Overview: Innovation Strategy

"Firms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Baidu have got into an AI arms race ... not so much making new sorts of minds as it is removing some of the need for the old sort... deep learning ... is a general-purpose pattern-recognition technique ... any activity which has access to large amounts of data—from running an insurance business to res…

If you ever wondered why meetings so often lead to the wrong decision ... "... we are wired in certain ways ... that can block groups from processing information effectively, which leads to bad decisions... Gilbert explains how to use diversity and inclusion to get better results from product ideation efforts... One of the most fundamental …

A good tour from Circa, not just re: Google: "Google ... will spend $150 million this year on a "far-reaching campaign" to improve the diversity of the technology industry... the technology industry "cannot be this homogeneous" if it intends to build products for a global marketplace."... Co-founders ... tasked the company in 2013 with doing…

"the whole point of digital transformation is realizing that technology fundamentally changes how you do business in just about every way. It therefore poses very difficult questions to business and technology leaders: Who best should do our work today? Where does the value come from? What do these new ways of working actually look like? How c…

While an excellent takedown of 'traditional' (group-focused) brainstorming techniques, this article should mention that individuals applying brainstorming techniques get good results. "In every case, four people working individually generated between 30 to 40 percent more ideas than four people working in a group. Their results were of a higher q…

"UBS ... are the latest of a string of banks to take a shot at incubating for the blockchain.... Despite the title this article's mainly about bitcoin, although it ends with "The possibilities and potential for blockchain technology are extraordinary at every level of business and society. If you’re not keeping up then you should" - It's not a…

"The excuse that tech companies make for their lack of gender diversity is that the pipeline of women studying engineering is shrinking. Sadly, this is a self-perpetuating cycle. Because there are few women in engineering, girls don’t perceive computing to be a friendly profession, so fewer are entering the field... This issue is important beca…

"the impact of IoT won’t be the Things, it will be the way the data can be analyzed to shape downstream innovation.... data from the highway department ,,, perfectly predicted the housing boom and bust, with an approximately six month lead time." - Trawling with Engines of Meaning — Work Futures — Medium

"many of us tend to sabotage creativity more than we cultivate it. Here are some of the self-sabotaging things you’re probably doing every day. "

"Stacy sits down with Google Ventures to share her perspectives on startup hiring, leadership, and more." Also a good example of video journalism, but a comparison between total Reads (as measured usign Medium's womderful metrics) vs number of views of the embedded videos - i.e., do people watch them, or just read the textual summaries? - Manage…

"If you’re embracing online collaboration as a necessary evil — the only way to work with an increasingly dispersed team of global or remote workers, for example — then you’re doing it wrong. Online collaboration is not a second-best substitute for face-to-face work: It’s a complement with its own perks and benefits." - Collaborating Online Is So…

"in the cause of wider employee participation... there’s more to success than just investing heavily in the latest Enterprise 2.0 technology platforms. Large-scale engagement of the workforce requires, first and foremost, a firm grasp of organizational culture and its social dynamics, a psychological understanding of what triggers new behavior, …

"While traditional strategy calls for rigorous analysis and critical thinking, design thinking espouses ‘thinking by doing’. The key is to find the sweet spot between the two approaches." Nice exploration of overthinking vs. underthinking: "... overthinking — aka ‘death by analysis’. An obsession with minimizing risk leads to the inability to ma…

"digital transformation... the application (or reapplication) of digital technologies and the restructuring of operations to better engage with customers, the company ecosystem, and the greater marketplace... We have rocketed into a new economy - a new era - where much of what we knew and relied upon ten years ago is being superseded by new ins…

"goal of MY-WAY is to strengthen the web entrepreneurship ecosystem ... by actively engaging student networks and student entrepreneurship centres”... MY-WAY will also support the Young European Disruptors’ Network (EDs) – a European community of entrepreneurs who will meet at summits, regional events, leadership development programmes and commun…

"most digital transformation deployments fall into the 'deploy and pray' category, a minority address known pain points and use cases, whilst only about 20% of projects involve a concerted organisation-wide roll-out aimed at creating a connected company. ... paradigm shift is needed to go beyond just adopting social technologies towards creating a…

"today’s social collaboration tools ... are focused on the wrong things, or at least on the wrong scale.... enterprises do business, but people do work. We will see a shift away from tools designed around ‘business’ and instead see a swing to tools that help people accomplish their work... the mantra will be — people first, mobile first, cloud f…

"I constantly get asked the question “how are we doing?” and “how can we measure the success of our startup community.”... ... a great first crack at this with a paper that I think will be viewed as the starting point for a real discussion about long-term growth and measurement of the health of startup communities..." - Startup Revolution | Meas…

"When you have a job, it’s amazing how many startup ideas you come up with... I’m sure my list of ideas contains a few that could be much bigger than ReadMe. However, the point isn’t to find the idea with the biggest market size. It’s to find the right idea for you... I spent too much time waiting for other people. Investors, cofounders, mentors.…

"Procter & Gamble, one of the pioneers of open innovation... since seen its revenue go from 43 to 83 billions in 5 years... open innovation has allowed them to develop new products by relying on the expectations and need of the customers and on the expertise of new partners... 50% of their products were developed through collaboration with extern…

"MIT Startup Exchange (STEX) is convening a workshop to discuss the latest advances in energy innovation from the perspective of the corporates, academics, VCs, government, and startups in the MIT ecosystem redefining the field today. We aim to cover innovation models, technologies, collaboration patterns, and partnerships. Speakers will touch on …

"Much of what social collaboration tools are designed to support is shallow work, and the stuff of managerial oversight... deep productivity comes from supporting deep work - cognitively demanding activities that leverage our training to generate rare and valuable results, and that push our abilities to continually improve - trying to support…

"Startups are notorious for this: You’ll have two or three people who are true hustlers, wearing multiple hats, pushing themselves and others to get shit done, while the rest of the group sort of ‘tags along’ and waits for shit to happen. " - The Truth About Collaboration — Medium

An excellent tour of management structures from hierarchy to holacracy, with some criticisms of the latter: "Hierarchies do authority incredibly well... but have some big flaws. They become slow, with decisions taking an eternity to pass up and down the ranks. Innovation from the edges is stifled by top-down control and bureaucracy.... So in the…

"There is no shortage of stories about companies that create amazing innovations with digital technology ... the software, media and technology industries ... account for less than 10% of the U.S. economy. What about the other 90%? We studied more than 400 large companies ... in every industry, companies are doing exciting things with digital te…

"I’ve seen many successful startups emerge and flourish outside of Silicon Valley, like Hootsuite, Jive, Bazaarvoice, Omniture, Spredfast, Sprinklr, BuddyMedia, BlaBlaCar, Freelancer, and a plethora of Chinese tech companies ... let’s first break down the pros and cons of having your startup be in Silicon Valley" - Your Tech Startup Doesn’t Nee…

I freely admit: I've been a fanboy of the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) since studying their design principles. Those principles are still good. Everything else, it turns out, was not.

"Who says innovation is only for start-ups? In these interviews, the heads of three large, established companies—Intuit, Idealab, and Autodesk— argue there’s no reason big players can’t develop the next big thing... how it can remove roadblocks to experimentation, and the merits of creating its very own idea incubators. "one thing that’s made the…

"When you think about a company with no managers there’s a good chance your mind drifts to stories of chaotic “meritocracies”, bro-y cultures, and HR disasters. Whereas we value mentorship and coaching, continuous self-improvement, and strive to make sure everyone feels safe and supported. ... That said, we do think there are problems with tradit…

"David Duncan, coauthor of Build an Innovation Engine in 90 Days, explains how to organize corporate creativity... serendipitous ideas that turn into major innovations do happen, but they’re relatively rare. And the key thing is you don’t want the future of your company to be dependent on strokes of luck or accidental breakthroughs. " - Innovati…