ’em—at least most of the time.
I do love writing rhymes for holidays and special friends. And when I read them again a year or decade later I’m always amazed that I don’t die of embarrassment.
