The Innovation Zone

You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

(WARNING - The following is a pro USA view of the world which does not acknowledge the "Post American Era" view being promulgated by economists, historians [or is that "hysterians"], and many more pundits much better educated, articulate and authoritative than I am — but this is my blog not theirs!)

Economists and pundits are having a field day trying to predict the future. How high will oil go? Are we in a post America era? What will the impact of a few billion more consumers be on global supply chains?

Come on, is it that difficult to see what's ahead?

Now this is a Hybrid!

What, you say you're in the market for a hybrid? Well if you can wait a few more months and want to not only get 30MPG+ but also want to slip the surly bonds of earth-bound commuters for the tranquility of blue skies I may just have the vehicle for you. Terrafugia, Inc. is developing the Transition®, a roadable Light-Sport Aircraft that will be able to land at the airport, fold up its wings, and drive on the road. Yes, I know, you've heard it all before. Talk about car/plane mashups has been around for over 100 years, since the car and the plane were first invented. Check out the Roadable Times web site to see the absurd and the even more absurd examples. But Terrafugia seems to have finally cracked the code on this with an "A" team and an "A" idea. In fact you can even pre-order your very own and be flying it by the end of 2009 with a deposit of $7400. It's been years since I flew small aircraft but this might just get me back in the pilot's seat! - tango kilo

How Wise are the Crowds?

In the spirit of  "The Wisdom of Crowds" - check this out - FBI turns to crowdsourcing to help solve 36 year-old case of skydiving hijacker D.B.Cooper.

Panic Attack!

Panic Attack

Do you panic when you see that U.S. companies are spending less on R&D, as a percent of worldwide R&D, from 43%  in 1986, to 32% in 2006?   

It's easy to buy into the gloom and doom scenario being painted for the US economy, run for cover, and, like super model Gisele Bundchen, require payment in Euros. But perhaps there's more to this story than the current moment of crisis.

Go Getter or Go Giver?

A great little book I came across recently. (hear me interview the author Bob Burg on blogtalkradio) Ranked as one of Amazon.com's top books (#13 today!), The book offers  insight into what the author calls the Five Laws of Success - five skills we all need in order to get ahead in  business and in life. It's an easy read (pack it for your next flight), written as fiction, it tells the story of an ambitious young man named Joe who yearns for success. Joe is a true go-getter, though sometimes he feels as if the harder and faster he works, the further away his goals seem to be. The Go Giver takes you on a personal journey of innovation that cuts to the core of how you approach success. This is simple stuff we all should know cold (and probably do), but don't practice as often as we preach it. Hey, innovation has to begin somewhere - why not with ourselves first?

Gen Y++

There is nothing new about the chasm between generations. It was there as I was growing up in tied died blue jeans with shoulder length locks (yes, no kidding, me!). It was there as my parents left the old country to come to the promised land of America, and it's there today as my daughter lobbies for an iPhone. So maybe I'm just taking my place in a long line of older generations when I step up to the microphone to express my amazement at how wide the gap seems to be from where I stand.

Yesterday I had the chance to talk about innovation to a group of underfrad students at Babson. It's not a new venue for me. I've guest lectured at a number of schools and was an adjunct at Boston College for several years. But it's been a little while since the last time I did that. Boy was I in for a surprise!

Blind Spot, Straight Ahead...

File this one under "A" for "accidentally, awe and amaze."

One of the benefits of what I do (at least in my own self deluded view) is that I spend so much time just stumbling upon random bits and pieces of knowledge that I never set out to look for. This is an old habit I started long before the internet when I would sit down in my dad's library and read the encyclopedia Yes, I was a lonely child...

But it taught me that there is much we don't know to ask until we trip over it, bump into it, or otherwise overcome our own inertia and find knowledge where we least expect it. Such was the case in a recent e-mail I got from my friend Stuart Silverstone at graphics.org, which referenced a site that provides a startling and amazingly well rendered animation on the topic of "Universcale,"  which was created by Nikon. I won't try to define the term for you, just click the link and look for yourself.

So why do I bring this up in a blog about innovation? Stumbling upon Stuart's e-mail reminded me of how often innovation is simply  a matter of perspective. How we look at a problem defines it and how we solve it. Solutions are almost always right in front of us, But if you look at anything the same way for too long you'll never get out of your own line of sight.

Think about it as you travel through Universcale.

Realizing What You're Made Of (it's more than you think!)

Imagine this - You're in perfect health, you work out, you feel younger than ever. You have a thriving consulting practice with one of the world's leading companies. Then you wake up one day and a few hours later your world gets turned upside down. You're paralyzed from the waist down.  What would you do?

That's exactly what I'm focusing on today on The Innovation Zone Blog Talk Radio Show for my interview with Glenn Mangurian. Glenn made that unimaginable journey and went on to write one of the most popular Harvard Business Review articles of 2007, "Realizing What You're Made Of."

Glenn is one of the most engaging and fascinating people I've ever met. He gives new dimension to the term resilience. But he also convinces you that your own resilience is probably much higher than you might think.

Join Glenn as he shares his inspiring journey from victim to survivor to resilient leader and in the processes helps you to better understand what you're made of!

Tune in to The Innovation Zone today, Thursday January 11th at 2pm Eastern
On the web at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/innovation or dial in to join the discussion at 718-664-6855

2007 Parting Thoughts

And so this is Christmas and what have you done...

As I once heard Steve Jobs say, "Everything in life can be summed up in a Beatles or a Dylan song." Indeed, whatever your soundtrack is download it now and pick a spot by the fireplace. It's time for all of us to contemplate yet another year passed.

So what did you do this year that will go down in history? Tough questions for most of us who didn't scale Everest or row across the Atlantic. Perhaps even for those who did.

Allow me a few minutes of Year's End reflection that might help shed some light on the question.

Innovation Ethic - Positive Signs for a Struggling Economy

Recession? Get Innovative! I was in Wisconsin last week running one of my Master Classes for the Wisconsin Technology Network. The Editor for WTN did a quick interview with me about innovation and the state of affairs in the US economy. Check it out here.

Innovating Leadership

Today on The Innovation Zone I'm interviewing America's leading Executive Coach, Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall has been an Executive coach to hundreds of top CEO. Warren Bennis said of Marshall. [He Has] the zen-like ability to create an evokative community- the mark of a great teacher." C.K. Prahalad called him "one-of-a-kind." Marshall has coached CEOs from the who's who of American industry, including, Ford, GlaxoSmithKline, American Heart Association, Herman Miller, Hasbro, Cesna, and hundreds more. Join me today as I explore the state of leadership in America with someone who has experienced it on the front lines!

Can you hear me now?

Do you ever stop to think about how painfully complicated technology has made our lives?

My Mother-in-law, once commented that the best decade was the 60s. "Everything just worked." she said. "You pushed a button and it worked. Now everything is just so complicated."

Get One Give One

By now you've probably heard about the Amex Red Card and Apple's Red iPod, both are a way to help give back to worthy causes while you spend on, well, "less worthy" causes. If you're taken by either of those socially responsible ways to spend then I have a way for you to go much further and have far greater  impact on the developing economies of the world. Read on....

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child initiative is ready to launch. If you haven't heard about this check the link. The idea is simple, put a laptop in the hands of every child across the globe. Ambitious? You bet it is.

Innovation Survey Results

Check out my latest Innovation Research

Take the Survey

See Results to date

Listen to my Podcast

The truth is simple!

I stumbled across this site today and fell in love with it. It's a complex world, but someone once said,  "the simpler you can make it the closer you get to the truth." If so then is is truth! Check out the site and enjoy a moment of simplicity in an otherwise far-too-complex world- tk

http://indexed.blogspot.com/

Had enough of the Flat World yet?

A few weeks ago I was invited to present to the CEO and 60 execs of one of America's leading banks. The topic, of course, was innovation. I was concerned; it was not the best time to be talking about innovation in banking. The markets were reeling from the impact of the subprime crisis and central banks around the world were starting to funnel money, lots of money (close to US$500B), into their member banks to avoid a credit meltdown.

The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective People

I'm so very tired of being told about all of the things I MUST do to be effective. I know what they are, we all do. We buy the books because they make us feel good about the fact that we already know what to do. The problem is not knowing what to do. If we could do those seven things we already would. The problem is that we have too many bad habits we can't get rid of. What I'd rather know is what to stop doing to be ineffective! Personally I'd settle for having to worry less about damage control. Then I might have more time to worry about adding new habits to my repertoire.

Which is why I just love the way Diann Daniel at CIO magazine characterized an interview she recently did with me in her article,  "Seven Highly Effective Ways to Kill Innovation."

Check out the list and see how you and your organization ranks. Then share it with those you know are guilty parties. Who knows, you may just find yourself dropping a few bad habits along the way.

The Drucker Legacy

Some insights, links and the archive of my radio interview with Bruce Rosenstein on July 12th.

Few figures loom  as large over the business landscape of the past 50 years as does the  imposing figure of Peter Drucker. Drucker pretty much defined management as  a science, he introduced us to knowledge workers, ushered in the post  capitalist age, and left an indelible mark on all who knew him.

I was lucky enough  to get to know Peter during the last decade of of his life. Each of my  visits with him was a fascinating journey through history. He was nothing  less than a walking encyclopedia of the 20th Century.

In my recent Innovation Zone radio show I talked to Bruce Rosenstein about Peter Drucker.  Bruce is working on a new book about Drucker and was recently at the first  Drucker Society Global Symposium, where he previewed video from an  interview he did with Peter just a few months before he passed away.

Bruce's insights  and knowledge of Drucker are amazingly crisp and clear, just like Drucker  himself!

If you're a  Drucker follower, or just want to find out a bit more about the man who has  influenced so much of business as we know it today listen in to the archived show at http://blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=38064

You can also check out these links...

MIT InvenTeams Links

Here are some cool links for my Blog Talk Radio Innovation show today:

Check out the radio show at The Innovation Zone

The InvenTeams Main site

The Lemelson-MIT program site

The Lemelson Foundation site

Cool Innovation Games on the MIT site

A Line in the Sand, Well sort of....

When I was writing my book Smartsourcing I interviewed hundreds of companies about the challenges of sourcing and the tenets of successful sourcing relationships. What I uncovered was a monumental myth that many of us have bought into as the result of it's simplistic appeal. It goes something like this, "keep the stuff you do well in house (that's your core competency) and outsource the rest." Sounds appealing, right? Sure, why not focus on those things that you do well and just hand off the rest to an organization that can do it just as well. Even the visual illustration of this model is simple. Draw a crisp vertical line on a sheet of paper. To the left of  the line are those things you keep, to the right are those things you get rid of. Not too tough for a CEO to grasp. In fact, to provide full disclosure, even I had once believed it was that easy. What could possibly be wrong with that model?  Lots!

Want a Nobel Prize? Join the Team! Want Reality? Watch TV!

So, I promised you in the last post that I'd unload some heavy new research in my weekly Innovation Zone Radio show. If you tuned in today you got that plus a great interview with Online Nation Producer Paul Cockrill. If you didn't, well, what are you waiting for? Click here to listen to my interview with Paul and to find out why even the Nobel Prize is becoming a team activity.

Click here to find out more about the new reality show, Online Nation, that Paul is producing.

Want me on your team?

(Pick me...pick me!) I don't know about you but I wasn't the kid that ended up being first choice when they were picking teams in the schoolyard. Okay, I wasn't second or third choice either. I got used to waiting it out, it built character and lots of patience. Funny thing, however, is that I ended up being a whole lot better at teamwork than most of my schoolmates - maybe because when I finally got on a team I tried like hell to stay on it for fear of having to find another one.

So hear I am, some 30 (or is it 40) years later and I'm hanging out with some really important people telling them that their companies need more teamwork, and they are actually listening or at least paying!

Innovation Insights Keynote

Check out the online video of my keynote from ii2007 this past week in Phoenix


You can also listen to my latest Blog Talk Radio Broadcast with my recap of the many sessions at Innovation Insights 2007 my tuning into BlogTalkRadio

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Innovation

I spent last week with my family touring Washington DC. Although I often visit DC for business, it had been a long time since I walked the city as a tourist and I more than made up for lost time; we must have logged a hundred miles on foot! What amazed me most was how much the city has changed over the years.

My most vivid memory of DC is a visit I made in the early hours of a morning 29 years ago, nearly to the day.

Bachelor of Innovation (tm)

Well it was bound to hapen. (And the fact that it did at an elevation of 5000+ ft is perhaps no surprise!) The university of Colorado at Colorado Springs is offering a Bachelor of Innovation (tm) degree. They put the (tm) there and they're proud of it. Actually they have a series of BI degrees in core disciplines such as Comp Sci, Business, CS Security, and Elec. Eng. Definitely high altitude education at it best. Find out more here.

Survey says...

Audio version of research report:


The survey on the "Sources of innovation" that we conducted last month surfaced some very interesting results. Nearly 300 individuals took the survey, an impressive sampling until you start to dive into the results and realize that while the degree of noise surrounding innovation is deafening, there is virtually no harmony. We've never seen a survey that is so scattered in terms of trend lines and alignment around answers. Not a single question was answered with a majority response and even when a single answer began to emerge it rarely received more than a few percentage points of the overall responses.

Pandemic Innovation

A friend recently told me that the commotion around innovation is like kicking an ant hill and watching the ants go crazy trying to figure out what's going on. IBM has clearly contributed to the madness, but I see more than just mantra here. IBM has been  pouring money into not just marketing and awareness but R&D on the topic. Big ideas require  more than talk, they need  investment. We might as well give credit where it's due. Take a look at this link and check out some of the more interesting work IBM is doing here. The link to IBM's work on the Avian flu is especially interesting.   

Fortran's father dead at 82

On innovation, according to John W. Backus

“You need the willingness to fail all the time. You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.”

Backus was the inventor of Fortran (Formula Translator 1957), arguably the first MODERN programming language and the inspiration that launched my IT career - oh so many years ago!

Check out the full story in the New York Times

Keynote Globalization/Innovation

Full 80-minute keynote by Tom Koulopoulos with Q&A on the topics of Globalization and Innovation. Given at Fusion 2007.
View below or try the very cool VEOTAG version of the video, with interactive navigation.


Download File

One hour on Innovation and cheese! - Can't make the connection, then read on...

Need a quick dose of innovation? Perhaps you know someone else who does. I recently gave a one hour keynote at the WTN show that was videotaped and is available with synchronized slides at the link below. It's a great primer on the topic (okay, at least in my humble opinion...)

I hope you enjoy it. Post a comment on my blog or send a quick e-mail if you do. I'd also love to talk with you if you are interested in bringing this keynote and topic to your organization in a longer customized version.

As for the Innovation/Cheese connection. It turns out the keynote was given in Wisconsin and as I prepared for it I found out that Wisconsin's K-12 students had placed First, Second and Third in a global Innovation competition. I asked the audience what it was that they were feeding these kids to make them so smart? Their answer was, of course, CHEESE. However, they refused to tell me what kind. "That," they said, "was a state secret!"

Watch the Innovation Keynote CLICK HERE

If you have any difficulty with this link send me an e-mail and I will post or send you a link to a quicktime version without slides. I am trying to annotate it with VEOTAG as well and will post that version soon.

LIVE - it's Blog Talk Radio

I've started a weekly radio program on BlogTalkRadio, with two shows posted so far. You can listen in live and even dial in to ask question or provide your own 2cents, every Thursday at 2pm EST. Find out more at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/innovation

TED - I'll save you $6K

I've always loved the TED conferences. The content is eclectic and entertaining, with huge STAR factor (albeit sometimes over the top). If you have never been then I have a treat for you. Now its ALL available in great on line video. Check it out here.

What's wrong with this math? (That is, if you can still add and subtract...)

Sharpen your pencils, I have some simple math I want you to check:

- 46 million Boomers with a college education will retire by 2020
+ 49 million college-educated workers will enter the labor force by 2020
- 12 million new skilled positions will be introduced

All totaled that means we will have a net deficit of
- 9 million fewer workers than needed in the US economy by the year 2020.

Does it add up for you? Not for me.

Visual Thinking - or how to make even the simple stuff complex...

I'm a consultant - it's the way my mind works. That means that I have this awful propensity to communicate with visual frameworks. When I try to simplify the complex I all too often reach into my bag and pull out things like Cartesian Coordinate systems, Magic Quadrants, Entity Relationship diagrams, Semantic Networks, and Radar-web charts to name a but a few. Truth be told, I'm often tempted to use these same tools in aspects of my life that have nothing to do with innovation, much to the dismay of my wife and kids. "Oh no Dad, not another pie chart!"

Still, I think that visualization can do allot to clarify when used correctly. Of course it can also obfuscate the simplest of ideas when used incorrectly. Which is why I love the link below which maps out the most popular visualization tools, along with examples. While many of them are commonplace there are also many that I had not heard of before.

Enjoy, and use with discretion!

USE THIS LINK TO GET THE FULL EXPERIENCE
Periodic table of Visualization Methods

How neat is this?

I made a dot.com investment seven years ago of about 100K - it finally paid off, well sort of.

First some background.

About seven years ago I ran an event in Aspen and video taped all of the speakers with the ambition of putting it all online with direct access to the content of the video via tags. The tags would include content from the presentations that you could click on, allowing you to effortlessly jump in and out of the video at any point. What a nightmare! Nearly three months and about $100,000 later I had a barely tolerable web-video library that nobody wanted anything to do with. Forget trying to sell access, I couldn't give access away. I reluctantly chalked it up to the steep price of education for a self admitted geek who jumps at any new technology, even if only for the thrill of the ride.

Fast forward seven years and a friend turns me onto Veotag, a free on line service that allows you to take any video and tag it any which way, then converts your tagged content to Flash and allows upload for the whole world to see

- oh, and did I say it was FREE!

Check out this Veotag video of a recent keynote I gave. How neat is that?!

What's your Personal DNA

I'm a "considerate creator," at least so I'm told by a web site I recently came across that provides an online self assessment test. I wonder, however, if others would describe me that way?

Innovation Gap: Objects in the Rear View Mirror may be Closer than they Appear

Do you ever get the feeling that you're looking into a rearview mirror watching the world catch up even though you're going at top speed?

A few days ago I came across a YouTube video that I thought was very cool. It was a BMW commercial about a kinetic sculptor. If you haven't seen this yet, take a look, your jaw will drop. His work is the ideal mash-up of innovation, creativity, engineering, and art. If I ever figure out a way to convince my wife to let me retire this is the sort of stuff I want to end up doing.

One of the first things I did after viewing the video was to ...

Distance is Dead, Long Live Distance

I received the following question from a listner to a recent webinar I participated in on the topic of globalization

"How do you measure the effects of virtual distance in a flat world? What about the actual practicalities of managing a globally distributed workforce?"

In my experience, the central issue in globalization is the effect of distance and culture on communication. One of the great myths that surrounds discussions about globalization is that distance is no longer relevant.

Have you been infected?

24/7 Innovation - A very cool podcast by my Friend Dan Keldsen interviewing Stephen Shapiro, author of the book 24/7 Innovation, on the topic of Creating an Infectious Culture of Innovation. Covers a wide range of topics within Innovation, from tools and methods for individuals, to processes and a larger setting, and brewing it all up into innovation as a culture and embedded capacity.


MP3 File

The Innovation Zone

The Road to Agra - A complete keynote I recently gave at a conference in San Diego on the topic of Globalization, Innovation, and core competency, with a special focus on India.

It's ALL about Education!

Some great articles from Lester Craft after his attendance at our innovation event.

America Is Sleeping Through Its Education Wakeup Call

Focus on Education Misses Half of Global Competitiveness Debate

What's New?

What's New?

It's sunny in SanDiego. Now there's news! When isn't it? As for me I'm cocooned on the tarmac delayed by an hour as we wait for Boston ATC to clear out the mess created by the rain and wind moving through the northeast. But my mind is already 3000 miles away. After a week-long innovation adrenaline rush, surrounded by new ideas and old friends I'm ready to go home and make sense of it all.

BTW: Check out James Taylor's Blog to see entries about last week's Delphi event
http://www.edmblog.com/weblog/2006/10/delphi_business.html