Innovation

If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone

Would-be innovators can sign up online to compete for prizes for solving diverse problems from around the world in a variety of disciplines. (Subscription required)

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How to Measure Innovation

NESTA, the independent British organization, is working on a new index to assess the state of innovation within specific industries.

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The Do-Good Imperative

07 JUL 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Some of the most innovative ideas today are coming from efforts to address the needs of those most in need.

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INNOVATION AVALANCHE

There's more 'innovation' happening than ever before. New brands, new niches, new concepts, new products, new services, and new experiences are flooding an equally fast expanding number of markets. Here are 41 new business ideas begging to be copied...

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What George Carlin Taught Innovators—The Virtues of Vuja De

George Carlin made another contribution to the language—believe it or not, to the language of business and innovation.

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Wind charges phones at Glastonbury Festival

Measuring more than 7 meters tall, the free-standing recharge pod is a self-sufficient unit that taps into a wind generator and solar panels to charge as many as 100 mobile phones per hour.

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We Need More Power, Keep Dancing!

Following in the footsteps of San Francisco’s Temple Nightclub, and Rotterdam’s Watt; London is getting it’s own eco-nightclub this July. The club features a piezoelectric dance floor that will generate 60% of the buildings electricity. The remaining balance of electricity will be bought from renewable sources. Organic drinks are featured and if you can prove you walked, biked or took public transportation to the club, they’ll wave the entrance fee.

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How Not to Finance Innovation

Government attempts to provide venture capital are, to me, like government subsidies for stadiums. Both are economic development trends that do NOT work, yet simply won't die.

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C. K. Prahalad on Innovation, Part 1

JUN 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Management expert C. K. Prahalad discusses the new landscape of innovation, in which companies must learn to co-create with their consumers, making use of a global ecosystem of resources. (Video )

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How To Kill An Idea

Super consultant Ram Charan on why that's one of the most important -- and most overlooked -- aspects of innovation.

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Changing the World from the Edge

Our columnists show how impassioned student movements for social change can teach executives about innovation.

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Eyes on Cisco's I-Prize

Competitions from the likes of Microsoft and Virgin are sparking innovation and drawing thousands of contestants from all corners.

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In a city that plays it safe, incubator has a tough job

Azuki Systems Inc. and Tsumobi Inc. are two start-ups with big plans to extend your cellphone's capabilities. But the differences between the two companies, based in Acton and Cambridge, respectively, highlight a serious glitch in the way Boston's innovation economy works.

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product innovation back on the agenda at unilever

At a time when product performance now trumps marketing spin, Unilever's Chairman is looking for more product innovation from the giant multinational.

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Autodesk's Digital Dreams

The software maker's CEO talks about the future of digital prototyping and the amazing structures made possible by the technology.

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Airplane Heal Thyself? Self-Repairing Aircraft Could Improve Air Safety

Aerospace researchers in Britain are developing self-repairing composite materials that "bleed" resin when cracked or punctured, creating a "scab" in a process that mimics human healing. They say it could make airplanes safer and foster development of lighter, more efficient -- and therefore less polluting -- aircraft.

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Fast forward: five to thrive

When Helen Greiner was pitching investors on her business idea in the early 1990s, they could hardly have been less interested. Greiner and Colin Angle were recent MIT grads who wanted to build robots to assist bomb squads and soldiers and fly on NASA missions to distant planets.

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How to allow innovation without abuse?

When Wall Street's best and brightest devise things like collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed securities in the good times, they're applauded. But when those things go bad, they get the blame. Bob Moon reports on balancing innovation and regulation.

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Institutional Innovations

A Silicon Valley nonprofit fostered the development of a radical open-source platform for top-level health research.

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Fueling Google's Idea Factory

CEO Eric Schmidt describes the simple principles driving the company's steady stream of innovations.

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Connect & Develop

It’s been quite some time since Procter & Gamble has rolled out a blockbuster breakthrough product like Pampers or Tide, but ceo A.G. Lafley thinks it will happen again in his lifetime, reports Anjali Cordeiro in The Wall Street Journal (4/23/08). His optimism is rooted in an innovation initiative...

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The Power of the Prize

Lo and behold, contests actually work to spur innovation. So should we use them for everything?

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Creating an American Innovation Agenda

Keeping the U.S. competitive through innovation requires action at the highest levels of corporate, academic, and governmental leadership.

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Finding Innovation Where It Lives

Bottom-up collaborative innovation doesn't happen by accident. BusinessWeek columnists Jack & Suzy Welch talk about what it takes to unleash its power. (Audio)

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BlackBerry: Innovation Behind the Icon

Research in Motion founder Mike Lazaridis talks about building a successful R&D culture and a decade of sustainable innovation.

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Computer Waste Heat to Warm Swimming Pool

Talk about immersing yourself in the data: A new computer center in Switzerland will pump the waste heat from its servers into pipes that feed warm water to the town swimming pool next door.

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Once the World's Great Factory, China Is the Next Great Innovator

The world's notorious source of low-cost labor is generating mountains of capital, tons of hot new companies and even some signs of technological innovation.

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Hidden Genius—Is There a "Million-Dollar Idea" In You?

The most powerful ideas often come from the most unexpected places. That’s why, Collins explains, companies "are now offering everyone the chance to be part of an open innovation process, to submit product ideas, share their creativity, influence the types of products and services offered."

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A Focus on Innovation, Passion and Luck

Innovation, timing, a good idea and luck are all ingredients of success in the technology industry, according to speakers at the recent Wharton Business Technology Conference titled, "Enterprise Agility: Lead with Speed." Former Microsoft executive Rob Glaser, who went on to found RealNetworks, and Glenn A. Britt, CEO of Time Warner Cable, both said strong technology businesses are built on firm technical footings, but shaped by business forces that are not always predictable. "Any successful entrepreneur who says luck did not play a role is either lying or lacks self-awareness," stated Glaser.

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Reengineering Xerox

One of CEO Anne Mulcahy's first moves when she arrived at Xerox was to provide the freedom—and funds—needed to let innovation happen.

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we think- a short film about mass innovation

A nice film promoting Charles Leadbetter's new book "We Think". Most of us know all this stuff, but it's nice to see it in a film and the conceptual idea of the shift from "the pyramid" to the "birds nest" is a good one. (Video )

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Want an innovative culture? Status differences blow

At the risk of making a broad generalization, I would say that innovative startups and more mature organizations capable of innovating on a routine basis (like Honda) share two key elements in common: first, a remarkable lack of status differences among employees, and second, a low-friction environment when it comes to the meritocracy of ideas. I actually believe the latter is a function of the former.

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Camera 'looks' through clothing

A camera that can "see" explosives, drugs and weapons hidden under clothing is invented.

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Brainstorming Bee

Stanford University held a global “brainstorming bee” to see who could be most innovative with a rubber band, leading to some insights into innovation, reports Lee Gomes in The Wall Street Journal (3/5/08).

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Building Expertise Through Collective Innovation

The Raymond open-innovation conference gathered design managers from companies such as Heineken and Lego to share best practices and improve the bottom line.

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Innovation Through Acquisition

Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, talks about the potential pitfalls and rewards of trying to "buy" innovation.

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Putting Innovation in the Hands of a Crowd

If executives are going to rely on the wisdom of the masses for business help, it’s probably time the masses get a little compensation for it. (Subscription required)

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Better machines through origami

Industrial Origami's metal-folding techniques are designed to slash the expense of making appliances and car parts.

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Marissa Mayer's 9 Principles of Innovation

Google's VP of search products and user experience shares the rules that gives the search company its innovative edge.

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Alaskan Efficiency

Alaska Airlines has reinvented airport check-in so that it’s not only faster but also cheaper, reports Dave Demerjian in Fast Company (Mar 08). Where the average check-in at United Airlines in Seattle is somewhere around "25 to 30 minutes," at Alaska Airlines, it’s done "in eight minutes or less."

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Philips Lighting CEO Rudy Provoost: Innovation Means Putting Consumers' Needs First

Approximately 19% of the world's electricity bill comes from lighting, according to Rudy Provoost, CEO of Philips Lighting. As such, Philips, the world's largest producer of industrial and consumer lighting products, has a big role to play in the ongoing transformation from incandescent to solid-state lighting using LED technology. Provoost, who until last year was CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics, is no stranger to new technologies, which he says are "just a vehicle to respond to needs." Figuring out what those needs are, weeding out needless complexity and innovating with an eye on the bottom line are the keys to growth, Provoost says. He recently spoke with Wharton marketing professor George Day and Knowledge@Wharton about the challenges of staying ahead in a rapidly changing industry.

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The World's Most Innovative Companies

We canvassed the experts, analyzed the products, and crunched the numbers. From visionary upstarts to storied stalwarts, here are companies that dazzle with new ideas -- and prove beyond a doubt how business is a force for change. We call them the Fast 50.

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Questionating by Corinne Miller

Those who ask ‘why’ are typically more holistic or whole-brained thinkers, those who ask ‘how’ are typically more box thinkers, and those who ask ‘why not’ are typically the challenging thinkers. All types, of course, are equally valuable and equally required for innovation!

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Accelerate Your Innovation

Stronger growth demands faster innovation. By Patrick Meyer and Robin Austin.

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Innovation Myths

"The most useful way to think of epiphany is as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems," wrote Scott Berkun in "The Myths of Innovation," as reported by Janet Rae-Dupree in The New York Times (2/4/08).

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Points of Innovation

If you want to innovate like a retailer, you need to think like a shopper. By Al Wittemen.

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Tracking the World’s Appetite for Innovation

In its quest for what it calls "new metrics for the knowledge economy," a nonprofit research group has come up with an index of global innovation confidence. (Subscription required)

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The house that social networking built

The Open Architecture Network's Cameron Sinclair talks about harnessing next-generation Web technologies to proliferate affordable housing around the globe.

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Imagine Innovation

Take a giant step inside your mind. A discussion on the future of innovation featuring Ann Lewnes of Adobe, Todd Peters of Staples, Mats Rönne of Electrolux, Watts Wacker of FirstMatter and Rodney Mason of Hawkeye.

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GM Envisions Driverless Cars on Horizon

Cars that drive themselves - even parking at their destination - could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say....

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The State of Innovation in India

The State of Innovation in India  —  10 years ago, in 1997, I wrote an article called Playing Against 5 Aces for a technology magazine in India called Dataquest.  The article looked at how the deck was stacked in favor of American technology companies, because they were playing with 5 Aces in the pack...

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Innovative Minds Don't Think Alike

30 DEC 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

It's a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience. (Subscription required)

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Apple's Piping Hot Innovation

Apple's Piping Hot Innovation — Want a coffee with your iPhone? — Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs wants to patent a process that will save customers the hassle of waiting to order a cup of coffee at a local Starbucks ...

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The State of Innovation

19 DEC 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

It's not just a buzzword—three recent surveys find innovation is still a high priority with a majority of executives across industries and across the world.

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Innovation Lessons From 'The Big Apple'

Ten years or so ago Apple Computer was almost bankrupt. Fast forward and Apple (the company no longer uses the word computer) is now regularly cited as the most innovative company in the world.

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The Six Core Values of Innovation

Innovation is the critical capability for all organizations trying to succeed in today's marketplace. But the case for innovation cannot be made solely on the basis of the economic value it creates for customers. It is equally important for enterprises and their leaders to embrace the 6 underlying core values of innovation as an integral element for a more vibrant future. This manifesto explores these values and explains how leaders can infuse them into their organizations in various ways.

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What Is Management's Role in Innovation?

Author: Jim Heskett

In early December, a colloquium on "Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Organizations of the Future" is being held as part of the 100th anniversary celebration at the Harvard Business School. To kick off the colloquium, senior managers of four sizeable organizations at the center of the innovation process have been asked to pose "burning questions" to the assembled researchers and practitioners of innovation and creativity. Given their importance for global economic health and progress, the questions are worth pondering.

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Six Sigma and innovation culture

There was an interesting story in Business Week a little while ago about 3M hiring a CEO called James McNerney, who imported the ‘Six Sigma’ process from his old employer, General Electric. Nothing remarkable about that you might think ...

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Is a Flying Car About to Take Off?

A Massachusetts company is developing a small airplane that can land, fold up its wings and drive down the highway. (Subscription required)

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Next-gen credit card: no names, no numbers

First on the list of paradigm-busting features is that the RevolutionCard does not print users' names or account numbers on their cards; rather, use of the card is based entirely on encryption and a 4-digit PIN. There is no annual fee, and the interest rate charged on unpaid balances depends on the user's credit profile. Consumers can store money on the card, loaded from their bank accounts. Merchants accepting the card, meanwhile, pay a fee of just 0.5 percent of the total sale, rather than the industry average of 1.9 percent.

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Slow Innovation: A Savour-y Way to Success

Using the Slow Food Movement as a metaphor, Derek Cheshire suggests a slow approach to innovation. There is immense pressure to innovate quickly or to rush to market, but does this bargain of speed versus quality really benefit a company? He lauds the goal of creating "an innovative company whose structure and culture are conducive to long-term growth and sustainability."

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The Changing Face of American Innovation

The contributions made by immigrant scientists and engineers for developing new U.S. technologies have been formidable—but not always well described.

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Cross-Bred Innovation

The greatest opportunity for innovation today is in combining dissimilar products, write Michael Gibbert and David Mazursky in The Wall Street Journal (10/27/07). Michael, of Bocconi University, and David, of Hebrew University, think that too many brands make the mistake of trying to innovate within their own categories, resulting in incremental innovation at best...

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Photos: Reclaiming silicon with water

IBM's eco-friendly process scrapes off circuitry from unusable wafers, which are then sold to the solar industry.

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Reimagining the Automobile Industry by Selling the Electricity

A top Silicon Valley technologist has devised a plan to reinvent the auto industry around electric-powered cars by building battery-charging stations around the world. (Subscription required)

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Why the Future Keeps Catching Us Out

Why is it that some innovations score a home run, whereas others leave the field almost as soon as they walk on? Two culprits are timing and the irrational behavior of human beings.

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Why is The New York Times So Dumb About Design And Innovation?

There is a sad, apologetic story about process innovation in The New York Times today that makes me want to cry about how one of the great Mainstream Media companies just cannot cover design and innovation.

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General Motor's CEO Rick Wagoner Pulls Off Business Model Innovation--Perhaps The Hardest Type of Innovation.

Larry Keeley at Doblin has taught me that there are many kinds of innovation and I think that the truly hardest is innovating the entire business model, which is what GM has just done.

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Innovation Farms

"In thinking about large companies, think of them as farms. And what you’re trying to do is grow rows of corn. You don’t want surprises, you want it to work well, you apply incremental innovation to be as productive as you can."

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Jobs Are Weak, Recession May Loom--Do Not Cut Spending On Innovation!

Cutting R&D and innovation spending now, as the economy weakens, opens competitive opportunities to those companies that take them. This is the time to boost, not cut, investments in innovation.

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Radical Collaboration

30 AUG 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

IBM is reinventing the way it innovates. At one time the tech giant was a true believer in go-it-alone R&D. The feeling was that if a technology wasn't invented by IBMers, it wasn't as good. Now the computer pioneer realizes that no matter how big an organization is, more smart people are going to work outside its walls than inside. So it courts R&D partners aggressively. "We are the most innovative when we collaborate," declares Chief Executive Samuel J. Palmisano.

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Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage

Mature companies understand that to compete today they need to innovate. But finding sources of innovation while still paying attention to the current business can be a struggle. The good news, says Harvard Business School professor Lynda M. Applegate, is that one of the forces that threatens established companies can also be a source of salvation: disruptive change.

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Imagining innovative behavior, vividly

I believe quite strongly that people are more likely to engage in innovative behavior when they are in a flow-like state of happiness. It's hard to be innovative when you are unhappy yourself, because as Maeda says, "You imagine most vividly what you do yourself." And it's hard to engage in innovative, value-creating behavior when you're only looking out for Number One...

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Sir James Dyson On Getting It Right

It took Sir James Dyson 5,127 tries to get his vacuum right, and three years to perfect a hand dryer. Listen as he explores the link between failure and greater creativity. (Audio)

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Mind of the Innovator: Taming the Traps of Traditional Thinking

Matthew May, author of Elegant Solutions: Breakthrough Thinking the Toyota Way and a popular ChangeThis manifesto on the subject, now brings our attention to the ‘Seven Sins of Solutions’, the traditional ways of thinking that prevent us from divining the most accurate—and elegant—of solutions to any problem solving situation.

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Crowd Farm to collect energy

MIT grad students are designing a system to convert the mechanical energy of people movingh around a building into electricity. Designed for a railways system, Tad Jusczyk and James Graham's "Crowd Farm" would consist of sub-floor that moves slightly as people walk across it. That motion would then be converted by a dynamo into current.

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The cover curse: explained

A study explains the business magazine cover curse

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Sideways Bike Lets You Surf the Streets -- If You Dare

Irish inventor Michael Killian's bizarre bicycle uses a complex chain transmission and innovative steering to let riders face perpendicular to their direction of motion.

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Microsoft cultures creativity in unique lab

Two dozen designers, engineers and strategists toil in an unusual research lab on the Microsoft campus. Awkwardly dubbed the Mobile and Embedded Devices Experience design center, or MEDX, it is where Microsoft plots strategies to sell souped-up cellphones that act a lot like PCs.

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Determined to Reinspire a Culture of Innovation

10 JUL 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

William A. Wulf says innovation in science and manufacturing starts with the eureka moment, in which people discover the reward in solving problems. (Subscription required)

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Innovation: Does the iPhone Look So Great Because Everything Else is So Bad?

It also shines so brightly because so much of the consumer market is mired in what amounts to a dazzle-free zone. Consider the automotive industry. America is a car-culture; remember when the Auto Show once grabbed the national imagination? Today, it’s a non-event, with media coverage desultory at best. And why should it be big news, like MacWorld is? When was the last time a car made anyone’s spirits soar?

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You May Be Wrecking Your Own Innovation

Innovative ideas - the kind that can transform your company - are inadvertently being demolished.

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Fast Innovation

The hardest part of making innovation happen is convincing "scientists, designers or other creative types" to put fewer ideas into the pipeline, suggests Michael George, of George Group Consulting, in a Wall Street Journal article by George Anders (6/11/07).

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Does Drinking Coca-Cola Make You Dumb?

You're in the business of selling high-margin liquid in bottles. You've built a pretty good business doing that, and you're guarding a formula that is supposedly as well-protected as Osama bin Laden. Money's not the issue; you've got bottomless pockets.

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A 12-Megapixel Camera That Doesn’t Mind Working in Low Light

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX100 uses a built-in image stabilization to prevent blurring while on the move and even in low light. (Subscription required)

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Microswitch keyboard DIY

"This guy apparently was permanently dissatisfied with commercial keyboards and the quality of their microswitches, so he designed the massive custom behemoth...."

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In Hot Pursuit Of the Next Big Trend

Our reviewer looks at two new titles on trendspotting -- a hot topic among companies seeking to capitalize on cool.

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Why Apple Is No. 1 In Innovation

Here are the first 50 of the 1032 responses on the survey explaining why top managers believe Apple is the most innovative company in the world. It makes for fascinating reading.

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What's Cooking in EMC's Labs?

We won't find out exactly what's in the pot for a while, but it will have something to do with managing information.

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Supreme Court Raises Bar for Patents

Thanks to a ruling on Monday from the Supreme Court, patents may now be harder to come by. The implications for innovative entrepreneurs could be immense.

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Background Office Sounds - Make Your Small Shop Sound Like a Busy Office

If you're already wearing the extremely popular Half Suit to look professional in your webcam meetings, then you'll love the idea of the thriving office CD.

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Grant Makers

"It's great to know another office appreciates your work."

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How Luxury Cars Drive Innovation

The hottest new automotive technologies almost always debut on luxury cars. Here’s why--and what’s coming.

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On the Road: If Checker Cabs Could Fly: Hop in, the Meter’s Running

DayJet plans to begin flying the nation’s first on-demand, per seat air taxi service in June. (Subscription required)

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Energy producers capture speedier wind

New technology is allowing energy producers to capture speedier wind that environmental activists say has the potential to provide 20% of the state's electricity within 10 years.

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Innovate: It's the Only Way!

Some say it is the economy, others speak about the lack of motivation of staff members, and many attribute it to the increased lack of balance between work and personal life.

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Special Paint Provides 'Electromagnetic Fortress'

Maxwell Smart was ahead of his time.

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With desktop camera, your face can be your password

Toronto company introduces 3D DeskCam, which uses infrared along with a lens to scan faces in three dimensions and authenticate users.

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GPS navigation plan to help blind

A satellite navigation system is being tested in northern Italy to help blind people find their way.

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Peer-to-Peer Network for Your Car - Traffic Jams a Thing of the Past?

Nobody likes to get stuck in traffic and if a German research project that is developing a peer-to-peer network that would relay important traffic information between vehicles as traffic situations develop is successful, getting stuck on your way to work may be a thing of the past.

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The Media Equation: All the World’s a Story

Assignment Zero, a new online journalism experiment, will use the combined reporting efforts of readers to tell the world a story.

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P2P Renting - Make Money By Renting Out Your Own Movies and Games at iLetYou.com

Got a pile of DVDs or games that you’ve already watched (or played) a million times? Not sure what to do with them? Then check out a cool new website: iLetYou.com.

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Play Fetch The Easy Way - Hyper Doggie Driver and Ball Launchers (GALLERY)

13MAR 2007 from Trendhunter Magazine | Read the full story»

Do you have a hyper-active dog who never seems to tire out from playing fetch? Then check out the Hyper Doggie Driver and Ball Launchers specially designed to save your poor arm and keep your fingers slobber-free.

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Decaf Being Joined by De-Heartburn

Folgers has opened a new flank in the coffee war: a “stomach friendly” coffee for Americans who think they can no longer handle the hard stuff.

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A New Battery Takes Off in a Race to Electric Cars

11 MAR 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

A123Systems, a start-up in Watertown, Mass., says it has created a powerful, safe, long-lived battery. If the cell fulfills the ambitions of its maker, that softer sound will be the future of automobiles. (Subscription required)

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Drowsiness Detector - New Car Seat Kicks Your Ass When You Fall Asleep

Recently the Researchers from the University of Tokyo, Oita University, the Shimane Institute of Health Science and Delta Tooling, an industrial equipment manufacturer, have developed a prototype smart car seat capable of detecting when its occupant is on the verge of falling asleep.

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Fog Machine Blinds Car Thieves

The latest antitheft device for automobiles makes it impossible for criminals to see -- and doubles as a disco light show.

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What Are You? A Mind Reader?

Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. Researchers use a brain scan that lets them identify your intentions before you actually do anything. By the Associated Press.

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Pee Powered Battery

The power is in your pee! Scientists at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology developed a prototype battery that runs on urine.

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Local Search Sites Draw Users' Input

Some start-ups allow surfers to easily find information based on recommendations from area customers.

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Unexpected Brand Name for Books: Bellevue

Up in a tiny office on the sixth floor of Bellevue Hospital Center sits the most unlikely tenant: a fledgling publishing imprint. (Subscription required)

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Handheld substance scanner becomes a reality

The tricorder from Star Trek is going commercial. Will clingy stretch shirts be next?

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Gamer builds 'auto-play machine'

A US gamer builds a machine to help him reach the final points he needed to finish a game.

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Musique Concrete: skateboard as digital musical instrument

Artist Simon Morris outfitted a skateboard with various sensors that convert acceleration, turns, and vibration into data that's wirelessly transmitted to a laptop. The computer than translates that data into sound, generating an "acoustical map" of the city being thrashed.

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