HowardWright.com

Travels - May/June 2009

For the next seven weeks I have embarked in a road trip across the US and will probably not be posting much on this site but will be recording the journey on my travel blog www.travelwrightblog.com as well as tweeting as wrighth1.

World Innovation Forum - musings from the two day event

Thoughts following the World Innovation Conference in New York May 5^th and 6^th

This has been an interesting conference for me in many ways – from the point of live blogging the event as well as being a participant.

A bloggers perspective

On the first point as blogger at the conference, it was interesting that the balance of bloggers vs. twitteres has changed since I live blogged the last conference at TED in February this year. I think there were less than 2 or 3 people blogging at the event and probably 20 – 30 people tweeting in the bloggers hub - as well as people in the audience. There was a real passion about the twitterers that I have not seen for a while; they are evangelistic about the technology and very passionate about their twitter client. This could just have been that more twitterers had been invited or that blogging is loosing a bit of it cache. To be fair most of the twitterers were going to go back and blog about the conference but the spontaneity and instant response to the tweets seem to engage those at the conference.

I still have to admit that I don’t fully understand the benefit of twittering and that could be my age I guess or that I need to get into it a bit more. I am going to try it out over the next seven weeks as I journey across the US on my Roadtrip (twitter name: wrighth1). I seem to have produced a large amount of narrative over the two days and I hope that people will find it useful – at least one publication has picked it up and wants to collaborate on a setries of articles so we will see where that goes. As I was parallel blogging on the my own blog (www.howardwright.com) and the PBConnect blog (www.pbconnect.com/blog) it has been interesting to see how many people have been visiting my site which has averaged 300 – 400 visits per day over the two days – 8 times the normal site traffic.

From the bloggers hub we had a good view of the audience and could gauge how engaged they were with the speaker by the number of phone screens lit up – I think Clayton Christensen had the least phone screens and C.K. Palahad had the most.

Participants view

As for the conference itself – have I learnt anything new? Well not really – many of the presentations I have seen and/or heard before.

I have, however, gained an appreciation of the whole – by putting this group of speakers together, I have probably gained an understanding and appreciation of the how the academic community is viewing Innovation. As with much academic work it was mostly backward looking and citing examples from today - what I didn’t get really was an appreciation of how things are going to change over the next 3 – 5 years in innovation which was, for me disappointing – maybe I expected too much!

The idea of the ‘One thing’ that will change the world was an interesting topic for the conference and I would have expected the speakers to give me their one thing or at least the moderators to pull the one thing out. Unfortunately this didn’t happen and I guess much of what we saw was generic material and not produced specifically for the conference.

Anyway, here are my ‘one things’ that I got from the speakers I saw:

• ·      Paul Saffo: Don’t fear change
• ·      C. K. Prahalad: Seek new practice not best practice
• ·      Vijay Govindarajan: Manage for today but make sure you have initiatives for the future
• ·      Clayton Christensen: Don’t ignore the companies at the bottom of the food chain.
• ·      Dan Ariely: People are prepared to cheat as long as it does not affect their moral view of themselves.

Overall the conference was interesting and I was privaledged to have met some fellow bloggers and tweeters who shared common interests. Fortunatley I was blogging on behalf of Pitney Bowes and therefore didn’t have to pay hard cash to go to the event, I think if I had had to pay real money I would have been disappointed in that there was nothing really knew and no great examples of Innovation.

Over the next few weeks I will be traveling on a Roadtrip across the US – blogging and tweeting as I go and this will give me time to ponder further what I have heard and maybe get some insight into the future of Innovation.

Follow my travels on my blog (www.travelwrightblog.com) or by following my tweets at wrighth1.

 

World Innovation Forum - Day Two last session, 6th of May

Check out www.pbconnect.com/blog for live blogging and tweeting from this event. To get a full list of Tweets from the blog search for #WIF09 on Twitter.com

Dan Ariely - Professor of Behavioral Economics and a Harvard Professor. Behavioral Economics the market crash was a good sign of unpredictability.  He started in the behavioral economics whilst in hospital after being injured in an explosion = 70% burns. His nurses used to rip the bandages off rather than take them off slowly - the nurses know that they word right and the patient wasn't allowed to argue. He decided to research pain and he went out and bought a carpenters vice and experimented on students putting fingers in the vice etc.

What he learnt was that the nurses were wrong in many ways. They learnt that it is better to start with high levels of pain and finish on low pain - the nurses had it wrong by starting at the feet and starting at the head - finishing with high levels of pain. Why did the nurses get it so long?

World Innovation Forum - Day Two, 6th of May - Fred Krupp

Check out www.pbconnect.com/blog for live blogging and tweeting from this event. To get a full list of Tweets from the blog search for #WIF09 on Twitter.com

I attended a lunch on Wednesday lunchtime sponsored by Imaginatik who presented their approach to idea management and solution generation. The company offers a software solution that many companies use including Pitney Bowes who have implemented an Idea capture capability internally called IdeaNet. THree customers of imaginatik provided stories about how they are using the companies software to generate and capture ideas. The lunch was at Sardie's on 44th street - an interesting venue although pretty uninteresting food :(-

Unfortunately I missed some of the early afternoon session as I had a meeting to attend so I am coming in part way through. Following a presentation around alternative fuels and energy there is a Q&A session with Fred Krupp from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) moderated by GE.

• Why did the presenter write his book?: We all need to know what is happening around alternative energy and global warming. We are going to save ourselves from ourselves we are not going to site around and wait to see what happens
• Two chapters in the book are on Solar why dedicate this so much?: We have so much sunlight and if we had a solar plant 100 square miles in Mexico we could power the whole US. We are getting much more efficient at capturing the sunlight.
• Should Government invest in Solar?: Clayton was skeptical about carbon sequestration and solar - citizens are demanding that governments act but something will happen because it has to. The Government invited all the democrats to the white house and told them that he wants this legislation to happen before healthcare. 
• What about regulation?: It should be regulation without too much control allowing companies to innovate within a framework  
• Should we be investing in solar and other technologies in Afghanistan and Iraq which don't have a grid infrastructure? Yes that is a great idea - the US can regain its dominance in this area if it decides to invest in these new technologies. At the moment Western Europe is far ahead of the US at the moment. 

World Innovation Forum - Day Two/Session 3 - 6th of May

Check out www.pbconnect.com/blog for live blogging and tweeting from this event. To get a full list of Tweets from the blog search for #WIF09 on Twitter.com

Clayton Christensen continues his discussion by talking about how his theories are impacting Healthcare and  Education.

With technology these is a tendency to centralize the industry - historically this was what what happened in computing. Over time this decentralized and computing moved out to the periphery - the desktop put the computer on the desk and home, the laptop in the briefcase and the handheld in our pockets.

In the healthcare industry there has been over times a trend towards a centralization of the problem - rather than the doctor going to the problem the problem has to come to the centralized facility - MRI, CAT scan etc. When hospitals compete against each other they have to expand and offer everything - as soon as one hospital has an MRI centre everyone has to have one. the latest being the DaVinci robotic surgeon. All this drives costs up.

World Innovation Forum - Day Two/Session 2 - 6th of May

Check out www.pbconnect.com/blog for live blogging and tweeting from this event. To get a full list of Tweets from the blog search for #WIF09 on Twitter.com

Session two commences with Clayton Christensen talking about the applicability of the first session on the healthcare and education landscape.

TwoTHreeandMe is a company that is aiming to democratize genomics - enabling everyone having information about their genome. They have hosted Spit Parties to gather samples for analysis - including in fashion week in New York. They have started building communities including the  latest which is in Parkinson disease - in a few weeks they have had over 3,000 people sign up. Normally this level of participation takes years to garner. Using this approach there can be long term engagement with people and therefore follow the progress of disease etc.

World Innovation Forum - Day Two/Session 1 - 6th of May

Check out www.pbconnect.com/blog for live blogging and tweeting from this event. To get a full list of Tweets from the blog search for #WIF09 on Twitter.com

Day two of the event sees slightly better weather in New York and a buzz in the Blogging gallery with people swapping stories and responses from the blogosphere and twittersphere. It all seems very positive and people are engaging in dialogues from across the world.

The first speaker of the day is Clayton Christensen who is Roberts and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the harvard Business School. His research and teaching interests center on management issues relating to the development and commercialization of technology and business model innovation.

Clayton coined the phrase Disruptive Innovation in 1987 and is currently focussing his interest on healthcare and education. Hi topic today is Creating and Sustaining Profitable Growth he started out creating a successful company and at 40 he became a doctoral student bringing with him his experience from the business world.

Observations from Day 1 at the World Innovation Forum.

Day one of the event was very well attended and the audience was clearly engaged in the topic although their level of engagement depended on the speakers’ content and delivery as usual. One of the interesting observations from the bloggers balcony was to assess how many people were using their phones when a speaker was on stage with the auditorium being dark it was easy to see how many blackberries and iphone screens were lit up – the more engaging the speaker the less phones!

The mix of speakers and case studies was an interesting although the case studies, although of interest, were not as compelling as the speakers. From my conversations with attendees, there was a feeling that the case studies could have been covered in other ways and a further practitioner speaker found. Most of the speakers over the two days are from the academic community and have a theoretical model to push and it is always refreshing to hear from a true practitioner – something we do not seem to be doing.

The topic of the day was ‘One Thing’ – so what one thing did I take from each for the speakers:

Paul Saffo – don’t fear change

C.K Prahalad – do next practice not best practice

Vijay Gavingarajan – plan for the future and don’t emulate the competition

World Innovation Forum - Day One/Session 3 - 5th of May

Vijay Govindarajan from  is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School and founding director of Tuck's Center for Global Leadership. He is also the faculty co-director for Global Leadership 2020, Tuck's executive education program that focuses on global management and is taught on three continents. 

His presentation topic is Ten Rules for Strategic Innovation. He stated that after 30 minutes into a presentation at 4 pm in the evening you will loose 75% of the audience, after an hour you will loose 100%!

• Box 1 - Manage the present - competition for the present - this is not strategy
• Box 2 - Selectively forget the past - competition for the future - this is strategy
• Box 3 - Create the future - competition for the future - this is strategy

How do you create the future while managing the present. You need to have products/initiatives in box 1 but also in box 2 and box 3 as welll with products and services for 2030. Quality improvement, workout etc, are all box 1 initiatives.

World Innovation Forum - Day One Case Studies - 5th of May

Check out www.pbconnect.com/blog for live blogging and tweeting from this event. To get a full list of Tweets from the blog search for #WIF09 on Twitter.com

Lunch was at John's Pizza on 44th Street for the bloggers and was sponsored by Pitney Bowes.

Innovation in Action segment

The afternoon starts with a series of case studies from Camp Bizsmart, The Drummers Led and GlaxoSmithClyne. 

Michael Gibbs from Camp Bizsmart which is a summer program for teens in the US. The camp teaches the kids to think about and solve problems. One of the students had the idea to get kids to raise money - although they don't have money themselves they know people who have. She set up a website called skipabirthday.com which encourages kids to forgoe their birthday gift and give it to charity instead.

In the US there are 6000 drop-outs a day from education in the US. The kids decided that it was probably that school was boring so they decided to design a new school and this is going to be built in Silicon Valley called Biztech High.

Camp Bizsmart works with large companies to get funding and support for the program. One of the key supporters has been Cisco and their CTO, Padmasree Warrior,  moderated a discussion with a group of kids from Camp Bizsmart. THe millennial generation bring new perspective on Innovation - they are happy to collaborate, share information and knowledge. The broad structural changes in the technology industry will create permanent changes in society and industry.

What role does innovation play in this new world. 21st Century Innovation is a move from a command and control management model to a organization form which is much more structured around 'Councils and Boards' and increasingly relies on tight collaboration.