Innovating Innovation – a social dynamic perspective

The way forward is paradoxically to look not ahead, but to look around

hmmm, but didn’t you PARC guys mess up big time??

Learning from failure can be pretty efficient, and anyways we did change the world and made tons of money.

1 Adapting to Exponential Change

Fundamental dynamics driving change

Hyper exponential growth in the infrastructure computing ⊗ communication ⊗ storage

Moore’s law baadndwi dth l aw disk law

doubles ⊗ doubles ⊗ doubles every 18 every 12 every 12 months months months

Average Lifetime of S&P 500 Companies 500 P years on S& years

But why is this happening??

2 The Competency Trap!

to produce a product family

to see new patterns

time but what blocks one from seeing new patterns?

Why seeing new patterns is so hard

Wisdom : wisdom can stultify itiinnovation. The more experi ence you have the more you know why something can’t be done (or work).

Conceptual ruts:

3 A Story of a Competency Trap (and a conceptual lock-in) Glenalvon - 1880s

Clipper Ships

France ll

4 Preussen

Thomas W. Lawson

path dependency reigns supreme

5 Getting stuck in a mind set was devastating even back then. Think what this means in today’s hyper-competitive, ‘flat world’. The World is Flat

Tom Friedman

Keys to Survival in a Rapidly Evolving World

> Interpreting trends & shifting value propositions, …

> Being leery of “wisdom” – been there; tried that; didn’t work,… > learning to see and

Seeing? I see just fine, jsb

6 Seeing is harder than you might think since competency traps can give you tunnel vision. Let’s explore using basketball.

Hmmm, where the heck is jsb headed now?

7 Hey, jsb, you must have lot’s of examples of folks ‘not seeing ‘great innovations inside Xerox..

Yes, but ---

What did Arthur D. Little fail to ‘see’ that lead IBM to not buy the patent rights? 914 copier

So it’s real value lay in a social practice that didn’t yet exist.

8 So how did it ever get sold??

Well, it didn’t. It got ‘leased’ on a per page charge basis – complementary innovation.

“When it becomes social practice, it has taken an initial step on the Schumpeterian journey from invention to innovation, which, as Tuomi argues, "happens when social practice changes". This definition helps map the terrain on which innovation can occur, from changes in local practice within a community, to changes propagated along a network of practice, to‐‐the most challenging of all‐‐changes spread beyond the network to affect other practices. In this way, the sociilal context is bbhoth a determinant and a register of innovation.” Paul Duguid

9 Amazon’s Novel Innovation Model 2 pizza team rule Ajax + XML+ SOA Platform

Service Grid

The Emerging New Logic of Innovation

Closed Innovation Logic Open Innovation Logic The smart people in our field work for us Not all of the smart people in the world * work for us & our customers have ideas too * In order to bring new products and services External ideas, when integrated into your to the market, we must discover and architecture, can be as valuable as internal * * develop them ourselves ideas If we discover it ourselves, we will get it to We don’t have to originate (and own) the * market first. research, in order to profit from it. * The company who gets an innovation Building a better business model is better market first, will usually win. than getting to market first If you create the most, best ideas in the If you make the best use of internal and industr y, yo u will win external ideas , yo u will win We should control our IP, so that our We should sell our IP to those who can * competitors don’t profit from our ideas make good use of it, and we should buy IP whenever it fits with our own business * model.

Hank Chesbrough

10 Open Source

Sufficient• Web Server to build a complete technology stack. – Apache HTTP Server (primarily Java)• XML Processing – Search Engine – XSLT/XPATH • Directory Services • Apache Xalan, Saxonica (Michael – OpenLDAP Cassatt – Kaye’s XSLT processor) • Application Server – XML Parsing – J2EE • , Apache Crimson , • Jboss, (new Jdom 90% of ourproject), Enhydra code (from Lutris, nowbase is open source. a defunct business), Sun reference – XML Formatting implementation • Apache XML Formatting Object – Servlet Processor (FOP) for Java The rest• ,is Apacheour Jetty unique value add! • Web Services – XML Security – SOAP • Apache XML-Security: an • (partial SOAP 1.2 Bill Colemanimplementation of the - W3C CEO XML compliance) Digital Signature standards, and – UDDI implementations of the W3C XML • Novell UDDI v2 Server/LDAP Encryption standard are currently PS -the •onlClient (()v2yypy) cheaper way to builbeing developedd dy a system – IBM UDDI4J, Apache Juddi, Novell • Frameworks • Database – - web application – RDBMS - MySQL (dual license) than goingdevelopment to with XML India pipelines is to pay– XML -nothing Apache Xindice, Sleepycat for it. – Grid - Globus Toolkit, IBM GAF4J Berkley, eXist (alphaworks) • Desktop Applications – IBM BP4WS (support for BPEL, – OpenOffice (dual license) alphaworks) • Operating Systems • Integration – Linux (various) (Cassatt– JMS: – OpenJMS, Service ActiveMQ, Level Automation, server farms) JbossMQ

Red Lake Mine and Rob McEwen’s Goldcorp Challenge

11 > Mid 90s the 50 year old Red Lake mine was nearing its end of life but test drilling indicated there may still be deposits of gold but their precise location could not be determined … > Rob – CEO gets the idea from learning about Linux to put all its super secret data drilling data on the web, launching a $575,000 contest fhbfor the best suggestion as to wh ere to f ind th e richest veins of gold.

Top InnoCentive Solver Networks (broadcast search) Each challenge must be well defined with an answer that can be readily verified.

12 The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving* (broadcast search vs. local search) 166 discrete scientific problems from labs of 26 companies disclosed to 80,000 independent scientists from over 150 countries • approach solved one-third of the problems that large/well known R&D firms had been unsuccessful in solving internally. • successful solvers creaadted solutions on the boundary or outside of their field of expertise but that triggered ideas/techniques that they had used In their own specialty . *Karim Lakhani et al.

The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving* (broadcast search vs. local search) 166 discrete scientific problems from labs of 26 companies disclosed to 80,000 independent scientists fromSummary over 150 countries: • approach solved one-third of the problems that large/wellinnovation known R&D happens firms had been at the unsuccessful in solving internally. • intersectionsuccessful solvers creaad teofd solutions disci onp linesthe boundary or outside of their field of expertise but that triggered ideas/techniques that they had used In their own specialty . *Karim Lakhani et al.

13 Tapping the Insights of the Customer

Well, of course, but are there systematic ways of doing that?

Informative - (web based) Collaborative elicitation and ranking of ideas of participants, by participants in their own words

ranking idea history base db

adaptive, dynamic sampling

feedback 10 best presented to participant to ranking history db new ideas 5 best submitted by ranked by participant participant Lego.com

14 Lego Creatively Listens

Star Wars: The Imperial Star Destroyer

Cool use of genetic algorithms jsb, but not all customers ‘ beliefs and wants are equal?

15 But is innovation really so hard?

“The real difficulty in changing any entiterprise lies not in ddlieveloping new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.” John Maynard Keynes

And old mindsets

16 Ethernet idea deemed crazy – even at PARC

“innovation is tied to ppyersuasion as every level and every successful innovation depended on getting people to believe in things that had not been done before.”

Myths of Innovation – Scott. Berkun

17 The Great Challenge in Innovation changing someone’s mental model

brick wall

Innovation requires the art of persuasion and the science of mobilizing action

Deep Engagement

The unfinished video, for engaging , not telling :

Step 1: watching the video Step 2: story boarding

Video = 3 miniscenarios as intuition pumps

18 Framework for Grassroots Innovation

Social Network Resources Creative Projects (Stocks) Individual underpinning: Knowledge Innovation Leadership Combining/Brokering (or Entrepreneurship Social Skill tertius iungens) Activity Collective Action (Flows) Articulation Skill David Obstfeld

© 2007 David Obstfeld

Technologies of Imagination Bridging the gulf between humanists/artists & technologists

Increasi ng rol e of import ance of the Arts and Humanities for Innovation in 21st century – changing social practices in a highly connected worlfld often h as increased unexpected consequences

Anne Balsamo/David Goldberg HASTAC

19 A Paradigm Shift in innovation Innovation: the process of translating new ideas into tangible societal impact. Z. Holly expands USC’ s definition The 21st century is characterized by the collaborative, cross disciplinary innovation of many gifted people working in communities. In the industrial era, innovation was generally the product of individual genius. Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Thank You

Special thanks to: David Obstfeld Paul Duguid John Hagel Z. Holly

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