“2007 is the year in which most every organization and individual will begin to focus all their energies on innovation. As someone who spends a lot of time helping some of the world’s largest organizations adapt to and understand the new high-velocity economy, I’ve long realized that there are big, creative-stumbling-blocks that have restricted the type of thinking that is necessary to “doing-things-differently.”
Some say sex is the driver of all innovation, and they mention VHS vs Philips V2000 videosystems. Or the internet. Or Second Life. A blogposting on TechCrunch shows that sex is going Web 2.0.
“What better way to ring in the new year than with a site that is most definitely not work safe. Eroshare is to Flickr what PornoTubeis to YouTube - user generated porn. The site, which launched an hour ago, encourages users to upload their home made erotic photos, and there is already a bunch of content on the site. EroShare gives 2 GB of free storage with every account and has all the standard photo site bells and whistles - friends, tagging, albums, etc. Eroshare is based - where else - in the Netherlands, and has not yet raised any funding.”
TechCrunch about the Web 2.0 companies they can’t live without, it is the update for 2007!
“A year ago I wrote a post called “Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without” and listed thirteen startups who’s products made a real impact in my life. Those were the products that I loved, and used every day. I enjoyed sorting through the hundreds of startups that we had written about, and picking just a handful that made a real impact on my life. It was so much fun, actually, that I’m updating the list this year.”
“Sadagopan’s Weblog on emerging technologies, trends and thoughts has named innovation as the Dominant Mantra for 2007. Citing Peter Drucker as well as a recent report from Booz Allen Hamilton on R&D spending, Sadagopan points out that “innovation would count as the most important thing that tech organizations around the world would be going after in the new year.” In building the innovative enterprise, one of the most important factors is managing, recruiting and enabling the right type of human capital”
And innovation is the buzzword for 2007. Couldn’t agree more!
On a BNR podcast I heard a very interesting story from Ruud Koornstra, founder of Tendris, a company that initiates innovative products with a sustainable character.
He said inspiring things like ‘an energy company should not make a profit on energy usage, but should create light in your home’ and ‘why should a retailer not cook your food, instead of selling you products’.
The rule he is talking about is this one: servicing your customer better will give you new opportunities to make a profit. I think one of the most important strategic thoughts in this era.
Here are my trends of 2006 and predictions for 2007!
Consumerization, the adoption of consumer applications (on the web) within the organization, partly due to a new generation of ‘digital natives’ entering the workforce.
Finding information within the organization has become critical due to reorganizations and restructuring. Enterprise portals are starting to become mainstream.
Software as a service is becoming interesting enough for business. Translating processes in terms of services when it comes to software, becomes a natural behaviour.
Blogging and wiki become natural way to communicate within organizations.
Mash up, i.e. breaking up structures (all kinds, information, techniques, organizations) in little pieces and joining them in new meaningful ways, will remain the most dramatic and creative effect of this information age.
The world as a whole and the world of business becomes more and more ‘real time’; steering the company will be more complex but more direct.
Knowledge management becomes a focus point of management (instead of something academic). The way to organize it will be in terms of ‘ownership’, bottom up or horizontal, definitely not top-down.
Strategy has to be formulated in terms of stories that are credible, understandable and inspiring. Vision will become even more important than it already is.
Management of the social environment will start to become an important competence.
Work will be done more and more in virtual environments.
Virtual worlds and games are becoming ways to communicate in business.
Strategic issue will be how to organize ’structured chaos’ in the company.
Interesting enough, this posting on TRIZ (Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch, Russian for ‘Theory of Solving Inventive Problems’) on CTO Blog by Ron Tolido.
“We all seem in need of rediscovering the ‘how’ of innovation (…) you might tend to think that innovation is mainly a matter if chaos and free association (…) If you have a closer look, there’s more systematic to it than you would ever expect.”
I don’t know what podcast (I believe from IBM) it was, but in it someone said a key factor to innovation is to have as much contact with external sources (humans, information) as possible.
Managing for creativity, he says, means taking most of what we know abouj management and standing it on its head. It means placing bets on ideas without much heed to their projected ROI.
Decide to do something that will probably fail, then convince yourself and everyone else that success was certain.
Reward success and failure, punish inaction.
Seek out ways to avoid, distract and bore customers, critics and nayone who just wants to talke about money.
Think of some ridiculous impractical things to do, and plan to do them.
Find some happy people and get them to fight.
Hire “slow learners” (of the organizational code), people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike, people you (probably) don’t need.
Take your past successes and forget them!
Use job interviews to get new ideas, not to screen candidates.
Ignore people who have solved the exact problem you face.
Encourage people to ignore and defy their bosses and peers.
Managers, analysts and other socalled experts do a poor job of judging new ideas and predicting which ones will succeed.
His aim is not to convince your company to discard every routine it uses and devote all efforts to inventing new ways of thinking and acting. On the contrary, doing routine work with proven methods is the right thing to do most of the time. But if part of your mission is to explore new possibilities, then your goal must be to build a culture that supports constant mindfulness and experimentation.
