Category: The innovation blog

Don’t copy, just be inspired

Nielsen’s warnings should not stop you learning from what other companies are doing online. The Chicago large format printer Benchmark Imaging and Display has a simple page on its site called The Idea Gallery (http://www.benchmarkimaging.com/Gallery/index.php?option=com_joomgallery&func=viewcategory&catid=1&Itemid=61 ) which does pretty much what the name suggests. The work is simply presented, the notes accompanying each idea/application are succinct and relevant, and the cumulative effect is pretty impressive.

Computer says “What?”

The collision of two powerful forces could stifle business innovation in the 21st century: new fangled computers and old fashioned bosses. That is the fear expressed by Andrew McAfee, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (http://andrewmcafee.org/ ). While new technology gives companies the potential to create a collaborative, networked business – a model that some have labelled Enterprise 2.0 – most bosses, McAfee insists, aren’t interested: “They say let’s not have a networked enterprise, let’s have a row-and-column enterprise, let’s have a grid enterprise, where people are sitting at their work stations everyday, with their heads down, getting work done every day, all day, not really forming communities and having voices, but just cranking out work.”

Innovation in their DNAMcAfee’s point is underlined by an interview once given by James Watson who, with Francis Crick, discovered the double helix structure of DNA. Asked how they had succeeded where others had failed, Watson...

The positives of negative thinkingWhat went wrong? It’s a question often asked after a project has failed and usually provides few satisfactory answers. But what if, as Richard Lawler of the Dublin-based consultancy...

Tree of a kindThe world might have gone crazy over family trees but do you have a strategy tree? Sounds corny but it worked for McDonalds. At its simplest the tree starts with a question that defines your root purpose: why do...