Thanks Naif
These two videos have Pranav Mistry explaining how the Sixth Sense Came to be at TED India.
What do you think?
From Harvard Business Review Blog
Do your Knowledge Workers have a Bitsmith?
This post presents a wonderful concept that points out the need for specialized tools for the knowledge era. That of a “Bitsmith”. Bitsmiths, according to the post ” are people who have deep knowledge of both the work content and the tools used to support the work. In other words, they are almost as expert in derivatives or computer design as they are in computer-programming languages. Because they understand both the domain and the tools, bitsmiths can take an idea from concept to implementation quickly .”
The article makes the case that high performance teams need to have a “bitsmith” just as many towns in the “old west” had blacksmiths to create the tolls they needed.
What do you think of this concept?
From Managing Automation Blog — Chris Chiappinelli
This blog post plus video sums up the business challenges and requirements of the design-build (Continuous Product Development) business for industrial automation well. http://www.enhancedautomation.com
A focus on the customer requires a focus on quality, cost, specification and reality; often many of these concepts clash.
Are there other challenges?
Thanks Peter for the article suggestion
From Detroit News
FORD Product Idea Website Article
From the website “Ford Motor Co. is creating a “idea portal” on its Web site, to give consumers the opportunity to suggest new features, allow others to critique them and vote for which ones should be considered by Ford’s product development team.”
Seems like a great idea.
Article on FORD Site About Idea Gathering
What do you think? Should they allow ALL comments to be seen by everyone?
From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100413/AUTO01/4130330/1148/Ford-to-harvest-product-ideas-from-Web#ixzz0m9T8mjH4
Thanks Shawn.
From Wired
API explained with examples.
Geeks to Music Industry: APIs Can Set You Free
From the article ” Behind every mashup of two or more online services, there’s an API. That’s short for application programming interface, a set of commands that lets programmers write new code that controls an existing piece of software. Many APIs are proprietary, but the net is full of open APIs that let anyone, say, play a YouTube video on their own web page or overlay bike routes on a Google map”
When will you suggest that your company build an API?
Now that I have your attention, Hugh shared this video.
Or, you can pull the plug or switch off the Power Strip.
Are you helping save the planet and your hard earned $?
A recent HBSP blog post “What Baseball Can Teach Us about Innovation” teaches us that statistics, and the use of widespread use and availability of statistics help baseball improve. The posting suggests that statistics can help innovation efforts. From the blog “Companies should create an internal encyclopedia in which they highlight the year they started work on each innovation, what type it was, how projections about its market potential changed through time, its key characteristics, and its ultimate performance. The encyclopedia would facilitate statistical analysis to help the company increase its success rate.”
What do you think, can better categorization and measurements of innovation efforts help us be more innovative?
I have been reading more about the “networked” body and decided to add some of the articles to this blog. I find it very interesting as it applies to “pervasive computing” , ”mobile computing”, “wireless computing” etc. that we are seeing an ever increasing array of products that work with our bodies. The article “Test Driving the Networked Body” talks about the device as well as the service that augments the accelerometer for fitness measurements and the program to improve fitness. From the article, ” The 3-D accelerometer has transformed mobile gaming (hello, iPhone), console gaming (thanks, Wii!), and now…fitness? The tech that accurately measures your movements has birthed a new generation of health monitors that track your daily activity and present it through a data-rich Web site. The big question: Can all that data be translated into a healthier lifestyle?”.
Do you think you will try something like this? Will we all have devices prescribed by our doctors? What do you think about just about “everything” being trackable?
I learned about this new book from an article and short video on the INSEAD KNOWLEDGE website.
The article is “The Innovation Manual“ and we can see from the perspective of a marketing professor a number of key points, many of which we have discussed in our classes, but it serves as a great reminder about the “basics” .
David Midgley, the author of the book, uses the example of the Apple iPod and the business model it created. Once again, we see this model coming out as a key to success. Further, the role of customers in product/service innovation and development. We also read about the importance of an innovation culture and the challenges of maintaining a culture of innovation. The book promises to tell us all about it.
What do you think of the reminders here? What should be emphasized more? Less?
Ok, so I am not teaching a marketing class at the current time, I still think that a reminder once in a while about the importance of brand and brand building is a good thing.
Branding is a consideration in New Product Management, often might even be a criteria in new concept screening.
The article “Five Letter words is key to Marketing Success” is what prompted my thoughts of branding.
So, how important is brand? How much should it (brand fit, brand extension)be a part of new product concept criteria?
Check out this concept phone “Nokia Concept Smartphone” . First thing, can these phones be designed to be more user friendly? How? What do they need? What do you think of the concept?
What else should you be able to do with your constant companion that it does not already do?
In the innovation game, competition can be brutal or wonderful depending on what side you are on. We have commented in class and within this blog a bit about the Kindle, we have also looked at the Plastic Logic E-Reader in 2008 within this blog.
Now we have aFast Company blog article that describes the Plastic Logic E-Reader as a Barnes and Noble product which directly challenges both Sony and Kindle. The 3 minute video describes and shows some of the cool features.
What do you think? Do you think the market benefits? How, why? or why not?
A FAST COMPANY blog article says that, based on patent filings we may be seeing contextual ads in the Amazon Kindle. Ads on the Kindle From the article “What the patents set out is that downloaded text content for the Kindle could be spotted with contextually-sensitive advertisements: Mention of a restaurant on a particular page could result in a dynamic-embed for a nearby restaurant to the user on the opposing page.”.
What do you think? Would you like (accept) this? Is this just the “way things are” and Amazon is just at the forefront?
Also from the post ”But it’s the possible extension of this idea to book texts that gets uncomfortable. Would you be happy reading a copy of The Hobbit, only to find an embedded ad for pedicure treatments on certain pages? The framework for this to happen isn’t clear from the patent, though it would be reasonable to expect Amazon to start by offering the ads in books with discounted prices”.
So would you accept the ads if you got the book at a discount? Does that change anything?
When creating our technology strategy, we need a full understanding of our business strategy and the market (economy), we must consider purchasing other firms or platforms as part of that strategy. The following linked article on FORBES.com describes some of the thought process.
Is this a good idea for ORACLE? For anyone else? GOOGLE Perhaps? What are the Lessons Learned from this article on creating technology strategy?
Ok, so we had some fun with the Microsoft Surface Parody.
I recently read a FAST COMPANY article online , with a series of short videos on apps for the Microsoft Surface.
What do you think? Innovative? Will these apps help diffuse the technology?
Fast Company, one of my favorite magazines has just published on one of its numerous cool blogs an article entitled “Six Ways to Avoid Landing in the Product Failure Bin“. There are some very good ideas about things to avoid when developing and researching new product opportunities.
Some of which are: “Don’t have a casual relationship with the truth”, another “Side effects can kill repurchase”. I think I have experienced most of these somewhere along the way.
What do you think of his advice?
Personally I think that RSS is one of the most under used, cool technologies of the internet age. Notice I did not say new because it has been around for quite a while. In fact, many people are already using the technology when they get news updates, weather updates, or just about any other notification through digital means.
HP has published an article that explains this technology/capability very nicely. In “The Skinny on RSS Feeds “ we learn about RSS Readers and other capabilities. (I have set up iGOOGLE with an RSS Tab). From the article “RSS isn’t just for articles. Pretty much any information source that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: recent additions to blogs, details of special discounts, or alerts as to when new web content is available”. This concept is the aspect of RSS we need to think about. I believe, when used as part of a knowledge management system, especially as part of a new products management process we can develop tremendous competitive advantage. Just my opinion.
What do you think? How do you use RSS?
In Businessweek’s article “Is Innovation Too Costly in Hard Times?” they talk about the priorities of R&D and innovation. This article is the context of their rankings of the “Most Innovative Companies” (Slide Show) Companies such as Apple, Google, Toyota, Microsoft etc.
What do you think? Are the “hard times” the time to get innovative and invest in R&D and New Product Development?
Baseline Magazine has published a list of “must reads” for information technology managers.
The list includes books on the subjects of “ Books on enterprise transformation, IT metrics, product development, careers and performance management.”
What do you think the most important subject will be and why? From this list or not.
A blog post at Harvard ”The Real Story of the Electric Vehicle” talks about the importance of the development of components such as batteries etc.. Perhaps the real value is not in the development of the systems but in the development of components and their protocol (the definition of the value and benefits they deliver) becomes the key to great products, or perhaps it always has been. Nonetheless, it does have us question where we add value.
Is the key to an electric vehicle the components? Is our “green” future dependent upon parts of the value chain? Or, is it about both components and system integration? Is a manufacturer’s role changing? Should assembly be in the hands (and minds) of the components, integrators, assemblers?
What do you think?
