Archive for September, 2009

Here is another post by Sandra Ljung in Sweden:

When I think of the Nordic region, leading companies and brand names, something intriguing strikes me. Finland has Nokia and Marimekko. Sweden has Volvo, Eriksson, Astra/Zeneca and lots of design labels ranging from crystal-ware to fashion. Denmark has the transportation giant Maersk, Bang & Olufsen, pharmaceutical industries, and a colossal design industry in fashion, jewellry, furniture, and home-ware. And Norway has…..well, not much comes up actually, when I think about Norway and brands.

These countries all have similar climates, are located in the same part of the world, and have similar social and political structures. Yet, Norway seems to stand in stark contrast to its’ neighbors when it comes to the area of brandnames. It stands in contrast to Sweden, Denmark and Finland in another important aspect as well. Norway has oil. Since the oil revenues are carefully saved, Norway has no national debt. It is reputedly one of the most expensive countries in the world with Oslo regularly finding itself among the top five on the list of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. This is Norway’s fundamental economic difference from her neighbors, and the question is:  does all this matter when it comes to innovation?

The concept called “the curse of natural resources” is an economic theory coined by Jeffrey Sachs that states, counter-intuitive as it may sound, that countries well-endowed with natural resources tend to not develop as much and as fast as countries which lack them. According to the theory this is due to the fact that people have a tendency to rely entirely on the resources for income, and lose focus of everything else. In many cases the existence of natural resources leads to disputes over ownership between different groups of people within  the same country, and sometimes even civil wars, all of which not only further distract from trying to find alternative income sources, but also drains countries in very serious ways. Many examples of this can be found in Africa where fights over oil and diamonds are common. Hence, the theory says, what should really have been a blessing for the country may turn out to be a “curse”.

If this theory holds true, then maybe it plays a role in the case of Norway as well? Norway is a well-established democracy with functioning state  institutions, and there is a plan in place for saving oil revenues in order to carry the country over when the oil runs out. But, has innovation been affected negatively during this long period of relative economic prosperity and certainty? Because it is really the latter that somehow constitutes the core of the curse of natural resources. Knowing that a certain income level can almost certainly be sustained for a quite long period of time may be nice and cushy, but it doesn’t exactly promote the risk-taking that is needed to start new businesses, and to innovate in general. My guess is that the sense of urgency will kick in at a later date in Norway resulting in more innovation, but as we know from the “Medici Effect” innovation doesn’t always happen over-night. It can be years and years of trials and failures preceding any one innovation, so it seems as if aiming for economic diversification is always a good thing regardless of what the current economic situation looks like.

Can Apple disrupt Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo in the gaming market? Although not a single one of these companies would say that this is even a remote possibility it is still interesting to analyze their incentives from a disruptive perspective:

• Sony, for instance, has very little incentive to create games such as HarborMaster or Bejeweled 2. Although they are very popular on the iPhone they are way too simple for their core market – teenagers that can memorize 26 combinations for most creative kills. Instead we should expect Sony’s gaming consoles to gain ever more processing power making it possible to create ever more advanced games.
• Apple has every possible incentive to improve the iPhone and iPod to make better and better games for a wider and wider audience. This means that they should be able to pick up more and more customers left behind Sony and Microsoft. My dad, who is 71, got an iPhone a year ago. The last time he played a computer game was in 1986 when I tried to get him to play Defender of the Crown from Atari. Today he has well over 10 iPhone games that he has paid for (Chess and Flick Fishing most popular) and plays them all the time.
• And although Sony may try it – they still have little incentive to develop an outstanding phone with their PSP. People don’t buy it to use as a phone – they buy it to play games with. This may hurt their chances of getting vast, cheap bandwidth.
• iPhone users consume 10 times more bandwidth than any other phone, but AT&T is working hard to meet this demand and has every incentive to do so. So which device may be better placed for super-popular, destined to be eve more popular, online games such as Halo or World of Warcraft?

If Apple develops a large screen iPod Touch which has been rumored forever now, they have an instant ability to create even better games for an ever expanding market. The incentives in these markets certainly seem to suggest that Apple, right now, can and will grow their gaming market while Sony can and may want to cede their gaming market.

Classic disruption.

Sony’s best response to Apple would be to either compete with them head-on for this new, growing gaming market (maybe through SonyEricsson…but they have had a hard time coming up with a phone people want lately) or to use their assets to find another intersection entirely.

Amazing new imagery from the Hubble Telescope. it is now more ten times more sensitive and here are the first images from our giant eye in the sky. Go here to learn more: http://hubblesite.org/

The latest issue of Speaker Magazine has me as the cover story where I give some suggestions for how to innovate in general and for speakers in particular. I find the entire industry of speaking quite interesting – it is a world entirely unto its own with a set of rules and traditions that it takes some time to learn and then question.

Speaking is also something I love doing while also discovering that I am pretty darn good at it – always a fun combination! After having seen tons and tons of speakers from all over the world I believe that there are common mistakes people make in their presentations. Some have to do with the slides people use (assuming they use slides) and sites such as Presentation Zen are a good help for reminding people that slides should be simple, clean and balanced while also being unique and provocative. Some have to do with the failure to tailor to your audience (CEOs of Fortune 50 are different from front-line workers for those same companies). I have often found, however, that many people forget that points made during a presentation should also be delivered through punches, emotional rollercoasters, and surprises – even in small ways. People have asked me about this many times and I will share some ideas on this on my blog, but for now here is a quick example of this principle in a tiny way:

After a couple of minutes in a presentation I often want to make the point that all new ideas are combinations of existing ideas (a core notion of The Medici Effect). I also want give people a subtle sense of that these combinations are 1) surprising and 2) requires us to rethink our existing assets, processes, strategies and resources although I will make both points explicitly a few minutes later. So how to do that within 30 sec or less?

Well, one can just say it, but that would be boring. All theorems are better remembered if coupled to an example. You could show a slide of this happening. At this point I have been using slides (I will have covered some 50 slides in about 5-6 minutes, but that is another story) and even shown an example of unusual combinations, such as termites and architecture. So I would like to change the medium.

Here is how I do it: I will have a water bottle with me on stage, and maybe had a sip or two from it…but the cap of the bottle is on in either case. So I now take the bottle, remove the cap and tell people that the screwcap is one idea. That already is surprising because the audience is not thinking of the bottle as a prop for a presentation. It immediately sends the message that you can find insight in unexpected places – and I do not have to mention this at all. I then pull out a light bulb from my pocket telling people this is another idea. By combining them: screwcap + lightbulb Edison found a way to attach his invention – an innovation that has lasted for a long time. I use the water bottle for the rest of the presentation to drink form and many people have told me that every time a take a sip – it sends a small message of using stuff around you in new and unexpected ways.

Lately I have innovated by developing The Medici Experience, which is a combination of a live performance and a transformational workshop. I just did one yesterday for a major, global client. It is an all-day event where the emphasis is to push the creation and execution of new ideas through the diversity of everyone present while also providing strategic frameworks and inspiration. The thing that I love about it is that it scales – it can be done for hundreds, potentially even thousands of people. It took quite some time to figure out how to crack that, but it seems to be going beautiful now. These Medici Experiences been very, very successful as I believe organizations, perhaps more than ever, want and need clear outcomes from their internal events. I am obviously also doing these types of events publicly (the next one is in San Jose next week – go to it if you can!)

Next week we are having The Medici Experience in San Jose, CA. It is on September 24^th, and you can find the details here.  I am really, really excited about this project because it is fundamentally a way for us to create change on a larger scale – to help cities and regions grow. Grow ideas, opportunities and jobs. It is terrific that the city of San Jose will host the event and can see the need for innovation in driving growth.

The idea for The Medici Experience came out of my strong desire to avoid just having a whole lot of talks with panels and keynotes while the audience sits still and does little. Instead I am imagining bringing 100s (even thousands as we scale) of people together from different backgrounds and disciplines within a region and have them work together to unleash an explosion of transformational ideas related to their day-to-day efforts, and then move as far along as possible towards making the best ideas happen. All in one intense, fast and furious day.  Everywhere I’ve done this it’s been extremely successful – whether within corporations or for the public such as our event in Trinidad earlier this summer.

Anyway – hope you can join us! We are doing this for the city of San Jose and so the fee is a very reasonable $195 to get a chance to interact with others looking to innovate and a chance to hear me present some of the fundamental aspects of Medici Effect theory.

See below for some indication of the energy that will follow!