Blogging about Innovation, especially Innovation in Ireland. You'll find case studies, videos, hints, tips, polls and reviews.
TRIZ, NLP, Appreciative Inquiry, LEAN and Ayurveda are all in the mix.
Welcome!
Having spent a bit of time with Google Wave this week I confess I haven’t been fully won over. In small collaborations and in co-creations of documents it comes across as a live Wiki style chat. It is fun but it is not at the stage where I would be rushing to check my incoming waves in the same way I track my email or Twitter feed. There is a genuinely different feel with Wave and a certain frisson that comes with learning. I’ll be sticking with it though.
New kid on the block is Raindrop from Mozilla, makers of my browser of choice FireFox. Billed as Open Messaging for the Open Web Raindrop is about pulling in conversations that you care about. You cannot yet download it but there is already plenty of buzz.
Raindrop uses a mini web server to fetch your conversations from different sources (mail, twitter, RSS feeds), intelligently pulls out the important parts, and allows you to interact with them using your favorite modern web browser (Firefox, Safari or Chrome).
Sounds cool right. It is also Open Source so if it catches on expect loads of addons to make life better. Watch this space.
Welcome Back. Don't forget to leave a comment. Thanks.
Just saw this today but it looks really good. Also a really cool example of voids being used to solve a problem for all the TRIZ guys.
ARTtrust is a simple self-certification system, under full control of each author, providing individual identity to any Digital Fine Art Collection Pigment Print, produced on an HP Designjet Z series Professional Photo Printer using HP Vivera Pigment inks on any compatible media. The solution is a combination of physical elements and data accessible through the Internet, combining the best of analog and digital capabilities.
It is in the Testing Phase but authors & artists are welcome to participate and get their first package of ARTtrust tags for free.
The solution uses a translucent polymer in which a set of bubbles are randomly self generated. This constellation of bubbles is used as the unique indentifier for the physical tag. There is no technical way to reproduce this tridimensional code as it is impossible to generate empty spaces with shapes, sizes and positions identically inside the material. Once affixed to any surface, it cannot be removed without visually altering the tag and the pattern. Brillant use of self action & voids!
Launched today was the new Science, Technology & Innovation report titled ” Delivering the Smart Economy“ Loads of press material but haven’t got the actual report yet to read.
This is the second report on the implementation of the Strategy for Science,Technology & Innovation that was aimed at transforming Ireland into a Competitive Knowledge economy. Eight government departments as well as advisory bodies, state agencies
and higher education institutions have worked together to implement the
strategy.
Commenting at the Launch Minister Conor Lenihan said:
Ireland has a unique environment that encourages linkage and
convergence between all the participants in a collaborative research
landscape. Government Departments, funding agencies, regulatory
authorities, academia and industry are all interconnected creating a
dynamic research environment.
Ireland has had a pretty decent track record in encouraging investment in R&D with Business Expenditure and Higher Education R&D spend growing significantly as a result. In fact, total Research and Development (R&D) spending has pretty much trebled
over a10 year period, reaching €2.6bn in 2008 or equivalent to 1.66%
of GNP.
Programs like Science Foundation Ireland do a great deal funding foundational research with an impressive list of partners across academia and industry.
Milestone for me and for the blog this week as I posted the 100th post.
I have learnt a whole lot about blogging, social media and web2.0 in the process. But the best thing has been all the interaction and people I have met though the blog and through Twitter
I created this Blog to capture and collect my own thoughts on Innovationand Ireland in one place. I have attempted to be interesting and informative.
Highlights
I did a whole series on the Dragon’s Den and follow ups that are pretty successful – new series next year! Eventually pulled together Innovation Events diary for people interested in Innovation in Ireland
Nice little video here. I popped it on the Innovation Video page too. While we look mostly at Innovation in Ireland and in Europe this is an interesting view from Australia that prompted a few thoughts.
The four key barriers to Innovation stated here are:
Unsupportive Organisational Culture
Employees lack capability
funds aren’t allocated to innovation
Management uncertain about outcomes
I have dealt with all four barriers and pretty much have found them in most countries and organisations. While a lot of companies recognise the second barrier and invest in training of some type or another it is the internal organisational supports that innovation needs most. What this reminds us is that the approach for an organisation must be a whole organisational approach.
Just wanting to do something is a great start but not enough.
The innovating organisation must have some desire for the new and the ability to handle the consequences. A business needs to be excited but recognise the consquences of the opportunity and plan accordingly. I’m a TRIZnik so I’d draw nine windows, think about the consquences and put in some preventative and some corrective actions. Might look something like this:
Once the company chooses an objective then we look at the consequences of that choice.
What is the level of investment needed to make it successful?
What is the level of risk?
What changes does this choice make in the company?
Does the organisation structure need to change?
Does the companies motivation/reward/recognition/review methods need to adapt?
How is the excitement going to be communicated?
How is this choice and the consequences going to be communicated?
A business needs to face up to risks & changes if it is going to succeed. A business that does not have internal support structures for innovation hits the barriers mentioned above time and time again. A solid buy-in, well and publically communicated. Accommodation of the changes within the way the business is run at a metric and system level is also important. The complexity of this varies of course. In a startup it’s a mindset change within a couple of people. In a bigger organisation it’s a mindset change among a lot more people and also systems and demonstrated behaviours and procesess.
Heads up for all those interested in Open Innovation in Ireland. Henry Chesbrough is in Belfast next month giving a lecture called “Open Innovation – a New paradigm for R&D”
The guys at the Research & Regional Services group have kindly agreed to share the invitation with readers of InnovationChef.com
Here are the details:
You are invited to an
INNOVATION LECTURE
as part of the InterTradeIreland All-Island Innovation Programme
Open Innovation
- a New Paradigm for R&D
presented by
Professor Henry Chesbrough
Director of the Centre for Open Innovation
University of California, Berkeley
Tuesday 10 November 2009 (6.00pm)
The Great Hall, Queen’s University Belfast
The concept of Open Innovation advocates that companies can no longer keep their own innovations secret. The key to success is creating an open platform around your innovations so your customers, your employees and even your competitors can build upon them. Only then will you create an ongoing, evolving community of users, doers and creators.
Today, in many industries, the logic that supports an internal and centralised approach to R&D has become obsolete. This change creates a new logic of open innovation that embraces external ideas and knowledge in conjunction with internal R&D. However, companies must still perform the difficult and arduous work necessary to convert promising research results into products and services that satisfy customers’ needs. Innovators must integrate their ideas, expertise and skills with those of others outside the organisation to deliver the result to the marketplace, using the most effective means possible. In short, firms that can harness outside ideas to advance their own businesses, while leveraging their internal ideas outside their current operations, are likely to thrive in this new era of open innovation.
Henry Chesbrough is Executive Director of the Centre for Open Innovation at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He has a unique background as both a practitioner and researcher having spent 10 years in senior product planning and strategic marketing positions in Silicon Valley. His research interests include a focus on innovation; managing R&D; technology-based spin-offs; corporate venture capital; and evolution in high-technology industries in the US, Europe and Japan. His book, Open Innovation, articulates a new paradigm for organising and managing R&D. This book was named a “Best Business Book” by Strategy & Business magazine.
