On personal note, it was with great sadness that I received this news: Continue reading “Clive Francis, RIP”
Historical posts follow…
Earlier posts are from some considerable time ago.
I’ve retained them because many remain relevant to innovation today.
Collaborative teams – USA versus Europe
T
oday is the last day of the Ryder Cup 2014, and the score is 10-6 (see update below for the final score). We have been here before. In the past, this score has been overturned on the last day twice (in fact, every time, see footnote).
Super-events
Each sport has its super-events which evoke significantly more emotional energy than other events, often inspired by national rivalries. Cricket has The Ashes, golf has the Ryder Cup (see footnote) for men and the Solheim Cup for women, and there are many super-events in other sports. However, the Ryder Cup, unlike the vast majority of professional golf tournaments, is a team event. This raises the question of how their performance depends on collaborative behaviour within the team.
Game or business
During the BBC commentary on this event, Nicolas Colsaerts was asked about the two sides and the differences between the approach to the game on the two continents. Continue reading “Collaborative teams – USA versus Europe”
The discontinuous nature of innovation
Making sense of the field of innovation is not simple. This is partly because of the range of aspects of innovation that are frequently discussed.
In this interview with Brightidea, the leading provider of innovation management systems, Keith McConnell, of Sara Lee, makes a distinction between innovation and “continuous improvement” in the first 25 seconds, when he says:
“My role is in continuous improvement. And my job is to actually improve the innovation process. So it is both continuous improvement as well as innovation.”
Keith McConnell [Sara Lee] from Brightidea on Vimeo.
#innochat today
Today (13 March 2014), during #innochat, this interesting aspect of innovation is proposed as the starting point for a discussion of the relationship between innovation and kaizen, which is often described as the pursuit of “continuous improvement“. The discussion will be led by our guest Elli St.George Godfrey (@3keyscoach). Continue reading “The discontinuous nature of innovation”
Some things work now
It’s 2014!
Some things still work
(and some things don’t work any longer)
Some things work now
(and some things don’t work yet)
You choose.
Gordon Edge, remembering a great innovator and leader
It was with great sadness that I learned of the recent death of Gordon Edge. These are some of my memories of a great technology innovator and business leader.
For a period of almost three years, during the 1980s, I was privileged to work at PA Technology, near Cambridge. This was a great place to be and formed part of what became known as the “Cambridge Phenomenon”.
Populated by a bunch of bright mavericks, it was led by its founder and chief maverick, Gordon Edge. Dressed immaculately, he spoke quietly, using few words, and what words!
Continue reading “Gordon Edge, remembering a great innovator and leader”
Tesla in Texas: two innovations interacting?
Selling innovative products
If you are selling something, then you want people to buy it, but how? The challenge is greater if your product is more innovative. But maybe other innovations can come to the rescue.
Resistance from existing distributors
For Tesla, the electric car manufacturer which is shaking up the motor industry, Texas is different. Tesla believe that existing car dealers have little incentive to sell electric cars, so they decided to sell them direct through their own sites, rather like a kind of Apple Store chain for cars.
But in Texas the car dealers don’t like that and they have laws to stop it.
Continue reading “Tesla in Texas: two innovations interacting?”
How much fun will your three year old child have learning to ride a bike?
Training wheels don’t work
If you have a young child who will learn to ride a bike sometime soon, you probably have recollections of the bike that you learnt on, and the awkwardness of bikes with stabilisers (also known as: training wheels). Recently, I came across this article about training wheels and balance bikes and it reminded me of the very different experience with my youngest son.
Balance bikes are much better
Balance bikes are great, as this video (not of my child) shows!
In my experience, they are obviously a better way to learn to ride a bike and it’s very surprising that anyone buys bikes with stabilisers (training wheels) any more. On a more professional note, this is also one of the best examples that I have encountered of innovation applied to learning by choosing different disclosure sequences, but that is a much bigger story.
How it started Continue reading “How much fun will your three year old child have learning to ride a bike?”
Mobile network vs landlines for internet access
Reply to Twitter messages
This is a reply to messages from @TobyParkins between 0813 and 0815UTC on 14 March 2013.
(This is also a communications experiment which I can perhaps try to explain elsewhere. Suffice to say, for now, that this is like a slightly longer Twitter message.)
The conversation so far is below.
Continue reading “Mobile network vs landlines for internet access”
Unified communication, this is not!
In this world of increasingly diverse communication, our conversations are becoming scattered across channels.
A few channels in a few minutes
Yesterday, my ex-partner sent me a text (SMS) message which approximated to: “Will you please reply to my email about …?”.
A few minutes later, she sent me another: “Actually, it might have been a voicemail“.
So I telephoned her and said: “Actually, it was a text message!”
Funny, or not?
On one level, we can dismiss this as being part of our funny old world.
But as the number of channels increases, it is not so funny when an important conversation breaks down because messages are being sent and expected on multiple disparate channels.
John W Lewis 
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