impact

There’s an interesting post on the Six Pixels of Separation blog today about metrics for social media. Here’s the problem that is set up: Maybe we have it all wrong (and I’m just as guilty as the next person). Why are we looking at how many people have joined Facebook overall? Why do we care […]

solar business model innovation

I spent a lot of time in my talks this week discussing business model innovation. The main point is that this is often the most powerful form of innovation while also being one of the most overlooked. I ran across a great example of business model innovation today on Kevin Kelly’s blog. One of the […]

Where do valuable innovations come from?

Tim does a really nice talk on the invention of the computer and he has posted the slides on this blog. While he uses the story to discuss the difference between innovation and invention, I think there are a lot of other really interesting lessons here. Firstly, I’d like to add to Tim’s story by […]

you are what you share

There’s a nice post by Lisa Katamaya on Boing Boing Gadgets about coffee in a can. She talks about how popular various forms of a coffee in a can are in Japan, and how they are being promoted as being ‘American’ even though there is nothing like it available in America. I love all the […]

understanding innovation

Here are the slides from the talk that Mark gave at the UQ Business School Industry Breakfast yesterday: Understanding Innovation – Industry Breakfast View more Microsoft Word documents from Tim Kastelle. The people there were a bit sceptical to hear that Josiah Wedgwood is the greatest innovator in history, but in the end I think […]

the innovation spectrum

The NESTA Connect blog is probably one of the two best innovation blogs going, and Jonathan Crowley wrote a terrific post there today, which nicely summarises a lot of issues that we’ve been discussing here. He starts with this picture: which shows the spectrum of innovation. He then goes on to say that most people […]

the power of examples

One thing that was really striking up in Cairns is how many Toyota Priuses are on the road. There are a whole lot – led by the taxis. I’d estimate that the Prius makes up about 2/3 of all of the taxis there (including one that’s gone over 500,000 km!). I just did a quick […]

talks – invention, innovation & business models

Here are the slides from a talk I gave this morning: Innovation Business Models View more Microsoft Word documents from Tim Kastelle. They might not make much sense as standalones – so here’s a summary of the two main points. The first is that invention and innovation are two different things. It is pretty closely […]

innovation networks

I was thinking again about the discussion here last week about fuzzy concepts – in particular that of networks. In that post, I was trying to get at the value of the network concept for economic analysis. Neil Kay made an interesting point in the comments – which was that you could substitute the word […]

the long tail for restaurants…

… doesn’t exist, does it? Well, it exists, but how can you get to it? I was thinking about that today while Nancy and I had a fantastic lunch at a Japanese noodle place called Ganbaranba in Cairns. We’ve run across four classes of Asian restaurants in Australia, and you can divide them up by […]

biomimicry

One of the more interesting ideas I’ve run across recently is that of biomimicry. The basic concept is that the best way to find sustainable innovative ideas is to mimic natural processes as much as possible. There are a wide range of r&d projects going on in this field at the moment, like trying to […]

stupid innovations

Right off the top I’d like to emphasise that my crankiness here has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I’m up in Cairns, but stuck in my hotel room writing up a consulting report. Absolutely nothing. While taking a break from the writing to get some lunch, I took a quick walk out […]