I posted this quote on Twitter and Facebook yesterday:

This was a observation made by management guru Peter Drucker several years ago, and it is still true today.  I posted it because I continue to see large companies line up to claim that they are adopting program x or strategy y to make the company more ‘innovative’. When you look behind the curtain, you find that they certainly have adopted new programs, but they continue to overlook the most important element: CULTURE.

It’s a sad truth, but they are just burning cash and energy … while the stated objective remains a distant dream.

Comments welcome.

Rick
 

There is a great podcast on the issues with our patent system at The American Life this week. I highly recommend it for anyone that cares about innovation, patents and business. Take a listen and let me know what you think.

Is the current patent system relevant today? Some have argued that the world moving too fast for the current patent system. So, what do you think?

Rick

Organizations are often consumed with market research and competitive analysis. They say they want to innovate, but their products and services are nothing more than a reflection of the current market. They a stuck in today’s paradigm, eking out incremental change, year after year.  The signals they use to plan and develop new products and services is much like the frozen ruts in the icy roads near my home on a cold winter day.

How should companies escape from this trap? Years ago, Wayne Gretzky said:  “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”  Steve Jobs referenced this quote a few years ago at the launch of the iPhone, to describe Apple’s strategy. I recently read again in a 2007 interview of Greg Joswiak, who at the time was Apple’s Product Manager for the iPod and iPhone. He quoted Gretzky, and then continued, “… We try to understand as we develop our product road map, what’s going to be exciting in the future. And that’s one of the advantages we have over our competitors. Our competitors tend to put the cross hairs on where we are now, and by the time they come up with a product that tries to match where we are now, we’re beyond them. We’re one or two generations beyond, moving faster than they are.”

I am not suggesting you should ignore the competition, but I am suggesting that the future is often right in front of you. Embrace it! Exploit it! Let me know what you think.

Rick

I have always had an intense interest in patents and the patent system. I am listed as an inventor on several, and have been called on to review many other patents. (No, they are no fun to read. If you have insomnia, this may be your best cure).

I just read a very interesting article: “Wolfe’s Den: Mad Rush For Eneterprise 2.0 Patents” by Alexander Wolfe of InformationWeek. The author made this observation: 

Like any nascent technology, Enterprise 2.0 is still searching for its sweet spot. Right now, the first wave of adoption has seen heavy user uptake of wikis. But wikis are just the curtain-raiser, and a minor first act, at that. The main performance is the crop of serious, first-generation products currently rolling out from vendors such as Cisco, IBM, Jive Software, Microsoft, and SAP.

Which got me to thinking: Whenever a new area starts to take off — before it hits the public consciousness, actually — companies rush to lock up its intellectual-property underpinnings. This means patents.

Looking at patents is worthwhile, because they give a heads up on interesting developments which might lie down the road. They provide inferential insight into vendors’ possible product plans, or, more correctly, the type of stuff they’ve been thinking about and the problems they’ve had to work to overcome.

Mr. Wolfe continue with a review of recent patents by the major players  … an excellent article and I recommend. 

The real reason for this post is to consider the impact of our patent system on innovation. For about 200 years this system has served us well. It promoted innovation by rewarding the innovator with exclusive rights to intellectual property for a period of time. It also provided a path for the spread of new technology through disclosure. 

Today the system is in need a a major overhaul. It is burdened by it’s own legacy and a mountain of bureaucracy. A few observations (my short list):

Patents take far too long to publish
When you are the inventor, this can work to your advantage as it allows you to keep your IP ‘hidden’ for a period of time. The implications of the slow system are well illustrated in the smart phones legal battles we witness in the news today.  In the rush to obtain exclusive rights to new IP, companies flood the patent office with new applications. The volume of patents further slows the process.  What happens next is that overlapping patents are granted. This sets in motion years of legal battles.

What is an innovation anyway? 
I have read hundreds of patents. I often walk away asking myself, “Is this really an invention”.  Applying known science to new applications seems obvious, but in today’s system, this results in a patent. One test for patentability is that it is not suppose to be “obvious to those skilled in
the art.” A quick note: A very large percentage of patents that are in the system have never been used.  I have heard numbers as high as 95%.

Patent Trolls
A patent troll is a holding company that owns a portfolio of patents. These companies exist for one reason: to build this portfolio, and then to sue others for infringement. Some argue that these organizations have value. I feel that they are destructive. They do nothing to innovate or spread innovation. I argue that they exist because the system is flawed. The are a symptom of the problem.

Conclusions
The patent system is in need of an overhaul. I am not sure anyone in the position to deal with it has the passion or energy to deal with it. It is in need of radical simplification, faster processing and patent rules that encouage real innovation. What do you think? 

Rick

I was fortunate this week to attend the World Innovation Forum in New York City. What an amazing experience. The speakers were great and the people I met were all so inspiring. Over the next few days I will share a few of my take-aways. Here is an outline fo the three days. I have so many things I want to write about.

Monday: The day before the event, I attended afield trip to Pfizer and Virgin US. The trip was let by !WhatIF!. It was interesting to observe the contrast between Pfizer and Virgin. The culture and their approach to innovation was so different. The folks at ?WhatIF! did a great job and provided some wonderful, thought provoking insights.

Tuesday: Speakers included Michael Porter,Andreas Weigend, Chip Heith, Buz Stone (co-founder of Twitter), and others. Chip Heith is a great speaker!

Wednesday: Seth Godin, Robert Burnner and others. I cannot say enough about Seth Godin. He also joined us for Lunch. This was a much smaller group and provided an opportunity for great insights.

It was amazing to hear from these great speakers and to compare notes with people in other industries. More to follow.

During my workout today, I listened to a recent DFJ Entrepreneurial Though Leaders Seminar. This is a podcast that is co-sponsored by BASES (a student entrepreneurship group), Standford Technology Ventures Program, and The Department of Management Science and Engineering (Standford University). The speaker for this session was John Seely Brown.  John has a technical background, having served as a Senior Scientist at Xerox. His bio is impressive, but I was far more interested in his discussion about the ‘Collaborative Innovation and a Pull Economy‘. I was so impressed by his remarks that I download his latest book,  “The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion” (Sponsored link).   

In the space I have here, I cannot begin to discuss everything Mr. Brown discussed. His comments, contrasting the 20th century business model, to what will be required in the 21st century are insightful. In a couple of paragraphs I thought I would attempt to tie a couple of his comments back to education, and even ‘new media’.

First, an observation: The 20th century model is founded on principles taught by Alfred Chandler. Mr. Brown called it the ‘Push Economy’. This model is hierarchical, with a ‘center-out’ approach to business. The goal of business in this model is “Scalable Efficiency”. Mr. Brown noted that the infrastructure was key to creating this economy (roads, cars, trucks, ships, and airplanes .. etc). Organizational architecture were built around this infrastructure, leveraging it, generating scalable efficiency. The goals of this were (and largely still are):

- Predictability
- Hierarchy
- Control
- Organizational routines
- Minimizing variance (can you say Six Sigma).

He said, “Build a lot, use transportation mechanisms to distribute it, bah bah bah”.  What he said next ties back to my last post. He briefly contrast the 20th century education system to this model. He said:

Our K through 12 schools are built on scalable efficiency, a factory model. Basically, we can predict for you what things you’re going to need for ten to 15 years away, and we’re going to build you a stock of assets for you to learn, to acquire so that eventually, you get to use them, very much like how corporations work.

This reminded me of a chapter in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (sponsored link) by Seth Godin: “Indoctrination: How We Got Here”. The chapter starts with this quote:

We’ve been taught to be a replaceable cog in a giant machine. We’ve been taught to consume as a shortcut to hapiness. We’ve been taught not to care about our jobs or our customers. And we’ve been taught to fit in”

There has been a fundamental and long-term change that will ripple through the business world for the next few years. In the new economy, the Pull Economy, will be built around ‘digital infrastructure’ and collaborative innovation. What we call social media today is just one element of the pull economy. This change will require that we think differently about everything from intellectual property to education. Take a few minutes to watch the video and consider what he has to say. I know it made me think hard about many things. I look forward to reading Mr. Brown’s book.

Watch the video and let me know what you think.

Rick

I have been reading “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?” by Seth Godin. This is an outstanding book. Today I came across the following comment. I apologize that I do not have a page reference, I am reading it on my Kindle. 

Wikipedia and the shared knowledge of the Internet make domain knowledge on its own worth significantly less than it use to be. Today, if all you have to offer is that you know a lot of reference book information, you lose, because the Internet knows more than you do.

Depth of Knowledge combined with good judgment is worth a lot. Depth of knowledge combined with diagnostic skills or nuanced insight is worth a lot, too. Knowledge alone, though, I’d rather get faster and cheaper from an expert I find online.

… Depth of knowledge is rarely sufficient, all by itself, to turn someone into a linchpin.

I hope this hits you between the eyes. It did me. Now, I would like you to do is to think of this in terms of how we educate our children. Get that really clear in your head. Got it? Now, hold that thought for a minute. 

Last week, I attended the 140 Character Conference in New York City. This was an amazing, wonderful event, put on by Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver).  I should take a timeout to blog about how it. It had an impact on me that I can’t put into words. I will say this: If you have an opportunity to attend a #140conf, GO. Just do it. You will not regret it.

Now back to education. During the first day of the conference, Chris Lehmann of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA gave the following presentation .. listen close: 

I am going to keep this short. Yes, children need to learn to locate information. Unfortunately, what we seem to do best, or at least what we seem to focus on, is training them to take test. Chris is right, we teach subjects instead of children. We train instead of teach. We need to teach them to use their minds and to create. The future can be bright, but we must change how we educate. I love the message. Get involved in your local schools or with our youth. This is important.

Rick

Check out this Web Browser market share data: From April 2009 until the end of February 2010, Internet Explorer lost 6 points. Market share for other Browsers was flat, with modest gains in a few cases. The biggest winner: Google Chrome which appears to have take share almost exclusively from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  

Chrome is relatively new, having been released in September of 2008. I am sure that most of us expected it to be successful. While 5.6% sounds small, the trend is significant. As for Firefox, it is not growing like it did early in the decade, but I would not write it off. Read the history of Firefox; it has been around for a while with version 1.0 coming out in ~2001.

Perhaps you are thinking, “Well, Micorsoft has this large position; 6 percent is nothing.”  Check out this July 2004 InfoWorld article which says IE had a share of greater than 95% early in the decade.  Now instead of a 6 point share loss, we are talking about 34 points in 7 years. Ouch.

What’s going on here and what can we learn? While there are many lessons, I want to comment on three: Innovation, Focus, Velocity and Risk Taking. 

- Innovation: Many (most?) of the Browser innovation we use today originated in smaller companies or as browser add-in’s. These innovations targeted user needs. It is not that big companies cannot innovate – they can and do, but small companies are usually faster, they are hungry and their culture promotes risk taking.  When the big guy becomes fat and happy, the smaller player usually moves in and eats his lunch (i.e. take market share). I am not saying Google is small, but they are behaving like a small company in how they develop new products.

Note: There are several Firefox add-on that I cannot live without and that could easily become standard features for a browser. (I guess that would be a good topic for a future post). 

- Focus: Big companies often become distracted. Management sees new ‘growth opportunities’, loosing focus on what really matters (Think of the recent problems at Toyota). Focus is often overlooked as a key to success in business and life. Project team will be more successful if they focus; business will be more successful if they are focused on what matters. It is possible to bring focus to teams inside large organization. 

- Product Development Velocity: Microsoft is not known for being fast to market. They have deep pockets and are wiling to be patient. This strategy has worked, but this data suggest that it may not be sustainable. Rapid prototyping and involving customers early works. Get something in the customers hands early! I live in a world where it takes far too long to develop products. Speed to market has has many benefits and is a competitive advantage.

Risk Taking: Remember this phrase: ‘Fail early and fail often’. Don’t be afraid to change directions. Be willing to take well considered risk. Will there be failures? Most certainly. Organizations that are not wiling to take risk spend most of their time in a state of paralysis which slows or even kills innovation.

Organizations that put these principles in place can increase their chance of success. Yes, it take talent, capital and other factors, but these four keys can make or break an organization.

What do you think?

Rick

Yesterday I attended the Crystal Classic Show Choir contest in Fairfield, Ohio.  (I had a great time, but that is another post). It was a 90 minute drive each way which allowed me time to listen to a few presentations from TED.   One that hit the mark for me was a recent presentation by James Cameron. It was excellent and had me scrambling to take notes:). Before I share a couple of my thoughts on this, I recommend you listen to this one:

- Far too many people do not accomplish their dreams. Perhaps the most significant barriers are self-imposed. Yes, society and those around you may tell you that ‘you can’t', but the reality is that we usually limit ourselves. Mr. Cameron’s curiosity lead him to live his dreams. He asked questions, then followed the path that ensued to live his passion.

This reminds me of Gary Vaynerchuk’s comments about ‘listen to your gut’ and that you ‘don’t have to settle.’ See his book: Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion (affiliate link).

- Speaking about not putting limits on yourself, he said that you should, “take risk”.  He spoke of NASA’s “Failure is not an option” philosophy and said that, “failure has to be an option” if we are going to take a “leap of faith”.  He said, “failure is an option, but fear is not.”

Failure is a great teacher; pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on. Taking the approach that failure is not an option kills innovation. More on that in a future post.   

- Mr. Cameron talked about trying to ‘understand the world and the limits of possibilities’. Instead of looking for why you can’t, ask what you want to achieve and how you go about it. 

- I enjoyed his comments about creating technology to make his dream happen. He was speaking about the need for new technology to make his dream happen when exploring ‘the deep’.  Listen, you may not create ‘new technology’, but you may need to innovate and re-engineer how you go about your life and your business. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the walls of your current life in your effort to live your dream.

- He said, “Curiosity it he most powerful thing you own; imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality. I love how he did this … you can too.

Perhaps technology has robbed us of ‘creativity’ and ‘dream’ time. Turn off the TV and find time to dream and consider goals and possibilities.

- On leadership, Mr Cameron said that he learned the importance of respecting your team. He said that this respect is more important than all of the laurels of the world. 

What did you take from his presentation? 

Rick

Remember when oil prices peaked out in 2008? Check out this chart:

Just looking at the prices in 2008 brings back all the angst of that summer. Today, prices seem to have stabilized. Credit a combination of reduced demands, driven down by the economic crisis, and a glut in supply. While I am not a global warming zealot, I think there are many strategic reasons to develop alternative energy sources. 

A good friend sent me a link to the following video. I wanted to share it because I think we are just begining to see the leading edge to significant innovation that will change the game.

If you want to get a better understand of this technology, check out this Fast Company article: “Bloom Energy Unveils Its Ultra-Secretive Bloom Box Fuel Cell.” It includes a clip from 60 minutes that is worth checking out.

This is only one area of technological wonder. Bill Gates spoke at TED 2010 about the world’s energy future. He talked about the need for a miracle technology (or technologies).  Check out his remarks, especially his comments about nuclear power: 

I have gone on a bit long here …. but the point is this: The world is about to see significant advances in alternative energy technology. This is a good time to be an entrepreneur. Keep watching the news – should be a great ride.

Rick