Can you train people to innovate? Financial analyst Barry Ritholtz has shared a helpful slide set titled “Innovation can be trained” that’s worth reading. Printing and then tacking individual slides to your cube walls can be used as a daily reminder that organizations can create cultures of innovation. It’s based on the work The Innovator’s DNA by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen.
499 Comments
Tomi says:
Peter Principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
The Peter Principle is a belief that in an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit, that organization’s members will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.” In more formal parlance, the effect could be stated as: employees tend to be given more authority until they cannot continue to work competently.
The principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions.
The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails. This is “The Generalized Peter Principle”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Advice So Good You Didn’t Know You Needed It
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/05/you-didnt-know-you-needed-it/
Disruptive design, disruptive products and disruptive thinking. And while it’s easy to look back in the past and pinpoint exactly what technologies caused disruption in various industries, incubating disruption within existing organizations is a different ball game.
According to Pink, disruption is giving the world something it didn’t know it was missing.
In order to create these things that enhance our lives in such a meaningful way, Pink argues, we must incorporating set allocations of time into our professional schedules in which the only thing we’re tasked with is to flex our creative muscles. Whether it is one hour of creative time for every 39 hours of traditional work time, or 20% of one’s total time at the office, it is in these moments that valuable creations are conceived through disruptive thinking.
“Artists do their best work in non-commissioned conditions, yet we have a problem because if we go to our workplaces throughout North America, there’s almost no non-commissioned work,” Pink said.
To break this pattern, Pink believes organizations of any type should take a hint from Google’s 20 percent time, Atlassian’s “Fedex Days,” and Genius Hours where employers tell their employees to “go work on anything you want as long as it’s not part of your regular job.” Having space and time to operate where failure is allowed, Pink says, is the way to foster disruption.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Business Master’s 3 Truths of Innovation
http://www.openforum.com/articles/a-business-masters-3-truths-of-innovation
Peter F. Drucker is legendary for his insightful work and writing about business.
Here’s a little of what he has to say about innovation.
Innovation is not so much about genius as it is about a system and some sweat.
“purposeful innovation resulting from analysis, system and hard work is all that can be discussed and presented as the practice of innovation. But this is all that need be presented since it surely covers at least 90 percent of all effective innovations.”
Innovation isn’t important unless you want your business to survive. “All economic activity is by definition ‘high-risk.’ And defending yesterday—that is, not innovating—is far more risky than making tomorrow,” Drucker says.
Companies that don’t innovate stagnate. And stagnant companies are dying companies.
Innovation will die unless you make it live. “It is not size that is an impediment to entrepreneurship and innovation; it is the existing operation itself, and especially the existing successful operation,” Drucker writes.
“The best, and perhaps the only, way to avoid killing off the new by sheer neglect is to set up the innovative project from the start as a separate business,” Drucker says.
To innovate, I start with something small, such as a new idea, a new method, a new product or a new service (a single item, not a whole bundle). And then I give it just a little space, a tiny little budget.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Good Boss Study Suggests Guilt Is Key Ingredient
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/good-boss-study-guilt_n_1467559.html?ref=small-business&ir=Small%20Business
Conducted by researchers at Stanford University, the study revealed that guilt-prone people tend to carry a strong sense of responsibility to others, which in turn makes others see them as leaders.
In all of the groups, those who were most likely to be judged by others as the group’s leaders also scored highest in guilt proneness on the personality test.
In addition, guilt proneness predicted emerging leadership more so than extraversion, a well-known marker of leadership, according to the study.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers Are Happy in Role as Non-Managers
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1381&doc_id=242782&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
If you’ve remained a technical contributor, eschewing the climb up the corporate ladder, are you happy with your decision?
Consulting engineer Robert Sander Sr. has no regrets about his decision:
“I spent four years as a manager and hated it all the time. I am much happier as a technical subject matter expert and acknowledged leader of technology in my field.”
According to consultant William Ketel II, “The sense of personal achievement that comes with a successful design is quite a reward, and that does make me happy. I can’t imagine doing anything else that would be so rewarding that I would get paid for.”
Lest we assume that management and engineering are discrete functions, Ketel reminds us of the contrary. When he was chief engineer at a startup, he saw himself as being on the engineering side because he was “the one ultimately responsible for everything.” After that startup cratered, his experience with his manager at a subsequent job wasn’t so sanguine:
“When one [manager] makes it clear that they regard all engineers as interchangeable commodity resources, moral suffers, loyalty is damaged, and the engineers leave. I am at a loss as to how MBA accountants can design electronic vehicle systems.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forget Edison: This is How History’s Greatest Inventions Really Happened
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/forget-edison-this-is-how-historys-greatest-inventions-really-happened/258525/
The myth of the solitary inventor — in 8 short stories
The world’s most famous inventors are household names. As we all know, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone, and Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.
Except they didn’t. The ideas didn’t spring, Athena-like, fully formed from their brains. In fact, they didn’t spring fully formed from anybody’s brains. That is the myth of the lonely inventor and the eureka moment.
“Simultaneous invention and incremental improvement are the way innovation works, even for radical inventions,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sometimes (quite often?) big companies will screw up the innovation in many ways:
Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself
15 years on, Winamp still lives—but mismanagement blunted its llama-whipping.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/
Enter Winamp, the skin-able, customizable MP3 player that “really whips the llama’s ass.” In the late 1990s, every music geek had a copy; llama-whipping had gone global, and the big-money acquisition offers quickly followed. AOL famously acquired the company in June 1999 for $80-$100 million—and Winamp almost immediately lost its innovative edge.
Winamp’s 15-year anniversary is now upon us, with little fanfare. It’s almost as if the Internet has forgotten about the upstart with the odd slogan that looked at one time like it would be the company to revolutionize digital music. It certainly had the opportunity.
“There’s no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition,” Rob Lord, the first general manager of Winamp, and its first-ever hire, told Ars.
By early 2004, Rolling Stone dubbed Nullsoft’s founder the “world’s most dangerous geek”—but companies like AOL aren’t good fits for dangerous geeks. That same year, Frankel resigned, writing on his website a few lines that were later removed: “For me, coding is a form of self-expression. The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have. This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leave.”
Like most companies, Winamp was created to solve a “pain problem.” That problem? Two decades ago, it was pretty difficult to organize and play compressed music, which had just started to enter mainstream usage.
The Windows Advanced Multimedia Products (WinAMP) player was released to the world on April 21, 1997. The next year, when its parent company Nullsoft formally incorporated, Winamp became $10 shareware. But no one pays for shareware, right? Wrong.
“Nothing ever was broken [if you didn’t pay], there was no feature that was unlocked,” Rob Lord told Ars. “In that year before we were acquired, we were bringing in $100,000 a month from $10 checks—paper checks in the mail!”
At the time, Lord already had staked his first claim to fame: co-founding the (recently revived) Internet Underground Music Archive, the world’s first online legal music repository, while he was a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“Justin was the one coding on it and he was the only one who had access to source code.”
It was Lord’s job to figure out how to make the company money.
“’We’ll just do x and let the universe decide,’” he recalled Frankel saying. “I think it describes the mode we were in—things happen for a reason.”
The universe decided that Winamp was awesome.
Before long it became hard to resist valuation offers in the neighborhood of $100 million.
Lord now says Nullsoft was “acquired at the sweet spot of insanity,”
“AOL, without telling either of us, bought us both,”
At first, Winamp kept riding high.
But problems quickly became apparent.
Former employees say that a deep chasm existed between the corporate cultures of Spinner and Nullsoft. Worse still, with their simultaneous acquisition, sometimes it was unclear exactly who was in charge of what.
AOL management decided that, despite Nullsoft’s larger user base, Spinner was the more mature company with more traditional corporate leadership. As such, Spinner was effectively given administrative and financial control over the two units.
Fred McIntyre claimed that one of the biggest reasons why AOL failed to capitalize on this music subscription plan was that the company insisted on using its own indigenous billing system, the one used for the Service.
“AOL was religious about this idea that we had to do billing through the same infrastructure that AOL did billing for service for,” he said, comparing it the ill-fated decision by Yahoo to force Flickr users to use a Yahoo ID to log into the photo-sharing service.
“Winamp would have a larger US audience today were it not the fact that AOL tried to get people to install Netscape or AOL or something else when they installed Winamp,” McIntyre concluded.
“When you think about what AOL had in early 2000,” he told Ars, “the only thing that they were missing that [would be] essential to today’s media system is a hardware device.”
The other problem, of course, is that by late 2001, the first iPod appeared. As Steve Jobs himself famously pointed out at the product’s launch, there were existing MP3 players—but they all sucked. By 2003, Apple had sold a million iPods and launched the iTunes Music Store.
“Apple so thoroughly dominated and crushed that space,”
“AOL did more to negate progress than any company I’ve ever seen,” said Palihapitiya, Winamp’s early head of business development. “These bureaucrats viewed every decision as a political decision. Really good ideas would die on the vine.”
“AOL as a company should not just sit on their asses and try to keep from losing as many subscribers as it can,” he told Rolling Stone for its January 13, 2004 issue. “I mean, I’m a stockholder of the company. I want them innovating. I want them doing things that are good for the world and being socially conscious.”
Frankel described the tension to Rolling Stone in 2004: “We fought off the AOL bullshit as much as possible,”
Probably the most surprising piece of the story is that Winamp didn’t die right then and there in 2004. For the next three years, the software seemed more or less in stasis—no new version appeared.
AOL’s own corporate strategy, which kept shifting, slowed down development.
But Winamp ticked along.
“What do you do if you have 50 million users around the world and 90 percent are outside the US and you have a six-person team in DC?” Weber wondered.
“The first is don’t screw up a good thing,” Weber said. “Don’t use it as a mechanism for delivering AOL-branded services. Help make it more relevant to people who do use it.”
“You sell a premium version of the product,” Weber said. “You’ve got this freemium play and it gets big enough, if you can get one percent [of your customers to buy it], you can build a real business.”
Currently, Winamp Pro sells for $20, which, when multiplied by hundreds of thousands of paid users, works out to millions of dollars in revenue. Another way to make money is by selling ads directly on Winamp.com—and with the site doing several million total unique visitors a month, it’s an easy way to earn some cash.
But there’s an even better way to make money: put a Winamp player inside a browser toolbar. As Weber explained, this generates “a hell of a lot of money—search makes a lot more than banner ads.”
“Google has a [search] deal with AOL, so we’re distributed AdSense, in a branded, Winamp sense,”
But Geno Yoham, Winamp’s general director since October 2008, argues that Winamp will continue to do well as a media player, particularly in emerging markets where Apple hasn’t penetrated as well.
Winamp says that it has around 30 million users worldwide currently (a figured based on comScore Web traffic analysis), with less than one million in the United States.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Power is both a micro and macro issue
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/other/4376398/Power-is-both-a-micro-and-macro-issue?cid=EDNToday
I was reading an article on Forbes this morning titled “Was Bell Labs Overrated?” It is an interesting article that defines the roles of innovation and invention in the high-tech world and states that the best companies need to be doing both.
It also points out how many of the old industrial labs failed because they could not get their ideas into products that people actually found useful.
Was Bell Labs Overrated?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2012/06/27/was-bell-labs-overrated/
Bell Labs, the research division of the “old” AT&T, came up with some of the most groundbreaking inventions of the 20th Century: the transistor, communication satellites, fiber optics, Unix. It even gets credit for inventing technologies like ion implantation and solar panels which have very little to do with telecommunications.
“As great as these institutions were as platforms for invention, they suffered from an inability to get ideals into the marketplace,” noted Justin Rattner, the chief technology officer and vice president of Intel Labs at an event in San Francisco.
He’s got a point. It’s tough to detract from the scientific accomplishments of Bell Labs or Xerox Parc. But commercialization wasn’t their strong suit. AT&T unfurled videoconferencing at the 1964 Worlds’ Fair, but it’s only coming into common acceptance now. The fax machine was invented in 1843, and both Xerox and Bell Labs had ongoing projects to fine-tune the concept. Still, faxing didn’t go mainstream until the 1980s. Voice mail? Edison invented the Ediphone (dictation machine) and the Telescribe by 1914 but it voice mail didn’t become a phenomenon until Japanese consumer electronics made it happen 70 years later. Cell phones? Cellular certainly took off faster overseas than here.
“We can’t stop at invention. They (Bell Labs) often only worked on the first half. They took it to a certain point and declared victory,” he said during an interview. “Too many industrial labs were patterned after Bell Labs.
Scientific breakthroughs can become the basis of tremendously huge industries.
On the other hand, innovation can lead to a quicker payback. Companies in China often innovate more than they invent. Apple relies far more on innovation than invention: the high-resolution retina screen, miniature drives, voice recognition and other technologies in their products were invented by someone else. Apple then packages them well.
Then again, by focusing on the shorter-term gains that can be achieved through innovation, companies and entire societies can mortgage their future. If the chronic, devastating droughts predicted by many scientists occur, no one is really going to care that you invented a cool new shopping app.
Rattner, and Intel’s, position is that companies need to do both, and that innovation can often be underserved
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t bother with Big Data – listen to customers instead
Analytics has a role, says telco innovator, but better insights come from your ears
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/22/listen_to_customers_dont_do_big_data/
“Insights wont come from data, they’ll come from observation,” Ossipoff told delegates at Genesys’ G-Force 2012 event in Sydney. The insights on offer from such observations will yield information on which business processes work and which mess customers around.
He therefore told the audience they need to listen to tapes of calls to their call centres
As another illustration of the importance of listening he revealed than 70% of support calls to Telstra come about because customer expectations have not been correctly set.
In the future, he expects business will also want to use big data generated by smartphones.
Standing in the way of such innovation, he said, is a tendency for business to atrophy and “defend legacy positions, cash flows and sunk capital.” Such tactics, he said, are unlikely to survive at a time when technology is changing consumption behaviour, especially among the young. Only by listening to their interactions with a business, and “always being in beta with new services”, can business thrive.
Tomi says:
5 Things Toddlers Can Teach You About Marketing
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670565/5-things-toddlers-can-teach-you-about-marketing
When Sense Worldwide’s Brian Millar spent a couple of years as a stay-at-home dad, he garnered more awards than at any other two-year stint of his career. Here’s what he learned.
1. Emotional benefits sell better than rational ones
2. Don’t ask your consumers whether they want something new
We’re programmed by evolution not to like unfamiliar stuff. So if you ask people whether they’d like something completely different to what they already have, they say no.
Sometimes you have to push new ideas on consumers. When you do, make sure it’s instantly gratifying. Get it right, and it’ll pay off big.
3. Bonuses are better than bribes
Bonuses are where you get something extra for doing something you’d like to do anyway
They increase loyalty that continues long after the promotion stops.
4. Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising
The marketing graveyard is littered with the wreckage of brands that couldn’t live up to the promises written by their ads.
5. Move beyond functional equivalence
These days, in the developed world, everything works. Increasingly, that’s the challenge for all manufacturers. Fortunately, it seems that people will pay for much more than function these days.
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 Strategies for Managing Junior IT Professionals
http://www.cio.com/article/714943/4_Strategies_for_Managing_Junior_IT_Professionals?page=1&taxonomyId=3185
No CIO wants to be a bad manager. This is especially true of an IT department’s youngest members, who are eager to make a difference but need some guidance before that can happen. Putting these four strategies into practice will help your junior IT professionals grow and learn at the right pace.
Allow People to Fail
Failure should be welcomed, particularly in junior roles. Otherwise, there is no room for growth.
We’re all attuned to avoid failure. It seems like it’s basic human nature to steer clear of making mistakes and causing disappointment. However, to write off failure as simply a wrong to be avoided ignores the basic principle of professional growth—by making mistakes, causing a problem and enrolling ourselves in the process of rectifying that problem, we grow, learn and mature in our careers.
Failure is downright scary at higher levels; with more responsibility and more access, more can go wrong. Limiting a junior administrator to a couple of organizational units in Active Directory or a single department’s set of computers to upgrade to Windows 7
Remember the old adage: Give people just enough rope to hang themselves and see what happens.
Explain the Reasoning Behind Decisions and, Ultimately, Processes
In our busy lives and the fast-paced corporate world, it’s easy to resort to giving commands and barking orders and expecting your deputies and lieutenants to simply follow through.
demonstrating a careful, prudent thought process and walking junior administrators and other direct reports through alternatives to an issue, weighing potential solutions and deciding on a final outcome can be very advantageous.
Don’t Be Afraid to Invest in Training
Training is perhaps the most important part of professional development, yet in almost all organizations its value is substantially overlooked.
The natural reaction to the learn-and-leave effect—which honestly does happen, but not to the extent that is feared by most managers—is to stop investing in training.
It tells your good employees you don’t care about their development and don’t trust their career ambitions, which all but pushes them out the door at their first realistic opportunity.
Don’t Promote People Beyond Their Competence
“This one seems obvious,” you may say. The fact is, there is a lot of truth to the old saying that people end up in a position one level higher than they’re actually capable of fulfilling with any level of competence.
Why do we so often take technical people who are great at doing technical things and suddenly ask them to not do technical things any longer but, instead, control projects and resources?
Let people transition gradually into roles of more responsibility. Create different growth paths within your team or your organization.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Innovation the Most Abused Word In Business?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/30/0328210/is-innovation-the-most-abused-word-in-business
“Most of what is called innovation today is mere distraction, according to a paper by economist Robert Gordon, written for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Real innovations involve things like the combustion engine or air conditioning, not the smartphone”
Innovation is the most abused word in tech
http://blogs.computerworld.com/tablets/20914/innovation-most-abused-word-tech
The iPad is about as innovative as the toaster. You can still read books without an iPad, and you can still toast bread without a toaster.
True innovation radically alters the way we interact with the world. It is something like air conditioning, the combustion engine or the telephone, not the smartphone.
But in tech, every little thing is called “innovative.”
Real innovation does not involve the things that Apple and Samsung fought over in their patent lawsuit. Restrictions on the use of features such as “pinch-to-zoom” will no more shut down development of rival products to Apple than Amazon’s shopping cart patent killed ecommerce.
Most of what is called innovation today is mere distraction. But don’t take my word for it. Read this paper by Robert Gordon, written for the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Gordon’s paper is provocative and interesting, and a reminder that big innovations in history are rare.
IS U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH OVER? FALTERING INNOVATION CONFRONTS THE SIX HEADWINDS
http://av.r.ftdata.co.uk/files/2012/08/IS-U.S.-ECONOMIC-GROWTH-OVER-FALTERING-INNOVATION-CONFRONTS.pdf
Robert J. Gordon
Working Paper 18315
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
August 2012
Tomi Engdahl says:
An innovation can be as small as a neat new way of handling some user interaction which nobody has done before or a heuristic which solves a hard problem but at the same time people from buisness or management backgrounds or courses do set an insanely low bar for what they consider “innovation”.
If you were to believe buisness grads then “innovation” includes their “ideas” along the lines of “a website like *only better*” or “that thing which everyone is already doing but which I think is my neat new idea”
Whether or not the word “innovation” has become the most abused word in the business context, that remains to be seen
On the other hand, “innovation” itself has been abused by the patent trolls
Innovators and inventors nowadays often find themselves in between a rock and a very hard place
On one hand, they can get sued by patent trolls if they put their innovation to good use
On the other hand, many of the innovators’ livelihood depends on their ability to invent, to innovate, to create new things
Source: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/30/0328210/is-innovation-the-most-abused-word-in-business
Tomi Engdahl says:
Good in math? You probably use both sides of your brain
http://www2.electronicproducts.com/Good_in_math_You_probably_use_both_sides_of_your_brain-article-fajb_math_brain_sep2012-html.aspx
Communication between left and right hemispheres can predict performance with basic arithmetic problems
Researchers at the University of Texas’ (Dallas) Center for Vital Longevity, Duke University, and the University of Michigan have found that the strength of communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain is a legitimate point of reference when trying to predict a person’s ability to perform basic mathematical problems.
What’s always been a question — until now — is whether these two hemispheres can work together in order to improve a person’s math performance.
This study proves that they can.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Avoiding the Dangers of Groupthink
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=251262&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
Have you ever found yourself sitting in a project planning meeting where everyone around the table is discussing completion dates they know can’t be met, yet no one ever says so? Or have you ever spent hours trying to work out some technical aspect of a design, even though you know another aspect of the design has a serious flaw that isn’t being addressed? Unfortunately, these surreal experiences are familiar to most engineers, and they take place more often than many of us would like to admit.
Groupthink is a concept that was introduced by William H. Whyte in a 1952 Fortune magazine article and later developed by the psychologist Irving Janis in the 1970s and 1980s. It refers to the tendency to suspend independent critical thinking in favor of group consensus. The result is poor decision making.
In all of these examples, it’s probably fair to say the denial of reality was more on the part of managers than engineers. But why weren’t engineers successful in winning their managers over to the side of reality?
The insidious thing about groupthink is that it builds on some of the best aspects of our character, including our ability to work together toward common goals and our unwillingness to give up in the face of a challenge. Despite the stereotype of engineers as solitary misanthropes, teamwork is central to the engineering profession. Engineers often have deep loyalty to their teammates. This is a good thing, but loyalty should never mean self-censorship of criticism.
Engineers also often have a tendency to believe they can solve any problem with hard work and ingenuity. This can sometimes lead to ever-increasing expenditures of effort toward a difficult task without questioning the value of the task itself.
I realized that it was important to take her criticisms seriously. If they were wrong, explaining why they were wrong increased our own understanding. If they were right, they helped keep us from going in the wrong direction.
Of course, I’m not suggesting it’s good to be a chronic complainer, but such people shouldn’t always be written off.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does crowdfunding work?
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/377242/does-crowdfunding-work
Is it really practical to fund a business from hundreds of small donations harvested over the internet? Simon Brew investigates
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why can’t China innovate?
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/techtropolis/4397118/Why-can-t-China-innovate-
As the final part of my four-part blog series from China (on EETimes.com), I wanted to explore one of the big questions that China faces today, and that is can it innovate?
China has no independent legal system to protect intellectual property so this leaves all forms of technology vulnerable to copying.
. Several people I have met recently who work in China have explained that there are a few historical precedents that we need to consider before being too critical of this issue; first much of Chinese cultural history is based on highly accurate copying of calligraphy, painting and hand-crafted pottery and furniture. The ability to copy and slightly modify classical art forms is highly treasured and goes back millennia. That’s the long view.
The short view is that the economic revolution in China over the last 30 years has moved much faster than legal or ethical standards.
Given the absolutely incredible growth of China as a low-cost producer of the world’s mass-market goods, can China now become an innovative economy?
On my trip I asked several people who work in China if they could name some innovative local companies. It’s interesting how hard they had to think about the question.
Ironically he teaches innovative thinking to Western companies in China because local firms are reluctant to educate their workers for fear of them leaving to work for a competitor.
My comments:
China seems to be a mixed bag.
I’m pretty sure China will rock the world on invention in the not too distant future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Baidu founder says follow your passion
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4397403/Baidu-founder-says-follow-your-passion
The co-founder of Internet search giant Baidu told them to do what he has done: follow their passions.
Li has become something of a tech celebrity, China’s answer to Steve Jobs
“The truth is I’m always happy,” said Li in an on-stage interview at the annual conference of the Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association (Hysta) here. “When I was working as an engineer in the Bay Area, I was happy, too–the most important thing is to always enjoy what you do,” he said.
“The industry is always changing, and that’s probably why I like my job,” said Li. “There are always new challenges.”
Despite his personal passion, “the atmosphere at Baidu is not tense, people are relaxed, but products come out that people like,” Li said.
He described the culture of Baidu as “simple: be direct not polite, say what is needed and be reliable.”
“What matters is how much you are willing to work and how good you are.”
“After I got into industry, I realized I wanted to build something many people could use.”
Baidu went five years without anyone in the CEO chair
“I am an engineer, and my passion is products–I don’t like government relations, and I don’t like drinking alcohol late at night with people I don’t really like,” he quipped.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ethics and freedoms are not global
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/eda-designline-blog/4397279/Ethics-are-freedoms-are-not-global
I am amazed at how unworldly many people are. Those of us who have grown up in countries other than the one we live in, or have had a chance to be in many cultures around the world, seem to have a different perspective on world events compared to someone who just drinks from one fire hose. A recent discussion with a friend brought this to light in a very stark way
We tend to think that things like ethics and morals are, or should be global. But this is far from the truth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Designers, Where Do You Start?
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=251493&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
I asked a question this month that could have gotten just as many responses as people responding. The question was “When you sit down to start a brand new design, what’s the first thing you do?”
Of course, the answer has a lot to do with what you are designing and what’s been done before.
from our own Jon Titus: “I make sure that I have clear objectives and requirements written and agreed upon by all concerned parties. You can’t start a project without a clear ‘map.’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Customers demanding evermore functionality. Shorter market windows. Compliance demands. It’s more difficult than ever to create products that stand out among the competition, yet are still profitable. Next generation products require next generation development techniques, such as systems engineering, to leverage knowledge and drive innovation earlier in the development process. Most organizations actually have the engineering data required to make this happen, but simply can’t access it or make sense of it due to overwhelming complexity and lack of integrated views.
Source: http://www.edn.com/electrical-engineers/education-training/webinars/4394467/How-to-capture-the-hidden-value-within-your-engineering-data-?cid=Newsletter+-+EDN+on+Systems+Design
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t Let Privacy Fear Defeat Innovation
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/the-vestigial-wing-of-privacy-fear/
Though closely linked, there is a difference between the need for privacy and the need for safety.
Keeping our credit card or Social Security numbers hidden protects us from real threats of fraud and identity theft.
Keeping the things we share to social media visible only to the right people protects us from judgement and discrimination.
If a social network, website, device, or person exposes these types of information, we have every right to be angry. Violating our privacy in this way actually jeopardizes our safety.
But often times, people and the press are outraged by perceived “privacy violations” that don’t affect our security. This is dangerous because it makes innovators afraid to build great things that use our data safely or with our permission.
A year ago, Facebook began allowing developers to request permission for our home addresses and phone numbers. This could have powered apps that let us bypass entering our shipping information when making purchases or sent us emergency updates via SMS.
But before the new data-permissions capability could even be used, the press and politicians declared it an egregious privacy violation. They misconstrued it as apps stealing this information, not asking for it. They jumped to conclusions and worst-case scenarios of home invasions and telemarketing spam.
Instead, if allowing adults to make decisions about how their info could be used, the fearful forced Facebook to backtrack and remove the option. To this day, it hasn’t been reinstated. Great, useful apps were not built because of fear.
Tomi Engdahl says:
US copyright militia’s Megaupload witch hunt threatens online innovation
The INQUIRER talks with Kim Dotcom’s defence lawyer, Ira Rothken
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2215406/us-copyright-militias-megaupload-witch-hunt-threatens-online-innovation
MEGAUPLOAD FOUNDER Kim Dotcom’s defence lawyer, Ira Rothken has lashed out at US and New Zealand authorities, claiming that their copyright witchhunt and its trail of misconduct have caused lasting damage to online innovation.
“The elephant in the room right here is the tension between copyright nationalism and the need for copyright safe harbouring,” Rothken told The INQUIRER.
“It [the Megaupload case] demonstrates the tension between the Hollywood copyright militia and the policy issues of copyright balance that are needed for internet innovation.
“Ruling in favour of hollywood will reduce the availability of cloud storage sites and cause problems for small businesses and individuals who are in the greatest need for competition in the marketplace.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
90% Of Incubators And Accelerators Will Fail And That’s Just Fine For America And The World
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/14/90-of-incubators-and-accelerators-will-fail-and-why-thats-just-fine-for-america-and-the-world/
Incubators are now an industry segment in their own right.
However, I noticed one model gearing up: Y Combinator by Paul Graham. At least in Silicon Valley, YC was pretty much the only well-known incubator. Today the total number of incubators (broadly defined to include incubators, accelerators, and “seed starter funds”) must be in the hundreds, each one slightly different from the other — versus a few years ago, when the space had YC, TechStars, YouWeb, Idealab and a couple of others.
I would like to present the claim that 90 percent of incubators will fail. By “failing,” I mean they don’t return (or don’t exceed) the money that was put into them. On what basis do I make my claim? Well, the hundreds of incubators are really startups, and the oft-cited rule of thumb is that 9 out of 10 startups fail.
Is there any reason why incubators would be different from other startup spaces?
Hal says:
Entrepeneurs? Check out this site Fast!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Business incubators
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/practical-chip-design/4399331/Business-incubators?cid=EDNToday
Starting up an EDA business, or many other types of technology business, can involve getting a computer and lots of caffeine as you burn the midnight oil trying to put together code that you believe will be the product that every designer will want or need. But do you work out of your home or do you rent some office space somewhere?
One option for many startups is to consider a business incubator that provides business support services and the flexibility to expand as you need to. Often the companies that provide these will offer lower rents in exchange for equity in your company. Others do it for free with the potential to invest in you later. Some incubators are attached to Universities providing a path for promising research to be turned into a significant revenue stream.
But not all incubators are created equal. Some of them are created by successful entrepreneurs who have a penchant for helping other succeed or have a steady stream of research that can be exploited. Incubators often come with many business connections and advisors as well as office space, communications equipment and the like.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Influential Women in Technology
In honor of Ada Lovelace Day
http://www2.electronicproducts.com/5_Influential_Women_in_Technology-article-FANE_Women_in_tech_Oct2012-html.aspx
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lessons From Paper Clips
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=253658&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
The paper clip is one of the simplest of useful things.
To engineers, design depends more on function than on form. Whereas an architect or product designer may tend to hold in his or her mind an image of the paper clip as a pristine, silvery, metallic object photographed against a contrasting dark background, an engineer is more likely to imagine the thing in the functional context of holding together a sheaf of papers. In that configuration, it’s not so much an object of aesthetic beauty than of functional cleverness.
But, as engineers and designers well know, no design is perfect.
But if no design is perfect, then it follows that no derivative design is perfect. For every advantage embodied in a new paper clip design, there appeared to be an equal and opposite disadvantage.
The simplicity of the device entices inventors into thinking they can do what no one before them has done: Displace the Gem from its position of superiority in technological elegance, product design, and market share.
When these dreamers are not turning over a Gem in their fingers, contemplating its pluses and minuses, these proposers of new paper clips are devisers of medical devices, manufacturers of automotive wire products, and designers of office chairs. They have all shared the same ambition: To succeed where countless inventors before them have failed.
To a fierce competitor, instead of being a discouragement, the failure of predecessors to achieve a goal can be a powerful motivator. Ask any athlete.
In the field of inventions, hopefuls focus on points of failure to zero in on what needs improvement.
Things old and new are full of lessons for invention and design.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is the work week full of meetings?
Are all the meetings really necessary?
According to a recent survey, the Finnish working time of up to 15 per cent – that is, nearly one working day a week – it takes at the meetings, which are not important to the work of the business.
Meetings have either a tendency to stretch. Many firm meeting rooms and a meeting of the card for it makes sense to book meeting room hours – although it should really only 20 minutes or half an hour.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/blogit/uutiskommentti/turha+turhempi+ndash+kokous/a856741?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-16112012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia sought help from a startup doctrines
The boundaries are bust, the experts’ opinions and the courage to fail out – a large company could learn from Startup. Nokia challenger attitude has given further impetus
Mobile phone company Nokia has sought help in a difficult market for startup companies doctrines. Organization’s internal boundaries are dissolved and contacts added.
Nokia’s head of design Marko Ahtisaari says the company has emphasized the importance of attitude, the challenger, the company revised its strategy in February 2011.
“Each of us must take our work attitude challenger, market-leading grip instead. A new attitude had an impact on the fact that we were able to bring the first Lumia devices on the market in record time, “Ahtisaari said.
“A big company can not operate like a small company. Still, Nokia has been in recent times things move faster, “Salmelin says.
“Startup spirit is not anything special. Above all, it means the attitude that has the courage and the courage to do new things. We know we do not know everything, “game company Rovio Entertainment Marketing Peter Vesterbacka says.
According to Vesterbacka companies should have more courage to question the fact that “the way it has always done in the past.”
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/tyoelama/nokia_haki_apua_startup_opeista
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Get Startup Ideas
http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It’s to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.
The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they’re something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Left-brained vs. right-brained people: Where does engineering and art merge?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4401962/Left-brained-vs–right-brained-people–Where-does-engineering-and-art-merge-
Popular belief is that the left hemisphere of the brain is for rational, analytical and logical thinking and the right hemisphere of the brain processes visual and audio logical stimuli, spatial manipulation, facial perception and artistic ability.
Some schools of thought agree with this and others disagree and say it is a misconception.
Yes, we had different ideas and opinions and different ways to go about things, but I know plenty of people that are artistic engineers. So does that mean they use both sides of the brain? Of course, we all use both parts of our brains, some people one side less or more than the other hemisphere, but I believe it may be rare that anyone is perfectly balanced between both sides of the brain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Body and soul
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/signal-integrity/4402189/Body-and-soul?cid=EDNToday
The Athenian school of classical Greek history emphasized three modes of learning: academic, physical, and aesthetic. All three were considered necessary parts of a complete education.
I would like you to consider, just for a moment, your aesthetic training.
I mean for you to consider studying, perhaps with an eye toward mastering, a deep, meaningful type of aesthetics—the sort of subject that affects your soul.
A good musician simultaneously applies all levels of this knowledge in real time under stressful conditions.
Engineers tackle similar tasks. We also work in layers, starting at the atomic level of semiconductor physics and moving up through the design of active devices, then gates, registers, CPUs, whole computer systems, firmware, operating systems, high-level programming languages, and applications. The competent design of a digital masterpiece requires knowledge of packaging, power, crosstalk, ringing, cabling, connectors, PCB design, international standards, and other factors. We apply this knowledge in real time, under stressful conditions.
I find the duality fascinating. Look for it in other fields of human endeavor. The ability to work in layers, to manage tasks of almost unimaginable difficulty, is the hallmark of human excellence. My friends who are musicians engage in such work on a daily basis—as do you.
Even if you never master a musical instrument to the point of performing onstage, the simple act of learning to play music stimulates parts of your brain critical to creativity and insight.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This engineering thing starts when you’re a kid
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/analog-ic-startup/4402488/This-engineering-thing-starts-when-you-re-a-kid?cid=EDNToday
My engineering passion appeared at a very young age. My parents tell me that when I was three I found a box of extension cords, and spent hours plugging them into the couch and stringing them across several rooms to connect various chairs, tables and my crib to my “grid.” (Luckily I didn’t find the wall outlet.)
As I got older, the magic of wires and circuits that actually did something never ceased to excite me. At age 6, I rigged a “mother buzzer.”
Many of my engineering friends have similar childhood stories. Our interest in engineering seems to start early in life, maybe because engineering itself–“the creative application of scientific principles to develop apparatus”– is so inherently scalable with age.
Karri Casanova says:
Very well written story. It will be valuable to anyone who employess it, including myself. Keep up the good work – looking forward to more posts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Engineers: When did you know you wanted to be an engineer?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/voice-of-the-engineer/4402943/5-Engineers–When-did-you-know-you-wanted-to-be-an-engineer-?cid=Newsletter+-+EDN+Fun+Friday
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of similar stories from folks who knew they wanted to be engineers at young ages. I’ve heard an equal amount of stories from folks who didn’t discover their calling until they were in college or working in a different industry all together.
If you’ve found your calling, you’re in the lucky minority. Most 30, 40, 50-year olds I meet are still trying to figure it out (this is the real reason we ask kids what they want to be when they grow up – we’re looking for ideas!).
That brings us to this week’s question: When did you know you wanted to be an engineer?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineering Students Show Off Interdisciplinary Problem-Solving Skills
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=255435&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
Ask engineering managers about the quality of recent engineering graduates and you’re likely to get more than a few sighs. In fact, a recent Design News article was titled, simply, “Lack of Qualified Engineering Candidates.” According to many readers, one of the biggest deficits among newly minted engineers is a lack of real-world problem-solving skills.
An innovative program at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago is addressing this deficit. The Interprofessional Projects Program (IPRO) was launched in 1995. Today, it is a requirement for all IIT undergraduates and was recently recognized by the National Academy of Engineering as an example for other universities.
In the IPRO program, teams of 10 to 15 students work together to solve complex, open-ended, real-world problems. An IPRO project differs from a traditional capstone engineering project because students from different disciplines work together. A typical team might include mechanical, electrical, and civil engineers, along with computer scientists, architects, and even psychology majors.
Many of the projects are sponsored by companies including Motorola, Nokia, Argonne National Laboratory, and A.M. Castle, among others. There are also service-oriented projects, done in collaboration with local community organizations and non-profits. Some projects are based on ideas developed by the students themselves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet the World’s Cheapest Venture Capitalist
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/12/worlds-cheapest-venture-capitalist/
Maciej Cegłowski’s new startup fund was the toast of Silicon Valley on Friday, lighting up Twitter, winning top billing on the elite Hacker News forum, and drawing dozens of applications from would-be portfolio companies. The fund’s draw: Extreme stinginess.
The Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud, as the fund is called, offers chosen startups all of $37 in venture capital.
“The thing that has really changed in the past couple of years that hasn’t been internalized by everyone is that startup costs are really very, very low,” says Cegłowski. “Even compared to 2008 it costs very little money to do stuff. You have these technologies that are pretty good at scaling up … but it’s still free, open source software. So as long as the labor is free, you’re fine.”
‘I want to promote ideas that aren’t game changers.’
— Maciej Cegłowski
If Cegłowski can prove there is an extreme version of this trend — that there are compelling startups for which investment dollars are borderline meaningless, and for which social capital is paramount – he could help remake the tech investment pipeline from a glorified money hose into a system for primarily distributing social capital like prestige, attention, taste, and advice.
The Co-Prosperity Cloud is an experiment in distributing just that sort of social capital. It offers not just the $37, but also Cegłowski’s vote of confidence – he’s only picking six winners – and “as much publicity as I can provide,” as the fund webpage says. That publicity will presumably come via the devoted online following Cegłowski has built over the years for his articles on bootstrapping his bookmark service Pinboard.in, as well as for his wide-ranging personal essays, including an indispensable meat-lover’s guide to visiting Argentina.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineering Faculty Debates Generalists vs. Specialists
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1419&doc_id=255830
we talked about whether their college should educate generalists or specialists.
One of the graduates explained how his broad education let him solve a problem with fundamental information that bridged several specialties.
One of the engineers with a deep knowledge in a narrow area countered that today many companies need engineers with specialized knowledge so they can “jump into” a problem right away without a “warm-up” period. I can see both sides of the generalist vs. specialist debate.
In electrical engineering, undergraduates often specialize a bit, perhaps taking more analog than digital electronics courses.. But they receive a BS degree with a good understanding of many facets of electronics. In graduate school they can continue their education in narrower fields.
The general knowledge instilled during four years of college also helps graduates evaluate a field and determine whether they want to continue in it.
On the other hand, when companies and universities advertise job openings, they usually have a long list of specialized requirements.
Generalists need not apply. So here’s my advice: Go ahead and specialize as you see fit either through an advanced degree or on-the-job training. But keep an eye on general knowledge in your chosen and related fields.
If you want to specialize in motor control, for example, you should know how to write code in C, simulate control algorithms in MATLAB and Simulink, use LabVIEW, and so on.
Tomi says:
Adafruit To Teach Electronics Through Puppets In New Kids Show
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/12/27/2233235/adafruit-to-teach-electronics-through-puppets-in-new-kids-show
“Wired has an article up about how Adafruit, the kit-based electronics retailer and promoter of hobbyist engineering, is aiming to teach electronics to a younger demographic. So young that they’re enlisting the help of puppets”
Tomi says:
Adafruit to Teach Electronics Through Puppets in New Kids’ Show
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/adafruit-childrens-show/
Their new online show, titled Circuit Playground, will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the 555 Timer Chip. Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Adafruit’s founder and chief engineer (and 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year), will host the episodes, with her team assisting with onscreen and puppeteering duties.
“We’ll have each component have a story, a song and something to do,” Fried says. “We’ll have live feeds in our factory on how things are made. It’s a little Elmo for engineering, a little Mr. Rogers for resistors and a little Sesame Street for Circuits.”
Adafruit is familiar with online broadcasts, hosting weekly “Show-and-Tell” and “Ask an Engineer” shows on Google+ and Ustream for over three years. Circuit Playground was a natural extension for them. “We saw the audience and the participants getting younger with more advanced projects, so we figured there was something there,” Fried says.
One of the first episodes will focus on robots.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A number of U.S. IT giants give employees time to innovate, says Computer Sweden magazine.
The most famous example is probably Google that gives one day in week for innovating other than main project.
3M’s employees have for decades, used 15 percent of their working time to innovate, which has paid for itself, among other things, Post it
The trend is becoming more common, says author Daniel Pink, author of the hit book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
“When you give the staff time to innovate, they will be permitted to fail and dare to try new and risky ideas,” says Pink News Service IDG News Service.
Research firm Forrester analyst Doug Williams says innovation programs to attract workers. Freedom is a carrot and stick more effective way to bring about innovation. However, not all businesses have the Williams can afford to give their employees to use the fifth working hours to innovate; ten percent may instead have been possible.
The idea has also spread to smaller firms.
Source: http://m.tietoviikko.fi/Uutiset/It-j%C3%A4tit+p%C3%A4%C3%A4st%C3%A4v%C3%A4t+pellepelottomat+irti
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hm, nice idea that. But somebody’s already doing it less well
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/31/biz_guilds_crush_newcomers/
We know there’s massive amounts of invention going on. Innovations are popping up all over the place. And while this should be increasing economic growth, none of this invention and innovation is being reflected in our economies. My own diagnosis: when it comes to the “creative destruction” that capitalism is supposed to be good at, the creation stuff is working just fine, but the destruction part? Not so much. And it’s holding back that most creative of current sectors: technology.
Some within economics make the distinction between invention (creating a new whizzy thing or method) and innovation (actually using the new whizzy to do new things, or old things in a different way). My contention is that the rules and regulations make it too difficult to do those old things in new ways. There’s just too much protection given to the incumbents if you like.
This isn’t a new idea in economics at all: Adam Smith complained bitterly about how the guilds were able to prevent or delay the adoptions of new technologies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startups: Keep It Simple, Stupid
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/06/startups-keep-it-simple-stupid/
But strip back some of the complexity and there are some basic overriding principles that make it more or less likely a startup will succeed. And the simplest of all these rules is simplicity itself.
Like any good pitch, if your idea can’t be conveyed in a sentence its survival is already in doubt.
Take a look at some of the startups that have succeeded and consider how easily what they offer can be conveyed. YouTube: upload your videos. Facebook: an online yearbook. Snapchat: self-destructing picture messaging. Twitter: real-time text updates. Instagram: fancy photo-sharing. Pinterest: an online pinboard… and so on.
Or, moving away from startups to products — this, from 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone as: “an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator”.
On the flip side, consider ideas that aren’t exactly flying, Microsoft has clearly had trouble getting people to buy into its Windows Phone platform and I would argue that part of its problem comes down to trying to sell a complicated message and explain the usefulness of concepts that aren’t immediately obvious — such as Live Tiles, or the OS’s panoramic view. These features might make sense after you’ve used them for a while but most people won’t get that far.
No matter how great you think your idea is, if it takes more than a few seconds to explain you are on the wrong side of today’s chronically fatigued attention spans. This is especially important in the consumer space where your users are the mainstream public, not specialists or business buyers with some kind of vested interest in gaining access to your product.
Never lose sight of the fact there are thousands and thousands of others – apps, services, startups — clamouring for a few seconds of people’s face time. There’s absolutely no reason why anyone should bother taking time to learn about your startup. A cursory, disinterested glance is the very best you can hope for.
If your big idea is actually a series of interconnected features/services don’t be fooled into thinking that’s a selling point. Less is more, so once again: keep it simple. An established app or service needs to grow by adding new features in order to stay fresh, relevant and competitive but piling on scores of features from the start in a bid to grab attention just gives people scores more reasons to ignore you.
Don’t bore people. Don’t make people do homework. Don’t expect them to do any legwork. Don’t make them feel like they have to raise a finger on your behalf. Expect nothing, and offer just one useful thing: your main idea, presented in a form that’s both easy to understand and effortless to tap into. It’s no good having a simple idea if your interface is convoluted and frustrating. Frustration is an ogre that eats good ideas for breakfast.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The internet is leaving children brain-dead: Inventor warns ‘Google generation who spend life in front of screens are losing creativity and skills’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2253170/Inventor-warns-Google-generation-spend-life-screens-losing-creativity-skills.html
One of Britain’s leading inventors has warned that a ‘Google generation’ who rely on the internet for everything are in danger of becoming ‘brain-dead’.
Trevor Baylis, who invented the wind-up radio, said children are losing creativity and practical skills because they spend too much time in front of screens.
The 75-year-old said he fears that the next generation of inventors is being lost, with young people often unable to make anything with their hands.
But he said children could rediscover vital skills if schools used Meccano and other practical toys.
‘They are dependent on Google searches. A lot of kids will become fairly brain-dead if they become so dependent on the internet, because they will not be able to do things the old-fashioned way.’
Tomi Engdahl says:
If you have experience with Waterfall or traditional “phase-gate” developmental processes, then you know why Agile has gained traction so quickly. It’s a nimble, collaborative way to work. But like any professional process, it takes new skills to gain the promised benefits.
Source: http://subscriber.emediausa.com/Bulletins/BulletinPreview.aspx?BF=1&BRID=44323
Tomi Engdahl says:
CES: CEA boss pushes for ‘ninja’ innovation approach
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2234873/ces-cea-boss-pushes-for-ninja-innovation-approach
LAS VEGAS: THE HEAD of the Consumer Electronics Association is calling on small firms and startups to help drive innovation in the market.
Speaking at the 2013 CES conference, Gary Shapiro said that firms should rely on their own ingenuity and push for less government involvement in the sector. He said that firms should evolve a “ninja” mentality, aiming to be self sufficient and relying on maximizing resources.
Rather than look to overpower the market, the CEA president believes that firms can get an advantage by relying on their own talents and innovating better products.
Other items on the CEA’s agenda include efforts to stop “patent troll” litigation campaigns and further efforts to cooperate with studios and media companies to develop platform-neutral cloud services
tomi says:
How Kickstarter stole CES: the rise of the indie hardware developer
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/10/3861406/kickstarter-at-ces
While corporate giants hog the floor space, indie gadgets are getting the rave reviews
Kickstarter has really changed the dynamics at CES
Kickstarter’s influence pervades the trade show. Many of these Kickstarted products probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the kindness of strangers with credit cards. Others used Kickstarter as a supplemental tool for fundraising or marketing.
The Kickstarter bug has spread to bigger corporations, too.
That’s partly because big companies like Sony, Asus, Samsung, and the rest tend to look at their existing technology portfolio and manufacturing capabilities to get ideas for what to make next. On Kickstarter, by contrast, the product starts with a need or desire, and the creators figure out how to build it from there. Of course — there’s also the issue of relativity. If Sony sold 85,000 watches, we’d call it a failure. When Pebble does it, it’s a rousing success.
At CES, Kickstarter seemed to be everywhere. “CES probably has the largest amount of Kickstarter backers in the world concentrated in one place,” Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky told The Verge. “We invited our backers to list who’s coming, and over 900 backers are here at CES. That’s the reason we chose CES for announcing the ship date.”
If Kickstarter had a booth, it would be the most impressive and creative display on the show floor
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disruptions: Design Rivals Technology in Importance
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/disruptions-design-to-propel-technology-forward/
“We’re on the tail end of technology being special,” says John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design. “The automobile was a weird alien technology when it first debuted, then, after a while, it evolved and designers stepped in to add value to it.”
Walk into most car showrooms in America and sales clerks might spend more time explaining the shape of the heated seat than the engine that moves the car along. Several decades ago, he might have been heralding pistons and horsepower.
Now, Mr. Maeda said, this shift has happened to technology, be it computers, smartphones or the iPad Mini.
“We have this exciting next step for design,” he said. “Now that we have enough technology to do anything, design can now begin to be better than the technology itself.”
“We want to make the product emotional for the person using it, and that happens with the design of it,” said Stefan Olander, Nike’s vice president for digital sport, who worked on the wristband. “You have to create a visceral, emotive experience around the design, which is something everyone cares about.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Do Entrepreneurs Innovate Better Than Managers?
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/01/13/1534221/why-do-entrepreneurs-innovate-better-than-managers
“New research from MIT suggests that entrepreneurs innovate better than managers not because they try more often but rather because when they do try they apply more of their available brainpower to the task.”
“when entrepreneurs did select explorative tasks, they used both the left and right sides of the frontal cortex of their brain whereas managers only used their left parts of the frontal cortex”
“This is an important difference”