Overview: Innovation Strategy

we begin to see the complexity at the intersections, the amplification of disruptive power, and the broad implications for the future.

In this week’s edition, two new social media products in one week; a few good longreads for the weekend; and more stuff for your online toolbox.

an ongoing conflict between artificial intelligence and the linked but divergent project of intelligence augmentation... the difference between a future in which human capabilities are enhanced by technology and one in which humans are made effectively obsolete, versioned out by the consequences of our own ingenuity... we might be “in for an in…

Huge longform exposé - don't know whether to be impressed, amused or horrified: "... what did it mean for an online retailer with annual sales of more than $1 billion, that fills 280,000 orders per week, to be “self-organized”?... Holacracy is ... just one example of a growing movement... that seeks to apply insights derived from evolutionar…

A great manager is someone that pushes you to fulfill your own potential. What you if you could do that for yourself? ... ... develop a strong understanding of your areas for growth and regularly invite ... feedback on your work? Would your team mates be willing to hold you accountable ... What if you invited coworkers to surface tensions direc…

You have nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear, and algorithms... It has never been easier for designers and non-designers to create great websites that even five years ago would have cost a fortune to build... design is dead. There is more to design than the pixel-pushing of visual design... The real designers, problem solvers... able to co…

The visuals team ... the product of merging two groups: the news applications team, who served as NPR’s graphics and data desks, and the multimedia team, who made and edited pictures and video... The multimedia crew wanted to make pictures and video that were truly web-native, which required web makers. And our news apps lacked empathy... Pictu…

we built an Interactive News team from scratch... a tight-knit group of editors and newsroom developers ... creates tools and processes ... to disrupt a print-first workflow. Here’s a look at how we got there and what we learned along the way.... A newsroom developer is only a Slack message away...we have three content editors embedded in diffe…

Storytelling at its finest... should evoke a visceral reaction in its audience. There's something to be said about inviting that audience to participate in a story ...the options for how to do so are infinite... Here, we explore some great examples of interactive and crowd-sourced storytelling at its finest. - Crowd-sourced storytelling: How…

The absence of hierarchy does not necessarily mean no structure. - Holacracy vs. Hierarchy vs. Flat Orgs — Holacracy — Medium

First, some useful definitions: "Imagination is envisioning things that don’t exist... Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge. Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions. And entrepreneurship is applying innovations, scaling the ideas, by inspiring others’ imagination... the way to innovate is to look a…

Technology First starts by selecting a very specific medium for communication, then creatively exploits its full potential.... the opposite of blank slate.... Enable creative thinking by embracing arbitrary constraints. ... Put emotional adjectives in front of specific technologies... Pick an everyday interaction and internet-enable it. - Ne…

Thinking of pursuing your next idea? Read this definitive guide first... a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is all about verifying the fact that there is a market where your potential company can call home and bring in paying customers. It’s about finding your early adopters and seeing exactly they are willing to pay for.... [but] an entreprene…

Any decent Communication Strategy will integrate offline, online, internal and external communications. But what about your organisation's Innovation Strategy?

"A large part of corporate economic activity today is still designed to accomplish what high market transaction costs prevented earlier. But the world has changed... coordination can be performed without intermediaries with the help of new technologies. Digital transparency makes responsive coordination possible... Apps can now do what manag…

"what people really want is to be treated like individuals and given the tools to help themselves.... Rigour is the cold, hard fact of insight. Magic is the creative talent ... Without great insight, creative may be ill-informed or poorly targeted.... Meanwhile, a data-based body of evidence that isn’t supported by creativity fails to creat…

"the C-Suite have optimized the supply chain, digitized marketing and communications, socialized customer care and service. Where else can they get a competitive advantage? Fundamentally changing the way they work, implementing change -- especially culture change -- faster and better, will be the source of competitive advantage going forward.... …

So I put together a landing page, sent a few newsletters to myself, then wrote a post on Medium. It featured 75 outstanding pieces of journalism ... my Minimum Viable Product. Naturally, nobody showed up to read the post. Then, somehow, Rand Fishkin (the CEO of Moz.com) found it and spread the word " - The Medium Viable Product — Thoughts on…

Another advocacy piece on holacracy, because "Getting rid of hierarchies might just save the human race" - You Don’t Need a Manager — Work: Reimagined — Medium

"The true purpose of an accelerator is to teach the method of entrepreneurship, so that on graduation day the founders have the knowledge and tools to keep improving. Funding, launching, weekly growth, etc is all a bonus." - Improving Startup Accelerators — Startups & Venture Capital — Medium

the competitive significance of business models turbocharged by machine learning is poised to surge... companies must have two types of people to unleash the potential of machine learning. "Quants" are schooled in its language and methods. "Translators" can bridge the disciplines of data, machine learning, and decision making by reframing the …

A good tour of theories of creativity, concluding with results from two recent studies: "With these widely accepted theories of creativity in mind, it is rather jarring to see two brand studies, both of which suggest that creativity is closely linked with inherent neurological and personality traits rather than methodology or practice. The impl…

"By evaluating 18 practices related to digital strategy, capabilities, and culture, we have developed a single, simple metric for the digital maturity of a company... its Digital Quotient. This survey reveals a wide range of digital performance in today’s big corporations... a strong and adaptive culture can help make up for a lack of technica…

Distributed intelligence means you need to find a social process, not a data-driven solution... You cannot outsource leadership to your analytics group. - Thinking Small: 3 Ways To Remain Creative In A World Of Big Data | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce

"in a world dominated by self-steering taxis, each ride becomes cheaper if the vehicles are autonomous rather than owned and run by major corporations... We can program it to ... make it the most moral, socially minded capitalist possible...it would not be self-aware... But they would be programmed to seek self-improvement in order to avoid bec…

"Networks are pretty good for collisions. Bureaucracies are pretty bad for collisions." - Why I Write on Medium — The Message — Medium

"There are many kinds of intelligence, and many kinds of stupidity. But not all are created equal. The intelligence of a computer is not the stupidity of a human, and vice versa. Which one would you rather be? ... One can be smart in stupid ways... or stupid in smart ways... technology’s making us stupid stupid — not just stupider, but stupider…

In Steph’s inaugural episode we explore the experience and perspectives of women in startups and lifestyle businesses. - The Female Perspective on Startups and Lifestyle Businesses (FS111)

"Nice way of bringing creatives in to think (ugh) out of the box - run a science fiction contest: "The Art Of Future Warfare ...is based on the idea that writers, artists and game designers have a lot to offer policy wonks... “Unconventional,imaginative thinking and expression can contribute meaningfully to the study and professional conduc…

"As Credit Karma has become a team of nearly 300 people, we've had to think about how to create a culture of uniform quality, where everybody is hungry and engaged with our mission. Successful companies are able to scale their culture of innovation with them. These cultures don't build themselves and require careful planning. Looking back, …