Endless Innovation

Crowdfunding Artistic Projects Through Kickstarter

Brooklyn-based Kickstarter enables people to "crowd-fund" new artistic projects (books, movies, films, etc.) and then follow along the progress of the project through regular updates. In my first-ever Kickstarter project, I helped to crowd-fund a new book from Robin Sloan (a former Current TV exec and aspiring novelist) after reading about it on CNET:

"I'm writing a book: a detective story set halfway between San Francisco and the Internet. And the more people who reserve a copy, the better each one will be! The basic setup is: Imagine a Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century. All the really good cases are on the internet. And Holmes is a woman, and Watson is an A.I., and San Francisco... oh, poor San Francisco... [...]

Now, the goal of this project is to put a book in your hands. And the cool thing about books is that they enjoy tremendous economies of scale. So here's the opportunity: as more people reserve books, everybody's book gets better, because a bigger print run means everything is cheaper. If I can get 300 backers, the book will be really nice: perfect-bound with a crisp color cover. If I can get 600 backers, suddenly we're talking better materials, more colors... maybe even hardcover? And more than 600...? Why, it'll be made of PURE GOLD."

Robin's goal was to raise a modest $3500 from other micro-funders in a period of about two months, but he ended up raising nearly $14,000 from 569 backers! Along the way, he provided 16 updates about the status of the book -- including one ingenious update while flying in a plane, and another update about the clever technique he used for the naming of characters in the novella. (Just an aside - Robin gained another 15 minutes of Internet fame this fall when Twitter announced that he was the author of the five-billionth tweet).

Anyway, I'm looking forward to receiving the book in the mail -- as well as funding other interesting artistic projects featured on the Kickstarter site. If you've ever used a site like Kiva to make micro-loans, the overall look and feel of Kickstarter should be familiar. As with Kiva, the actual funding for the project is not disbursed until the entire pledge has been met, so even though I "funded" Robin nearly two months ago, the money wasn't actually debited from my bank account until November 1.

[image: Robin Writes a Book via Kickstarter]

"Exploiting Chaos": Trendhunter's New Innovation Trends Book

One of my favorite trend-watching e-newsletters has always been Jeremy Gutsche's Trend Hunter - a site chock full of innovation that always seems to have its hand on the pulse of what's happening in business and popular culture. Jeremy's new book Exploiting Chaos offers managers 150 different ways to spark transformative change. Ahead of the official publication of the book on September 1, download a free PDF version of the first chapter of the book here.

Exploiting Chaos has already been named one of CEO READ's Books to Watch in 2009 and has picked up endorsements from the likes of Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and John Battelle. As bestselling author Daniel Pink notes, "EXPLOITING CHAOS is a rousing battle cry for the kind of creative, risky thinking that is most needed in times of change and disorder. Whether you're a CEO trying to stay ahead of the curve, a daydreaming teenager, or a wannabe trailblazer, this bold guide is the shake-up you need to check your assumptions, get inspired, and turn business-as-usual totally upside down."

Book Review: The Silver Lining by Scott D. Anthony

The Silver Lining, a new strategy book from innovation guru Scott Anthony at Cambridge-based Innosight, is a valuable playbook for bringing disruptive innovation into the enterprise at a time when many corporations are pulling back on their innovation initiatives. First defined and popularized by innovation guru Clayton Christensen (also at Innosight) back in 1997, the concept of "disruptive innovation" is a surprisingly effective way to cut back on costs while simultaneously innovating for growth, making it just as relevant now as it was during the go-go years of the first Internet boom. (If you're not already familiar with the principles of disruptive innovation, the best place to start is with Christensen's all-time business classic, The Innovator's Dilemma.)

Within The Silver Lining, there were several chapters that I've literally bookmarked for future reading as they resonated with some of my own thinking and findings about innovation:

(1) Companies need to figure out how to surprise and delight their customers with the performance of their products. However, even the most demanding customers are really only looking for "good enough" performance -- companies that try to add to "overshoot" by adding too many features and too many options to a product are wasting valuable time and resources. At the end of the day, technology only has to be "good enough" to get the job done. As Anthony points out in Chapter 3 ("Refeature to Cut Costs"), one technique to refocus teams on "good enough" is Kano, a Japanese management technique developed by Noriaki Kano at the Tokyo University of Science in the late 1970s.

(2) It's possible for any manager to become a more innovative thinker. In Chapter 8 ("Drive Personal Reinvention"), Anthony points out the ways that many top innovators excel by being able to question, observe and experiment more effectively than their peers. The good news is that an "innovator's DNA" is not simply inherited -- only 25% of an individual's capacity for innovation is inherited, the other 75% comes from experience. Anthony mentions 7 specific ways to become a more innovative manager. Sometimes it's just a matter of asking better questions.

(3) People typically think that only start-ups and emerging companies are capable of launching disruptive innovations, but large companies are just as capable of launching disruptive innovations. In Chapter 7 ("Learn to Love the Low End"), Anthony gives big, mega-corporations a playbook for learning to innovate at the low-end of the market, which is typically where all the disruptive innovation activity occurs. At the end of the chapter, he gives a list of 10-12 major, FORTUNE 500-style companies that have launched disruptive innovations -- including two of my personal favorite examples, Dayton Hudson (Target) and ING (ING Direct).

(4) As intelligence and innovation know-how becomes increasingly more distributed around the globe and on the Web, even large companies with massive R&D departments need to become more adept at tapping into the talent around them. In Chapter 6 ("Share the Innovation Load), Anthony maps out potential strategies for medium- and large companies to build distributed networks of innovation to help them become more innovation. Companies like Eli Lilly, Netflix and P&G are all leaders when it comes to bringing in new insights about innovation from external sources.

(5) Even in 2009, during the low point of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, there are innovative companies emerging in new areas. In Chapter 9 ("What's Next for Innovation"), Anthony catalogues some of the great, up-and-coming companies that are turning established business models upside down. Some of the companies are well-known even to casual readers (e.g. Skype, Facebook, Amazon Kindle), but some of the companies I had quite honestly not even been aware of -- like EnerNOC and QlikTech.

In a time of economic uncertainty, it's far too easy to give up on innovation and re-allocate budgetary resources elsewhere. However, as Scott Anthony argues, the constraints of the current period are exactly the right time to begin a program of disruptive innovation. If you're already familiar with the principles of disruptive innovation, The Silver Lining is a remarkably quick read (weighing in at only 180 pages) that can then later become a quick reference resource for launching a new corporate innovation program.

Niall Ferguson on the evolution of the financial services industry

Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money is a first-rate historical study of the growth of the modern financial system -- and a look ahead at what might happen now that banks like Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock and Bear Stearns literally went to the brink. In a step-by-step, chapter-by-chapter approach, he outlines how different foundations of the modern financial system - like the credit markets and the housing market - "evolved" over time in response to certain needs and conditions. In fact, Ferguson suggests that the entire modern history of the world can be viewed in purely financial terms.

For me, perhaps the most interesting part of The Ascent of Money was the Afterword, in which he lays out the fundamental features shared by any industry and a truly "evolutionary" system:

(1) Genes in the form of certain business practices that can be passed on to successive generations

(2) The potential for spontaneous mutation (i.e. innovation)

(3) Competition for scarce resources, leading to a survival of the fittest scenario

(4) A mechanism for natural selection (i.e. how the market allocates resources based on over- or under-performance)

(5) The potential for speciation, leading to new "species" of financial institutions

(6) The ever-present threat of extinction, as species die out altogether

If you'd rather not dig through (a best-selling) 350 pages of financial history, you can also watch a four-hour video series over at PBS. Or buy a DVD for $24.99... These days, Niall Ferguson is just about everywhere.

Malcolm Gladwell's new book: Outliers

Ever wondered why some people are successful and others are not? Malcolm Gladwell answers that question in his new book about the Outliers. The buzz about the book, as might be imagined, has already started to build to deafening levels ahead of the November 18 publishing date. Using examples from the world of business (Bill Gates) and popular culture (The Beatles), he isolates the reasons for their success. Success, it turns out, is often more circumstantial than based on personal merit.

His breakthrough book The Tipping Point is still on bestseller lists and for good reason -- Gladwell has a natural gift for taking data and observations and weaving them into a clear and easy-to-understand framework for people from all walks of life -- including movers and shakers in the world of business innovation. In the current issue of New York Magazine, Gladwell has a simple explanation for his own phenomenal pop culture success: "People are experience rich and theory poor. My role has been to give people ways of organizing experience."

Innovation and the Simple Life

As John Maeda points out in his bestselling book The Laws of Simplicity, companies can unlock a tremendous amount of innovation by embracing the principles of simplicity.  There are the obvious examples from Apple and Google, as well as numerous other examples from the likes of IKEA and Bang & Olufsen. Some of the most interesting examples, though, are only tangentially related to business. For example, the Japanese culinary tradition of omakase, in which master sushi chefs choose every element of the menu for guests (literally, "let the chef decide"), is a clever form of simplicity. The Laws of Simplicity is a deceptively breezy little book - Maeda intentionally limited the book to 100 pages in order to encourage as many people as possible to learn about the basic principles of simplicity. (Elsewhere in the book, Maeda laments the size of many instruction manuals for digital products that overwhelm the reader, so the size of the book is keeping with the theme of simplicity.)

Formerly at the MIT Media Lab, John Maeda is now at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. As a result, his thoughts and musings on simplicity have migrated from the popular Laws of Simplicity blog to a new RISD blog.

Danny Meyer: Setting the Table for Innovation

In his bestselling book Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, celebrity restaurateur Danny Meyer explains how he went from a struggling 27-year-old first-time restaurant owner to the leader of a true hospitality franchise: the Union Square Hospitality Group. Anyone who's ever visited New York has at least heard of Meyer's collection of restaurants - whether it's the flagship Union Square Cafe, the Gramercy Tavern, or the summertime cult favorite Shake Shack.

While Meyer's autobiographical book is a fascinating read for anyone who delights in celebrity chefs, famous restaurants and the  behind-the-scenes tales of the hospitality industry, one of the most interesting chapters ("Context, Context, Context") - from an innovation perspective - was all about choosing the right types of business initiatives to move forward with. As a celebrity restaurant owner, Meyer has been deluged with promotional and collaboration offers - some good, some bad. Through it all, though, he has relied on a set of 9 rules to keep him on the right path and avoid reckless over-expansion:

"I tend to view business opportunities  as chances to explore and learn, rather than as a license to expand the company without limits, at any cost. I'm not hell-bent on opening the greatest number of restaurants we are capable of operating. That would feel reckless and would make it nearly impossible for a company whose success is based on meaningful human interaction to retain its soul. I am not too interested in making deals just because we can make them. Since there will never be more than 24 hours in a day, the careful choices I make about how to spend that time determine the style with which my colleagues and I will spend it.

I have always believed that you can tell as much about a company by the deals it does not make as by those it does. Much of the success we have had has resulted from saying, "no, thank you," to opportunities that, while initially compelling, would not have been wise to pursue..."

Much of the same thinking goes into the pursuit of new innovation initiatives at any company, whether it's a high-tech giant like Google, a big industrial conglomerate like GE or a hospitality business group. The innovation projects that you reject ultimately have a greater impact on the company than the innovation projects you accept. By rejecting the wrong projects, you ensure that you have the resources and bandwidth to pursue the right projects.

The most innovative books of 2007

The 1-800-CEO-READ blog has become one of my favorite go-to destinations for learning about the best new business books. Yesterday, the blog posted a review of the Best Business Books of 2007, arranged by category:

"The day has finally arrived. After careful consideration, the winners have been determined for our first annual Business Book Awards. Nearly 300 titles were submitted which were then critiqued and reviewed by our editorial staff. A list of 13 titles make up the winners for each category as well as the Best Business Book of 2007."

The #1 Business Book of the Year was Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath, while the #1 innovation/creativity book of the year was Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.

[image: Made to Stick]

The Global Brain and networked innovation

A big hat tip to Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney, who have just released The Global Brain. The book provides a roadmap for innovating faster and smarter in a networked world. Here's a blurb from the book's website:

"To innovate more effectively, you must harness powerful new sources of creativity from both inside and outside your company. You know that ... but you also know that “one size fits all” approaches to network-centric innovation don’t work. The Global Brain helps you systematically identify and execute the right network-centric innovation strategy for your business.

Drawing on the experiences of the world’s most successful innovators, Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney show how to identify the specific roles your company should play in innovation networks, the specific capabilities it must create, and the specific steps it must take to prepare. You’ll find practical guidance on every facet of network-centric innovation, from identifying opportunities to implementing metrics, enhancing operations to overcoming “not invented here” cultures."

Anyway, the two B-school professors (Nambisan is a business strategy professor at RPI and Sawhney is a professor at Kellogg) tackle terms like “communities of creation,” “innovation networks,” “open market innovation” and “crowdsourcing” -- showing how they are all part of a bigger picture.

[image: The Global Brain]

Scott Berkun: The Myths of Innovation

If you're looking for a thought-provoking, concise guide to modern innovation, I would suggest checking out Scott Berkun's The Myths of Innovation. In each chapter, Berkun presents a commonly-held assumption about innovation (e.g. "the best ideas win," "innovation is always good") and then dissects this assumption step-by-step using a mix of business case studies, historical examples, and anecdotal evidence.  (In Chapter 4, there's even a quote from Niccolo Machiavelli on why introducing new innovations is so hard!) One of my favorite chapters in the book looks at the way that basic evolutionary theory can be used to understand the path of innovation. In retrospect, of course, history seems to be perfect. The reality is that the unique twists and turns of the past are often "frustrating, embarrassing, and uncertain."

You can find out more about the myths of innovation over at Scott's personal blog.