Big companies don’t have to lose their souls; How to grow your business without crushing creativity

Big companies don’t have to lose their souls

June 28, 2013: 9:24 AM ET

How to grow your business without crushing creativity.

By Joris Luijke

(TheMIX) — Remember working for that start-up? Things were good. You responded quickly to change. You could, and often did, roll out new programs within weeks or days. Your boss approved quick changes with a simple nod. And you got results — fast. Then you moved to an important role at a big enterprise. Things were different — slower, costlier, stuck in red tape, less tangible, less experimental. That’s because big organizations are complex. And when we are accosted by complexity, we get anxious. We need certainty and coordination — in the form of structures, policies, responsibilities, and rules — to push that fear away. We can’t change our fear of complexity, nor our desire for control. So, what can we do to keep our organizations agile — even as they grow? How can we ensure that innovation doesn’t get crushed? Read more of this post

A 15 Year-Old Girl From Canada Has Built A Flashlight Powered By The Heat Of A Hand

A 15 Year-Old Girl From Canada Has Built A Flashlight Powered By The Heat Of A Hand

JAY YAROW 16 MINUTES AGO 241

There’s almost no real reason to own a flashlight now that all smartphones have bright flashes that work as flashlights. However! If, for some reason, you do want a dedicated flashlight in your life, a 15 year-old genius, Ann Makosinski from Victoria, B.C. has developed a new innovative version of the flashlight.  Instead of using batteries, the flashlight converts the heat from your palm into energy that powers LED lightbulbs. Incredible! The best part of this invention is not the flashlight, which, as we already noted is obsolete. The best part is knowing that a 15 year-old is already playing around with this energy technology. Hopefully in the next ten years she can do the same sort of thing for smartphones. Imagine just having to hold your smartphone for it to have enough energy to run?

12 Of The Shrewdest Business Maneuvers Of All Time

12 Of The Shrewdest Business Maneuvers Of All Time

MAX NISEN AND ALEXANDRA MONDALEK JUN. 17, 2013, 8:54 AM 14,405 6

The success of failure of a business can come down to one single bold decision. A recent thread on Quora asked users to name the “the shrewdest, smartest maneuver you’ve ever seen in business.” We’ve broken out some of the best answers, including critical decisions by Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Henry Ford. Bill Gates originally wrote a PC operating system for IBM. He convinced them to let him sell it to others, starting him on the way to becoming the richest man in the world.

Bill Gates using an early version of Microsoft Excel

Via Quora user Prakul Agarwal:

Back in the 1980s, IBM asked Bill Gates to produce the operating system for its PCs. He licensed an operating system from Tim Patterson (QDOS) for $50,000, modified it, named it MS-DOS, and sold it to IBM. Gates managed to convince IBM to let him market the system separately, because IBM thought all of the money was in hardware. When other companies started to build their own PCs, MS-DOS was the standard, and Microsoft made a fortune.  Read more of this post

Original Mad Man David Ogilvy on the 10 Qualities of Creative Leaders: A capacity for hard work and midnight oil; A streak of unorthodoxy – creative innovators

Original Mad Man David Ogilvy on the 10 Qualities of Creative Leaders

The rare talents of trust, gusto, and guts under pressure.

Long before the listicle epidemic of the social web, 11th-century Japanese courtesan Sei Shanagon, the world’s first “blogger,” enumerated 7 rare things in life, beloved novelist Umberto Eco asserted the list was the origin of culture, and the inimitable Susan Sontag reflected on why lists appeal to us. One of modern history’s most fierce list-lovers is advertising legend and original “Mad Man” David Ogilvy, as evidenced by his enduring 10 no-bullshit tips on writing. From The Unpublished David Ogilvy (public library) – which also gave us Ogilvy’s endearing note to a veteran copywriter – comes his list of the ten qualities he looks for in creative leaders, as originally delivered in one of Ogilvy’s eloquent talks to the staff. Among expected necessities like work ethic and the ability to transcend fear in the creative process are also a few oft-overlooked but equally important requirements like a healthy dose of nuttiness and comedic sensitivity. (We already know that humor and creativity are driven by the same mechanics.)

High standards of personal ethics.

Big people, without pettiness.

Guts under pressure, resilience in defeat.

Brilliant brains – not safe plodders.

A capacity for hard work and midnight oil.

Charisma – charm and persuasiveness.

A streak of unorthodoxy – creative innovators.

The courage to make tough decisions.

Inspiring enthusiasts – with trust and gusto.

A sense of humor.

The Unpublished David Ogilvy features many more of Ogilvy’s lists, as well as a wealth of his insights on everything from creativity to management to the nitty-gritty of the communication arts.

The high cost of sad workers; Not happy at your job? Your company is paying for it in innovation potential

Not happy at your job? Your company is paying for it in innovation potential.

By Vivek Wadhwa, Updated: June 13, 2013

A Nov. 2011 paper from European Union-backed academic institution evoREG makes the case that happiness is both integral to the innovation process and oddly enough simultaneously misunderstood. The authors find happiness to be both an input factor as well as an output factor of the innovation process. In other words, happiness leads to more innovation, and when directed properly, innovation creates more happiness for societies. Read more of this post

Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry

Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry

by David Robertson  (Author) , Bill Breen  (Author)

Brick by Brick takes you inside the LEGO you’ve never seen. By following the teams that are inventing some of the world’s best-loved toys, it spotlights the company’s disciplined approach to harnessing creativity and recounts one of the most remarkable business transformations in recent memory.
Brick by Brick reveals how LEGO failed to keep pace with the revolutionary changes in kids’ lives and began sliding into irrelevance. When the company’s leaders implemented some of the business world’s most widely espoused prescriptions for boosting innovation, they ironically pushed the iconic toymaker to the brink of bankruptcy. The company’s near-collapse shows that what works in theory can fail spectacularly in the brutally competitive global economy.
It took a new LEGO management team – faced with the growing rage for electronic toys, few barriers to entry, and ultra-demanding consumers (ten-year old boys) – to reinvent the innovation rule book and transform LEGO into one of the world’s most profitable, fastest-growing companies.
Along the way, Brick by Brick reveals how LEGO:
– Became truly customer-driven by co-creating with kids as well as its passionate adult fans
– Looked beyond products and learned to leverage a full-spectrum approach to innovation
– Opened its innovation process by using both the “wisdom of crowds” and the expertise of elite cliques
– Discovered uncontested, “blue ocean” markets, even as it thrived in brutally competitive red oceans
– Gave its world-class design teams enough space to create and direction to deliver
built a culture where profitable innovation flourishes
Sometimes radical yet always applicable, Brick by Brick abounds with real-world lessons for unleashing breakthrough innovation in your organization, just like LEGO. Whether you’re a senior executive looking to make your company grow, an entrepreneur building a startup from scratch, or a fan who wants to instill some of that LEGO magic in your career, you’ll learn how to build your own innovation advantage, brick by brick. Read more of this post

The 10 Things Innovative Companies Do To Stay On Top

The 10 Things Innovative Companies Do To Stay On Top

JULIE BORT JAN. 25, 2013, 10:09 AM 50,035 3

Innovation isn’t this abstract thing that some companies have and some don’t. Innovation is actually a business skill that executives and employees can develop and master. So says Booz & Company management consultants Barry Jaruzelski, John Loehr, and Richard Holman. The authors of Booz’s annual “Global Innovation 1,000 report” named the most innovative companies in the world for 2012 and studied what makes them so. In addition to looking at what these 1,000 companies do right, it also surveyed some 700 companies not on the list to find out how they come up with new products and services.

No. 10: Innovative companies systematically create new ideas Read more of this post

Pepsi’s Chief Design Officer On How To Invest In Innovation

Pepsi’s Chief Design Officer On How To Invest In Innovation

KATHLEEN DAVIS, ENTREPRENEUR 10 MINUTES AGO 110

The fast-paced business world is focused on results and returns, but truly innovative companies have a culture focused on long-term gains where innovation can thrive. Mauro Porcini, the chief design officer of PepsiCo, argues that true innovation isn’t about creating the “next big thing” to capture their fleeting attention. He says companies should instead focus on connecting with customers on a more meaningful level.
Porcini spoke at the World Innovation Forum in New York today about the evolution of “design thinking,” a form of creative problem solving. “Design thinking is not a job; it’s a lifestyle,” he says. “There’s no difference for a design thinker between life and work.”
He offers these insights to foster a company culture where innovation can thrive. Read more of this post

What 10-Foot Noodles Have to Do with Competitive Advantage

What 10-Foot Noodles Have to Do with Competitive Advantage

by Scott Anthony  |  12:00 PM June 12, 2013

“A properly integrated business model forms the essence of a company’s competitive advantage,” my colleague Mark Johnson advises. That quote ran through my head as I watched a young man in a track suit prance around my table twirling a 10-foot noodle.

I was in one of the Shanghai locations of a chain of hot pot restaurants called Hai Di Lao. If anything deserves to be commoditized, it would be a hot pot restaurant. The essence of the meal is cooking food yourself in close-to-boiling broth. The popularity of that cooking style in many parts of China means many nondescript restaurants compete ferociously for customers. Somehow in this crowded field, Hai Di Lao commands fierce loyalty; has expanded to 75 locations across China, Singapore, and soon the U.S.; and generates about $500 million a year in revenue. Read more of this post

How do you build a culture of innovation? Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, describes why empathy is an important part of the equation

How do you build a culture of innovation?

by SHANE PARRISH on JUNE 2, 2013

http://bcove.me/v25prnc1

How does a successful company maintain a climate in which new ideas and risk-taking are encouraged? In this interview, Tim Brown, CEO and president of the design consultancy IDEO, describes how he thinks about innovation and why empathy is an important part of the equation. Organizations are well intentioned. They put people in charge of innovation. They hold meetings on innovation. They mandate innovation. Yet, despite all of these words and actions, to no one’s surprise, they largely fail to innovate. That’s because innovation is cultural. A 2009 study in the Journal of Marketing set out to identify the factors that predicated whether a firm would innovate or not. While there are a lot of variables at play, the study found, the most important driver of innovation was internal corporate culture. An article in Sloan MIT Management Review identifies a series of “building blocks” for an innovative culture, including hard-to-measure characteristics such as values, behavior, and climate. “An innovative climate,” the authors write, “cultivates engagement and enthusiasm, challenges people to take risks within a safe environment, fosters learning, and encourages independent thinking.” Here’s the transcript of the Interview with Tim Brown. Read more of this post

Innovation: DNA Fog security system that marks intruders with genetic material derived from plants. It’s hard to remove and links suspects to crime scenes

Innovation: DNA Fog by Applied DNA Sciences and SmokeCloak

By Caroline Winter on June 06, 2013

Form and function A fog-based security system that marks intruders with genetic material derived from plants. It’s hard to remove and links suspects to crime scenes.

Partners Stony Brook (N.Y.)-based Applied DNA Sciences developed the tracers, and Danish security company SmokeCloak builds the deployment devices.

“Police often have a very good idea who the criminals are, but they just cannot prove it.” — Applied DNA Sciences Chief Executive Officer James Hayward

Starbucks regularly launches products before they’re perfect. Why does such a risky approach to innovation work so well?

RISKY INNOVATION: WILL STARBUCK’S LEAP OF FAITH PAY OFF?

THE WORLD’S LARGEST COFFEEHOUSE CHAIN REGULARLY LAUNCHES PRODUCTS BEFORE THEY’RE PERFECT. WHY DOES SUCH A RISKY APPROACH TO INNOVATION WORK SO WELL?

BY: AUSTIN CARR

In late March, as Starbucks was preparing to introduce its first offer on Groupon, the daily-deal service, the coffee chain’s chief digital officer, Adam Brotman, realized he had no clue whether the gambit would pay off. The discount wasn’t for anything crazy like bungee jumps or skydiving lessons–it was for 50% off a $10 Starbucks Card eGift–but to Brotman, the deal was just as risky because of how the company would be offering it. His team had to integrate Starbucks’s eGift platform with Groupon’s system for the one-off promotion, and it was about to go live to the world. “They’d never done deals at the scale we were offering, and we had never put our [eGift] platform through that type of pressure test,” Brotman says. “But we didn’t have the luxury to say anything other than, ‘We think we got this right, so let’s see what happens.’ There are times when we just completely don’t know how things are going to work.” Read more of this post

Apple’s Tim Cook: You look for people that are not political. People that are not bureaucrats. People who care enough that they have an idea at 11 at night and they want to call and talk to you about it.

In One Of His Most Revealing Quotes, Tim Cook Explains His Strategy For Running Apple

Jay Yarow | Jun. 2, 2013, 9:07 AM | 8,495 | 7

Tim Cook gave one of his most revealing quotes to date about how he’s running Apple in an interview at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Cook got his MBA at Duke 25 years ago. He was on campus for a reunion and did a one hour interview with Fuqua’s Dean. Duke posted a clip from the interview to YouTube. In it, Cook answers a question about what he looks for when trying to get employees who collaborate. Cook has done a lot of interviews since being CEO. Much of the time it with the business press, or Wall Street analysts. As a result, Cook is normally pretty guarded in his answers. In this short answer, though, Cook is somehow more revealing than normal. Maybe we’re reading into it too much, but swe think it explains his entire philosophy about running Apple and how he’s completely different than Steve Jobs. A lot of people have asked him to compare himself to Jobs. For the most part he’s resisted. In this instance, he accidentally tells us. Here’s the question and answer, with our comments following:

What qualities do you look for in terms of what you think will produce effective collaboration?And what’s your role as CEO in fostering that kind of collaboration?

You look for people that are not political. People that are not bureaucrats. People that can privately celebrate the achievement, but not care if their name that is in the one in the lights. There are greater reasons to do things. You look for wicked smart people. You look for people who appreciate different points of view. People who care enough that they have an idea at 11 at night and they want to call and talk to you about it. Because they’re so excited about it, they want to push the idea further. And that they believe that somebody can help them push the idea another step instead of them doing everything themselves. Read more of this post

Disney U: How Disney University Develops the World’s Most Engaged, Loyal, and Customer-Centric Employees

Disney U: How Disney University Develops the World’s Most Engaged, Loyal, and Customer-Centric Employees[Hardcover]

Doug Lipp (Author)

Publication Date: March 5, 2013

With a Foreword by Jim Cora, former Chairman of Disneyland International

“A leadership blueprint, applicable in any organization.” — Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, U.S. Navy (Ret.), and author of It’s Your Ship

“When I first arrived at The Walt Disney Company, I was surprised to find I had to go back to school–at Disney University! There, I learned the fundamentals of guest service that consistently gave Disney a tremendous advantage in the marketplace. Now, anyone can know these secrets of success thanks to Doug Lipp’s informative book. No matter what your business, the lessons taught at Disney University will prove invaluable.” — Michael Eisner, Former CEO and Chairman, The Walt Disney Company

When it comes to world-class employees, few organizations rival Disney. Famous for their friendliness, knowledge, passion, and superior customer service, Disney’s employees have been fueling the iconic brand’s wild success for more than 50 years.

How has Disney succeeded in maintaining such a powerful workforce for so many years? Why are so many corporations and executives drawn to study how Disney continues to exemplify service and leadership standards?

The Disney University, founded by Van France, trains the supporting cast that helps create the world-famous Disney Magic. Now, for the first time, the secrets of this exemplary institution are revealed. In Disney U, Doug Lipp examines how Van perpetuated Walt Disney’s timeless company values and leadership lessons, creating a training and development dynasty. It contains never-before-told stories from numerous Disney legends. These pioneers share behind-the-scenes success stories of how they helped bring Walt Disney’s dream to life.

Disney U reveals the heart of the Disney culture and describes the company’s values and operational philosophies that support the iconic brand. Doug Lipp lays out 13 timeless lessons Disney has used to drive profits and growth worldwide for more than half a century.

To this day, the Disney University continues to turn out some of the most engaged, loyal, and customer-centered employees the business world has ever seen. Using the lessons outlined in Disney U will set your organization on a path of sustained success. Read more of this post

How Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring has shaped 100 years of music; From start to finish The Rite of Spring exalts in a new and explosive sense of musical movement

How Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring has shaped 100 years of music

Piece first performed in Paris exactly 100 years ago emblematic of era of great scientific, artistic and intellectual ferment

George Benjamin, The Guardian, Wednesday 29 May 2013

Stravinsky in 1914. Photograph: Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library; A section of a facsimile of Stravinsky’s manuscript for Rite of Spring, which was published this year to mark the centenary

The Rite of Spring was a revolutionary work for a revolutionary time. Its first performance in Paris, exactly 100 years ago on Wednesday, was a key moment in cultural history – a tumultuous scandal.

Written on the eve of the first world war and the Russian revolution, the piece is the emblem of an era of great scientific, artistic and intellectual ferment. No composer since can avoid the shadow of this great icon of the 20th century, and score after score by modern masters would be unthinkable without its model. Read more of this post

Creative companies: What are the 10 secrets of innovative offices? Allow Time for Ideas to Emerge; Improvise at the Edge of Chaos; Manage Knowledge for Innovation; Ditch the Organizational Chart; Build Decentralized Networks

Creative companies: What are the 10 secrets of innovative offices?

by Eric Barker

What do creative companies do right?

Keith Sawyer got his PhD studying under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi — the researcher who coined the idea of Flow. I’ve posted about his research on top creative teams and how brainstorming is broken. What did he find when he studied creative companies?

1) Keep Many Irons in the Fire

“In 1997, Shona Brown of McKinsey and Company, working with Kathleen Eisenhardt of Stanford University’s business school, compared three collaborative organizations with three organizations that didn’t innovate. The collaborative organizations constantly experimented, and they always had several different low-cost projects in the works. But instead of a grand plan that organized all the projects, they responded to what emerged. The contrast with the noninnovative companies couldn’t have been more stark— those companies didn’t have any experimental projects under way. And their managers dealt with the future by planning the future— spending months on elaborate strategy and product development plans. The problem was that if the future didn’t unfold according to plan, they were doomed to fail.” Read more of this post