I love to see an extension of my favorite chart from business school. Fun seems to continue trumping efficiency.

http://visualecon.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/history-...

Skeleton for post.
Clean up day
Show up ready to work
Arrive and ask
Experts
Like self-organizing but not optimal for brief one-time events

Skeleton for blog post. Having a child is a serious commitment. Newborn can't do much, completely dependent, lots of personal care and nurturing.
Toddler learning about the world, how to think, communicate, etc.
Elementary school to learn and master more basic skills, social skills, etc.
Tweens are awkward and insecure.
High school gain confidence, master specific skills, preparing for adulthood.
College almost on their own, entering society as individual.

During each of these stages, parents need to apply differing levels of discipline, support, understanding, and guidance. Well innovation goes through these same phases of maturing. But many innovators dont have the skills and/or

Might not get it all out but the essence of this post is about whether we need to be building technology based on context rather than capability. More and more there are great capabilities available but they fail to reach the desired adoption by the target user base. Why? I think it's because they lack context for how/when/where/why the user needs the capabilities.

Agile user stories are effective because they provide some level of context... As a (audience), I want to (capability) so I can (goal). Both audience and goal gives us more context to understand how/when/where/why the capability will be leveraged.

A trend I've noticed about my successful work over the last few years is that the designs were directly influenced by understandinqg the context of the audience. Not just the job my product was hired to do, but the context in which that job is to be done.

Apps store success - many capabilities already optimized for a specific context (small screen, limited bandwidth, etc)

Blah blah blah

I love how this diagram highlights that the adoption of 'fun' things is much more viral than the adoption of 'efficient' things. Of particular interest with this diagram is that it considers older innovations and how they took off. This is part of the allure of gamification.... making things fun.

This diagram is from the article "Household appliances and the use of time: the United States and Britain since the 1920s" by Sue Bowden and Avner Offer.  It was published in The Economic History Review, Volume 47, Issue 4, pages 725–748, November 1994.  

A very inspiring video from IBM celebrating its 100th year in business with 100 IBM innovations made its way across my screen.  I love this stuff (and not just because I'm an IBMer).  It's remarkable to think about how profound an impact innovation can have on the world.  I often marvel at the very ordinary fact we can fly airplanes and drive cars in addition to the extraordinary innovations that enable us to see pictures from Mars. Here's the IBM video:

Feel inspired now?

Ready to change the world? 

Are you brave enough to have a go at it? 

I know I do but.... where to start? what to tackle? who to work with?

I believe we need to find ways to transform the triumphs of innovation into stories that inspire and awaken the passionate innovators in all of us. I have a theory that if we can somehow "turn on the lightbulb" of creativity and help people harness their own practical experience, we can uncover even more powerful innovations for our world. I believe that all of us have some innate passion and creativity but most of it remains dormant.

But how can we unlock this dormant value?

Here's a few thoughts:

• I believe we need more ways to showcase past and present inventions and innovations.
• I'd like to hear personal stories from Innovators about how their "lightbulb" was turned on.
• I'd like to tune into an inspiration channel with user-contributed content filled with videos, books, articles, etc. that are inspirational in both technical and non-technical ways. 
• Showcase how thinking about things just a little differently can lead to new opportunities or improvements.
• Provide platforms that breathe life into ideas whether through tools, collaborators, or something else.

In short, find ways to turn on the lightbulb..... and keep it on!

Terri Griffith blogged about some remaining questions she had from the Social Networking for Innovation event.  She asked me to comment on the following:

"Companies have looked at working with intrapreneurship for a long time — is what we’re seeing now different?"

I say yes, at least for software intrapreneurs, for the following reasons:

1. cheaper - it's possible to try internal incubation without having to make significant investments as a result of the more open environments and tools...
2. new opportunities - with the down economy, there appears to be more risk tolerance with taking small gambles on longshots with limited downsides but potentially significant upsides...
3. staying competitive - across the technology landscape we've all witnessed companies like Google launch new services / revenue streams derived from stimulating and nurturing intrapreneurial passions...
4. social - the explosion of social networking externally has led to models for improving internal social networking and crowdsourcing...
5. reputation - innovation is a hot term and many seek opportunities to build their reputations and grow their personal network...

I'm sure there are many other contributing factors as well.  What do you think?

Learned a new term today.... Hero Graphic.  Apparently it is recognizable, describes some call to action, and is visually not too complex.   I wonder if the image below counts?

I was one of the panelists to share insights about how companies can use social networking for innovation. The event was on Friday January 14, 2011 at Santa Clara University.It was a really interesting event where leaders from several major companies as well as knowledgeable academics discussed external and internal challenges and approaches for leveraging social networking for innovation.

Some goodies I picked up from the speakers include:

• ideas are an organizing social object
• Techshop sounds like a way cool community workshop with industrial tools to help get the maker out in all of us
• give people access to a network of collaborators, give them access to the right tools.... get out of the way
• crowdsourcing can be very good for incremental innovation, disruptive breakthroughs perhaps not so much
• The crowd might miss stuff.
• position yourself to become the 'escape valve' of ideas
• "Technology has the shelf life of a banana" - Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems
• Difference between Consumers & Enterprise with respect to innovation = consumers not about money, enterprise is ALWAYS about money
• Pain for external innovation is socializing value of co-creation and negotiating IP
• We are clearly entering a future where there will be more and more open innovation markets, perhaps there will be too many
• There are idea networks and there are action networks.  (I personally love this 'action network' term, captures the essence I think).
• there's not doubt about need for mobility going forward but there's disagreement to how critical mobility is for supporting innovation efforts.
• The Chicken and the Pig fable is an analogy for the different levels of commitment.  (Personally I think there are many many chickens dressed up like Pigs.)

Of course there were many more insights, especially during the internal panel but I didn't get them all down in notes. I also walked away with a list of web sites to check out for some reason or another.  Here's some things I heard about and sounded interesting enough I looked them up:

• Magic Seth - guy does amazing mind-reading tricks via technology
• ninesigma - the ebay of open innovation?
• Build it with me - connect business folks, idea folks, and technical folks
• Techshop - community workshop with industrial tools to help get the maker out in all of us

Special thanks to Terri Griffith and Tatyana Kanzaveli for organizing the event and including me as a panelist.

For innovation to be successful in large organizations, I think you need a strategy that considers the end-to-end lifecycle of innovations. To me this means you need an ecosystem which spans several stages and provide capabilities that allow formal & informal innovation:

1. Get Ideas - where can we get ideas, how can we validate and rate them, can we stimulate innovative thinking in particular areas, etc.
2. Try Good Ideas - where and how can we try out some of these ideas, who funds prototypes & pilots, how do we know if they are good, etc.
3. Promote Winners - how can we get our promising innovations into the mainstream, who funds taking them to the next level, how easy can they integrate and/or scale, etc.
4. Productize - is this something we can sell, is there a market for this, etc.

Across each of these stages, you need to also be mindful of the dynamics and perspectives of who is involved. Each stage of the end-to-end innovation lifecycle brings a different set of interested parties.

• Motivations - What motivates the innovator? What motivates the early adopter? Why would a mainstream person be interested? Is this optional or required?
• Incentives - Do we need incentives to get ideas, to rate ideas, etc? How di we celebrate successes at each stage? What are the benefits for involved parties?
• Investments - Why should we invest time/money/resources/attention? Is the return tangible? How long before we see results?
• Risks - What happens if we fail? Are we willing to put our money where our mouth is?

I further believe you MUST ensure connectivity and flow across each stage of the end-to-end innovation lifecycle or you will only get pockets of success. In conclusion, the innovation ecosystem is more valuable than the sum of its parts.