Spreadsheets and innovations

"Strategy isn't about spreadsheets - and certainly not about short-run numbers. It's about understanding how rivalry and advantage in industries and markets are changing. The Apps store is important because it is letting Apple redefine the balance of power in the mobile value chain. Because Apple controls the supply of new services, it will enjoy greater and greater bargaining power vis a vis (more and more commoditized) mobile networks - likely expanding Apple's margins." via Umair Haque

Innovative way of using Many Eyes

Pawel experiments with PubMed data in Many Eyes

Pickup the phone and call the customer

P&G CEO's A.G. Lafley's tips on growing your business in this challenging environment:

"The customer needs to be the center of the innovation equation. When Lafley took over as CEO in 2000, he said he saw too many managers on their cellphones, or buried in spreadsheets, in essence "showing customers their behind." via Scott D Anthony

Customer Focus: Key to success

Once again Booz Allen Hamilton experts Barry Jaruzelski and Kevin Dehoff found no correlation between companies R&D spending and their innovation success. Their study found that the most successful companies align their innovation efforts with their corporate strategy and listen to their customers at every stage. via strategy+business

"And as in years past, we found no statistically significant connection between the amount of money a company spent on innovation and its financial performance."

"Companies more focused on customer insight or market needs are also more successful than their less-customer-focused peers. In particular, companies that directly engaged their customer base had twice the return on assets and triple the growth in operating income of the other survey respondents."




I look forward to reading this report every year.

Employee Retention and being a winning company

Marc Andreessen addresses some very valid points to be a winning company and eliminate retention issue.

He concludes by

In general, the intangibles that keep great people are: the quality of the people they're working with, the interestingness level of their projects, and whether they are learning and growing.

The tangibles are: winning, and a high stock price.

As the leader, you have to really believe that you can get your company back to winning and therefore back to a high stock price.

If not, you should sell the company.

Indeed this Friday evening I was talking with a colleague and we touched the same intangibles points to keep talents in the company. One additional thing that we had was having fun with what we are doing.

Want revenue growth? Find new set of customers

From Business Week interview with Clayton Christensen:

In The Innovator's Dilemma you warn that the maxim "staying close to your customers" can lead you astray. Wouldn't a cursory reading of the book say "don't listen to your customers?"

You're exactly right. The cursory reading is "don't listen." The deep reading is you have to be careful which customers you listen to, and then you need to watch what they do, not listen to what they say. This is catching on with one of the big automobile companies in Detroit. If you look for the jobs that people hire a car to do, the opportunities for innovation are extraordinary.

There are about 30 million Americans for whom [a car] serves as their office. Isn't it interesting that nobody has designed a car to work as an office? They pull up to Starbucks (SBUX) and go in to use their T-Mobile hot spot or if they're in Silicon Valley they'll pull up next to someone's apartment building to mooch off their Wi-Fi because they can't access the Internet in their car.

They stop at a stoplight, their notebook computer falls onto the floor. They can't recharge their computer because the electrical system was not designed to do it and there's no docking station. They throw sales literature in the backseats. Nobody's designed a car to do that job. If you understand the job, the opportunities to differentiate are just extraordinary.

To do that, though, you do have to "stay close to your customers" to see what jobs they need. In a sense, they will lead you to the answer, not astray. Shouldn't Dilemma have been clearer on that, or expanded on that idea?

Yes. The problem is when you say "listen to your customers," your customers are only going to lead you in a direction that they want to go in. Generally, that will never lead you to disruptive growth. You've got to find that new set of customers, and listen to them and follow them. That's the trick. Once you have customers, they hold you captive to their needs.

A new look from Silobreaker with more insights

Silobreaker continues their enhancement in their new beta. They are one of the few companies (and few smart guys in Sweden) who understand how to play with information to provide more intelligence.

Where to spend R&D dollars

In a recent HBR article (July-August issue) Jim Scinta who is the Chair of IRI's Research on Research Committee and a manager at ConocoPhillips highlights that companies are spending more dollars in new projects than basic research which is critical to innovation and developing breakthrough products. He gives examples from two companies ConocoPhillips and Pfizer on how they use their basic research effectively. He states that:

"While firms that concentrate on new projects may satisfy some of their immediate business goals, they will probably fail to cultivate the broad-based knowledge they'll need to realize their leading goal of growth through innovation"

Nature Does it Again: It's all about access and sharing of scientific information

Here is Timo Hannay, Nature's Director of Web Publishing's email to Tim O'Reilly explaining the new Nature Precedings initiative.

"[Nature Precedings] will enable researchers to share, discuss and cite their early findings. It provides a lightly moderated and relatively informal channel for scientists to disseminate information, especially recent experimental results and emerging conclusions. In this sense, it is designed to complement traditional peer-reviewed journals, allowing researchers to make informal communications such as conference papers or presentations more widely available and enabling them to be formally cited. This, in turn, allows them to solicit community feedback and establish priority over their results or ideas." via Nascent

I agree with Tim O'Reilly 's conclusion in terms of bold moves by Nature's team:

"They are consistently the boldest and most innovative of publishers -- and it's so rare to see a market leader with Nature's unparalleled reputation taking such risks. It's truly inspiring."

Xerox Innovation and R&D in action in Second Life

Sophie Vandebroek who is the Chief Technology Officer and President of the Xerox Innovation Group talks about R&D and innovation in virtual world. via Endless Innovation

Benefits of opensource for entreprises

JP Rangaswami who is the CIO of Global Services for BT Group lists 10 reasons for using opensource in the entreprise"

"Opensource makes it easier for you to get married. When your architecture is primarily based on opensource components, software and data integration costs stay low and the process works.


Opensource makes you cleverer. You innovate faster because you have access to faster innovation. Whenever you look at an opensource ecosystem, try and compare it with a closed-source version. Compare it in terms of the time taken for launching in different countries, languages, whatever. I should say “try to compare it in terms of….”. There is no comparison".

ABCs of collaborative innovation from IBM

IBM report (pdf) highlights ABCs of collaborative innovation within and extended entreprise

• Alignment

• Boundaries

• Commitment

The study finds that on 17% of CEO were relying in their R&D team for innovation. Employees, business partners and customers were ranked at the top for sources of innovation. The report also finds that 50% of strategic alliances fail.

Samsung is asking for your ideas

Another example of bringing customers into the R&D process and pitch your ideas

Some positive feedback to our tagging feature

An Ole from a Spaniard for the Tagging and Groups feature:


"Constituye una innovación importante, sobre todo por la filosofía subyacente, que hace entroncar a un servicio comercial de información científica con las métodos de la web social y con los modos de comunicación más libres (Flickr, Del.icio.us, Connotea). Es también un guiño a los usuarios, una entrega de poder al consumidor."

"Es una iniciativa interesante sin duda. Lo más significativo es que muestra la voluntad y capacidad de los grandes sistemas comerciales de información científico-técnica, históricos diríamos, de competir con las formas emergentes de comunicación y con los grandes buscadores abiertos al público y sufragados con publicidad." via Observatorio de Martinej


It constitutes an important innovation, mainly by the underlying philosophy, that brings to a commercial service of scientific information the methods of the social Web and the freer ways of communication (Flickr, Del.icio.us, Connotea). It is also a wink to the users....

"It is an interesting initiative without a doubt. Most significantly it shows the will and capacity of the big scientific and technical commercial platforms, historical we would say, to compete with the emergent forms of communication and the big public search engines ....."

Collaboration and Innovation between universities and corporations

ibridge is an excellent initiative from Kauffman Foundation via Frederik Questier

Using Lean Six Sigma to improve operational innovation

IBM study "Driving Operational innovation using Lean Six Sigma" written by George Byrne, Dave Lubowe and Amy Blitz provides good insights how Caterpillar, POSCO, and Scottish Power used Lean Six Sigma successfully.

"Lean Six Sigma, a relatively well-known approach for achieving operational excellence, can, as it turns out, do more than simply improve processes. It can help leaders discover innovation opportunities far beyond operations, enhance financial performance and create organizations that have an inherent inclination toward innovation."