Quoting Chuck “At this time of year, many people often reflect on the past year, including their successes, failures and lessons learned. Here’s an opportunity to share what you’ve learned, and gain new insights from the experiences of other InnovationTools readers. Please respond to this question: What is the most important lesson you learned regarding innovation, creativity or brainstorming during 2006?”
Best Innovation and Design Books for 2006
The end of the year is approaching and the “Best of 2006” lists start popping out. One good list that you will probably want to check out is the “Best Innovation and Design Books for 2006” which was compiled by the people over Business Week. The list included:
Does Innovation imply Success?
Sometime ago I was reading through an MIT book about innovation and one of the definitions for innovation on the book was: “the successful exploitation of ideas”. While this definition could be true to a certain extent, I think that most people wrongly associate innovation with success.
How to succeed in 2007
The Business 2.0 magazine has a very interesting story on the cover of the December edition: “How to Succeed in 2007”. They basically asked advice to business leaders, CEOs, nobel prizes and other people regarding how to succeed on the coming year. Here are some of the topics covered and some of my favorite respondants.
Users, Purchasers and Influencers
Most organizations identify their customers as one single entity. If a certain company is producing miniatures of racing cars its customer is going to be boys aged between 3 and 12 years right? Well, it is right, but only to a certain extent. Those young boys are certainly the “users” of the product, but they are not the only people involved in the buying process. Apart from the “users” you will also have the “purchasers”, who in this case will probably be the parents and the “influencers” who could be the close friends or family.
November Roundup
Below you will find the 4 most visited posts of November, check them out if you missed any.
Innovation and Baseball
Clayton Christensen just published an interesting article over Forbes magazine titled “An Innovation Home Run”. According to Christensen the major innovation is coming from the deeper connection that clubs are building with their core baseball consumers.
The Art of War is dead?
Since the beginning of the business administration science its theories were entangled with war analogies. One of the most mentioned books of the past decades, in fact, was The Art of War, written more than 2000 years ago by the Chinese general Sun Tzu.
The Invention of the Braille System
The Braille system was developed in 1829 by Loius Braille and it was adopted officially in France in 1854. The system is based on embossed dots, and each Braille character, also called a cell, is composed of 3 columns of 2 dots.
Wal-Mart disrupting pharmacies
Wal-Mart recently started selling generic prescription drugs over its stores for $4. It is already covering 38 states throughout the United States and its portfolio includes more than 300 prescription drugs. The question that arises is: does this move from the giant retailer represent a disruptive innovation to traditional pharmacies?