I'm afraid this post is going to read like enterprise-grade Chicken Soup for the Soul, but I'm going to write it anyway, because I'm hoping to capture what has been a really great lesson from my current work. I am currently leading a proof-of-concept to test the delivery of some new capabilities in the firm. Everyone involved (from vendor to stakeholder) is very excited … [Read more...]
Book Review: The New Killer Apps
I just finished reading The New Killer Apps (How Large Companies Can Out-Innovate Start-Ups) by Chunka Mui and Paul Carroll. It was particularly germane to me since I work in an exceptionally large firm and my role is centered on innovation. As I reflect on the thesis of the book, I find myself energized to bring some of the lessons to bear on initiatives in which I am … [Read more...]
Breaking Down Barriers: Clearing The Innovation Brush
Recently, I was involved in an innovation initiative which was a crowdsourcing initiative to identify efficiencies within a company. The challenge was open to all employees and voting and commenting were permitted. After the challenge was closed, the most popular (by votes and comment counts) were presented to leadership. Their reaction, to say the least, was less than … [Read more...]
Standing On The Threshold
Some things that are amazing me: We can smash atoms together to unlock a particle that only existed in math equations a month ago. We can store enough data to simulate a living organism. We can slow down time enough to sort through photons and see around corners. We can sort through vast amounts of data and determine that someone is pregnant based on their … [Read more...]
The 5 Vectors Of Business Transformation
I spend my days in the Innovation Office of a large professional services organization. Our team focuses on helping the firm generate and refine new ideas to improve our culture, operations, and the services we provide to clients. All our efforts would be useless unless what we do is strategically aligned. One tool we use to ensure alignement is to map out the business … [Read more...]
Is Brainstorming Broken?
I just got done reading William Duggan's post on strategy+business called "How Aha! Really Happens." It is an interesting read and I'll let you read it for yourself rather than try to recap it here. For brevity's sake an our purposes, let it suffice to say that Mr. Duggan asserts that the process companies use to come up with solutions to problems is flawed in that the focus is … [Read more...]
Predict This! Kaggle Seeks The Michael Jordan Of Analytics
Last week, my boss and I had the pleasure of speaking with Anthony Goldbloomd and Karthik Sethuraman of Kaggle (http://www.kaggle.com/) and we were both impressed by what this San Francisco startup has cooking. Kaggle is a platform for crowd-sourcing solutions to complex analytics problems. There's a great writeup at Forbes about the company. Here's the gist of it, … [Read more...]
CIO Dashboard: 5 Innovation Opportunities
I recently had the opportunity to co-author a post with Chris Curran over at the CIO Dashboard blog. It is an update on a post he did last year considering some innovations to watch in 2011. We spent some time thinking about some emerging tech trends in 2012 and what the opportunities are to the CIO/CTO community (i.e. what should you be thinking about to get ahead of the curve … [Read more...]
Touch Me, Babe – Observations On History Of Touch Computing
All Things Considered over at NPR just ran a piece called The Touchy-Feely Future Of Technology. I suggest you read/listen to it because it's a great overview of the history, and a glance to the future of touch computing. However, I'd like to spend my time here calling out a few points that got only passing mention in the piece. Music & Technology: Friends With … [Read more...]
Innovation: Finding your Voice
I read a post today over at 15inno.com listing 5 Reasons Not to Use Apple As a Role-Model for Innovation. While it's hard to argue with the points made in the article (You're not Apple, You don't even know Apple, People don't think you're as cool as Apple, You don't have Steve Jobs), it comes off as a little to Fanboy-ish - even for me. But, it did get me thinking... Is … [Read more...]