NexGen Voice Commands from Google

Eggs Galore…

Equation ….

People …

For a few dollars less …

Big Data Gets Bigger…

 

Came across an interesting article.  Big data is on a roll now…

 

Data is being generated about the activities of people and inanimate objects on a massive and increasing scale. We examine how much data is involved, how much might be useful, what tools and techniques are available to analyse it, and whether businesses are actually getting to grips with big data.

 

Computing's 'Big Bang' moment came during World War 2, in the shape of the world's first programmable digital computer, Colossus. Built at the UK's Bletchley Park codebreaking centre to help break the German High Command's Lorenz cipher, Colossus could store 20,000 5-bit characters (~125KB) and input data at 5,000 characters per second via paper tape (~25Kbps). Small data in today's terms perhaps, but Colossus decrypts made a vital contribution to the Allied planning for D-Day, in particular.

The Digital Universe

In December 2012, IDC and EMC estimated the size of the digital universe (that is, all the digital data created, replicated and consumed in that year) to be 2,837 exabytes (EB) and forecast this to grow to 40,000EB by 2020 — a doubling time of roughly two years. One exabyte equals a thousand petabytes (PB), or a million terabytes (TB), or a billion gigabytes (GB). So by 2020, according to IDC and EMC, the digital universe will amount to over 5,200GB per person on the planet.

http://www.zdnet.com/big-data-an-overview-7000020785/

 

 

 

Hot Air !

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below.

She descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don't know where I am."

The man below replied "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."

"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist. "I am", replied the man.

"How did you know?"

"Well, answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip even more."

The man below responded, "You must be in management."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "You don't know where you are or where you're going.You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems?!!"

Veg Tiffin @ Singapore

 

Given the Indian crowds thronging the Singapore business areas, there’s a sudden demand for food services in Singapore. For those on short term travel, could be a good alternative. Home and work delivery as well. leave your reviews in the comments!

I was referred here - http://vegtiffin.com/Home_Page.html

Panic in Indian Stock Markets!

  

The Real growth Story in Social Media

 

$100 Billion Cloud Index

Still doubtful about the whole cloud computing thing? Here’s a new metric that should probably change your mind. The combined market capitalization of the Top 30 cloud computing companies is now north of $100 billion.

http://allthingsd.com/20130729/bessemer-venture-partners-launches-100-billion-cloud-index/

Turning 50(or 60,70) Means Keeping Up, Not Resting

If you wonder on a daily basis , as I do, as whats really happening at the workfront, it will give you some comfort reading this WSJ article on a middle manager in his 50s. as I have always argued in my blog, a new breed of management model is urgently required. Models which will go beyond Flat worlds, which will potentially shed light on decades of upcoming struggles. Models which Governments worldwide will use to create new programs to help their own citizens. Else we are doomed with rusted thinking which is prolonging agony across decades. Read on…

"I know I've peaked in my career," Mr. Toal said at the time. "I am never going to be a vice president. But I'm running as fast as I can, and I don't know why."

To other middle managers, I'd say: Be flexible and open to taking on new challenges because it makes you quick on your feet, gives you more understanding of how a company works.

One of the things I did learn is that it's really hard to choose your own path. Things happen, and you go with it."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323997004578644281045966670.html

New Skills, Old Tasks

To stay afloat, he has reinvented himself again and again. Once specializing in managing production, he learned marketing, then purchasing, then finance. He gets up at 5 every morning and doesn't get home until 8 p.m. Yet he still does essentially the same job he did 10 years ago: overseeing a small staff, making revenue projections and supervising expenses in the sales division and resolving disputes over salary compensation.

Only this year did he get back to earning the salary he made in 1989.

When Mr. Toal's father, a union machinist, was 54, he had already begun planning for retirement, was respected by his union and company management, and had become active in the local United Way. Mr. Toal recently stopped coaching his 16-year-old daughter's soccer team because he has no time. He can't imagine retiring because he has no pension—just money in a 401K plan and a series of worthless stock options. He pays $27,000 a year to send one daughter to Simmons College in Boston. His other daughter heads off to college in two years. His wife works part time as a teacher's aide.

Eyes turn to Mr. Toal. "No clue," he says. "I feel like I've peaked in my career, but I don't think I've peaked as a human being." He loosens his tie. "Things are not what any of us anticipated--that with natural talent, hard work and good moral values, there would come some sense of stability. There is no security and no stability."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB862794279247838000.html

World Innovation Clusters

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517626/infographic-the-worlds-technology-hubs/

Tom Preston-Werner’s GitHub Is an Exceptionally Free Place for Open-Source Software | MIT Technology Review

San Francisco startup GitHub has all the hallmarks of the next big social network. The company’s base of 3.6 million users is growing fast, and after raising $100 million last year, GitHub was worth $750 million, at least on paper.

Yet GitHub is not a place for socializing and sharing photos. It’s a site where software developers store, share, and update their personal coding projects, in computer languages like Java and Python.

“It’s a social network, but it’s different from the others because it’s built around creating valuable things,” says GitHub CEO Tom Preston-Werner, whose company has been called “Facebook for geeks.”

GitHub’s mix of practicality and sociability have made it into a hub for software innovation. People log on from around the globe (78 percent of its users from outside the U.S.) to test and tinker with new ideas for mobile apps or Web server software. For Ethan Mollick, an assistant professor at the Wharton School, GitHub is one of a new class of technology platforms, including the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, that allow innovation without the traditional constraints of geography or of established hierarchies. “Virtual communities have more influence on reality now,” he says.

What all this could mean for software hubs like Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley isn’t yet clear. Certainly, in the post-GitHub world you no longer have to frequent the right coffee shops and parties in the Bay Area to make a name as a talented coder. Companies get founded on the site, and it’s a favorite hunting ground for recruiters as well.

The features of GitHub’s service and community that have driven its popularity could appear opaque to non-coders. The guiding principle is that any and all possible barriers to one person contributing to someone else’s project must be stripped away. That means avoiding e-mail and conventional management. “That idea of not having to ask permission to be involved in something is really big,” says Preston-Werner.

Preston-Werner says GitHub, launched in 2008, has been profitable, and signs up around 10,000 new users every day. The newest feature of its business model is to rent out a version to companies they can use internally. In Marissa Mayer’s first company-wide memo after becoming CEO of Yahoo last year, she listed GitHub as one of the ways she intended to fix her company’s stifling bureaucracy.

GitHub’s most important feature is the pull request. It allows a person to suggest a modification to the code of someone else’s project, and shows that suggestion to the project’s owner in a way that makes it easy for them to review the changes. A single mouse click can merge them into the project or start a discussion about the changes. If a person’s pull request doesn’t stick, they can “fork” the project to create a parallel version on GitHub with their idea included.

GitHub’s only physical location is an office in San Francisco where about one-third of its 176 employees work (the rest work from their homes, coffee shops, or rented desks in the U.S. or overseas). No one at the company has set working hours. Some show up at noon and work into the night, others arrive close to dawn and disappear by midafternoon. Only Preston-Werner, as CEO, has a formal job title. Everyone else uses generic or frequently changing descriptors such as “Bad Guy Catcher” or “Señor Open Sorcerer.”

GitHub now plays a major supporting role in the creation of widely used open-source software, and the company uses it to maintain and expand its own service as well. Although Preston-Werner may set the overall goal of such projects, details of how it will be achieved are left to his workforce. Teams of GitHub workers form on an ad-hoc basis, growing, shrinking, and melting away as the company’s needs change and people find new things to work on.

Meetings are seen as a tragic waste of time, and thanks to the pull request, fewer are needed. “I don’t think we’ll ever have to hire managers,” says Preston-Werner.

Preston-Werner hopes his philosophy will spread and that more kinds of work will happen on GitHub. The platform already has features targeted at designers working on images. Some journalists, academics, and even the White House are also experimenting with GitHub to collaborate on articles and write research and policy documents. “Software is where we’re starting, but the vision can encompass a much broader scope than that,” says Preston-Werner.

Tom Preston-Werner’s GitHub Is an Exceptionally Free Place for Open-Source Software | MIT Technology Review

How SMBs use (Cloud)startup software to save big bucks

Its a cliche to say Cloud is disruptive. Its already mainstream as evidenced by the adoption across the spectrum. I came across this article which expounds on this theme. Below are some excerpts:

CEO and founder David Soutar said that almost all of the software they used had come out of the startup community, and that because they can relate to how the development process works, they are willing to accept a few bugs here and there. But it also means that the businesses creating these products understand that startups don't have a lot of money to spend, and price themselves accordingly.

"The companies that come from startup roots understand that as a startup company, you don't have a lot of money to spend.

In fact, Soutar sees the minimal features of Google Apps and similar cloud services as being a cost saving compared to "installable" applications.

And there are areas where enterprise systems haven't yet caught up. For example, WattCost is using Flowdock to tie everything together on the social media and, to a degree, customer relationships management side. It's a combination of an internal instant messaging system and an inbox that can be hooked into other services like Twitter, Facebook, Zendesk, and GitHub.

http://www.zdnet.com/case-study-how-smbs-use-startup-software-to-save-big-bucks-7000017488/

Where the Jobs are at AZ,IBM, SAP…

You can’t guess it. But the numbers show. Its in Inside Sales. So whats Inside Sales?

- refers to sales positions done remotely from headquarters, without face-to-face meetings with clients

The number of inside sales jobs has increased dramatically in recent years, far outpacing the growth in jobs for field salespeople.

• Astra Zeneca has replaced virtually all of its field sales force support for its mature brand Nexium with a 300-person inside sales team. The team provides for most doctors' basic needs for samples and information at a substantially reduced cost.
• IBM has invested in social media training, toolkits and personalized digital pages to help its inside salespeople generate leads and manage account relationships. Early results include a 55% increase in Twitter followers and a significant increase in the number of high-quality inbound leads.
• SAP has refocused its large and growing inside sales team towards working with channel partners, rather than directly with customers, as part of a strategic initiative aimed at increasing channel sales to 40% of the company's total sales by 2015.

inside sales reduces cost-of-sales by 40-90% relative to field sales, while revenues may be maintained or even grow. Benefits include:

• Reduced sales force cost-per-contact and increased number of contacts per day
• Increased revenues in accounts that were lowest priority for field sales, but are high priority for inside sales
• Greater access and faster response times for customers
• Increased effectiveness by specializing inside salespeople by industry, product or activity, without the increased territory size penalty that specialization creates for field sales teams
• Flexibility to scale up the size of inside sales teams without relocation of salespeople
• Better coaching and development for inside salespeople who share a working location with their manager, resulting in shorter ramp-up and more apprenticeship.

When focused on the right market segments, stages of the customer engagement process, and product/services, inside sales drives huge sales force efficiency improvements with little or no effectiveness loss.

Excerpted from http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/07/the_growing_power_of_inside_sa.html

Brilliant Definition of a Evernote User

Someone who has a poor understanding of life-work balance. They’re always thinking about everything. Someone who’s answering email at 11 p.m. on a Saturday, but also someone who’s reading restaurant reviews and recommendations at the office. The modern knowledge worker.

Read on @ http://www.wired.com/business/2013/07/evernote-10-questions/

Innovation destination– India calling?

Earlier this year N.R. Narayana Murthy pointed out the need to position India as an ‘innovation’ destination, build products and add value by strengthening its existing areas and looking at new ones. This clarion call is resonating amongst others in the Indian industry at a time when winning deals and getting Fortune 500 companies to open up their technology budgets are getting harder.

Analysts and industry watchers are of the view that despite growth in the sector’s contribution to India’s GDP, from 1.2 per cent in fiscal 1998 to 7.5 per cent in the 2012 fiscal, the sector still missed out on opportunities to position India.

The two most often cited areas are software products and the ability to go beyond body shopping and cost arbitrage. “When I look at Indian IT services players, I can’t distinguish one from the other,” says a US-based outsourcing advisor who does not wish to be identified as he works with some Indian IT companies.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/info-tech/moving-away-from-it-services-to-products/article4963774.ece?ref=wl_industry-and-economy

The History of Website Development

 

Surprises Are the New Normal; Resilience Is the New Skill

Some management thinkers are at the cutting edge of management thought and rightly lead the world with their thinking. Rosabeth Moss Kanter is one such thinker who never fails to amaze. Below is an excerpt from her recent article which is a good guide for all of us in the business world.

The difference between winners and losers is how they handle losing.

That's a key finding from my ongoing research on great companies and effective leaders: no one can completely avoid troubles and potential pitfalls are everywhere, so the real skill is the resilience to climb out of the hole and bounce back.

Volatile times bring disruptions, interruptions, and setbacks, even for the most successful among us. Companies at the top of the heap still have times when they are blindsided by a competing product and must play catch-up. Sports teams that win regularly are often behind during the game. Writers can face dozens of rejections before finding a publisher that puts them on the map. Some successful politicians get caught with their pants down (so to speak) and still go on to lead, although such self-inflicted wounds are harder to heal.

Resilience is the ability to recover from fumbles or outright mistakes and bounce back. But flexibility alone is not enough. You have to learn from your errors. Those with resilience build on the cornerstones of confidence — accountability (taking responsibility and showing remorse), collaboration (supporting others in reaching a common goal), and initiative (focusing on positive steps and improvements). As outlined in my book Confidence, these factors underpin the resilience of people, teams, and organizations that can stumble but resume winning.

http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2013/07/surprises-are-the-new-normal-r.html

i-de-a

noun

1) a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action:
— a mental impression
— an opinion or belief.

2) (the idea) the aim or purpose:

3) Philosophy (in Platonic thought) an eternally existing pattern of which individual things in any class are imperfect copies;
(in Kantian thought) a concept of pure reason, not empirically based in experience.

Planning Your Idea Management Initiative (Govt Example)

• Identify the Purpose of the Site: Idea management tools can serve a variety of purposes for your agency. Identifying the purpose of your idea management initiative early on will allow you to choose the best tool that fits the needs of your agency and your audience. For instance, if you are creating an idea management site that is for internal use only, identifying the purpose from the beginning will ensure that you select a tool that will work on your agency’s network and include features relevant to your initiative. Furthermore, by identifying the purpose of the tool, you can include any relevant stakeholders throughout the life cycle of your idea management initiative.

• Develop a Written Plan: The written plan is the foundation for your idea management initiative. The written plan should outline the key roles and responsibilities for creating and managing your idea management page.  The written plan should include a clearly defined purpose and audience (e.g., generate ideas to improve agency operations, find ways to save money, etc.). Lastly, the plan should identify the site administrator and any workflows or policies for approving and removing content.

• Get the Requisite Approvals: Seek approval from the appropriate decision-makers throughout your agency to create awareness, establish proper protocols, and gain buy-in from key stakeholders and participants.

• Develop a Terms of Use Policy: A Terms of Use statement is a set of rules that users must follow in order to participate on the site.  The statement should be featured prominently on the site, clearly state how the site is moderated, identify the rules for posting an idea or comment and any consequences for violating the rules.  Make certain to add a disclaimer that notifies users that your agency has the right to reject any idea or comment that is submitted.

• Develop a Comment Moderating Policy: In addition to voting, some idea management sites allow users to comment on the posted ideas. When planning your idea management initiative, ascertain whether you will allow commenting on the ideas contained on your idea management site. If you allow commenting, determine if visitors will be required to register for the site and if their comments will need to be approved before being made visible to the public.

http://www.empire-20.ny.gov/ideamanagement2-kit

Idea management checklist

http://www.empire-20.ny.gov/sites/default/files/images/ideaMgmtChecklist2.jpg

Singapore most innovative city in Asia Pacific

 

Singapore was identified as the top city in Asia Pacific in innovation, according to a study done by marketing and growth strategy consulting firm Solidiance.

The Republic beat 15 other cities in the region, including second-ranked Sydney and third-ranked Melbourne. The top three cities were separated by 0.04 points and a macro-view “photoshoot” was needed to allocate the top spot to Singapore. This means the ranking is likely to change in the future.
The study was done to prove if a city has developed an efficient innovation environment. Six main categories -- human talent, knowledge creation, technology, society, government and global integration -- were used to measure the level of innovation per city.
Singapore took pole position in global integration, which was in turn determined by factors such as global competitiveness, presence of innovative corporations and net migration. It ranked from third to fifth in other categories.

 

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/singapore-most-innovative-city-in-asia-pacific--study-101706554.html

Why cross-disciplinary collaboration drives innovation

 

An oft missed point in Innovation is how to spur innovative thinking. If you are a busy corporate person, you are too engrossed in the daily grind to spend any meaningful time assimilating new inputs and mulling over the intersection of such inputs. The recent article in HBR by Whitney Johnson provides a workable solution for this challenge.

Innovation happens when we cultivate diversity and cross-disciplinary collaboration, when we play in the in-between. If you've learned a new language or lived in a foreign country for a time, you have likely experienced these kind of mind-opening lessons. This can, at times, feel very unpleasant, just as immersing myself in a new language and culture required a big move out of my normal way of living and thinking. But it's this willingness to live in the unknown for a while that opens a space for truly new ideas. As you are attempting to collaborate, if it feels foreign and outside of your comfort zone, you just might be on the right track. Sprechen sie the language of innovation?

A perfect example of this is Dave Blakely, who began his career at IDEO as an engineer. He could have worked his way up to manage technical staff, but instead he volunteered to become a project manager. As Dave made the decision to move to the margin, many of his peers dismissed this an escape route from the rigor and detail of engineering. But by learning to associate himself with two different disciplines, Blakely broadened his skills, so that today he is the head of technology strategy at IDEO — a firm which by the way, has an ethos of managing on the margin.

http://blogs.hbr.org/johnson/2013/07/innovation-needs-a-lingua-fran.html

Humor

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
_______________________________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
_________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget..
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's 20, much like your IQ.
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children , right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death..
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral...
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________
And last:
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No..
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Truly and Well…

Innovation Guru With A Twist

If Amazon.com AMZN +0.09% is to be believed, at least 58,000 professors, CEOs and other innovation experts are vying for our attention. Each guru has spent years creating a book about pioneers such as Apple AAPL +0.64%, IDEO, Zappos and Starbucks SBUX -0.22%. The result: mountains of earnest wisdom explaining the secrets of business breakthroughs.

Then there’s the fellow who calls himself Steve Musselman.

I met Musselman this week at Z Below, a small, basement-level theater in San Francisco’s Mission district, where he was running a 90-minute innovation seminar based on the business practices of YD Industries. Come again? Musselman, in full deadpan, assured us that YD is an economic giant, with 27,000 employees, a vast headquarters campus in New Rochelle, N.Y., and a product line that spans everything from medieval-themed burger restaurants to voice-compression software.

It didn’t take long for us attendees to realize that YD Industries exists only in Musselman’s mind. The company turned out to a nonstop spoof of the business cliches that we live with every day. The company’s logo: an inane combination of a duck bill and electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus. The founder, as depicted in a PowerPoint slide: a goateed relic of a different era, best known for his memoir: “Lion in the Chicken Coop.” The company’s iconic strength: “ambiguity.”

Nothing in YD’s product catalog sounds remotely marketable. Blissfully unaware of the idiocy of his wares, Musselman told brief stories about the market triumphs associated with swimming-pool gondolas, nose-hair extensions and — YD’s earliest breakthrough — a chair simulator that lets people practice sitting down.

“This didn’t do well at all in the U.S. at first,” Musselman declared. “But we achieved greater successes in Mexico and Argentina. Then, when the U.S. market was ready, we brought it back here. It goes to show the importance of our motto: IDACSU. That’s a shorthand for our founder’s great insight: “idea + action = success.”

Before long, buffoonery spread into the audience. Musselman showed slides of odd landscapes, animals and machines — and asked attendees to come up with products for each situation. Ideas tumbled forth: yoga classes for cows; robotic dog-walkers for families that didn’t want to go outside, and so on. A few minutes later, attendees huddled in small groups to sketch out designs and marketing campaigns for each one. All the while, Musselman (who in real life is a startup veteran known as George Nachtrieb) advised people: “Say yes to everything.”

The net result: some witty and imaginative ideas. They all bubbled out of the irreverent and carefree mood created by the absurdities of the YD Industries tale. It left me wondering whether mainstream approaches to innovation could use a lighter touch, too. After all, even the iPod didn’t start with Steve Jobs telling everyone to create $100 billion of shareholder value. That’s not how great tinkering happens. Instead, innovation must harness the free-wheeling ways of tinkerers who aren’t sure where they are going.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/07/16/innovation-guru-with-a-twist-his-company-never-existed/

Innovation Evolution

Innovation: Starting with the Basics

Building a foundation for innovation starts with the basics. In Robert’s Rules of Innovation™ the imperatives to Create & Sustain “NEW” in Business, number one is Inspire and Initiate. Innovation and ideation are pointless without buy-in from top management, and the support of your team. Engage the senior leadership team, employees of organization, and key external stakeholders in the development of a shared vision and the path forward.

Do you have an innovation culture?  How do you quantify it?

One of the first steps to creating a solid foundation for innovation is to define the desired culture. Quantify your goal, whether it’s a sales figure or number of new products you hope to achieve, and this will help justify the resources to be allocated. Create a mantra like, “one new innovation idea a week”. Develop “core attributes” as in, attributes which will form the foundation on which your company functions and conducts itself.

What are the beliefs and practices that make your company, your company? What is the essence of your organization?

Once you set your innovation core attributes, it is easy to bring your team on board and empower your company to create successful, sustainable innovations. The common saying goes, “people support what they help to create”

Phil McKinney CEO of CableLabs (previously vice president and chief technology officer of the Personal SystemGroup at HP) suggests asking the following 4 questions:

1) What does your team believe your innovation culture to be?

McKinney suggests asking a number of people in your organization what they believe is the essence of what the organization stands for.  “If you get different answers, that points to lack of clarity which then means each person is projecting what they think.” In order to create a sustainable culture of innovation, you want all members of your organization on the same page.

2) How is your organization similar or dissimilar to other organizations in the same industry?

According to McKinney, “If you are generic, with a generic culture, then innovation is NOT part of what you are about.” Reach past mundane product extensions, and the “me-too” business models of competitors. Remember that developing core attributes of innovation is not a one-size fits all glove. Your attributes need to be unique to your company and your culture.

3) What are the common traits of successful people in your organization?

What are the abilities or traits that get someone promoted? Different individual skillsets and mindsets are needed at different stages of the Innovation process, but when you know what works and has worked before; harnessing the abilities of your team becomes much easier.

4) What are the characteristic of the missed opportunities and failures of the organization?

Chances are, you won’t like every idea brought to the table, and not every idea will pan out. Rather than view failure as inherently bad, successful innovation requires that executives and teams commit to learning from each experiment gone bad – and incorporate those teachings into the next endeavor. “On every campaign our clients do, easily 30 percent of all the contributions are absolutely nonsensical,” says Luis Solis, president of innovation software firm Imaginatik. “Another 30 to 40 percent might not be properly timed. But what we don’t know is whether the first chunk inspired the best remaining 30 percent.”

Read on @ http://www.innovationcoach.com/2013/06/innovation-starting-basics/

What drives a successful innovation eco-system

It was Joseph Schumpeter in “The theory of economic development” (1912) who introduced for the first time the distinction between invention and innovation, that gave rise to a whole new subject of theoretical studies, conceptual frameworks and practical cases in empowering innovation throughout different market scales.

In this 100 years of innovation, both theoretical and practical evidence suggest that innovation has become a critical factor for the long-term success, in maintaining competitiveness (Tidd et al., 1997; Cooper, 1999; Bernstein & Singh, 2006) and increasing the probability of succeeding in the market place (Cooper, 2000; Gielens & Steenkamp, 2004; Urban & Hauser, 1993). In the same vein, Innovation 2010, a study conducted by BCG, a consultancy, targeting the most innovative worldwide companies reveal that more than 72 percent of the senior managers consider innovation one of the top three priorities (up from 63 percent on 2009). Hence, as essential as innovation becomes, more attention should be directed on the corporate culture that embraces it.

Determinants of an innovation eco-system that embraces successful innovation projects

The organizational strategies on innovation activities are positively correlated with the success rate of firm’s innovation projects. That is, the right implementation of the following organizational strategies (Training of Employees, Innovation Strategies, Innovation Culture, Innovation infrastructure & Partnerships, Process of Innovation, Innovation Knowledge Spread) could result in 25 percent higher success rate in innovation projects.

The propensity to innovate has been analyzed along the attitude toward innovation as opportunity or risk and the attitude toward new inputs. Implementing a proactive innovation-to-risk culture could increase the probability of being successful in the innovation projects by 34 percent. On the other hand, the dominant attitude toward new inputs has been “actively seek them out”, potentially resulting in 22.25% higher innovation project’s success rate.

http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2012/07/16/new-series-of-articles-on-the-risks-faced-by-innovation-projects/

Innovation in Government–Challenges & Opportunities

Came across this presentation, looked interesting!

Innovation In Government from Christian DE NEEF

Guide to OpenInnovation

Jeffrey Phillips, VP Marketing and lead consultant for OVO Innovation, defines four Open Innovation approaches in the book A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing. His typology is based on the operation of Open Innovation platforms; attending to those who participate in the challenges to be overcome and in the instructions to submit ideas.

Phillips’ four types of Open Innovation are the following:

• Directed/ Invitational: Only invited firms/solvers can participate and the terms and conditions are established previously. This type is ideal to work with in small teams and reliable partners.
• Directed/ Participative:Anyone can suggest ideas to solve a specific problem. This type is useful for board participation and seeking usual novel solutions.
• Suggestive/ Invitational: Invited participants, with specific knowledge, can submit ideas about anything they believe that is important. This one is good for generating ideas.
• Suggestive/ Participative: Anyone can submit an idea about any topic. The great advantage of this one is that it helps to spot consumers and market trends.

Open innovation typology from Jeffrey Phillips

How To Succeed In The Health-Care Vertical

Comport Consulting had built a successful business around converged infrastructure as a major enterprise HP (NYSE:HPQ)partner, but seven years ago the solution provider decided to specialize in a vertical industry. Jack Margossian, president of Comport Consulting, talks with CRN TV about how he built a strong practice in the health-care industry and explains why it has been so lucrative for his business. In part one of this series, Margossian explains how Comport Consulting sells not only to hospital CIOs, but also to line-of-business and details the challenges around bringing hospital IT infrastructure into the 21st century.

Check out the video @

http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/240157454/how-to-succeed-in-the-health-care-vertical-video.htm

http://bcove.me/yfp19wi3

Open Innovation

 

Charles Leadbeater says that innovation is democratizing and it is not a matter of professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs and consumers have much to contribute and Crowdsourcing platforms are proving it. In the video, Leadbeater talks about how collaboration can help develop new ideas and disruptive innovation.

3D BioPrinting Saves Lives Now…

The Youngstown, Ohio, baby turned blue again and again as his little airways collapsed and kept air from reaching his lungs. But doctors used a 3-D bioprinter to custom-make a splint that is holding his airway open and helping him breathe.

   Now 19-month-old Kaiba Gionfriddo is “into everything”,  says his mother, April Gionfriddo.

Kaiba’s life was saved by a brand-new field of regenerative medicine based on plastics and inkjet printers. Doctors at the University of Michigan used CT scans of Kaiba’s little airways to custom-design a scaffolding to pull open the passages and hold them open until they could grow strong and healthy on their own.

Read on @ http://www.nbcnews.com/health/doctors-print-splint-babys-blocked-throat-6C10035715?franchiseSlug=healthmain

Accidental Architecture

An interesting term which has come up given the proliferation of Data and Devices. As users run helter skelter to manage the huge data flows, they start reacting and apply common sense solutions to technical challenges. Giving birth to “ Accidental Architecture”. A recent CIO article states “ users are addressing individual data protection challenges reactively, as they arise, and they're applying costly siloed or "one size fits all" products and solutions that are difficult to manage, optimize and pay for. You've got desktop backup, virtualized backup, cloud backup, different forms of backup for different applications. In effect, organizations are creating "accidental architecture."

Backup isn't exactly the sexiest area within an IT organization. In many cases, it's perennially understaffed and under-resourced. But as data becomes an increasingly valuable commodity in the enterprise, and the volumes of data generated by the enterprise expand exponentially, backup is buckling under the strain. A new way of thinking about protection storage architecture may be required.

"Imagine a dam with a single, small sluice gate near the bottom, and there's water just gushing over the top," says Guy Churchward, president of Backup and Recovery Systems at EMC. That sluice gate represents your backup platform and the water represents your data. "Backup can't handle the load."

And worse is coming, Churchward says. If you were to pan the camera back from your little dam with water spilling over the top, you'd see 15 other raging rivers rushing toward you.

Read on @ http://www.cio.com/article/736179/EMC_Bringing_the_Sexy_Back_to_Data_?page=1&taxonomyId=3000

Key to Govt Cloud Success

As the dust settles down and the G Cloud emerges, a key success factor which is potentially emerging everywhere is for the Cloud solution to be fully integrated than individual parts. Smart Govts are deciding along the same course. This has been borne out of the recent article in Forbes as well.

One Washington, D.C.-based privately-held company, IQ Business Group (IQBG), has led the way in bringing one of the largest federal agencies, the Department of the Interior (DOI), into the 21^st century.

Last year the company scored a $53 million contract with the DOI, the federal agency that is responsible for federal land and natural resource conservation. The eight-year contract for IQBG’s software as a service (SaaS) platform is part of DOI’s IT Transformation initiative, which is expected to save $100 million annually. Known as the eMail,Enterprise Records, and Document ManagementSystem (eERDMS), the platform captures and auto-classifies (stores in folders according to subject) 100% of a staggering 75 million e-mails per month.  One impressive feat: it took only 45 days for IQBG to get eERDMS up and running for the DOI, which has nearly 100,000 employees nationwide.  This compressed time to going live illustrates the advantage of software based solutions: cost savings.

Michael Beck, IQBG’s CEO, notes that his company’s contract with the DOI is among the largest information technology initiatives in the federal government.  “We’re the first to provide a comprehensive solution for  e-mail archiving and journaling for an entire cabinet level agency,” he says, “and our competitors [which include companies such as IBM] do not have a fully-integrated product in production like ours that includes auto classification, record keeping and eDiscovery support.”

The DOI contract has helped IQBG expand its public sector practice, which includes state, local and higher education clients, from 30% of revenues to 65% of revenues.  And the company’s SaaS offering has led to impressive growth — Beck says IQBG’s total revenues have grown “in excess” of 100% over the past few years, and total information captured and processed by the company has grown from 10-15 terabytes in 2012 to an estimated 75 terabytes (eHow.com equates a single terabyte as equivalent to about 143 million pages of stored Microsoft MSFT +0.39% Word documents).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hilarykramer/2013/07/08/washington-moves-into-the-cloud-saving-money-and-securing-data/

Inspiration…

Cloud Vs System Integrators…the UK Story

Its tough to pick out Cloud success stories in the government, given the privacy concerns of recent past. But the G-Cloud seems to have a way of bubbling up to the surface. Below is an excerpt from such a case study.

Faced with a £52m bill from a large IT vendor for hosting "a major programme" the UK government decided to turn to commodity cloud services.

The result? It picked up a comparable service from a smaller player for £942,000.

Commodity cloud services are delivering savings that put prices charged by large systems integrators to shame, according to the UK's tech chief.

Spend on G-Cloud services is growing rapidly, passing £25m in May, but is still tiny compared to an estimated annual public sector IT spend of £16bn. However this could pick up even more sharply as long-term contracts with large systems integrators expire.

"The majority of the large contracts finish by 2014-15, so there's an enormous amount of change underway at the moment," said Maxwell.

Maxwell has plenty of government IT horror stories of his own, telling the conference it historically cost government £723 to process each payment claim made by farmers to the Rural Payments Agency.

"It would be cheaper to rent a taxi put the cash in the taxi, drive the taxi to the farm and keep a manual record than it would have been the way the outsource contract worked," he said.

Read on @ http://www.zdnet.com/here-are-another-51-million-reasons-why-the-cloud-is-winning-7000017639/

Secret Sauce of the Business Cloud–SaaS

 

The next wave of the Cloud is well on its way. For a good time, SaaS models focused on inevitable Cloud disruptive factors – Subscription, Billing, Hosting, Zero Legacy etc. Disintermediation proved a big success mantra for upcoming SaaS companies. But the middleman took note and turned the tide against itself, defeating the objective of having the Cloud in the first place. Transactions started happening directly. Its now the turn of the new SaaS model – SaaS becoming the System of Record as opposed just a low cost line item. Businesses take note, it may well be the tip of the iceberg!!

I came across an excellent article along the same lines:

By serving as the access portal to the marketplace, the system of record and most importantly, the paywall that drives predictable revenue, SaaS can revolutionize the marketplace model to offer modern advantages the failed B2B marketplaces of the early 2000s never had. These include revenue predictability, favorable unit economics and a barrier to disintermediation.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/14/why-saas-is-the-secret-to-success-in-the-business-marketplace/#VYgSbOwdc32dTuM3.99

What am I Doing?

Quite frequently, Executives at large organizations ask themselves the same question:

 What am I doing?    I have met many senior folks who want to focus on their work, not on themselves and not on the logistics of how they do it. Many take this as a necessary evil, some dread it. Maybe there’s an answer to this. Its how Sony entrusted its key product to an outside consultant.

In his words:

“As a consultant, I did not manage employees,” he said. “I was not responsible for budgets. I didn’t give presentations to other Sony groups. I didn’t track progress on milestones. I didn’t negotiate contracts.”
In other words, he could focus on doing the work, communicating with groups inside and outside of Sony. It was like being the director on a game rather than a manager (responsible for employees) or a producer (in charge of the budget).

“The director’s role is to shape the shared vision and communicate it,” he said. “I’m free to think about where we need to be in five years.”

If the PS4 is a success, Cerny will get the credit. If it isn’t, well, he’s just a consultant.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/29/how-sony-entrusted-the-design-of-the-playstation-4-to-a-consultant/#f9VdSftmkpyal74F.99

Get your free online personal research assistant…

 

If you are like me, you spend lotsa time researching on your customers before you meet them – (not to mention senior folks from your company). You have back to back meetings, and less than five minutes to run from one to the other.  It will take you much longer than 5 minutes to lookup everyone in the meeting and try to find their LinkedIn accounts, Twitter accounts, Blogs, Company blogs, and news related to their companies.Till date, I used to research by hand on the Net- LinkedIn, the works… Now we have a cool startup, Prepwork(https://prepwork.com) which promises to automate all of that. PrepWork searches for you and sends information that will help you make a positive impression. I have synced my calendar, so should you!

Prepwork, a digital assistant application that aggregates background data from all over the web that applies to each person that you are meeting with during a given day (e.g. alma mater, company news, recent blog posts and tweets, etc.). Then it emails this “intel” to you during the morning prior to your meeting, just like your own personal research assistant.

It gives you insights into someone’s sports interests.  So, in the sample image, this user follows the key players on the Miami Heat.  Because the user follows the Miami Heat, they show you the score from their last game and a link to the ESPN recap. Cool isn’t it …

Streamline your Conference calls…

Here’s yet another worthwhile free app for busy business folks.

MobileDay has enabled One-Touch into ANY conference call on ANY conference provider. The app syncs with your phone’s calendar and auto-detects the conference call details within your meeting invites. When you tap the green icon, MobileDay sends the conference sequence to the phone’s dialer, inserting all the codes, pauses, #, *, and 1s for you.

With One-Touch into voice conferences and online meetings such as GoToMeeting®, Google+ Hangouts, WebEx®, Apple FaceTime, and Skype audio, joining meetings on the go has never been easier.

You even have the choice to make calls via your phone or a VoIP dialer.

Supercharge Your Salesforce Via Mobile Sales Enablement

http://www.mutualmobile.com/posts/infographic-a-supercharged-sales-force

Add Yesware, Become more productive

One of the key objectives of my blog is to provide my readers details of tools which are cutting edge (and usually free) which moves their productivity needle several notches higher.

So introducing Yesware - the Boston-based startup  that helps sales and marketing people assess how effective  email campaigns are by tracking who opens what  and when. A big part of that story is that Yesware’s service integrates with Gmail and contacts as well as with Salesforce.com, synchronizing appointments between Gmail and Salesforce.com accounts.

Get your free Yesware at http://www.yesware.com/

Product Tour

• Overview

• Team Collaboration

• Email Tracking

• Custom Templates

• Salesforce

• Reports & Analytics

Yesware is a free add-on for Gmail that helps you sell more effectively right from your inbox.

Email Tracking

Get actionable insights into how your prospects and customers are reacting to your messages with our email tracking features.

• Get alerts each time someone opens an email or clicks on a link
• Know exactly when to follow up with your clients and prospects
• Know where in the world your message is being viewed
• View the device that prospects are using to open your email

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Team Collaboration

Yesware Teams make it easy to share winning messages and viewing detailed team reports.

• Name your team and invite colleagues to collaborate
• Share all of your winning email templates with each other to increase sales and productivity
• View detailed team reports & analytics on emails sent, opens, response rates, & much more

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Custom Templates

Create personal, customized email templates for every stage of your sales process.

• Choose your best templates by seeing which ones your customers reply to most
• Incorporate links and rich text to send great looking messages at the click of a button—every time
• Use [brackets] to indicate custom fields to make your templates even faster and easier to use

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Reminders

With Yesware Reminders, you'll never miss a follow-up again.

• Remind yourself to follow-up on important emails
• Use Reminders to easily prioritize critical messages that don't receive replies
• Get detailed tracking information about your emails when your Reminders come due

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Salesforce Sync

Harness the best that Yesware and Salesforce have to offer. We let you manage your sales funnel, right from Gmail.

• Create and Edit Salesforce contacts directly from Gmail
• Automatically sync all tracking data— sent emails, opens, link-clicks, and replies— to Salesforce
• Quickly add new tasks to Salesforce while you're reading an email from a contact
• Get activity reporting for each contact, lead, account, and opportunity

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CRM Syncing

With just one click every email you write can sync automatically with your CRM. You can focus on selling, we’ll take care of the data.

• Ease of use thanks to partnerships with popular providers like Salesforce, Batchbook, Pipedrive, Base, Highrise, SugarCRM, and other services like TimeTrade
• Save time and avoid mistakes from manual entry
• Actionable information when it matters most

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Reports and Analytics

Our reports and analytics turn you into a sales superstar by helping you close more deals—faster.

• Know exactly who’s best to follow up with by using our personal tracking reports and gauge your email opens for the last 30 days
• See where in the world people open your emails from inside your inbox
• Find out if your message is reaching top decision makers
• Prioritize your email prospecting with subject filters and email activity sorting

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Team Reports

Quickly and easily monitor your team's performance, and goal progress, with Team reports.

• Learn how your team's messaging is resonating with your target market
• Know what your team is doing everyday without having to rely on manual data entry
• See which emails get high open rates and leverage these insights to share expertise amongst the team
• Reward best practices and winning approaches

Inspiration

Mobility at the Crossroads…

BIG Data–As Big As It Gets!

The Real World of Big Data via Wikibon Infographics

All Paths taken by the CIO to the Cloud

Pacific Crest Securities recently published the results of a survey of chief information officers (CIO) as regards cloud computing. The study found that CIO’s are finding the “path to the cloud” is more complicated than just signing up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) or upgrading shares of EMC to Outperform from Neutral. Pacific Crest calls the revolution in cloud computing we’re experiencing “click to compute” and that there are ‘six pathways to the cloud’ including but not limited to SaaS and AWS: there’s also virtualization and automation, OpenStack, converged systems and services.

But EMC, as big as it is, hasn’t fallen prey to disruptive offerings from smaller, more nimble providers.  The traditional storage vendor has taken steps to diversify its portfolio and keep up with new technology.  When it comes to these six pathways to the cloud in particular, EMC has done a great deal in recent months to advance its efforts. Here is a collection of those recent advancements, broken down by “pathway”: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/06/20/emc-the-6-pathways-to-the-cloud/

My Tree gets Planted!!

 

Simple…

Be Like Da Vinci: Develop Your Own Idea Management System

Great article on Ideas and their potential.

Some of the greatest moments in science and the arts come from a quick flash of thought, when things just start lighting up within the your mind. You’ll never be able to predict when those moments will occur — and being prepared is critical. Everyone has ideas,  but few take the time to cultivate them. It is up to you, to effectively capture and nurture these moments of inspiration.

Read on @ http://marlagottschalk.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/your-own-idea-management-system/

Dreams…

Simple…