IBM’s Innovation Man Commercials
Just a few days ago I wrote a post under the title “Innovating takes hard work“. I thought that using a gerund such as “innovating” would help set the tone. A verbal noun implies an uncompleted action and a sense that some work needs to be done. Today I came across two humorous IBM commercials which I think make the same point quite effectively.
“I” for implementation?
Are you fired up?
| J. de Francisco |  |
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| Chicago, 24 February 08 |  |
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World Innovation Forum. New York. April 8-9, 2008
“The World Innovation Forum is an unparalleled opportunity to hear from the sharpest minds in the field of innovation. World-renowned visionaries, prestigious academics, and bestselling authors.”
“Over two days, the experts will guide you through the exploration of the latest innovation theory, strategy, and case studies. Learn from these resources how to successfully implement and refine innovation to leverage and grow your business.”
| J. de Francisco | |
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| Chicago,24 February 08 | |
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First Annual Blog Review
“Savvy business owners and executives must learn how to strategically and successfully manage the blogosphere today -or risk potentially unpleasant and expensive consequences tomorrow.”
“Among small business with fewer than 100 employees, 10% have incorporated blogs into their marketing plans, and fully 81% report that they plan to increase spending on blogs and other technology tools over the next two or three years (…) Some 1,500 Microsoft employees write blogs (…) IBM hosts about 2,500 internal blogs on its servers (…) In the United States, there are some 5,000 corporate bloggers posting commentary for internal or external readers.”
From Blog Rules by Nancy Flynn.
I would like to start by thanking you all for visiting my blog, posting comments and for letting others know about consultaglobal. I really appreciate the positive feedback I have received in person, by email and the encouraging comments and reviews some of you have written in your own blogs.
2007 was an interesting and surprising year. Soon after starting this blog about innovation, consultaglobal was featured by WordPress as a “Blog of the Minute“, a feature which showcased the most interesting blogs.
BLOG STATS
This chart shows both the number of monthly direct hits (light blue line) as reported by WordPress’ blog stats as well as an estimate (dark blue line) taking into consideration that some of you do not come to this site as you can get blog updates by email, RSS readers and widgets.
I have written more than 320 posts on innovation matters by now. WordPress’ counter already shows in excess of 43,000 direct hits to date, these are page views.
Interestingly enough, the “long tail” concept applies. The top 10 posts just manage to capture around 40% of your visits, the remaining 60% relates to single daily page views. In other words, there are more people reading articles which register just one hit a day than people reading the most frequently viewed items.
Technorati’s “authority” for consultaglobal’s blog is now 42. This only means that there are at least that many websites and blogs linking back to this one (e.g. incoming links). That metric measures the number of blogs rather than the number of links, since some blogs might refer back to consultaglobal several times. Today, Technorati also showed more than 100 blog reactions, which are comments and trackbacks.
CHALLENGES
Spam is becoming an issue of concern. The good news is that Askimet managed to prevent more than 24,000 spam comments. Nonetheless, every week I have to spend some time cleaning up random comments that have nothing to do with this blog’s subject. The number of automated splogs is also growing. These are phony blogs where I’ve seen quite a few of my articles posted. Many do not credit the source and some even make up the author’s name. I suggest reading Lorelle’s post on this troublesome subject. Anyhow, going back to more interesting things…
BLOG DESIGN
This picture shows the current layout with the few widgets and buttons complementing this blog. I would like to express my gratitude to Lucian Marin, who designed “The Journalist” template, which I adopted as soon as it became available.
BROWSERS
I must confess my current preference for Firefox and Flock, as they display the blog’s content and widgets as expected. In any case, if you were using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, I would then recommend the latest version. Unfortunately, older versions distort this blog’s formatting (e.g. version 6 and older).
FEEDS
You can get this blog’s feeds by clicking on this link or by subscribing to Feedburner, which can deliver emails instead. As far as sharing bookmarks, there is an Add this button you can use. By the way, a consultaglobal widget is available from Fox’s SpringWidgets. This year I would like to do some more work on this just to explore the benefits.
SOCIAL NETWORKING
Getting to know people with the same interest in innovation practices is one of the most gratifying outcomes of blogging. I am also impressed and humbled by the fact that quite a few readers reach this blog from Asia, Europe and South America. Linkedin is the social networking tool I use the most. Clicking on that button displays my personal profile. There is also a Skype “call me” button featured in the right column.
EVENTS & LOCATIONS
Over the year I have been listing relevant events focusing on innovation in the U.S. Platial’s tool comes in handy as you can see the pinheads for each event on a Google map which you can actually help update as you wish.
FILE SHARING
I initially started using Jotspot’s wiki, which is still up and running even though the company was bought out by Google. By the way, Google also acquired Feedburner. You will also see Box.net’s widget, an online storage service that I plan to leverage a bit more often moving forward.
DAILY INNOVATION NEWS
To be able to track down innovation news I’ve been using a quick mashup I put together with Yahoo Pipes. You will find the link to the daily newsfeed at the bottom of most of my posts, jointly with other links of interest. Additionally, you can help promote and demote search results on Eurekster’s Swiki, a community search engine.
MOBILE BLOGGING
Last year I spent many hours at airports due to delays frequent at at Chicago’s O’Hare. I often capture thoughts and notes using my smartphone, many of which I end up reviewing and blogging from my laptop over a WiFi connection. I have written and uploaded a few posts using my 3G phone, a Samsung Blackjack. Admittedly, I have not been taking advantage of this tool as much as I though I would.
CONTENT
Blogging is fun, one can share thoughts on the go and receive feedback from anyone. Blogging gives readers a voice. As Nancy Flynn states in her book “it’s the casual, conversational, anything-goes nature of the blog that makes it both so appealing to blog writers and readers.” While most of my posts have to do with news of interest around the subject of innovation, I have also tried to create content for some themes such as innovators’ dilemmas, innovation recipes and, most recently, a discussion around innovation and the rationale behind emotional design. Looking at what’s next and trends in the design world are also of great interest to me.
UPDATED BLOGGING RULES
- Making the most of the game changing nature of the Internet by experiencing it first hand.
- Providing worthwhile information and exchanging insights writing under my own name.
- Citing, linking and crediting sources as well as displaying an unequivocal legal disclaimer.
- Continuously improving the quality and readability of this blog.
- Netiquette: no anonymous posts and comments and blogging in an ethical manner.
- No posts discussing clients, employers, peers, customers, projects, confidential and proprietary information.
- No discussions involving private matters, obscene, defamatory, hateful, libelous, abusive materials.
- No relationship with paybloggers seeking favors or any third party programs of this kind.
BLOGGING SOFTWARE
This blog is hosted by WordPress. While I can blog by just logging to my WordPress account on an Internet browser, my blogging tool of choice is actually Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer. I think many of us have found Live Writer to be one of the best desktop applications handling rich content so far.
ABOUT CONSULTAGLOBAL
Consultaglobal is a management consulting firm focused on innovation practices. As co-founder and principal, my goal is to support our clients’ business launch and growth.
We live and breathe innovation, striving to provide independent consulting services to start-ups and small businesses launching new products and services in the high tech sector.
Our team is formed by highly qualified business professionals with more than ten years of management experience each. We happen to be high performers with management responsibilities at Fortune 500 corporations. I personally asses the merits of each project to ensure a good match between our client’s expectations and the services we provide, as well as avoiding conflicts of interest in the process.
Our customers believe that innovating takes passion, entrepreneurial spirit, analytical skills and hard work, and so do we.
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| Chicago, 23 February 08 | |
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S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index
“The index is made up of 25 of the most innovative public companies around the globe, based on The Most Innovative Companies rankings (BusinessWeek.com, 2007), an annual survey prepared by BusinessWeek in partnership with Boston Consulting Group (…) Each May, after the Most Innovative Companies ranking is published in BusinessWeek, the 25 companies in the index will be rebalanced. Some companies will fall off; others will be added.”
By Bruce Nussbaum for BusinessWeek.
Sanjay Dalal introduced an innovation index back in 2006, which is clearly shown outperforming the S&P500 on his blog . The index is based on the weighted stock price index of 20 leading North American corporations known to innovate in their respective markets.
As an example, if you would have invested $10,000 in The Innovation Index on December 31, 2001, five years later the return would have been 174%, this means $27,351 gross as of December 29, 2006. This estimate is the one provided by IIG, the Innovation Index Group.
Interestingly enough, BusinessWeek just followed suite with a new innovation index of their own. The S&P BusinessWeek Innovation Index was launched this month. The following is the list of companies covered by both indexes. Corporations shown in brown color would be the ones which happen to be unique to either index.
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S&P BW Innovation Index |
Innovation Index Fund |
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| J. de Francisco | |
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| Chicago, 22 February 08 | |
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Innovation and the rationale behind emotional design (3)
“The ability to identify logical fallacies in the arguments of others, and to avoid them in one’s own arguments, is both valuable and increasingly rare (…) A logical fallacy is, roughly speaking, an error of reasoning.”
Logical fallacies are not just leveraged to win discussions but are also part of our day to day thoughts. Many would convince themselves about satisfying a given wish (or procrastinating) based on faulty reasoning. It just so happens that articulating an apparently logical reason helps people rise their comfort level, overlooking the fact that their preferences and behaviors might have more to do with instincts and emotions.
What Donald Norman portrays as three different levels which can be mapped to product requirements, features and characteristics should not be understood as independent silos since all of them end up blended when making decisions. These three levels are:
- Visceral design: first reactions, perceptions driven by instincts (e.g. good or bad, safe or dangerous).
- Behavioral design: acquired behaviors leading to habits and routines (e.g. the prevalence of the qwerty keyboard layout despite of more ergonomic alternatives).
- Reflective design: conscious thinking, which can involve judgement errors and logical fallacies.
Often times, we can immediately tell what we like just based on the product’s appearance. This gut feeling can be rationalized immediately after the fact to rise one’s certainty about a given personal choice, as well as being a source of intellectual excitement. In some cases, whether right or wrong, that gut feeling might be backed up by a logical fallacy which ends up being key to a consumer’s compulsive buying behavior, and can even be even part of more meditated purchasing decisions. If you happen to be an entrepreneur note that the same could be said about venture capital decisions and business case reviews. This is well known in the advertising world and it is leveraged by marketers to prioritize product requirements.
Speaking of gut feelings, a couple of years ago Malcolm Gladwell published a book stating that we “blink” when we think without thinking. These days we tend to be overloaded with information so we practice “thin-slicing” based on selective memories while handling limited information. This helps many people reach conclusions instead of feeling overwhelmed and stalling. Some claim they actually make better decisions when relying on snap judgments. This can be the source of rush judgement relying on logical fallacies and past decision making patterns. At times, this also means that some will rush through important decisions even thought more time might be available to assess the pros and cons of one’s options.
If interested in this subject, I would suggest reading my previous posts:
- Innovation and the rationale behind emotional design (1)
- Innovation and the rationale behind emotional design (2)
Picture Credits: “Digital image content © 1997-2007 Hemera Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Jupiter Images Corporation. All Rights Reserved”.
| J. de Francisco | |
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| Chicago, 21 February 08 | |
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