One of the major themes on the blog is how innovations are created from new connections. The connections can be between people or technologies. Today I want to continue this connections theme but instead talk about innovations resulting from new connections in our minds. To start with, have a look at this famous optical illusion. […]
Consider Jared Diamond’s discussion of the lost technology of Tasmania: Tasmania is just an island of modest size, but it was the most extreme outpost of the most extreme continent, and it illuminates a big issue in the evolution of all human societies. Tasmania lies 130 miles southeast of Australia. When it was first visited […]
I love the story of the development of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). It was developed by Xerox in their Palo Alto Research Center. They used it on their first commercial home PC, the Xerox Star, but that didn’t sell very well. While the history is a bit muddled, Apple definitely knew of the work, […]
Why do so many organisations focus on generating lots of ideas when the try to become more innovative? Innovation is a three-step process – generating great ideas, selecting and executing the best of these ideas, and getting your ideas to spread. Most organisations fail in the last two steps, not in generating ideas. One reason […]
Check out this talk by Jeremy Rifkin: I’ve talked before about how innovation needs to be empathy-driven, and Rifkin’s talk illustrates why. We are inherently empathic – and many ideas spread not through persuasion, but through copying. This point is made emphaticaly by Mark Earls in his terrific book Herd. Earls talks about what this […]
Veronica Vera pointed me to a great talk by Anil Gupta from TEDIndia. He talks about grassroots innovation, and methods for getting ideas to spread in poorer regions. It’s a fascinating talk: Innovation in developing countries is a wildly unappreciated phenomenon – there are incredibly interesting things going on in places like India, China and […]
“Fresh insightful connections.” That’s how Rishad Tobaccowala defines innovation in a terrific post today called Becoming Innovative. I think this is a great way to think about innovation. I’ve already said that connecting ideas is the fundamental creative act in innovation, so it was great to see Rishad say this: Connections is a about the […]
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 […]
The economy is a network. I’m Reading Smart World by Richard Ogle and he talks about a couple of the important implications of this. The networked nature of the economy tells us a lot about how innovations diffuse – particularly some the difficulties new ideas face in getting adopted. It sheds light on some questions […]
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been participating in an innovation jam organised by Kate Morrison from Vulture Street Innovation Services – it’s been a fascinating experience. I’ve talked about jams before, but it’s been great to get deeply involved with one. I’ve been thinking about this one through the aggregate, filter and connect […]
We create economic value out of information when we figure out an effective strategy that includes aggregating, filtering and connecting. The three steps interact and reinforce each other – and successful information-based business models have all three. We can undertake business model innovation by changing our methods in these three areas, or by changing where […]
