Edison as Mashup Artist: Combining Discipline, Process and Intuition
 Innovate Like Edison is a must-read for anyone who wants to thrive in the “flat world.” Had it been written in the 20th century, the book would have been applicable to R&D leaders, and it would have been a nice-to-have for business and government leaders. Innovation was the place kicker on the team during the Industrial Economy because companies created value through efficiency (refining continuous processes), and innovation is about discontinuous processes.
In the 21st century Knowledge Economy, however, innovation is the linebacker. Customers merely expect world-class efficiency, but it rarely differentiates. Innovation is now a core competency at most levels of every organization.
The problem is, the authors explain, is that very few people are innovation literate, and they don’t know how to practice it practically. As I’ve written extensively, business innovation failures are over 95%, and most new products fail at high rates. We must reposition innovation as a linebacker, and that means understanding it differently and treating it differently.
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Mashing up Edison and Weinberger wires together two thinkers that usually exist in different worlds, and reveals key facets of Knowledge Economy disruption.
By the way, Noodles represent a new kind of post, bits of thought that are unstructured and relatively brief. Many won’t even be split into “extended” articles. They are partially inspired by twitter.
Yesterday I heard David Weinberger (one of the Cluetrain authors; his new book is Everything is Miscellaneous) talk at Big Frontier, and the big insight I took away doesn’t sound like much but, peel the onion, and it’s quite profound. Knowledge is inherently social. We vet our thoughts by sharing them with other people. Interaction helps us to refine thoughts and coalesce them into knowledge by knocking off the rough edges, and we co-design knowledge by collaborating.
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Three CIOs Share Vision and Techniques for Creating the Networked Enterprise—Facebook and Tagging Creep In
 After James Owens’ luncheon address, the Executives’ Club of Chicago’s 2007-08 Technology Conference series opened with the CIO of the Year Award and a sneak preview of the 2008 Chicago Technology Outlook Survey.
Then a diverse panel of executives took the stage to discuss the role of the CIO in the “networked economy 2.0.” Bahman Koohestani, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Orbitz Worldwide, Paul Mankiewich, Chief Technology Officer, Alcatel-Lucent and Karenann Terrell, Chief Information Officer, Baxter International, shared their visions for the evolving role of the CIO and IT. John Gentry, Partner and Managing Director, CSC Consulting, moderated the panel discussion with aplomb. The Club’s quarterly Technology Conference took place October 16 at the Chicago Hilton.
Although the panel represented such diverse businesses as pharmaceutical giant Baxter, global network equipment provider Alcatel-Lucent and travel sensation Orbitz, all were very focused on how CIOs needed to enable a new level of innovation by fostering a new level of trust and adopting a networked model—for everything. […]
Will China’s Rise Lead to an Environmental Catastrophe? summarizes The Economist Chicago debate, examining the environmental fallout of the Chinese economic supernova—sibling rivalry rears its ugly head.
 In 2007, nary an RSS feed or the page of a newspaper (for those still inclined ,^) does not mention China’s exploding impact on the global stage: China is truly an economic supernova, and it is breaking almost any record for development that is laid before it. However, China’s breakneck development is accompanied by grave environmental fallout: for example, as the host of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the city is designing extreme measures to ensure that the air is clean enough for the athletes to breathe. The chief culprit is coal, a key source for China’s insatiable need for electric power, and a resource that the country has in abundance. For key facts on China, I suggest The Economist’s Country Briefing or CSRA’s Emerging Markets category (in depth) or China tag (mentions).
The Economist and WBEZ 91.5 FM presented an Oxford-style debate on the effect that China’s rise […]
A Paradoxical Proposition, Are People More Real Where They Live Their Dreams?—Zapped by Conventional Thinking
 Gaming and virtual worlds like Second Life have been a hot topic due to their novelty and, where gaming is concerned, their Gen X and Gen Y demographics. However, early adopter marketers who have flocked to virtual worlds to create presences there have often been disappointed. Forrester’s Paul Jackson is a long-time follower of gaming and virtual worlds, and he gave a fascinating and valuable session on the status and best practices for how marketers can approach this new medium. He also gave a rough ROI picture of investing. Just like anything, if you approach virtual worlds with appropriate goals, you can benefit significantly.
An Overview of Games and Virtual Worlds
Jackson began with a history of virtual worlds and gaming, which are both inherently social (and usually sticky). Gaming began in the 1970s with multiuser Dungeons, and many early games were played on the VAX. The 1990s introduced 3-D graphics and VRML as well as massively multiuser games like Lineage, EverQuest and the World […]
Social Computing at an Inflection Point—Preparing to Be Overwhelmed
 The Global Human Capital Journal’s coverage of the Forrester Consumer Forum 2007 continues with this session on Delta’s experience with customer blogs. Moderator Henry H. Harteveldt did an excellent job setting up the session and letting Laura R. Hunnicutt, Delta’s General Manager of Customer Experience, talk with the audience about some real-world practical problems of moving executives’ legacy thinking to Web 2.0. Having enterprise visionaries and thought leaders added tremendous value to the conference.
The Global Human Capital Journal published the overall conference wrap and will have several other in-depth articles in the days ahead. You can be notified as to their publication by subscribing to the forum’s RSS feed.
This session showed that social computing can have a powerful strategic impact at inflection points in companies’ histories. As everyone knows, Delta is recently out of bankruptcy, and the airline business is difficult on a good day. The company is in a period of high risk-high reward, and Laura gave the audience a heartfelt behind-the-scenes look at the company’s Web […]
Dell and Procter & Gamble Innovation Leaders Share Web 2.0 Transformation Insight—The Slow Boil
The Global Human Capital Journal’s coverage of the Forrester Consumer Forum 2007 continues with this session on what I’ll hazard to call Innovation 2.0 ,^). David Armano of Critical Mass moderated this an infectious session. It was clear that Proctor & Gamble’s Stan Joosten and Dell’s Manish Mehta had been in the innovation trenches, and their comments were extremely valuable.
A key ingredient to Web 2.0’s transformational potential is that the technology is an order of magnitude more explicit, easy to use and less costly. It’s possible, and desirable in many cases, to take small steps. On the other hand, Dell took a risky step in launching Direct to Dell in the midst of serious customer service problems, and it leveraged blogs to turn the situation around.
The Global Human Capital Journal published the overall conference wrap as well as in-depth coverage of several sessions. Access all through the link to the conference logo (right). Other articles will be published in the days ahead, and […]
Case Studies Presage Imminent Adoption of Social Technologies—Emerging Markets Prize In Balance
A who’s who of global marketing executives convened on the Hilton Chicago October 11-12, 2007 for two days of cramming on social networks, emerging technology and transformation. It certainly felt like an inflection point: analysts’ insights and technology pioneers’ zeal were tempered by corporate stories in the trenches. Based on my experience with previous adoption curves, I predict a significant jump in Web 2.0 adoption by corporations next year.
Depending on your industry, the next six months will be your last chance to be early to market. As success stories become more widespread and executives realize that Web 2.0 has very low barriers to adoption due to the social Zeitgeist and a relatively low price point, the use of social technologies will rapidly become mainstream. The main barrier to adoption is cultural resistance and organizational inertia.
Although this was not a technology conference, in my conclusions, I will provide some insights about why and how Web 2.0 represents a fundamentally new technology value proposition that makes it […]
Just Released—CSRA Market Advisory Highlights How I-Banks are Using Web 2.0 to Drive Competitiveness
![Enterprise 2.0 A Game-Changer for Investment Banks [Market Advisory]](http://rollyson.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Mkt_Advisory.gif) This summer, “Enterprise 2.0” began to get legs as the new moniker for applying Web 2.0 to the enterprise, reflecting that pragmatists are raising their eyes for an exploratory glance. The market advisory shares how global investment banks are using Enterprise 2.0, and it suggests action steps for executives to take this year and next. Here is the executive summary and a few choice concluding points:
Enterprise 2.0 Enables Executives to Digitize and Monetize Collaboration for the First Time
This is so simple that many will miss it and open themselves to disruptive competition…
Banks increasingly use wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools for mission-critical processes, as shown through the examples of Citi, DrKW, Morgan Stanley, ING and JP Morgan.. Enterprise 2.0 is a new term that denotes corporate adoption of Web 2.0 and social software tools. It offers investment banks an unusual opportunity to reduce risk and improve their earnings and profits by increasing returns on process, human and knowledge capital. However, Enterprise 2.0 also confronts banks […]
But Legacy Thinking Makes Agency Ecosystem Vulnerable to Disruptive Change—Who Will Be Their Southwest?
 Technology is remaking the advertising business because it is beginning to enable individualized targeting via automated tools. It is not a moment too soon.
The ultimate context for this session is that technologies are driving interactivity, which is becoming the default for marketing communications. Legacy players in the marcom value chain have mixed feelings: they want to leverage their investments in legacy processes, people and relationships, and many of their clients are not pushing for interactive or its latest incarnation, digital video.
Thought leaders and visionaries are frustrated by their colleagues’ reticence because they perceive that marketers’ worst fear—irrelevance—will soon ensue unless they begin to make serious investments in digital video and Web 2.0, which highlights peer-to-peer interactivity.
When it burst into public view with the growing popularity of the Internet (“Web 1.0”), “interactivity” represented new capabilities and sensibilities. Viewers of marcom messages could react to the messages by clicking, and these clicks could be tracked very economically.
 However, this was merely a brief overture […]
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