Healthcare’s identity crisis: is a massive role reversal looming?
There was a point where professionals felt as if they were being turned into robots, forced to spend more time processing data about their patients than engaging with them as human beings.
Probing the innovation management implications of iconic ex-Valver Ellsworth’s ejection
Promoting Valve’s quirky employee handbook as a manifesto for unfettered workplace creativity set Gabe Newell on a collision course when he hired the legendary geek goddess
The switch from doing jobs to starting startups: will we even notice?
Could our increasingly online lifestyles morph smoothly into self-employment if today’s culture of ’employee-based careers for all’ gradually fades into oblivion?
Could Luton turn out to be the UK’s first Silicon Town?
Everyone’s looking for the UK’s next startup hotspot, but they might not be looking in the right place
Mel Brooks Producers as a model for lean startups
Founders having an innovative idea, a fruitful search for a solution, generous early investors: what could possibly go wrong?
Instead of just scalable startups, a scalable startup ecosystem
‘Adopt lean startup methodologies’ is seen by many as the best advice to give startups, but how do we know if this advice is making a substantial positive contribution to the wider economy?
Pivoteer skills
What makes people good at pivoting? 21 things which, if you can’t do them well, will probably keep your career in the world of innovative startups short and disappointing
20 Percent Time 2.0
We pay your wages, but the IP rights for anything you create in your 20% time are 100% yours
Double your (dole) money?
Startup founders, while their venture is still revenue-free, are not really self-employed. Unless they’ve also got a day job, they’re technically unemployed. This fact opens up opportunities for some really imaginative startup incentives
Startups below zero
So I’m calling it: the margin of costs beyond a founder’s living expenses is now officially zero. What next?
Shattering our Customer Relationship Management delusions
Ever wondered what would happen if anyone actually bothered to check out those incessant claims everyone makes that ‘customer service standards are constantly improving’?
iij top 20 upcoming innovation books for 2012
There’s a growing interest in introducing an entrepreneurial approach to innovation, whether its happening inside or outside the established organisation
Innovation fixation?
Are so-called ‘clone startups’ (those hoping to be acquired by the mothership after creating a successful, ‘local language lookalike’) too easily dismissed as ‘non-innovators’?
Startups: what happens when an economy completely collapses?
In places where prosperity has seemingly reigned forever, sometimes all the big employers and retailers can suddenly disappear: welcome to the startup-only economy. We probably need to start looking at places where this already exists
Need to recover from ‘startup overreach’?
Ty Danco’s ludicrously improbable but riveting tale definitely belongs in the history books, alongside AirBnB’s legendary ‘survive by literally eating your own marketing material’ yarn
Post-exit startups: the friendly ghost in the job-creation machine
A new report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is being mistakenly interpreted as showing that startups are creating fewer jobs. This view somehow manages to completely ignore those odd things investors call ‘exits’.
Is the AirBnB situation a gift?
“Customer service here, we’ve decided to do whatever we can to put right this terrible thing that happened to you when you used AirBnB. For a start, can we have your bank details, so that we can immediately deposit a million dollars”
Startup Accelerator Nation
Ten ideas for weaving the lean, low-investment, iterative, failure-tolerant, build-measure-learn attitude toward giving people constructive ways to spend their time into the fabric of every culture
Innovation, meet thy nemesis: healthcare services
Please, no more innovation! Just let us come to terms with the last lot of changes! We prefer standardisation to innovation! This is the sector where innovators are really gladiators
The iij top 10 upcoming customer service innovation books
Where is customer service innovation really happening right now? Is it mostly in sales, brands, marketing, call centers, e-commerce, retailing, CRM, products, social media, mobile, games, finance? These titles show that it’s taking place over the entire spectrum
Accelerator outperforming YCombinator and TechStars?
They’ve been around longer. $138m revenue, 55 startups and you’ve never even heard of them
Founderpreneurs and funderpreneurs
Fred Wilson (the VC world’s leading blogger) makes an insightful comparison between first time and serial entrepreneurs. I was thinking through the ‘who do you go to?’ question
iij Top Ten Startup Weekend Videos
I had to work my way through an enormous number of clips to put this together, but I still only scratched the surface. I had to do it now, because soon, there are going to be just too many to even attempt this with any sense of purpose.
The iij top 20 upcoming design books for innovators
These titles are at the leading edge of thinking about where design and innovation meet. Not just in predictable design territory, such as consumer products or web and mobile apps, but also in such diverse fields as cultural development, physiological experience analysis and architectural kinetics
iij Top 15 Upcoming Innovation Leadership Books
Apart from being about new ideas and leadership (which is, after all, the entire reason for the list) there’s not much in common between these volumes, other than each one focussing on some unique but pertinent aspect
No potential startup founder left behind
It looks like the enviable track record of startup accelerators like TechStars and Y Combinator derives from identifying something you might call ‘Foundational Capability’ as the basis for startup success, but there is a dark side
The iij Top Twenty Upcoming Social Media Books
What is the range of subject matter in our ‘spring collection’ of (weighty and in some cases expensive) Social Media volumes? Integration, culture, storytelling, journalism, transmedia, immersion, law, enterprise, strategy, teaching, meaning, creativity, identity, invention and belonging
Two innovation universes, one amazing video
This starts off as a talk about startup methodology but somehow manages to morph into a sales pitch for an intriguing new solar technology. If you’re able to keep up with Bill Gross’s sometimes ferocious pace of delivery, stick with it, it’s well worth the ride
Cleantech startups: early exit strategies and beyond
What does cleantech look like from a strictly ‘risks and returns’ perspective? What new investment approaches will make the most promising government funded emerging technologies a realistic prospect for scalability and growth?
Innovation videos: making sure they’re not ignored
Fail to do most of the things below, and you risk the likelihood that even an outstanding presentation will be consigned to oblivion. Most innovation videos uploaded to YouTube are let down by things that are easily prevented
Thousands of lean startup devotees bravely endure shaky YouTube video
Yes, it’s Eric Ries classic ‘Minimum Viable Product’ presentation. It’s so absorbing that you soon stop noticing the jitters. Oh, and no, you can’t even cheat by just listening to it. There are slides. And if you saw it in 2009 but you did nothing about it, shame on you, it’s time to watch it again.
Marketers target our invisible connective tissue, offline and online
We’re leaving trails behind us, both offline and online, inside and outside social media, that we don’t notice, but marketers do, and they’re using them to spot our closest friends, betting that they’ll share our tastes and would probably buy what we bought if they were approached.
The iij Top Ten Startup Books for the start of 2011
Shame on us for not managing to get a top ten startup book list out at the end of last year, but most of these titles are barely a month old. Some are obvious choices, but others are quite specialised and deserve more attention than they’ve received
Are innovators their own worst enemies?
We innovation cheerleaders leave a lot of ruffled feathers behind us as we urge the sweeping away of the long-established. Do we care?
Is there a real difference between Transmedia Marketing and Integrated Marketing?
If the essence of Integrated Marketing of was “message consistency” across platforms, then in Transmedia Marketing they’re saying it will be all about “storytelling and conversation” which is supposed to need a whole new approach
Innovation issue missing from Wikipedia right now (hopefully not for long)
Green Engineering is not only ‘using engineering to do sustainable things’, it is also about ‘how to do all engineering in a sustainable way’
Disruption contained: preventing self-inflicted innovation wounds
You’ve got a revolutionary product and a choice of innovation strategies: trying to do everything you do ‘in the spirit of innovation’ or to run an otherwise traditional business, limiting additional risk: are both options misguided?
Charisma failure = innovator failure?
Problem: many brilliant innovators wouldn’t recognise their own shortcomings in the charm department even if … (insert painfully humiliating scenario) Solution? Get ready for the Science (or Zen?) of Charisma
What’s authenticity got to do with innovation?
This video doesn’t ask or answer that question. But it makes it clear that something highly relevant to both of these issues is heading our way and it’s on a collision course with the way we think about everything.
Who is Mr Prediction in Tech?
This year was expected to be so full of unprecedented upheavals that getting it right would be tougher than ever.
Competing with Apple: what’s it like being Nokia?
Apple may have reinvented themselves as a phone company, but that doesn’t mean that Nokia can’t try to reinvent themselves too, so the question is this: what do they want to become?
What does it take to be a leadership guru?
Hidden away in an old ‘speaking showreel’ on YouTube: a showcase of the exceptional talents of René Carayol
What role does ‘synthesis’ play in the design process?
It’s the missing link, halfway between discovering an original idea and using it to make something new: this video tries to explain how it works
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Rescuing crash victims just got a whole lot easier
New tools for tearing wreckage apart to get trapped occupants out of mangled vehicles
A wealth of innovation opportunities among the poorest on the planet
And you thought shopping was exhausting: necessity forces these ‘dollar or two a day’ people into an unimaginably intricate daily web of cash and credit
What can innovators learn about creativity from a fiction author?
Amy Tan writes about mother /daughter relationships and talks about the creative process in this video
Working with the Y (Why?) Generation
A battle to reinvent the way you see your workforce [Video]
How to present to the board
American coaching company Bates Communications gives pointers on presenting to the board