Inspiration, anyone?

Remember the movieclip of the advertiser and the consumer, sitting in a restaurant and talking about their relationship? The makers of the commercial 'Bring the love back - The Break Up' won already four awards for this creative, inspiring, but most of all funny movie. Right now their second movie is presented on the Internet. He is still an advertiser, she is no longer a consumer. Does he have a plan? And will she buy it? I would invite you all to see this 'Inspiration, anyone?'.

Inspiration, anyone?
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Bringtheloveback.com

Innovation for Hard Times

On businessweek.com i just read the text beneath. To make sure that i will not invalidate or take the edge of the text i shamelesly copied it. I want to stimulate you to read the rest of the text on Businessweek.com

The article is written by John Hagel and John Seely Brown. They are co-chairman and independent co-chairman, respectively, of Deloitte LLP's Center for Edge Innovation. John Hagel writes a blog at Edge Perspectives. Their monthly column, Innovation on the Edge, explores what executives can learn from innovation emerging on various forms of edges, including the edges of institutions, markets, geographies and generations.

(I added the link of his blog in our blogroll)

The intro of the article:

Innovation for Hard Times

"Cutting staff or programs while demanding more of your workers will yield diminishing returns. Executives should seek leverage to create economic value

By John Hagel and John Seely Brown

Everyone is familiar with financial leverage. It is a powerful way to improve performance when times are good. The danger, of course, is that financial leverage magnifies the impact of downturns in demand as well. It can literally kill a company, as we are witnessing in the financial-services industry.

But there are other forms of leverage. And executives should be searching for them in order to navigate the current crisis and allow firms to continue to create economic value, rather than becoming a victim of the destruction in value unfolding around us."

...

Effectively harnessing capability and learning leverage requires another form of innovation—institutional innovation. Companies will have to redefine governance structures as well as the roles and relationships required to effectively mobilize and coordinate activities of large numbers of firms. There's significant complexity in trying to scale the number of participants in networks and conventional rules might not apply.

This institutional innovation should be pursued in rapid increments. Rather than reimagining from the ground up a fundamentally different way of organizing activities across thousands of participants, companies need to find pragmatic ways to move from where they are today in ways that generate near-term financial returns. The well-known case of Procter & Gamble's (PG) "Connect and Develop" program illustrates some of the opportunities that can be reaped by building broader networks to source promising product ideas. Nearly 50% of P&G's products today have benefited from some form of external collaboration. Other companies might follow this example to position themselves to pursue even more powerful forms of capability and learning leverage, especially once the economy recovers.

Business model innovation

With great pleasure i read the blog of Bas van Oosterhout (basvanoosterhout.com). Earlier this year he presented his thoughts about business model 2.0; manage your value chain. I found this particulary interesting because Bas is a consultant at capgemini and i was very pleased to read that they adopt these kind of thoughts which are closely related to imagineering.

Hereby, the presentation he made about this topic.

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Google.org; searching for solutions

Companies nowadays include the wellbeing of the (global) environment in their objectives to spread positivism around their brand(s). Today i read an article about how Google (via google.org) tries to prevent people from getting the flu by letting them know when the risk of being 'infected' is the highest. They are actually not measuring how much people have the flu, but they make conclusions based on the searches that have been done on topics related to the flu and the outcomes are strikingly accurate.

This flu-initiative is one of the outcomes within their overall 'global challenge' aspirations via five major initiaves which are mentioned in the text below.

They state:

Google.org aspires to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease. In collaboration with experienced partners working in each of these fields, we will invest our resources and tap the strengths of Google’s employees and global operations to advance five major initiatives: Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal, RechargeIT, Predict and Prevent, Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services, and Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.

You should definetely take a look at their website if you want to learn/know more about it, because they have a lot of initiatives that can boost the wellbeing of the earth (people as well as the environment)

The American Human

This is not a rant or rave about the shortcomings or greatness of the United States. It is actually a post made because I have found some interesting things on the country and it's position in the modern era and I would like to "spread the wealth around" (little campaign humor) with you all.

I will present you with contrasting views on different subjects and leave things free for interpretation:

First, I would like to present to you a magazine: Adbusters. Written with a, sometimes nauseating, pessimistic editorial line, it likes to critique modern western (mainly American) culture, sub-culture and counter-culture.

The first article has been much talked about and is quite interesting. I highly recommend reading the comments as well.

Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html


Other interesting articles are:

America’s Slippery Slope
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/78/america_slippery_slope.html

and

Quit Facebook
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/80/quit_facebook.html

I recommend you surf around and I'm sure you will find interesting things, you may not necessarily agree on, but will give you a different perspective on a couple of things.


_____________

In contrast, I would like to leave you with a couple of articles about the election that recently took place. Find the links to imagineering, you will undoubtedly see obvious cross-over themes.

What Have We Created?!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/165658

How He Did It
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167582

An excerpt from an article:

Obama’s Third Way
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167607/page/1

"If he truly wants to mold the future, Obama will have to demonstrate similar leadership. His favorite thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote in 1841 that "the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation ... have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made … Innovation is the salient energy, Conservatism the pause on the last moment." To create a new governing majority, Obama must now embody the idea of innovation."


And finally the video of the speech, a great speech, where the tone themes of co-creation, dialogue, innovation, the view of others not as competition or rivals, a great purpose, "big hairy audacious goals", etc. are played in to really connect and get people behind you.