NEWLOGIC INNOVATION

New Frontiers in Healthcare Technology

2009-06-25T08:38:00.002-05:00

The NIH is sponsoring an insightful conference on the future of telemedicine. Videocast is available here.

Growing brand energy in the downturn

2009-03-09T21:00:00.000-05:00

To flourish in this downturn, challenge the conventional wisdom that only cost-reducing wins. "Recessions provide fertile ground for launching new businesses, developing disruptive new products and strengthening customer loyalty." These are the words of marketing expert Andrew Razeghi from Northwestern University. Here are a few tips he offers based on the many examples of successful companies that prospered during recessionary times:
• While managing cash is important, don't put the brakes on. Continue to invest in R&D and marketing. "Listen to the market, invest in products for the long term, and keep in front of the customer."
• In a recession, the worst thing you can do is to go dark. In a recession "fear creates focus." "Customers wonder how you're doing. Now is the time to increase communication and restore confidence not only in the products you're selling, but also in the company behind those products."
• Marketers need to play to their strengths, and rethink how to turn those strengths into new opportunities. As marketers continue to clamor for attention, sensory branding will grow increasingly relevant to help cut through the clutter.
As he points out, many high-profile name brands were born in the midst of the Great Depression.

Innovation Survival Tools: Five Things About a Down Economy

2009-03-06T11:53:00.012-05:00

When times get tough companies of all sizes and market positions seek ways to reduce expenses and conserve resources. These cycles give rise to increased pressures on new product development managers and executives. Newlogic has helped guide clients through the last two financial downturns, and the subsequent recoveries. As a result, Newlogic has devised five Innovation Survival Tools to effectively manage innovation during an economic down cycle.

Download our white paper at: www.newlogicusa.com/news

Fast Company's 50

2009-02-20T09:52:00.001-05:00

Even in these tough times, surprising and extraordinary efforts are under way in businesses across the globe. From politics to technology, energy, and transportation; from marketing to retail, health care, and design, Fast Company has identified their 50 top companies that illustrate the power and potential of innovative ideas and creative execution. These are the kinds of enterprises that will redefine our future and point the way to a better tomorrow.

[ Fast Company's 50 Most Innovative Companies ]

Bright Ideas for Dark Times

2009-02-20T09:50:00.001-05:00

The Guardian explains why NOW is the time for creative thinking and innovation.

[Read more at the Guardian]

BREAKTHROUGH DESIGN INNOVATION

2008-06-10T10:54:00.003-05:00

The BMW GINA Light Visionary Model is an design study that shows BMW designers' innovative design thinking. Featuring an outer skin made entirely out of textile fabric that's pulled taut around a frame of metal and carbon fiber wires, the car's shape can change, controlled by electro-hydraulic devices. For instance, the headlights of the concept can be exposed or hidden by the car's skin just like blinking eyes, and the hood opens from the center as the fabric parts to expose the engine. This idea extends to the interior, where BMW designers have made visible only those instruments that are required at a certain time, while the rest of the time the same fabric interior "blinks" them out of view.

e-HealthTech Resource

2008-05-09T13:26:00.004-05:00

e-HealthTech.org is a comprehensive resource for professionals developing new electronic health systems. Founded by a group of entrepreneurs working to improve user access to EPRs via patient initiated healthcare, e-HealthTech.org brings a unique, user-centric, point of view to the need to healthcare facilities.

ON-SHORING INNOVATION

2008-05-09T10:50:00.002-05:00

According to a new study published by the National Academies, a Washington organization that advises the U.S. government on science and technology policy, America continues to be the world leader in creating new products and services has remained remarkably resilient over the past decade—even as more research and development by U.S. companies is done offshore.

And while the report makes a compelling cases that U.S. companies are succeeding, it does not address the issue of U.S. innovation's benefit (if any) to the U.S. worker.

Still, given all the debate over offshoring, the report's central findings are interesting. The authors marshal a wealth of evidence to show that, thanks to innovation, globalization hasn't eroded U.S. leadership even in some industries where there has been a substantial offshore shift in engineering and design.

There are cases where the U.S. can lose a commanding lead when domestic manufacturing disappears—namely in flat-panel displays and lighting. Macher also concedes "there are problems on the horizon" regarding America's future competitiveness. Other nations are starting to mimic many of the strategies that give the U.S. an innovation edge.."

via BusinessWeek

INNOVATION COMPETITION

2008-05-09T10:43:00.002-05:00

A Massachusetts startup recently raised $6.5 million to build a global innovation outsourcing company based on the x-prize model. Innocentive postes product development challenges on the Web and invites people around the world to submit competing solutions, with a substantial monetary prize as the reward for the winner.

InnoCentive was set up by Eli Lilly in 2001 as an experimental way to farm out some of the giant drugmaker’s biggest product development challenges. Two years ago, Lilly spun out the company as an independent venture, and it has since diversified beyond the life sciences to a range of disciplines, such as computer science and cleantech.

It works like this: Companies work with InnoCentive to craft their challenge and pick a dollar amount for the award. InnoCentive then alerts its network of solvers, and those who choose to engage in a particular challenge are given access to online project rooms containing proprietary details about the seeker’s project. At the end of the challenge period, the seeker evaluates the solutions and chooses one as the winner; InnoCentive then helps transfer the rights to the solution from the solver to the seeker’s organization. People who submit solutions can win awards that range from $10,000 to $1 million.

It isn’t “crowdsourcing” in the typical Web 2.0 sense of throwing open a problem and soliciting thoughts and contributions from thousands of random Internet surfers. It would be more accurate to describe InnoCentive’s platform as a mechanism for soliciting RFPs (requests for proposals) from a much broader cross-section of experts than any company could reach through the traditional business consulting process. Companies like Procter & Gamble use Innocentive’s system to find new product ideas faster than they might on their own, and the model has even inspired imitators such as Ohio-based Planet Eureka, which launched last month.

via xconomy

CONCURRENT INNOVATION: WHO SAYS BIG IDEAS ARE RARE

2008-05-07T10:05:00.002-05:00

Malcom Gladwell's (one of the WSJ's to 20 management gurus) essay on innovation featuring Nathan Myhrvold's Innovation Ventures, Alexander Graham Bell and Dinosaurs!
Read it here.

via The New Yorker

WJS'S NEW LIST OF BUSINESS GURUS (IT'S NOT WHO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE)

2008-05-06T15:08:00.002-05:00

From the Wall Street Journal comes this year's crop of business gurus. The results, based on Google hits, media mentions and academic citations, ranks author and consultant Gary Hamel No. 1. However, included at the top of the list are psychologists, journalists and celebrity chief executives.

via The Wall Street Journal

TOO BIG TO GROW?

2008-05-06T14:55:00.002-05:00

According to Stall Points, research conducted by the Corporate Executive Board (see Harvard Business Review Magazine Article), that shows that almost all companies hit a point where historical growth rates decelerate. Once the corporate growth engine stalls, it is very hard to restart.

The study involved close to 500 companies that have appeared on the Fortune 100 or international equivalents over the past 50 years. Close to 90 percent of those companies experienced a stall, or “secular reversals in company growth fortunes.” Only 50 percent of companies that stalled were able to grow even moderately over the next decade.

There are many reasons why growth becomes increasingly difficult as a company grows. One challenge is that the hurdle for new initiatives becomes so high that many potential game-changing initiatives never see the light of day. To quote one fortune 100 executive from the article: “A billion is nice, but at our size we really need to set the target at $10 billion.”

The problem is there aren’t very many $10 billion businesses sitting around. Worse, a $10 billion business doesn’t always look like a $10 billion business in its early days. The only reliable way to create that top-line growth of that magnitude is through relatively large acquisitions, which tend to be at best value neutral.

So what’s a giant to do? One key to success is keeping individual units responsible for growth small enough so they can prioritize opportunities that start relatively modestly. For a long time Hewlett-Packard had a practice of splitting up any division that reached a certain size to minimize bureaucracy and leave the smaller unit free to prioritize relatively small opportunities.

Another key is to set reasonable screens for new growth opportunities. By all means make sure there is a story for why a given opportunity could be a blockbuster success. But leave room for exploration, iteration, and small starts, or it will just be a matter of time before you hit your own stall point.

via Scott Anthony at HBS

MORE UNCERTAINTY AT THE PATENT OFFICE

2008-05-06T09:12:00.003-05:00

A problem in the way patent judges are appointed at least arguably invalidates every decision of the patent court, as decided by a panel that included at least one judge appointed after March 2000.

At issue is a 1999 law that changed the way patent office judges are appointed, substituting the director of the Patent and Trademark Office for the Secretary of Commerce. The problem is patent office judges are, by definition, "inferior officers", and the constitution states inferior officers must be appointed by a head of a department (Secretary of Commerce), not a head of an office (such as the Patent Office).

The impact of this problem, identified by John F. Duffy, at the George Washington University Law School, could be cataclysmic for the patent world, casting “a cloud over many thousands of board decisions” and “unsettling the expectations of patent holders and licensees across the nation.”

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to take up the question, in the case involving Translogic, one with $86 million at stake.

via NYT

MORE SUPPORT FOR FOCUSING ON SERVICE INNOVATION

2008-05-05T14:01:00.002-05:00

The nation’s service industries suffered a slowdown in activity in April as inflation put a squeeze on businesses already pressured by falling demand, according to a private survey released Monday by the Institute for Supply Management. But service companies also appeared to add jobs....(via the NYT)

We sum up the attraction of new services with this often used chart:

Product-only businesses face new challenges:

Increasing global competition
Mounting product price pressure
Decreasing product margins

Service Innovation

Meet wider set of related customer needs
Create new sources of competitive differentiation
Diversify revenue stream
Higher margins
Longer contracts
Higher barrier to competition
Internet - key distribution channel

Communication is Key

2008-05-02T08:47:00.002-05:00

Hidden within today's NYT article on the ongoing resuscitation of Kodak (here) is a lesson about how corporate structure can support innovation:

[In the new Kodak] researchers who rarely interacted are now expected to collaborate....“This used to be a closed society, where some researchers kept their records in locked safes...”
Researchers...must now work with the business managers...Today, everyone involved in creating, selling and servicing ... is grouped together...
“Finally, we have a structure that promotes commercialization of research.”...

Too often corporations create structures where there is little interaction between R&D and marketing functions. Organizations such as HP, CERN, and 3M have institutionalized this cross-functional collaboration, enabling nascent ideas to benefit from business-unit guidance, with the goal of innovation commercialization.

SPENDING MORE ON R&D IS NOT THE ANSWER, SPENDING RIGHT IS

2008-04-29T10:32:00.003-05:00

Wrigley's acquisition by Mars demonstrates, again, that simply spending more on R&D is not the answer when a company needs innovative products.

He (Bill Wrigley CEO) hired scores of food scientists, chemists, and engineers for an innovation center he opened in 2005 on a 7.6-acre Chicago site that he hoped would yield the next greatest thing since chewing gum...Bill Wrigley tried to do big things but never had a breakthrough.

There is a link between innovation and corporate longevity (demonstrated too clearly by the story of Wrigley). Both innovation and corporate longevity require long term commitment to continuous learning outside of the corporate parent.
Innovation and corporate longevity are bottom up initiatives that strive to keep the individual highly engaged with the world outside the business; with customers, with new markets and nascent ideas.
When the people who work at any company (Wrigely, Polaroid, EMI Records, etc.) are complacent and concerned about maintaining the status quo, investing in a new R&D facility will not be a panacea.

IS YOUR COMPANY INNOVATION TOLERANT

2008-04-26T19:13:00.003-05:00

Thanks Bizarro!

OUR DEFINITION FOR INNOVATION

2008-04-26T08:50:00.003-05:00

Innovation: A creation whos express purpose; improving business performance, is dependent upon first-mover advantages - patentability is not a requirement.

EVENT: BERN UNIVERSITY

2008-04-24T18:53:00.002-05:00

Today, Marc is talking about Innovation on Demand in conjunction with Babson College to students from Bern University's executive MBA program. Key discussion points for this international group will focus how corporate culture can enable innovation.

Crowd Sourcing The Right Answers

2008-04-10T09:37:00.002-05:00

Prediction markets, online virtual wagering communities are being utilized to analyze idea pipelines inside majore companies such as the InterContinental Hotels Group, General Electric and Hewlett-Packard. The promise of prediction markets is that the collective wisdom of a company's workforce will improve forecasting, reduce risk and accelerate innovation.

Like blogs and wikis, prediction markets can spur communication and collaboration within a company. Yet they add rigorous measurement to business forecasts, like estimating the sales of a new product or the chances that a project will be finished on time.

Corporate prediction markets work like this: Employees, and potentially outsiders, make their wagers over the Internet using virtual currency, betting anonymously. They bet on what they think will actually happen, not what they hope will happen or what the boss wants. The payoff for the most accurate players is typically a modest prize, cash or an iPod.

The early results are encouraging. “The potential is that prediction markets may be the thing that enables a big company to act more like a small, nimble company again,”

Via NYT

Thinking Outside the Company’s Box

2008-03-29T21:31:00.002-05:00

One of the oldest barriers to innovation is “Not Invented Here,” a persistent bias of even the most creative people toward their own creations and against those of people who work for other companies. And the problem of N.I.H. isn’t limited to business; it can also infect the military and government research agencies.

To help counteract N.I.H., large corporations are increasingly promoting technology alliances with rivals, as well as the concept of “open innovation,” to draw on a wider circle of big brains — not on their payroll — to work on core technical problems. These efforts arise from the recognition that no single innovator or team, no matter how loyal to an employer or successful in the market, has a monopoly on wisdom.

Newlogic has always supported this growing trend, helping clients realize that access to an idea is more important than ownership. It is part of our market focus, creating success criteria based on external, customer-centric, metrics. Customers don't care how many patents a company has, they care about how well the product they're considering to purchase.

via: NYT

Technology is making it easier to make things worse

2008-03-15T11:27:00.002-05:00

Lou Reed may have made this remark specifically about the ubiquity of MP3 players and how their technological limitations reduce audio quality.

Yet the same can be said for many innovation initiatives. New technologies make it easier to create. Easy to use 3D CAD, ideation programs, brainstorming software, and rendering programs allow any person to create.

Technology is indeed making it easier for make things worse.

If the postal clerk in the next cubicle can create photoreaslitic rendering of his idea, what is the value of the idea from a professional designer?

How are business managers expected to discern the difference between good design and bad?

0% INNOVATION 100% SPIN

2008-02-21T09:12:00.004-05:00

Another reason why I have zero respect for BusinessWeek when it comes to their 'reporting' of design and innovation.

Splashed across this week's cover is a picture o the Levono Super-Thin ThinkPad. Accompanied by a five page article of the 'design' team's two year struggle to develop a super-thin laptop.

Given only lip service in the article are the very real business challenges of innovation.

I often wonder if there are lessons we can learn from Levono's design team?
- Is this a clear proof that talent is the most important element of a design team? With Sapper still involved with the product design and the ThinkPad identity still rooted in his formula, clearly individual designers of immense talent can have long-lasting impact on a corporation.

- Is this clear proof that Levono has no clue about design? So risk-averse are they (and IBM before) that they continue a dated design identity without innovation because if it is less risky for the product managers to use a design that worked before than attempt to create something new.

Design Industry at Risk

2008-02-15T09:36:00.002-05:00

Laura Lee writes in BusinessWeek about the role of design and innovation during the current economic downturn.

"Design thinking is a useful innovation tool, not the absolute source of sustainable growth. Meeting complex growth challenges requires a broad range of capabilities from across the social sciences, business strategy, and design. Just as there is no one, best approach to innovation, there is also no evidence that profitable growth is impossible in a slow economy. As the economic cycle turns again, managers face a critical choice: Will they join the packs that give up on growth while waiting for better times? Or will they find new ways to grow during the coming storm?"

ITS ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE

2008-02-10T17:41:00.000-05:00

"Organizations do not innovate. People innovate. Inspired people. Fascinated people. Creative people. Committed people. That's where innovation begins."

Mitch Ditkoff, in his blog; The Heart Of Innovation, drivest home the point that people will innovate, not because they have to, but because they want to.

He sees the challenge is to find a way to help each and every person in an organization to awaken, nurture and develop their innate abilities to create something extraordinary. In order to help people who have been hired for these skills, we ought to provide them with training, tools and environments that can help to enable this process.

The Heart Of Innovation