Registration for the BIF-6 Summit is sold out. Folks interested in attending are encouraged to join the waitlist by emailing Tori at tori@businessinnovationfactory.com. Demand for this year's Summit was especially high--a reflection of the incredible roster of storytellers scheduled to participate.
The Business Innovation Factory is looking for an experienced design researcher for an upcoming project. The ideal candidate will have designed and conducted generative and evaluative human-centered research initiatives, translated insights into highly communicative narratives, and contributed to the development of new systems concepts and models.
Novel platform will focus on illuminating entrepreneur experience and development of new entrepreneur support solutions
Babson College and the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) have embarked on a new partnership to create an Entrepreneur Experience Laboratory that will accelerate the design and development of new entrepreneur support solutions.
Continue reading Business and Economics | Business Model Innovation | Education | Experimentation
Who says things slow down in summer? We're pleased to welcome two international innovation superstars to the BIF Community: pharmaceutical research giant Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research and global food and nutrition leader Nestlé. Both organizations recently joined the BIF member community.
Continue reading Business Model Innovation | Design | Experimentation | Healthcare | Technology and Science
Jackpot! BIF scored a major victory this month when we nabbed Christine Costello, a design researcher with 15+ years of rock solid experience. Christine will officially join BIF in August as our new director of design. In addition to serving as chief designer on BIF’s growing portfolio of projects, Christine will play an instrumental role working alongside the BIF team to expand activity in all of BIF’s Experience Labs.
Attention BIF-6 Summit Attendees: Join BIF Founder Saul Kaplan and Babson College President Len Schlesinger for an invigorating conversation about the challenges and opportunities of business model innovation, an emerging but, in many cases, still poorly understood discipline.
Continue reading Business and Economics | Business Model Innovation
"The customer is always right" was the retailing innovation of Wisconsin-born merchant Harry Gordon Selfridge, who founded Selfridge's department store in London in 1909. This traditional business mantra, once thought to ensure good customer service, has lost some of its appeal in a retail era dominated by volume, speed and impersonal mass marketing. But Tony Hsieh, CEO of the online retailer Zappos.com, has found a way to return to the basics of keeping the customer happy. And he does it by focusing on his 1,600+ employees.
The College Board Advocacy & Policy Center and the Business Innovation Factory today announced a joint effort to explore new ideas and identify innovative solutions to improve the student experience and help ensure that students from all backgrounds have the opportunity to succeed in college and beyond. The first phase of the collaboration between the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center and BIF will leverage BIF's Student Experience Lab to increase awareness of the challenges facing young men of color and develop solutions to help improve the educational experiences of these students. This effort follows the release of the College Board's report The Educational Crisis Facing Young Men of Color in January 2010.
Anyone read the book The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman? It's an anthropological study of the culture of cooking; the journey top chefs travel on their way to greatness. I couldn't help but be reminded of this emotional and often gut-wrenching account of purpose-driven people yesterday at the World Innovation Forum in NYC because if there were one natural theme that tied all the speakers together, it's this: Corporations large and small are on their own soul-searching journey.
BIF and TED have embarked on a new content-sharing partnership. This summer, TED will begin publishing select videos from BIF’s Innovation Story Studio archive on the TED.com website and TED will also be the online content partner for the 2010 BIF-6 Summit, held this year on September 15-16.
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The BIF Bookgroup on Ning is the place to talk about the latest books on innovation. This month we're reading Tony Hsieh's "Delivering Happiness". New members are always welcome! Here's a sampling of our latest conversation starters:
Our monthly correspondence includes brief, useful updates on Business Innovation Factory projects, events and developments.