Saturday, March 17, 2007

Business Innovation on CNBC

CNBC has a new show called The Business of Innovation airing on Sundays at 9 PM PST/12 EST. I haven't seen the show yet but it looks like they have a good lineup of guests including the CEO of the NASDAQ, founder of Staples, CEO of eBay, and many others. The first two episodes are available for download as a podcast. Episode 2, Evolution to Revolution, featured Larry Huston, former VP of Innovation at P&G, discussing how companies need to realize that great ideas exist outside the walls of the firm.

Even the Economist wants to innovate

It seems that The Economist magazine is on the hunt for innovative ideas. They have set up a website called Project Red Stripe. I'm not quite sure what to make of the site yet. At the very least it seems fairly like a fairly interesting read. A few people have made some sarcastic submissions and there may even have been some good ones. So far they have received at least 140 submissions. I'm not so sure that I'll be sending them my valuable ideas (assuming I had any) but then again they are offering a six month subscription to the magazine as compensation.

Monday, March 12, 2007

The Future of Work

I'm currently taking an organizational design class with Professor Tom Malone. The class focuses on what future organizations will look like. His book, "The Future of Work," makes the assertation that the reduction of communication costs has been the driving factor in the development of new organizations such as Wikipedia and InnoCentive. This is a speech he gave in 2005.

http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail731.html

Clayton Christensen Speech

Take a listen to Clayton Christensen's keynote speech at the at the 2004 Open Business Conference. It runs 1:48:43 but you can download the file and listen to it on your iPod later.

http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail135.html

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Customer Driven Innovation at Intuit

When I think of innovation Intuit always comes to mind. Visiting the company headquarters this past January only reinforced things as I got to see some of their customer interview rooms and also hear from their Chairman and former CEO Bill Campbell. Their innovation is primarily focused on solving customer pain points. To do this they obsessively listen to customers and watch them use the product. If you are interested in trying out some of their new products and features check out their innovation website.

http://innovation.intuit.com/

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Harrah's Entertainment & Innovation

ZDNet has a great series of CIO videos. Recently they interviewd Tim Stanley, CIO of Harrah's Entertainment, on his new role as Chief Innovation Officer. As I've mentioned before, Harrah's is on the cutting edge of innovation in the gaming industry. They view innovation as a requirement for improving customer service. They are constantly looking to other industries to find new ideas and technology to improve the experience of the customers. Listen to the interview with Tim to hear more about the technologies they are looking at including mobile, RFID, etc.

http://video.zdnet.com/CIOSessions/?p=113

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Building an Environment for Innovation

This semester I am working as a research assistant on a project with the Center for Information Systems at MIT. The project is headed by CISR research scientist George Westerman. We will be writing a series of short vignettes on innovation as well as some full length case studies. Check out the CISR website for more information.

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/cisr/r-main.php#innovation

In this project we will explore how IT leaders exert the necessary pressure to develop an organizational capability to innovate. Specifically, we will study how leaders in innovative firms reshape IT management processes and organizational culture to enable innovation. We will address the following questions:

How can IT leaders successfully suggest and implement innovative uses of IT?

How do innovation processes differ across firms with different strategies and/or structures?

How do IT management processes need to change to improve IT innovation?

What are the elements of an innovative organizational culture?