Innovator’s Dilemma – Political vision & will by championing solutions that can be realized at intersection of technology & policy

Imagine a silver bullet that could simultaneously do the following:

1) Reduce the USA’s dependence on oil,

2) Reduce the USA’s impact on the environment,

3) Reduce relevance of Oil on the USA's economy and thus the stranglehold suppliers from volatile, hostile regions have on the USA’s economy and Defense policy as it pertain to protecting the USA’s vital interests (in terms of our oil based economy).

4) Reduce the strain on the USA’s aging infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels (etc.), extending the duration of usability of the USA’s infrastructure which would also save on government expenditures.

5) Provide an economic stimulus to small, medium and large businesses, setting the stage for increased business investment and profitability for shareholders.

6) Provide an economic stimulus to individuals that increases disposable income, setting the stage for increased consumer spending and investment.

7) Provide a stimulus to the Telecom sector, still striving to climb out of the biggest meltdown in the history of the USA’s economy, as well as various technology industries including online security of vital information.

8) Increase family time by adding hours available to adults to be with their kids and loved ones, their communities, etc.

9) Assist Homeland Security with decentralizing our valuable human resources by slowing the brain-drain trend of American’s talent to major metropolitan areas which are also known to be targets in the current Terror War.

The “how” has already been proven to work on a small scale…being done selectively by individuals and businesses for about two decades. If managed aggressively to scale participation to critical mass, the “how” could unleash all of the above benefits.

What is the a “how”? Simple. Telecommuting.

Around since at least the 1980’s, telecommuting has yet to have the aggregate impact on the above due to a variety of reasons. However, fundamentally, those various reasons (desired face-time by bosses and subordinates, company politics, etc.) can be overcome if businesses are baited to act in a way that helps decision makers and businesses have an opportunity to increase the bottom line. Accomplish this by having the government institute a tax-break program for businesses that rewards companies with X%, Y% or Z% tax incentives if they arrange to have A%, B% or C% of their work force work from home.

All of the above 9 benefits and more could be realized over time by the USA if a Presidential candidate stepped up as champion of a program like the above. Borrowing a page from the government’s approach to not tax internet commerce so that this emerging aspect of the USA’s GNP can realize its full growth potential as quickly as possible, a carefully though-out government stimulus program designed to motivate action/participation by businesses that is tax revenue neutral or even positive (like recent tax cut initiatives have proven to be) would help scale this “how” so that the USA can lead the evolution into a sensible new world order that addresses global concerns while at the same time enhances the potential for strengthening households and communities.

Why not??!!

Innovator’s Dilemma – Rebuilding the Rust Belt, one kid at a time

In a historic old northern Indiana town on the majestic shores of Lake Michigan, a community is struggling to transition from it’s dependence on companies of the industrial age.  Some growth can be seen in retail (from major chains and big box retailers to a major regional outlet mall), as well as in a rediscovery of the recreation and tourism treasures that include the beauty of the Lake Michigan and area beaches to “Duneland” parks and much more. The transition is taking time (decades), but there are signs of progress.

One personal discovery last week was at a small business eatery my family enjoys visiting in the summer…Carlson’s Drive-in where Rootbeer & Hotdogs and much more is served right in your car. Enjoying another visit, we had a chance to chat with the owner and discovered what I viewed as a remarkable story and effort. Employing 53 people – mostly kids – the owner is committed to offering scholarships to A & B students. He posts grades inside Carlson’s and is engaged with teachers of the students to be sure his kids continue to achieve their scholastic results. In addition, he has a system that rewards grades, attitude and attendance with coveted positions serving customers where tips can be quite generous.

In an area of the country that lacks the charisma and popularity of sunbelt and coastal cities, this small-business owner has demonstrated by his commitment of personal time and involvement, along with financial contributions, that one person can make a difference in the lives of many - even in an area struggling to find its place in the new economy. If you’re ever passing through northern Indiana on I-80 or I-94 between Chicago and Detroit, consider taking the Michigan City exit (Route 421 North) to Carlson’s Drive-in (http://www.carlsonsdrive-in.com/index.htm ). It’s a slice of Americana – both yesteryear and the future.

(* - Scroll right margin of this blog to see a collage of pictures of Carlson’s).

Innovator’s Dilemma – Interesting Twist

Came across two words/concepts in recent days that shed a little light on things we take for granted as finite, but really have the potential for interesting alternatives:

“Moon bow” – Rainbow formed by light of moon.

“Switch pitcher” – If a ‘switch-hitter’ can bat from either side, then a ‘switch-pitcher’ can throw with either arm (NY Yankees just drafted a collegiate who can really do this!)

Innovators, take note!

Innovator's Dilemma - Quote about Innovation

“Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.” – W. Edwards Deming

William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993), was an American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. Deming is widely credited with improving production in the United States during World War II, although he is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. There, from 1950 onward he taught top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the latter through global markets) through various methods, including the application of statistical methods such as analysis of variance and hypothesis testing. Deming made a significant contribution to Japan becoming renowned for producing innovative high-quality products. Deming is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

Innovator’s Dilemma – Let’s Change the USA’s approach to the Presidential Campaign

Talk about an area that is ripe for innovation. Sure, progress has been made by candidates who are leveraging “new” technology such as blogs, MySpace profiles, (etc.), plus many states are jockeying to reposition themselves on the Primary calendar to make their state’s impact on candidate selection greater. Here are some thoughts to fix what I see as wrong with the process:

1) Eliminate polling that shows ranking of candidates (limit polling to topics/issues).

Benefits:

a) Stimulates voters to pay better attention to candidates and to think for themselves.

b) Stimulates Media to stop its approach of segregating the field between “Tier 1” and others …. to me, the most shameful part of the Presidential Campaign process. Both parties have many candidates (8-10+), yet watching the media, it appears that each party only has 3 candidates each. Why does the public allow the media to take this de facto filtering approach?

2) Have a National Primary Day for all 50 states, followed by run-off national elections per party until each party has one candidate with 50%+ of the vote. Sure, this “unthinkable” approach puts financial pressures on the candidates to promote themselves in so many markets at once, but splitting Iraq into 3 countries had been an unthinkable approach up until very recently too. (Maybe another area for reform is to look at what the Media charges candidates for exposure. Can the public demand that the publics’ airwaves have X% allocated to the publics’ business of driving awareness for future elected officials?)

Why not?!

Innovator's Dilemma - Quote about Innovation

“Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courage and patience.” - Hyman George Rickover

Innovator’s Dilemma – Creative Collaboration of Classic Blues Artist John Lee Hooker & Santana in Grammy Award Winner: “The Healer”

One of the last links to the blues of the Deep South, John Lee Hooker was born on August 22, 1917 in Clarksdale, Mississippi the youngest of the eleven children of William Hooker (18711923), a sharecropper and a Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (1875-?). He and his numerous siblings were only permitted to listen to religious songs, and so young John's earliest musical exposure was to the spirituals sung in church.

In 1921 John's parents separated and the next year his mother married William Moore, a blues singer who provided his first introduction to the guitar (and whom he would later credit for his distinctive playing style). The next year John's father died and at age 15 he ran away from home; he would never see his mother and step-father again.

Attracted by factory work, Hooker moved from Mississippi to Detroit in 1943, where he would reside until 1969. He felt right at home near the blues venues and saloons on Hastings Street, the heart of black entertainment on Detroit's east side. Hooker's recording career began in 1948 with the hit single, "Boogie Chillen," cut in a studio near Wayne State University. Despite being illiterate, he was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting the occasionally traditional blues lyric (such as "if I was chief of police, I would run her right out of town"), he freely invented many of his songs from scratch.

Recording studios in the 50s rarely paid black musicians more than a pittance, so Hooker would spend the night wandering from studio to studio, coming up with new songs or variations on his songs for each studio. Due to his recording contract, he would record these songs under obvious pseudonyms such as "John Lee Booker," "Johnny Hooker," or "John Cooker." His early solo songs were recorded under Bernie Besman. John Lee Hooker rarely played on a standard beat, changing tempo to fit the needs of the song. This made it nearly impossible to add backing tracks. As a result, Besman would record Hooker, in addition to playing guitar and singing, stomping along with the music on a wooden palette.

By 1970, John Lee had moved to California and begun working with rock musicians, notably Hooker recorded several songs with Van Morrison, including "Never Get Out of These Blues Alive", "The Healing Game" and "I Cover the Waterfront". Also touring with Van Morrison and Canned Heat, Hooker continued to tour the U.S. and Europe throughout the '70s and '80s. He appeared and sang in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. In 1989 he joined with a number of musicians, including Keith Richards and Carlos Santana to record “The Healer”, which won a Grammy award (one of many awards) and catapulted him back to million-seller status and began what has been the most successful period of his extensive career. He fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died soon afterwards at the age of 83. Hooker recorded over 100 albums and lived the last years of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he licensed a nightclub to use the name Boom Boom Room, after one of his hits.

Among his many awards, John Lee Hooker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Two of his songs, "Boogie Chillen" and "Boom Boom" were named to the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. "Boogie Chillen" was included as one of the Songs of the Century.

The Healer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_8kkuekS5A ) is a brilliant example of collaborative innovative genius ... in this case, between John Lee Hooker and Carlos Santana.

Innovator’s Dilemma – Gabor Baross and 1800’s Style Commerce & Communications Innovation

Searching online for fun several years ago, a “Baross Hotel” in Budapest, Hungary was discovered (http://www.barosshotel.hu/ , http://www.priceline.co.uk/pcln/hotel/226600 ). Although no known ancestors could be traced back to Hungary, this discovery was intriguing enough to become a ‘some day I’ll visit the place’ (or at least look into the reason for the name).

In 2005 I was invited to speak at a Telecom/eCommerce Industry Conference …. taking place in Budapest, Hungary! After the meetings, a visit to the hotel and discussions with locals caused me to learn that the hotel is across the street from “Baross Plaza”, which is also the location of one of the main international railroad terminals in Hungary – “Keleti International Rail Station” (http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&gbv=2&q=keleti+international+rail+station&btnG=Search+Images ).

Baross Plaza is named after “Gabor Baross” (http://www.pms2000.hu/kiad/mini-2.jpg ), a Hungarian Statesman from the 1800’s who, per this Wikipedia link: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabor_Baross ) achieved his fame in the area of economics as the Minster of Ways (Commerce) and Communications. Gabor Baross is recognized

as the person responsible for the development of Hungary’s rail system to the country’s interior, a rail system designed to help the nation’s remote areas (not accessible via the then standard river system for the transportation of raw materials, goods and services) to become connected with Budapest and the other major centers of Hungary. This “innovative” initiative also allowed Hungarians to become less reliant on foreign nations.

The link to Google images for Gabor Baross show his statue on the grounds of Baross Plaza: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.budapest-photo.hu/Budapest%2520kepek/Baross%2520Gabor%2520szobor_2005%2520majus%252021_002_922x692.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.budapest-photo.hu/Baross%2520Gabor%2520szobor_1.htm&h=346&w=461&sz=265&hl=en&start=15&tbnid=xBpZkmqwxlEyaM:&tbnh=110&tbnw=147&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgabor%2Bbaross%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Whether or not he is ‘Great Uncle Gabor’, here’s an individual who had vision and responsibility to evolve 1800’s era Commerce and Communications (communications defined then as connectivity via the rail network), to help a market/society evolve to the next level. Being personally involved in helping advance business, technical and economic models designed to help optimally unleash the fullest potential of eCommerce and mCommerce on the Internet via collaboration with global wireline and wireless telecom providers, the parallels are intriguing.

Innovator’s Dilemma – The Brilliant Vision of Kouji Ohboshi

Innovator’s Dilemma – The Brilliant Vision of Kouji Ohboshi

NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode revolution ……. how did it happen? NTT was fortunate to have a visionary by the name of Kouji Ohboshi. Ohboshi became responsible for running NTT’s (unprofitable) wireless business in the mid-1990’s. Although Ohboshi navigated DoCoMo through significant growth in the late 1990’s as mobile services were adopted into the Japanese mainstream, Ohboshi also saw a plateau coming for that growth as saturation would eventually evolve the market into facing commoditization pressures and declining revenues.

Ohboshi’s vision to solve the impending revenue decline? Evolve DoCoMo’s mobile solution (along with marketing tactics that kept messaging simple) to harness the coming evolution in the NTT DoCoMo mobile networks by pivoting their strategy into providing life style value via harnessing the power of their data network.

Although short-term cannibalization threats were a concern, Ohboshi understood the long term benefits of his vision (and the consequences of failure of this quest). With the power NTT DoCoMo’s brand and billing core competencies, Ohboshi connected the dots with compelling content that was of interest to the Japanese market … and created history with i-mode, which now serves as the beacon for other mobile providers’ services (i.e.: Venison Wireless’ Get It Now, Vodafone Live!, etc.

* Interesting footnote: Ohboshi got an assist from McKinsey & Co. The consulting form’s report endorsed pursuing the mobile multi-media opportunity (evidence that McKinsey learned from the guidance (per “legend”) they provided to AT&T Executives in the mid-1980’s concerning the mobile opportunity: “….other than construction workers, who needs a mobile device….”, which cooled AT&T Officers’ interest in aggressively dedicating themselves to wireless at that time.

Innovator’s Dilemma – Filtering Individual Bias

Ever been in a situation where you see an opportunity for your company or a client/prospect, then in formal and/or informal discussions to enlist support from leadership &/or key stakeholders you receive feedback something like: "...well, I don't think I would be interested in buying/using this proposed offer/service...". That is frustrating when you realize that what this colleague/decision maker has done is put on their own consumer hat and judged the potential offer/service based on their own personal tastes and preferences. By taking this approach, they have become a focus group of 1 and biased their ability to assess and judge the opportunity.

One of the challenges of driving innovation is that you'll often face situations like the one above. It continues to amaze me that even senior management will revert to this type of a screening approach. To overcome this type of 'bias', point out (diplomatically) that there is reasonable evidence of opportunity in spite of their individual personal tastes. Remember Peter Lynch, the famous fund manager of Fidelity Magellan back in the 1980's? He was also know for advising individuals to find investment opportunities by visiting local malls to observe where the foot traffic and excitement is. Clearly, not every store's offerings are for every shopper...but that doesn't mean that every store couldn't potentially be an investment opportunity for every clever investor.



The reality that innovators/business developers face is that personal bias is alive and well in your day-to-day. From 20-somethings to 60-somethings, internally and externally, across all business functions, watch and listen. You'll be amazed at how often people will revert to this approach. Maybe this phenomenon is a contributing factor as to why the USA is no longer the top global innovator.

Innovator’s Dilemma – Is Driving Profitable Innovation Easy?

On the surface, driving innovation seems like an undertaking that folks would rally around and embrace. However, the reality of driving innovation in business is that new concepts are often based on theory. Like predicting the stock market or sporting events - there are no guarantees. From intuition to analysis, there are many approaches taken to assess innovation opportunities, then rank them along with other activities on the aggregate plate of a business.

Factor in that decision makers are typically compensated and rewarded by their measurable impact to driving new revenues and/or reducing costs, the champions of innovation face the extra hurdle of enlisting support for undertakings that typically have out-year break-even results. From start-ups to major corporations, the drill and obstacles to overcome are similar (although in a corporate setting, another issue relates to also 'competing' with legacy offerings that ... although late in their life cycles ... still may view innovation as a cannibalization threat). Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen introduced this concept in his 1995 article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave, which he coauthored with Joseph Bower.

From my experiences, challenges for innovators are relentless, so if you know you are on to a breakthrough idea/concept/business model, a vital key to successfully driving your innovation is to have a passion for determined persistence.

Sesame Street - Put Down the Duckie

                             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqJjrtDFGpI

                               Innovator’s Dilemma – Put Down The Duckie

A metaphor for aspects of life, this great-sounding, funny video from Sesame Street (1988) speaks for itself.