800-CEO-READ Blog: Innovation

Pockets of Knowledge

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to interview Jeff Howe on his book Crowdsourcing. We talked about what crowdsourcing is. Essentially, it means harnessing the power of an undefined crowd to do work.

One of the pieces that stuck out in Jeff's book is a quote from economist F.A. Hayek, from his 1945 piece, The Use of Knowledge in Society:

Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests...civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess. And one of the ways in which civilization helps us to overcome that limitation on the extent of individual knowledge is by conquering ignorance, not by the acquisition of more knowledge, but by the utilization of knowledge which is and which remains widely dispersed among individuals.

Crowdsourcing brings together the scattered pockets of knowledge and everyone who is involved benefits. On the same day I interviewed Jeff, the NYTimes (perhaps they're psychic) posted an article about a company called InnoCentive, which also makes a regular appearance in Jeff's book.

InnoCentive is the embodiment of the civilization that Hayek talks about. It matches organizations together with innovators. The innovators are possible problem solvers for organizations like P&G and Eli Lilly (where the organization started). They come from around the world with diverse backgrounds and are rewarded if they find a solution. Amazing results when people come together.

Jeff posted more on the article over here. I'll post our podcast a bit closer to the book launch in late August.

Pecha Kucha Night - Slideshow - June 17, 2008

Our first Pecha Kucha Night was a great success! We had a ton of fun--check out the pictures--and were impressed with each of the presenters. I'm sure we'll share more thoughts this week, but for now we invite you to enjoy Pecha Kucha Night as we experienced it. You can also view the show over at our Flickr site.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The next Pecha Kucha Night is August 26 at the Hi Hat Garage.

A Book Publisher's Manifesto

For all of you interested in what the future of publishing will look like, Sara Lloyd has begun posting her essay on the topic over at the digitalist (the digital team at Pan Macmillan's blog). Because of it's length, she's posting it in six parts. Today's installment was part two.

From the introduction posted yesterday:

Crucially, we will need to work out how we can add value as publishers within a circular, networked environment.

One of the key perception shifts that publishers need to make, then, is about the book as 'product'. Whilst the book continues to be viewed as a definable object within covers, as a singular 'unit', publishers will continue to limit their role in its production and distribution, and this is a sure fire way for publishers to write themselves out of the future of content creation and dissemination.

This is a conversation we have quite often here. While we were handing out books at an author event recently, a gentleman walking by turned to us and said, "no one reads books anymore"--and, keep in mind, this man was there to see the author of the book speak. It's that sentiment that causes so much panic in our industry about the possible demise of the printed book, and I think that that panic sometimes clouds our vision of the future and what great possibilities it holds. So far, Sara Lloyd's essay has provided a very thoughtful and sober view of the situation. I'm looking forward to the next four posts.

And, speaking of the future of publishing, you can now browse inside HarperCollins books on your iPhone.

As a nation, we must embrace innovation.

One of the runner-ups for our Innovation/Creativity award was Innovation Nation by John Kao, who, among other pursuits, is a professor at Harvard, a jazz musician and was named "Mr. Creativity" by the Economist. This quote from the Economist should tell you something about him: "If Orsen Welles and Peter Drucker were somehow to mate, the resulting progeny might resemble John Kao, a serial innovator."

John's looking to start a conversation on innovation as a nationwide pursuit. (And what better time, than with the incoming of a new president?) Innovation, he explains, needs to be built up by the nation. Schools can't do it alone. Businesses can't do it alone. Nor can the government. Each body needs to come together to spare us from becoming the "Detroit of nations."

From a Q&A with John:

As someone who has been identified with the subject of innovation for some twenty-five years, I am appalled at the denial, indifference and ignorance I see surrounding this important topic. To quote from Innovation Nation:

"I see a crisis brewing, and it makes me angry. We should be doing better than we are. We have the talent, money, track record and infrastructure necessary for continued success. But we are rapidly becoming the fat, complacent Detroit of nations. We are losing a collective sense of purpose along with our fire, ambition, and determination to achieve."

The book is certainly a conversation starter. You can learn more with a quick video with John over at bnet. And if you're interested, John is a contributor to the Huffington Post.

Post2Post Virtual Book Tour for Creativity Today

The second Post2Post Virtual Book Tour started today featuring Creativity Today by Ramon Vullings, Godelieve Spaas, and Igor Byttebier. The first stop is at Think For A Change.

Optimism and Mastery

"More than anything, I associate mastery with optimism. It's the feeling at the start of a project when I believe that my whole career has been preparation for this moment and I am saying "Okay, let's begin. Now I am ready." Of course, you're never one hundred percent ready, but that's a part of mastery, too: It masks the insecurities and the gaps in techniques and let's you believe you are capable of anything."

-Twyla Tharp
The Creative Habit
(Our Jack Covert Selects of Creative Habit)

Innovation through new eyes.

Over at the NYTimes, you'll find one of the most viewed articles this week is on innovation. It features Chip and Dan of Made to Stick and Cynthia Barton Rabe of The Innovation Killer.

In her 2006 book, "Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine -- and What Smart Companies Are Doing About It," Cynthia Barton Rabe proposes bringing in outsiders whom she calls zero-gravity thinkers to keep creativity and innovation on track.

When experts have to slow down and go back to basics to bring an outsider up to speed, she says, "it forces them to look at their world differently and, as a result, they come up with new solutions to old problems."

A link to the article.

Jack Covert Selects - Zoom

Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future by Iain Carlson and Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Twelve, 336 pages, $27.99 Hardcover, October 2007, ISBN 9780446580045

"The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age could well end long before the world runs out of oil." That statement pretty much sums up the argument made in Zoom, and ironically, it was not made by an environmentalist, but by former Saudi oil minister Sheik Yamani. Having built our economy on the internal combustion engine, which burns carbon-heavy fuel and emits harmful greenhouse gases, we are now facing a dilemma in our country. But, we are a nation of drivers, and not only would we not want to give up our cars, it would be impossible to do so considering the miles we are conditioned to traverse. This new book by two correspondents for The Economist suggests that a change of course is a must.

Their premise is simple enough. "Oil is the Problem. Cars are the solution." That may sound odd at first (big oil in Texas and the "big three" auto makers of Detroit have been so linked for the past century that they now seem inseparable), but it seems painfully obvious when you've finished the book. Zoom looks at the current state of affairs in Detroit, Texas, and Washington, and prescribes steps needed to move us toward the car of the future. A car that is healthier for us, better for business, and cleaner for the environment. They believe two separate approaches are needed:

Both top-down public policies and bottom-up marketplace innovations must play a role in propelling the world to the post-petroleum age of carbon-free cars. On the policy front, it looks like Washington politicians may finally be shamed into serious action by the clamor in states and cities for action on global warming, a real budding grassroots revolution. As for those marketplace innovations, will the dinosaurs of the car and oil industries finally learn to dance? Or will it be an unruly and disruptive bunch of upstarts, entrepreneurs, and innovators that leads the effort...?

Toyota surpassed GM earlier this year as the world's top auto seller, in part by addressing this need for a new approach, and is now forcing American auto makers to look at a world beyond petroleum. If Detroit wants to remain relevant and viable, the big three must come out of their entrenched positions and address the concerns of consumers and challenges of innovation. The authors believe that what they call the "Great Awakening" of American consumers will lead to a demand for change, "promising a clean-energy revolution even bigger than the telecommunications and Internet revolutions," and that belief--and this book--are infectious.

Reliable Innovation

Robert Austin's using lessons gleaned from the Medici String Quartet to write a business book; the working title is Reliable Innovation. 'Reliable innovation is "a weird concept," Austin admits. "Reliability in business is about things aimed at consistency of outcome. Reliable innovation means something more like a consistent ability to produce valuable inconsistencies."'

Here's a snippet of his Q&A with HBS on team dynamics. [fyi. We linked to this on Friday and thought it deserved another round of pointing to.]

In business we have the notion that we can create a healthy innovation dynamic where everybody's happy and everything goes well.

What we see here is not a story like that. We see a story that's full of unresolved tensions and people upset with each other. The music is exceedingly harmonious, but the process of making it could not be described as harmonious. There is something interesting in that. I think partly it is a result of striving for such extreme levels of performance.

Authors In the Zines

Business authors make prominent appearances in a number of magazines this month.

Titled "Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency", Wired Magazine profiles the author and Getting Things Done in the greatest detail I have seen in the major media. Allen has a huge following in the tech community which plays perfectly to Wired's core audience. If you are new to the cult, this is a must read.

Gary Hamel of Competing For The Future fame has a new book out from Harvard Business School Press called The Future of Management. The premise of the book, which is summarized nicely in a Fortune Magazine piece, is that the practice of management hasn't kept up with the times, but the stand-out companies of today (Google, Whole Foods, Gore) are leading the way into a new era.

Finally, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the author of Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, wrote a piece for Portfolio Magazine. Titled Big Green Machines, the article summarizes the automotive players and the energy-reducing technologies they are betting on.

Creativity Today

Awhile back, we presented a book called, The Idea Book - an interesting book from Sweden we were surprised wasn't readily available here. We made it available to people in the States, and received a ton of compliments and thanks for bringing this title into the fold.

Well, we've found another great book.

It's called Creativity Today. Published in the Netherlands (in English), the cover states that the book offers "tools for a creative attitude for business, education, industry, training, development, government, consultants, workers, thinkers, meetings, design, health..." Indeed, it's true. In fact, Creativity Today has inspired thousands of European managers, teachers and students, and has become the standard by which other creative thinking books are measured.

Paul Williams at Idea Sandbox (www.idea-sandbox.com) turned us on to this book. We're using it internally as a manual for how to approach any problem or situation creatively. Here are some of the many points in the book that stand-out to us:

- By definition, new ideas don't fit into existing schemes of thought. This means that judgment very often occurs too fast when new ideas are launched.

- Visual languages are generally less respected than verbal language. Yet, the ability to visualize may be the most important basic skill in the creative thinker's toolbox: no creative solution, simple as it may be, can be thought of, designed and realized without using imagery.

- Ideas need to evolve from an abstract, conceptual level to a concrete, practical level, otherwise they will always remain what they are: ideas.

With each of these points (and many, many others), the authors provide case studies and easy-to-follow instructions, analyzing problems through "The Series of Phases," applying "The COCD Box," and a variety of exercises and tests. This book is literally a textbook in creative thinking. They take on creative challenges such as fixing traffic jams, product creation and development, customers waiting too long at a checkout counter, how to make money, and many more. As a bonus, this edition includes an expanded section called "Creation Today" that applies the ideas of the book to organizational development.

You can't get this book anywhere in the States, so we decided to remedy that. 800-CEO-READ will sell it until a U.S. publisher picks it up. The cost is $39.95, but the first 100 people who type the code 8x2vf during checkout will get an additional $5 off. Click here to check the book out.

You can also visit the book's website for more info.

Thanks for considering this offer. We hope you can start practicing the lessons in this book soon and watch their effect on your business.

Do It Wrong Quickly - Marketing in the Age of the Web

A little background...Pearson, a major international publisher of educational and resource materials, puts out some of the best books on Internet marketing, technology support, and learning HTML and multimedia software. (And they're not paying me to say so.) You've probably seen Pearson's many imprints on your resource books -- IBM Press, Financial Times, Prentice Hall, Peachpit Press, Longman, and Wharton, among many others. Peachpit's Quickstart guides, for example, give non-technicians the basic tools to make heads or tails of programs once mastered exclusively by programmers and graphic designers. As much of our creative work becomes do-it-yourself or stays in-house, it's almost necessary to start a reference library. Over the next few months I'd like to recommend a few titles to get you started.

As we're thinking about ways to expand our online presence, Todd and I have been talking a lot about the best ways to approach new projects. It used to be that we decided to do something--print a new brochure, redesign a web site, incorporate a new technology--and then presented a plan to a designer. There might be some initial back-and-forth about needs and goals, but what the designer came back with in the end was essentially a finished product. We had to be sure we knew exactly what we wanted before we asked (and paid) for it. Today, though, there's a lot of wiggle room. Especially online, we can try and fail at something new without taking a significant hit (or any at all, sometimes).

A few weeks ago Todd wrote about a book called Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres:

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007328.html.

It was also featured in Jack Covert Selects in August:

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007292.html.

One point Ayres makes in Super Crunchers is that by applying randomization, we can learn a lot about our customers/users' needs and preferences--a lot more than we could know by traditional trial and error.

This week I opened up Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules (IBM Press). The subtitle might make you think "Um, where have you been?" but the author, Mike Moran, actually gets at something close to what Ayres talks about in Super Crunchers. Using a bow-and-arrow analogy, Moran suggests that the archer with three arrows has a higher chance of success than the archer with one. In other words, it's great if your shot in the dark hits the bull's eye, but chances are it won't every time. On the other hand, if you take three shots at the same time, you might not hit the bull's eye, but you'll score more points--and learn more along the way.

I'm probably not doing justice to the author's message, here, but I think that the important thing to take away is that it no longer makes sense to expect that even a carefully thought-through, well-executed marketing campaign will hit the target in today's world. In fact, Moran believes that the new marketing means getting away from the plan-then-execute approach, and starting to try lots of approaches at the same time. In addition to systematic ways of assessing your online marketing (conversions, metrics), you have to listen better to your customers. He talks about the social media phenomenon, incorporating multi-media approaches in your message, and creating deeper relationships with your customers by engaging them in a conversation.

As Moran puts it, "whether change gets your blood pumping or leaves you in a pool of sweat, marketing is undergoing a revolution more profound than any of us are likely to see the rest of our lives." Do It Wrong Quickly is a friendly invitation to that revolution.

A big push for digital books? Not quite yet...

There was an article in last week's issue of BusinessWeek called "Amazon Does Downloads, Sort of: Why its push into digital delivery of books, movies, and music seems halfhearted."

Here at 800-CEO-READ, there is an ongoing discussion about, you guessed it, whether digital will eventually take over the book industry and books as we know them will go away. We all agree that the physical book will never go away - it's too bound up in our culture, and it's still the most portable way of carrying ideas around with us, not to mention the fact that experts overwhelmingly agree that reading printed matter is easier on the eye than reading a screen. But we are seeing more and more cool technology when it comes to books. Todd and Dylan got to see a prototype of an electronic book at the Tools of Change Conference, in June.

The author of the article, Scott Kirsner, looks into the e-commerce side of the digital debate. Despite the fact that Amazon has acquired Mobipocket (an online, digital- book-seller), and even though it is expected to open a downloadable music service, sell an e-book device called the Kindle, and offer NBC TV shows through Unbox, a movie-download service, Amazon has been awfully timid in venturing too far out into the possibilities of selling digital content.

"Amazon's toe-in-the-water approach may seem odd, considering how it helped pioneer online shopping in the mid-1990s. You might think that fulfilling orders for digital media would be more efficient than pulling CDs off shelves, boxing them, and handing them over to UPS for delivery. But as long as digital music and e-books come with heavy restrictions on how and where consumers can use them, the market will be limited and rights holders will have the power to shake down sellers. That's O.K. if you're Apple Inc. and see music as a "door opener" for iPod and iPhone sales. But for Amazon, there's still much more money to be made shipping real stuff."

Yes, heavy restrictions will continue to make downloadable content more difficult to acquire--and whether it should be is another conversation--but the last two words of that passage stuck out to me. "Real stuff." Not only do many industries still depend on real stuff--for manufacturing, packaging, shipping, stocking, and so on--but buyers have shown that they still want tangible, material objects for their money.

I suspect, however, that Amazon's plunge into selling digital content isn't too far off. And it's more likely to be a swan dive than a belly flop.

Who wants to run a lemonade stand with me?

Tis the time for lemonade stands -- a business venture I remember all too well. Dixie cups. Kid-sized plastic table. Large plastic pitcher. The sign with "Lemonade: 25 cents" scrawled in kids' penmanship. Charming smiles. And of course, our prime lemonade-selling real estate on the main road of the neighborhood. The customers that donated $1 to our cause were millionaires in our minds. If we earned $20 in three hours, we were rolling in the dough.

A friend and I were discussing this business the other day. It made me realize just how much it has changed in my fifteen-year absence. My friend told of running into a lemonade stand ran by a boy of about 10 years. Now most lemonaires I've run into have marker on their fingers from sign making and are running around in bathing suits to take the occasional dip in the sprinkler.

Not this little entrepreneur. He was in his best Sunday suit -- truly a Wall Street-er in the making.

The lemonade was running for the bargain price of 25 cents (apparently, inflation has yet to hit lemonade). My friend started asking the little boy a few questions about his stand and business. To which he replies, "I've only been here 2 hours today and I've made, um, about $56." Somehow, he was earning $27/hour. Perhaps it was the business suit, the fresh lemon slice in each cup, or maybe the colored straw.

Yes, the lemonade stand world is more lucrative than I thought.

Author Ray Davis is helping kids realize their lemonade stand dreams. Ray, who is the president of the infamous customer-centered Umpqua Bank, recently announced putting $830,000 towards lemonade stand kits for kids (password required; click here for help).

Kids under 13 can apply and, if accepted, will receive:

...a lemonade stand kit, which includes a booklet called "How to Become a Lemonaire: A Guide to Starting Your First Small Business,"with tips on how to share, save and spend money responsibly; a yellow, plastic tablecloth; a sign for "(fill in the name's) lemonade stand"; cups and napkins; and a $10 bill for start-up capital. (The "loan" does not have to be paid back, although at least one proprietor has done that.)

If only they'd put the $10 bill in quarters, dimes and nickels so the kids could make change. If you know a budding entrepreneur, applications can be found at Umpqua banks and in newspapers in Portland, Bend, Eugene and Medford, Oregon, and Chico, Eureka, Sacramento and Yuba City, California.

And if anyone wants to go into lemonade business with me, I'm taking applications.

The Internal Attack of the Ego

Yes, fighting can be a great creative tool when ego doesn't get in the way.

On that note, Josh explains that ego often gets in the way of collaboration. To this, Audrey responds that for any successful collaboration, we must let go of our false sense of control.

(1 of 7) Glad to Be Here... and Thanks to Jack and Todd

Welcome to a day of blogging with James Andrew, co-author of Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation!

Glad to Be Here… and Thanks to Jack and Todd

First off, I want to thank Jack and Todd for inviting me to the blog-fest here at 800-CEO-Read. I spend my days taking a hard look at innovation – my Boston Consulting Group colleague Hal Sirkin and I wrote Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation to blow up innovation myths and help leaders innovate in ways that really drive their business. It’s great to meet up with all of you and spend my day sharing ideas here in the blogosphere. I hope we can take a look together at what innovation is, what it isn’t, and how we can all do a better job of it.

Innovation and Why It Fails: Results from the 2007 BusinessWeek/BCG Innovation Survey

What’s wrong with innovation? Plenty. Most leaders say that innovation is critically important. But more and more, they’re unhappy with the returns on their innovation efforts.

For insight into why, look no further than the Boston Consulting Group/BusinessWeek Innovation Survey. The 2007 edition was released on May 4th. We do the survey every year to benchmark innovation and see what’s working and what isn’t. The survey helped us frame some of the arguments in Payback, and the new results tell us that there’s still a long way to go.

The 2007 numbers are worse than we’ve seen in the past. This year, fewer than half of the execs say they’re happy with the way their innovation programs are paying off. Operating executives are far less happy than CEOs – that has to be a sign of trouble.

What’s most worrisome is that there are signs of an innovation pullback. Fewer executives than last year said that innovation was a top-three priority. And fewer said they were planning to increase innovation spending. So innovation frustration is leading to real consequences.

That’s a bad outcome. Pulling back on innovation is exactly the wrong approach. At the end of the day, innovation is by far the best way to build asset value and give shareholders a return. That’s because innovation is really nothing other than the management of new knowledge to create organic growth. And it goes without saying that sustainable organic growth is a major prize.

So what’s wrong? We believe that businesses fail at innovation because they treat it like some magical art. They don’t manage it as what it is – a business process that needs business discipline.

The survey shows why innovation programs fail. Executives say their companies:

• Aren’t able to move innovations through the pipeline quickly enough.
  
• Waste too much time at the development stage.
  
• Fail to enforce “hurdles” to test and disqualify innovation projects at key stages.
  
• Fail to apply key metrics, like “innovation ROI,” and fail to measure their innovation portfolios based on hard measures like the number of innovation projects that meet planned targets.
  

In other words, business leaders don’t apply to innovation the normal management discipline that they bring to bear on every other business process.

The good news is that the solution to the innovation problem is right at hand. To succeed at innovation, all that managers need to do is... manage. Everything they need to do to improve innovation is already under their control. Improving the innovation process means applying the standard management toolset and approaching innovation with the same rigor and the same attention to metrics you’d use in any business situation.

We wrote Payback to make that point – and to describe the approaches and metrics that will turn innovation frustration into innovation success.

Watch for more throughout the day...

What Podcasts People Are Listening To

Here is a little peak into what people are listening to on our Podcasts blog. This is a ranked list for the first four months of 2007.

1. The Elegant Solution Interview with Matt May
2. Marketing and Sales for Big Complex Selling Interview - Part 1 with Brian Carroll
3. Marketing and Sales for Big Complex Selling Interview - Part 3 with Brian Carroll and Jill Konrath
4. Everyday Greatness Interview with Stephen Covey
5. The Difference Maker Interview with John Maxwell
6. Confessions of An Economic Hitman Audio Excerpt
7. Made To Stick Interview with Dan Heath
8. Growing Great Employees Interview - Part 2 with Erika Anderson
9. Purpose Interview with Nikos Mourkogiannis
10. Growing Great Employees Interview - Part 1 with Erika Anderson

Wii-ly Cool

In a current Business 2.0 article, "How the Wii is Creaming the Competition," John Gaudiosi discusses how Nintendo remade itself with its latest gaming system: the Wii.

If you haven't heard of it, Wii is a relatively inexpensive, motion-controlled system that blends physical activity with the video game environment.

Unlike high-end products like the Sony Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox, Wii has a basic design that allows Nintendo to make a profit from the get-go. Nintendo knew it could make an instant $50 in profit on the system (whereas Playstation and Xbox actually take a hit before they make a profit on expensive games and accessories), so they offered its "killer app," Wii Sports, for free with the purchase of console and controller.

Gaudiosi explains how, in addition to the system itself, Nintendo revolutionized its marketing approaches:

Finally it came time for Nintendo to market the Wii to the world. In addition to its standard TV campaigns targeting schoolkids, the company pumped 70 percent of its U.S. TV budget into programs aimed at 25-to 49-year-olds, says George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America.

He even put Wii ads into gray-haired publications like AARP and Reader's Digest. For Nintendo's core users, he took a novel, Web-based approach: 'To reach the under-25 audience,' he says, 'we pushed our message through online and social-networking channels' including MySpace.'

It seems the Wii serves as an excellent example of taking a popular technology and incorporating social values and marketing trends.

I had the chance to bowl with "the Wii" over the weekend with some friends. It's a pretty cool experience--and my score was surprisingly close to its real-world average. (I hoped it would be better, though.) I'm not a gamer in any way, shape, or form, but I have to say that even a short experience with the Wii was enough for me to say that it was unlike any other game I've played. And somehow, that made it even better.

You can read the article here.

Read an excerpt from The New Language of Business

The new excerpt on our Excerpts blog is from Chapter 11 of The New Language of Business: SOA and Web 2.0 by Sandy Carter.

Carter shows how, by levering SOA (service-oriented architecture), Web 2.0 and other technologies, business leaders can use innovations in technology to drive process improvements and support change.

With the growing sophistication about how and where innovation occurs, companies know that business flexibility is the driver. New ideas don’t just come from inside their company, but from wikis, blogs, partners, customers, and even competitors. This world requires collaboration to solicit the ideas and flexibility to respond to those ideas. The insight is that CEOs now say that more of their ideas for innovation come from partners and clients than from their own employees.

Go directly to the excerpt to continue reading.

What Is Missing From Shelves

I want to add one more point to Rebecca's post on the Carol Hymowitz column. Hymowitz ends her piece with:

What's missing from bookstores, it seems, are more titles that show how executives have reshaped businesses so they don't become obsolete in the digital landscape, and one that explain the new rules of the corner office, where CEOs must cater to an array of constituents.

To the first question of fighting technological irrelevance, Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma plays directly to that point. It is now 10 years old and his argument that disruptive technologies are what cause great companies to fall continues to be just as relevant. Read it.

I don't have as strong an answer to the second question. I think Jossey-Bass had a good book in The Triple Bottom Line by Andrew Savitz. The three aspects Savitz says should be measured are the traditional economic concerns, the growing environmental concerns , and the ever-present social concerns. It is a good starting point as the dynamics of leading a company continue to evolve.

PS There is a discussion going on in the WSJ forums about today's column.

No "Jack Welch" on the horizon

It's interesting how many inquiries we receive regarding "CEO" books. Not from customers, but from the media. There seems to be a fascination with the stories of heroic or villainous business gurus. Remember the sensation surrounding the release of Carly Fiorina's memoir? Conveniently released around the inquiries into HP's spying scandal.

As it turns out, the latest trends in business book sales are not toward the famous CEO biographies (though, of course, we have seen success with titles like Tough Choices and Andy Grove), but toward the books that help people find answers to questions and solutions to problems.

In today's Wall Street Journal, in the Marketplace section, the "In the Lead" column discusses the books that business people--even executives--are turning to, books that "promise to help managers to everything better--from building strong teams and winning customers to achieving robust profits."

This latest wave of business books also stresses "the importance of being able to continuously improve results. Now, more books emphasize innovation over execution--the principle and vision beyond the the plans."

A few titles mentioned in the article:

• True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership (which actually debunks "the myth of the superhero top executive)
• Know-How: The 8 Skills that Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
• The World is Flat
• Freakonomics
• The No Asshole Rule

Shout out from Seth

ChangeThis got a nice mention on Seth Godin's blog today. He has a really great entry up about how you can benefit from publishing an e-book. Here's a direct link to the post:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/03/you_should_writ.html

I feel compelled to boast a little bit about ChangeThis (since I've only been here for a few months and it still fascinates me). Seth Godin conceived of the project in 2003. In the summer of 2005, 800-CEO-READ took over managing the site. We have a great editor, and we're seeing record downloads. It seems like the ChangeThis reader community is growing each month. If you've never been over to the site and are wondering what it is, here's a blurb from the FAQs:

ChangeThis is a new kind of media. It's calm and thoughtful and direct and transparent. And unlike almost every other form of media, it reaches people through community. If an idea is a good one, it'll spread, because people like you will send it to their friends. Unlike a broadcaster, we're not using FCC frequencies to send our ideas to people who don't want to hear them.

Unlike a book or a newspaper, it's free. And there are no ads.

I really like this explanation of why we're doing this:

Because we're tired of the yelling, tired of the irrational posturing, and tired of the lies. We decided to do something about all three. Our bet is that smart people will embrace being talked to with respect and will spread the word.

We have no secret plan. No ulterior motive. We wanted to see if it would work. The fact that you're reading this sort of implies it did, at least a little.

Check it out. And thanks, Seth, for the shout out.

Hot Spots spark innovation

A few days ago we posted an excerpt from the book Ignited. Here's an excerpt from a February Financial Times article that reviewed Lynda Gratton's new book, Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, And Organizations Buzz With Energy - And Others Don't, another "hot" title this spring:

But, if you are lucky, you may also spot the occasional flash of orange or red. These are "hot spots" - "a moment when people are working together in exceptionally creative and collaborative ways . . . Hot spots occur when the energy within and between people flares - when mundane everyday activities are set aside for engaged work that is exciting and challenging. It is at times like these that ideas become contagious and new possibilities appear."

Gratton has not branched out from her distinguished career studying management to dabble in meteorology. The "hot spots" are an extended metaphor, but one that is soundly based on a body of academic research into networks, teams,culture, collaboration and creativity.

The author brings up examples like the communities that build Linux, Nokia, and Goldman Sachs to illustrate the fact that even groups with far-flung members can feed on one another's energy to spark innovation.

Gratton has written a succinct and utterly compelling book. She is really a kind of one-woman hot spot in herself.

Check out the article: "Creative sparks warm up a business ice age" by Stefan Stern.
www.ft.com, February 28 2007.

Leading For Growth: A Review, Part II

I'm going to build off Todd's review of Leading for Growth. I heard about it months ago from its publisher and started reading it on my train ride down to Chicago the other day. Co-author Ray Davis has helped take Umpqua Bank (based in Oregon) into the limelight; I'm sure you've heard of the bank from a number of Fast Company mentions. It's a model for customer service and building a great experience. Imagine a bank where:

...branches [in Umpqua's world branches are stores] keep dog bowls full of water just outside the door for clients with pets...employees open up the lobby for community events. Recent programs include yoga lessons, movie nights, and a "stitch and bitch" knitting club that meets once a month...Davis encourages spontaneous demonstrations of outstanding customer service by giving each branch a special fund expressly for that purpose. Every associate also spends a day training with the Ritz-Carlton.

It shouldn't be hard to believe but it is. A bank with employees trained by the Ritz-Carlton?

In the book, Ray shares a conversation he had with a Ritz bellman. Ray was inquiring as to how the hotel fared in the Ritz's quality program. The bellman explained that they had failed because housekeeping overlooked the TV Guides.

Now, get this: housekeeping had forgotten to move the bookmarks every day! And that is the type of attention to details Ray encourages.

Zoom Zoom Zoom

Toyota is everywhere.

There is a great article written in Fast Company this month by (of course) Charles Fishman called No Satisfaction.

We have a great ChangeThis manifesto by Matt May called Elegant Solutions.

On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal's had a piece on Toyota's CEO Katsuaki Watanabe and his drive to continue to make the company better [sub. needed].

Richard Florida is blogging

Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class, is blogging at The Creativity Exchange.

More From The Elegant Solution

I just like The Elegant Solution alot. You are going to see a Jack Covert Selects on it this month. This morning, I posted a podcast that I did with Matt a couple of weeks ago.

Here is another story I had not heard before:

According to neuroscientist Dr. William Calvin, author of Ascent of Mind, we're hardwired with a natural ballistic ability--the innate and uniquely human ability to throw an object and hit a moving target. Only humans have the genetic ability to think ahead, to project ourselves into the future, and to launch a plan of attack that hits the objective.

Bill Taylor Interview from OnMilwaukee.com

I wanted to repost the great interview that our friends at OnMilwaukee.com did with Bill Taylor. They wrote this leading up to the live event we had two weeks ago.

On Thursday, Bill Taylor, one of the co-founders of the cutting-edge business and lifestyle magazine, Fast Company, is in town talking about his new book "Mavericks at Work: Why The Most Original Minds in Business Win." He collaborated with former Fast Company colleague Polly Lebarre on the project.

OnMilwaukee.com is a media sponsor of Thursday's event, and took a few minutes to get Taylor's take on media, business and his book.

OMC: Define success.

Taylor: I'd never suggest that my definition of success should be anyone else's definition, but here's how I think about it: Can I make use of my natural talents to do work that means something to me, that makes even a little bit of a positive impact in the world, and that creates something of value in the marketplace? I firmly believe that there is an iron-clad connection between the values you believe in and fight for -- as a company or as an individual -- and the economic value your create. That's how you do your best work -- and how material success also feels like "real" success.

OMC: What two albums do you need on your iPod for a long trip?

Taylor: I am the world's most passionate Bruce Springsteen fan -- I have a bootleg of the famous 1975 Milwaukee "bomb scare" show at the Uptown Theater. So my first choice has to be a Bruce album, probably "Darkness on the Edge of Town." Second album has to be Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited." I know, I'm showing my age. Hey, the truth hurts.

OMC: Does a "rise in tides lift all boats?"

Taylor: The answer is no, both in business and society, I'm afraid to say. The story of our times is the "disappearing middle." Everywhere I look, whether it's in the computer business or the auto business, or whether it's in society itself, there seem to be big winners, big losers and not a lot of companies or people just moving along in the middle. That's why the stakes are so high -- and why it's so important to think hard about how you compete as a company and work as an individual.

OMC: How do companies turn ideas into money?

Taylor: Actually, the only way to win big in the marketplace today is to stand for something distinctive and disruptive -- to stand for a powerful set of ideas. Every industry in the world is plagued by overcapacity, oversupply and utter sensory overload. We already have too much of everything -- cars, computers, cell phones, banks, you name it. In this kind of hyper-competitive environment, the companies that thrive are the ones with a distinctive point of view.

Think Southwest Airlines, Pixar Animation Studios, Starbucks Coffee Company. As one of our maverick CEOs said, "Every great company has reinvented the business that it's in." That's why ideas matter. The only sustainable form of business leadership is thought leadership -- generating better ideas and making smarter adjustments than the competition.

OMC: What's next for media?

Taylor: More choices, more grassroots participation, more variety in every way imaginable. That said, I am not one of the blog-crazed cheerleaders for the demise of the so-called mainstream media. For the life of me, I can't figure out why the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times can't figure out how to become incredibly prosperous businesses -- Google and Craigslist notwithstanding. But whether or not they succeed as businesses, as a society we can't afford them to become shadows of their former selves. No other institution has the brainpower, the time, and the resources to figure out what's really going on in the world. To all those bloggers out there who like to dance on the grave of the mainstream media I say, be careful what you wish for...you might just get it.

OMC: Any suggestions for the owners of OnMilwaukee.com?

Taylor: I learned a long time ago not to offer detailed advice on other people's businesses -- they quickly realize how little you really know. So I'd suggest that you keep asking yourself a small number of questions that I believe are at the heart of being a maverick:


Is there a distinctive and disruptive sense of purpose behind everything you do?
If you went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
Why would great people want to be part of your organization?
Do you work as distinctively as you compete?

OMC: How has competition changed?

Taylor: Competition is both more intense and more lackluster than ever before. Intense in the sense that in every industry, there are more rivals, from more parts of the world, offering better products, at lower prices, with better quality than at any point in human history. Think about how much computing power you can buy for two thousand bucks. Think about how cheap it is to make a cell phone call or send an e-mail. And yet, competition is lackluster in the sense that most big companies in most industries seem to compete in identical ways. How is it that all cars look so alike, or that all airline service is so lousy, or that every TV network copies from every other TV network? That's why this hyper-competition opens up so much room for mavericks. If you do something truly different, people notice.

OMC: Who is your pick to win the World Series?

Taylor: I am lifelong New Englander, which means I'm a die-hard Red Sox fan. So my only must-have in the Series chase is for the Yankees to lose. That said, I am both picking and rooting for the Oakland A's. They've got the "maverick" approach to building a team -- they can't outspend the competition, so they out-think the competition. Plus, Billy Beane, the general manager of the A's, did a great blurb for our book -- so rooting for his team is the least I can do. Go A's!

OMC: Finally, why should I buy your book?

Taylor: Because it offers new and exciting and compelling answers to some of the most basic questions in business -- questions that are center stage for entrepreneurs, executives in big companies, even people running a business on the Internet or out of their house. What does it mean to have an effective strategy -- how do you create value in the marketplace? How do you forge enduring connections with customers -- how do you stand out from the crowd when the crowd gets bigger, better, and louder every year? How do you unleash innovation -- where do ideas come from? How do you win the battle for talent--how do you attract more than your fair share of the best people in your field.



This is both a how-to book and a what-if book. It is meant to persuade people of the power of business at its best -- and we think the companies and characters we discovered in the course of research deliver on that promise.

Guy K's Q&A with Poll(a)y

Guy Kawasaki has Ten Questions with Polly LaBarre, co-author of Mavericks At Work.

My favorite is:

Question: How does gender play into maverick-dom?

Answer: Some of the most powerfully inspiring and effective mavericks we know are women. What’s more, maverick-dom in general is mercifully free of the power-suited legions of Organization Men that have squeezed women out for too long. Mavericks connect and win on the basis of a deeply-felt and original sense of purpose-it doesn’t matter what package that comes in.

For example, IBM’s Jane Harper isn’t an unlikely maverick because she’s a woman, but because she’s survived-and thrived-as a relentless challenger of the status quo at IBM for a quarter-century. She has worked all over the organization, but her real specialty is creating an entirely new position by pushing the organization in new directions. She took on the role of director of Internet technology and operations after she pushed the company to launch one of the first corporate websites in 1994. She got IBM to build a website in part by announcing to Lou Gerstner—along with her boss and collaborator John Patrick—that IBM had bought a huge chunk of floor space at InternetWorld and needed to create a respectable Internet presence, fast.

In 1999, Harper asked a question nobody else wanted to address: Why would really great people-the best technical and managerial talent in the world-want to come work at IBM? In an era when every young, gifted programmer, engineer, or entrepreneur’s first instinct was to write their own business plan or head to eBay or Google, life as a foot soldier in Big Blue’s 320,000-member global army was a pretty hard sell. Harper understood that great people want to work on exciting, high-impact projects, with a small team, in a dynamic setting. So she created exactly that in a Cambridge, MA lab and launched a wholly original and powerfully effective internship program called Extreme Blue.

Since that initial experiment (for which she had no permission and no budget-hallmarks of a maverick), Extreme Blue has grown to a year-long set of programs that attract 250 top interns and hundreds of IBMers as sponsors and mentors. In the six years since the program’s founding, nearly 80% of the participants have accepted full-time positions at IBM (including many with competing offers from Google et al). What’s more, students file 100+ patent disclosures each summer and turn nearly half of the nascent ideas they start with at the beginning of an intense twelve-week summer program into actual products and service for IBM customers.

It's All Magic

That sometimes what business feels like.

Two books this fall are using magic as the means to deliver their message.

Andy Cohen, new author, ad exectuive and expert magician, has written Follow The Other Hand: A Remarkable Fable That Will Energize Your Business, Profits, and Life. The fable is based around a family's olive oil business. The business is facing challenges as markets changes and doing the same won't work anymore. The main character Jonathan West meet a man named Merlin and the rest is a tale of their journey. Each chapter ends with a magic trick that goes with the lesson.

The second book is The Houdini Solution: Put Creativity and Innovation to Work by Thinking. Ernie Schneck is also an ad man and he takes the approach that creativity comes from the limits on a situation.
Think about when Houdini would he locked himself in a box and then submerged it. Schneck says:

If you were faced with drowning, I think the box would have had you paralyzed with fear. I think you would have quickly resigned yourself to your fate, convinced there was no use in trying to find a way out because the glass was too thick, the water too cold, the chains too tight, the locks too well made.

But Houdini had a different approach. Instead, he accepted this circumstances. He accepted the box. He accepted the water inside the box. He accepted the chains and the locks. Rather than allowing his mind to be consumed with the problem, he directed all of his energy toward solving it.

An Elegant Book

I am 100 pages into The Elegant Solution by Matthew May. I just like this book. I like the message. I like the tone. The design of the book fits well with the content.

I am really attracted to the Toyota's idea of always getting better. Mr. May takes the philosophy from the factory floor and applies it to the knowledge worker.

My favorite quote thus far:

Slaying dragons and storming castles isn't for the faint of heart. The root meaning of ingenuity means free thinker. In a world run by powerful bosses and inflexible systems, rarely if ever is creative license granted freely. It's taken. And that takes basic courage. Or at least a soldier's bravado. It's the obstacles that make the achievement so impressive. If it was easy, we wouldn't be talking about it. No challenge, no creativity.

Expect more from us on this book...

Books on Blogs - 9/12/06

If you read the blogs that I do, here are the books you would have seen mentioned over the last week or two:

Curt at The Occupational Adventure is reading Energy Addict: 101 Physical, Mental, & Spiritual Ways to Energize Your Life by Jon Gordon. He says he is adding it to the list of book he regularly recommends to clients.

Paul at the Idea Sandbox talks through the six factors that made Walt Disney successful. He draws on the material from How To Be Like Walt: Capturing Disney Magic Every Day Of Your Life by Pat Williams.

You can find some interesting picks in Kevin Maney's Thursday CEO Book Group. Each CEO posts an old book and a new book they like. Last week Kevin posted the choices of two CEOs -- Howard Anderson and Steve Waite. Both chose The End of Medicine as their new choice. For their old choice, Anderson went with Drucker's Management and Waite went with Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop.

Matt Blumberg at Only Once writes quite a few book reviews under the heading "Book Shorts". His latest post gives a thumbs up to Dealing with Darwin by Geoffrey Moore and a thumbs down to Small Is The New Big by Seth Godin.

Matt at Signal vs. Noise writes about Point and Shoot Software and invokes Gary Klein's classic Source of Power.

Listening to S***

A while ago the WSJ had an article about John Hammond. For you non-music folks John Hammond literally discovered some of the greatest talents of the twentieth century. Little known people like Billy Holiday, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Count Basie, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan. This guy was there at the beginning of some great music, for example “In two consecutive work days in the fall of 1933, Bessie Smith made the last records of her career and 17-year-old Billy Holiday made the first. Each session was produced by Hammond, then 22.� What were you doing when you were 22?

How did Hammond find these people? Again, I quote “Years before, I once asked Benny Goodman what it was like to be with John at those moments “when you first heard Billy Holiday, Lester Young, or Charlie Christian.� Goodman seemed amused at my naiveté. “We listened to an awful lot of s*** too,� he said with a smile. “Did John ever tell you that?�� How much s*** have you “listened to� today to find the next big thing? I know I haven’t listened to enough.

The article is reminiscences of Hammond by John McDonough who writes about Jazz for the WSJ and it was stimulated by a new book called “The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music� by Dunstan Prial…Gots to get that book!

Playing in the background Oh Yeah by Roxy Music

Get Back In The Box - Rushkoff on other books

This is the final post in a series on Doug Rushkoff's Get Back In the Box.

In my last installment, I thought I would highlight his mention of other business books. Rushkoff has no hesitation about calling people out. His first swing is at HBSP's Got Game (John Beck, Mitchell Wade):

In a classic misunderstanding of play culture, a Harvard Business School Press book about how "the gamer generation is reshaping business forever" contends that kids who grew up with videogames need to be treated differently in the workplace. True enough, but the authors but the authors surmise that game play has made young workers more competitive "because the object of all of those games is to win." They couldn't be more wrong. Beyond technology, the main difference between video games and those that came before them is that many videogames have no winner. That should be a clue: the real difference in creating a work environment for the gamer generation is finding ways to allow them to participate actively and consciously in the evolution of the enterprise itself.

I would say he goes a bit further with Clotaire Rapaille, author of The Culture Code. In this section, he is referencing his Frontline documentary The Persuaders where he spent time with Rapaille (watch section four The Science of Selling):

I've watched another consultant, an eccentric French former psychologist named Clotaire Rapaille, utterly transfix the CEOs of dozens of Fortune 500 companies by claiming to have a system through which he can discern "the code" underlying each of their industries. Through focus groups and hypnosis sessions , Rapaille uncovers people's earliest remembered associations for anything from coffee to jet planes, in order to help clients redesign their products, packaging, and promotions in accordance with the buried archetype or "code".

One Boeing executive I interviewed fully believes that the new Dreamliner aircraft will achieve its success with customers primarily because of Rapaille's input. "It's not enough to make bigger baggage compartments. They have to be 'on code.' " Of course, the executive could not tell me Rapaille's code for the Dreamliner, for it I released it, the competition would be able to redesign its aircraft using the same secret formula.

An interesting feature of Rapaille's work is his insistence on hypnotizing not only random focus groups, but also key executives involved in making decisions. His combined role of hypnotist, psychologist, and brand guru puts his clients in a particularly passive--what Freud would call "regressed"--position The net result is to make these executives more dependent on his advice and support. From what I've witnessed at baronial estate in Tuxedo Park New York, his clients are quite under his spell. They drink champagne, marvel over his car collection, and listen with rapt attention as he explains that women's experience bearing children makes them more conscious of automobile interiors, or that a luxurious air travel experience is undermined by aggressive search routines at the gates. His insights are either absurd, obvious or both, but his audience of executives focus on his every inflection with their jaws slack and eyes glazed over.

By hypnotizing this clients, Rapaille also gains insight into their true personal and business aspirations. The information about airplanes he gets from airplane executives is just as, if not more, important than what he gets from their customers. For those who have forgotten how to get back to the source of their passion and expertise, a hypnotist and psychologist like Rapaille might be useful--at least in the short run--as a form of psychotherapy or internal inquiry. The problem is, of course, that, unlike a course of therapy where the patient learns to solve his or her own problems, here Rapaille ends up receiving credit for insights gained and retains the exclusive ability to mine for more.

If you stuck with me on this post, the first thing I like about the book is Rushkoff's challenge of other people's thinking. It is often too polite in the world of business thought and we don't get to work really works.

Get Back In The Box - It's OK To Have Fun

This is the fourth in a series on Doug Rushkoff's Get Back In The Box.

The final theme I want to discuss is the importance Rushhoff puts on play. He says Apple is the company it is because Jobs let people have fun. He says companies do all sorts of things to make it difficult for their employees to play -- incentive bonus structures, short-term consultancies, and "business as war" mentalities.

That's right: the driving force behind our new renaissance society is play.

Sure, groups can organize around a variety of things: fear, patriotism, even hatred. But these are more suitable for armies than cultures. They require blind allegiance to a single idea on the commands of a leader, and are compromised by feedback or cross talk. They can't handle complexity, freedom, or natural selection. And because they tend not to be fun, they require enforcement. That means additional resources must be spent just maintaining cohesion, which eventually leads the whole enterprise towards diminishing returns

Play, on the other hand, allows for engagement on an entirely more voluntary and complex level. Participants in a successful brand culture are not cajoled or coerced into membership, but simply invited. Even the spread of media viruses--the word of mouth promoting products and ideas through culture--is a form of play. The reward, as in a game of "telephone," is seeing what the whole collective has wrought. We pass on tidbits of social currency because it's fun. The mediaspace becomes a kind of play space, where the object of the game is to get the most Web "hits" for one's homemade animated video, or to see if a media prank can get coverage on the national news.

In a renaissance society driven by the need to forge connections, play is the ultimate system for social currency. It's a way to try on new roles without committing to them for life. It's a way to test strategies of engagement without being defined by them forever. It's a way to rise above the seemingly high stakes of almost any situation and see it as the game probably is. It's a way to make one's enterprise a form of social currency from the beginning, and to guarantee a collaborative, playful, and altogether more productive path toward continual innovation.

Think Red Rubber Ball.

Get Back In The Box - People Need People

This is the third post in a series on Doug Rushkoff's Get Box In The Box.

Rushkoff's next theme is the concept of Social Currency. This is his way of talking about word-of-mouth and comes at it from the authentic angle.

People don't engage with each other in order to exchange viruses; people exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other. Media viruses, and their massive promotional capability, are all dependent on the newfound collective spirit of our age and the increasing need for social currency that has resulted. It's not about convincing a few key individuals to sell products; its about creating products that provide everyone the currency they need to forge new social connections. Sure, if we analyze the movement of an idea across the community, we'll be able, retroactively, to determine which individuals gave it the most word of mouth.

If we want to understand or even replicate this effect, however, we must instead learn to see people not as individuals looking for power or social status, but as parts of a group looking for cohesion...That's why, in spite of growing fears that we are living in a materialis