Archive for July, 2006
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
Take a Risk. Create a hit.
From This Blog Sits at the is this great post about Disney’s approach to risk taking, and Johnny Depps response. [T]he eccentricity of Depp’s approach sent ripples of panic through Disney’s executive suites. Frantic phone calls were placed to Verbinski, Bruckheimer, and Depp’s agent: Why is he walking funny? Why is he talking like that? [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Innovation CULTURE by Roger Dennis
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
When crowd sourcing works
HBS Working Knowledge has an article on user led innovation / crowdsourcing. There has been a lot of discussion about the trend, and I maintain that for a small-medium company the process is generally expensive and time consuming. However this article – which focusses on white water kayaking – makes an excellent point about the [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in Innovation PROCESSES by Roger Dennis
Friday, July 21st, 2006
In defence of the most expensive pram/stroller
Bugaboo is getting a lot of media attention about it’s stroller. If you are not familiar with it, then you might have seen it referenced in articles about how much money people spend on their children. Or what things celebrities buy for their babies. Or in a photo shoot with Gwyneth Paltrow. That’s because it’s [...]
8 Comments » - Posted in Innovations by Roger Dennis
Thursday, July 20th, 2006
Cross sector collaboration
I was talking to the Vice Chancellor of a large university yesterday. The conversation got around to innovation which occurs when two unrelated disciplines collide. He mentioned that the problem with university departments is that they are great at forming relationships with their counterparts on the other side of the world, but terrible at forging [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Fringe scanning / peripheral vision,Innovation CULTURE by Roger Dennis
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
When a corporation gets serious about innovation
They do things like this… How to make Samsung more innovative? One key initiative is the VIP Center. The center, at Suwon, Samsung’s main manufacturing site, 20 miles from Seoul, is open 24 hours a day. Housed in a five-story former dormitory, it has 20 project rooms, 38 bedrooms for those who need to spend [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Innovation CULTURE by Roger Dennis
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
Crowd Sourcing is Expensive
The excellent BusinessWeek Innovation blog has another posting about crowdsourcing. It’s bang-on in so much as it identifies that making the customer the starting point of the design process can yield significant and high margin returns. Companies that “get it” and begin to integrate consumer input into the actual making of stuff and experiences will [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Innovation PROCESSES by Roger Dennis
Thursday, July 13th, 2006
The book publishing model (and how it works in New Zealand)
I was listening to an interview this morning on RDU with a new author called Rachel King who has written a book called the Sound of Butterfly Wings. She mentioned that in New Zealand – a country of around four million people – you have to sell five thousand copies of a book in order [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Inspiration by Roger Dennis
Tuesday, July 11th, 2006
Employees are the richest souce of ideas
Where do most of the ideas come inside your company? Not from management. Not from consultants. Not from trend-aping breathless management books. But from inside your organisation. Read more at Optimize Magazine (via Imaginatik Research)
No Comments » - Posted in Innovation CULTURE by Roger Dennis
Thursday, July 6th, 2006
Free water in Africa, one playground at a time
You cannot help but love this idea
No Comments » - Posted in Inspiration by Roger Dennis
Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
Creating positive conversations
I was at “The Cup” cafe in Christchurch at the weekend trying to enjoy some brunch. I say ‘trying’ because they were piping in diabolical music from a surf-punk-alt-rock station called “The Edge.” We asked the waitress to change the music, but she said that their music server was down. Seventy years ago she would [...]
