BIF Speak - Experimentation
Friends Matter and Other Innovation Lessons From the 18th Century
Last month we launched the BIF Book Group with author and outside.in creator Steven Johnson's new book The Invention of Air. Our thanks go out to everyone who joined and participated. As the great conversations wind down and we begin looking at our next book selection, I’m struck by a couple of common themes from the book which are as applicable today as they were in the late 18th century.
New BIF Project: Introducing the Nursing Home of the Future
In case you missed it, the Business Innovation Factory is partnering with the Tockwotton Home, Quality Partners of Rhode Island and the MIT AgeLab to create a real-world laboratory for developing and testing new solutions, products and models for improving elderly care. Leveraging the BIF Experience Lab platform, the "Nursing Home of the Future" will create a platform for innovators and industry partners to transform current approaches to elderly care in assisted living and nursing care facilities.
Can modeling and simulation enable collaborative innovation?
I was watching the Master's Tournament this weekend and enjoyed the incredible high-definition television images from Augusta National. As a true geek wannabe I was most impressed with the use of a simulation model of the entire golf course and how it enhanced my viewing experience. If modeling and simulation technology can improve the experience of watching a golf tournament surely it can help to improve more important experiences for us as patients, students, citizens, and consumers.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger on the LIfe-Cycle of a Business
This is well worth a read:
A Delicate Balance by Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Irving just wrapped up his first semester teaching at MIT and managed to succinctly condense thirteen, three-hour seminars into a nice post. The seminar was about technology-based business transformation and he examined how companies can leverage emerging, major technologies to significantly transform a business or even a whole industry. There are so many factors that go into developing a business based on technologies as broad and complex as the Internet and in his post Irving talks about the delicate balance that exists within the life-cycle of a business:
Rewriting the Rules in R&D Doesn't Mean Starting Over From Scratch
BIF Research Advisor Alph Bingham and I shared an interesting exchange last week about new organizational models for R&D. Alph is the founder of and former CEO of InnoCentive - a Web-based community launched in 2001 that matches companies facing R&D challenges with scientists who propose solutions. It's one of the few open innovation models that has found financial success. It's worth heading over to Alph's blog for a full run through of our conversation but what I want to explore here is something Alph mentioned about sticking with the old (and how that "just ain’t gonna cut it") versus abandoning the old (which is equally short-sighted).
Don't Build Your Experimentation Practices on Eureka
He may have retired as President and CEO of Innocentive, but BIF Research Advisor Alph Bingham is far from retired. He recently launched is own blog - Innoblogger - writing about the wide-open rationale for open innovation. His recent entry, Edison, Archimedes and Solution Space goes indepth on a subject near and dear to us here at the Business Innovation Factory - what's the right way to organize around problem-solving and experimentation?
The MinuteClinic Disruption: Classic story in the 21st century
The Boston Herald ran a story over the weekend about Rhode Island-based CVS’s plans to locate low-cost health care clinics in retail stores in Boston. I'm sure CVS knew they were in for a fight considering the lengths many Rhode Island primary-care physicians have taken to block their efforts to do the same here in our state.
John Kao Q&A: How the U.S. Can Reclaim its Innovation Edge (and why Rhode Island may hold the key!)
Today’s conversation on innovation typically focuses on individual companies or market sectors, but with his new book, Innovation Nation, Business Innovation Factory Research Advisor John Kao takes the talk to a whole new level: how can you innovate a country?
Kao may just have the most interesting–and diverse–resume of anyone I’ve come across. A celebrated jazz pianist, he’s toured with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention band, produced several movies including sex, lies & videotape, taught at Harvard Business School for 14 years, wrote a best-selling book called Jamming, founded a few firms and consulted to big companies, small start-ups and government agencies around the world. Along the way, he also trained in philosophy with a B.A from Yale, psychiatry with a M.D. from Yale Medical and also business with a M.B.A from Harvard Business.
Eric von Hippel Joins BIF Research Advisory Council
If you've been following my blog entries of late, you know that I'm a huge fan of Eric von Hippel. His guidance in recent weeks in helping me shape a BIF initiative driven by his lead-user innovation research has been invaluable. So I'm thrilled to announce that Eric has joined our Research Advisory Council. He joins an amazing cast of characters comprised of leading business executives, academic and consulting innovation thought leaders who are helping our BIF community shape our research initiatives as well as provide direction on the best practices and next practices that are most valuable for our members to understand.
Building Lead-User Research into an Innovation Platform
The real exciting thing about the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) is that we’re trying to figure out how processes work from a systems perspective and then provide a real-world environment where those systems can be innovated upon. More than the typical action-oriented research that just takes one slice of one issue and follows the thread down the rabbit hole, we’re providing a platform that generates true collaboration; bringing in disparate, and often times analogous points-of-view into our experimentation process.
Wanted: Chief Integration Officer
I had an interesting conversation last week with BIF research advisor Stefan Thomke and MIT professor Eric von Hippel about the role of the integrator. What's more important, we asked, the various components that go into a successful innovation or the foundation/platform that the components are built upon?
Do Lead Users Have a Role In Business Model Innovation?
Let’s talk about lead user innovation. I traveled to MIT last week with BIF chief catalyst Saul Kaplan to spend some time with legendary innovation guru Eric von Hippel. A 45-minute packed conversation later, we left armed with a whole lot of questions about what it means to innovate and whether it might be prudent to put the lead user (as opposed to the average user) at the center of our innovation process.
Larry Huston on Building Networks for Innovation
BIF Research Advisor Larry Huston (former VP of Innovation at P&G, architect of Connect + Develop, and now founder of consulting firm 4Inno) in on the Wharton Channel talking about how innovation networks function, the ways they can be nurtured, their potential downsides and the impact they will have on how firms bring products to market.
How open is open? Hint: Constraints are good!
The Economist has a good article on open innovation and how the concept continues to wreck havoc on conventional R&D practices. But how open is open? Depends on who you ask.
Cross-Boundary Disruption - Andy Grove Style
Forbes magazine asks the question: How do you innovate in a field that already exists? Longtime innovator extraordinaire Andy Grove is teaching a group of kids at Stanford how to do that through "cross-boundary disruption." Grove is a disciple of BIF research advisor Clay Christensen so it makes sense that this smells a whole lot like disruptive innovation.
The Hidden Tyranny of Transparency
"Every truly great accomplishment is at first impossible," said U.S. Homeland Security Under Secretary for research and development Jay Cohen to an audience of innovators at BIF-3 on October 11th. Prior to his post with Homeland Security, Cohen was head of naval research. His directive was very clear: make the navy more innovative. "When I took over naval research, it was an organization with 232 years of tradition unhampered by progress," he said.
Innovation and Collaboration: The BIF Way
An interview with BIF Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan is posted on Steve Hardy’s Creative Generalist blog where the two talk about everything from Rhode Island’s position as a national innovation hot spot to the real world innovation lab BIF is developing to what it takes to really drive systems change.
Sharing is Winning: Open Innovation Case Study at Nestlé Co.
Nestlé Co has a case study in this month's Food Technology magazine highlighting some of the steps and processes the company is applying in their open innovation strategy. The article also suggests several recommendations concerning the paradigm shift required for organizations to go from a "not-invented here" mindset to a "sharing is winning" culture.
Elder Experience Lab Update: A New View of the Personal Care Experience
Earlier this winter BIF’s Elder Experience Lab team set out to better understand the experience of personal care for elders. In Phase I, our design observations revealed that personal care routines were especially challenging for even the most able elders, and that the experience needs to be fully redesigned.
Podcast Interview with Continuum's Harry West Now Available
This week I’m pleased to present BIF research advisor Harry West. As Vice President for Strategy and Innovation at design consultancy Continuum, Harry has probably been in your business, your house and maybe even in your car.
Have you picked up a Swiffer lately? Seen the slick dashboard interface on a BMW? Or how about locked something up with one of those titanium Master Locks? West and his teams at Continuum have an impressive record conceiving innovations and delivering them to market.
Yet design shouldn’t be just about making things work better and look better. Instead it should be about understanding the emotions that drive buying decisions.
Law of Large Numbers
Imagine needing to add $5-6 billion in new revenue this year just to meet corporate growth expectations. That’s about $16 million in new revenue every day including weekends. It is also Nestle’s 2009 corporate revenue growth target. Accorded to Helmut Traitler, Vice President for Innovation Partnerships, Nestle has about $100 billion in current total revenue and a growth plan calling for a 5-6% revenue increase. Just the incremental growth revenue in Nestle’s plan would land a company on the Fortune 500 list.
I had the opportunity to spend time with Helmut at an Open Innovation forum in Cambridge hosted by the Swiss Consulate’s swissnex program this week and to learn about Nestle’s Innovation Partnerships initiative. Nestle expects to get half of its growth revenue as a result of it’s innovation program so I was very interested in Helmut’s talk and the ideas he shared with me about how they plan to achieve their growth objectives.
BIF Founder Saul Kaplan Sounds Off in Business Week
BIF Founder and Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan was recently invited by Business Week to pen an article outlining his thoughts on our country’s need to create a national innovation agenda. In this piece, Kaplan discusses the perils of using stimulus cash simply to shore up outmoded education and health-care systems, rather than take the bold steps needed to transform our economy and social systems.
Escaping Karma-Vertigo: There is a Silver Lining
So many of today's companies have become paralyzed by the economic crisis - suffering from what Jaron Lanier calls "karma-vertigo" - capable only of slashing costs indiscriminately in a hail Mary attempt to survive through to the other side. And with a nod to Karl Marx who said “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it, ” we’ve seen several great academics (like BIF research advisor Clayton Christensen) develop theories around how to innovate. But the point is to actually do it. That’s where Scott Anthony’s latest book (and first solo endeavor) The Silver Lining comes in.
Join Us in the Elder Experience Lab Online
Please join the Business Innovation Factory’s Elder Experience Lab online forum. We just launched the forum a few days ago and we would love to hear from you. The Lab’s on-line forum offers opportunities for the community to discuss lab activities, participate in specific activities and participate in guided discussions. We invite you to get involved and share your ideas.
BIF Executive Director Melissa Withers at TEDX
BIF executive director Melissa Withers recently gave a talk about the BIF Elder Experience Lab at the the inaugural TEDxBoston event. In this video, Melissa reveals insights into how seniors prefer to interact with caregivers, utilize private and shared spaces, care for body and mind, and ultimately, what she thinks the elder experience can (and should) look like.
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