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The Innovative Leader: How to Inspire Your Team and Drive Creativity
May 27, 2009
Author: Paul Sloane
Date Published: 7/28/2007
Price: $12.21
Description: The Innovative Leader is written to address, in a practical way, the questions of innovation that managers face: How can managers transform employees from cubicle dwellers into innovation warriors? Where can the ideas come from to fuel the supply of innovation? How does one find the time and resources to try new ideas? Sloane stresses the competitive advantage of innovation and creativity in modern business. He shows how to apply methods of innovation and creativity to the individual, to business peers, and to the organization. Paul Sloane demonstrates the importance of setting out one’s vision clearly, and he emphasizes the need for continual evaluation of the process. Through numerous international examples he illustrates how organizations such as Virgin, Body Shop, Disney, and 3M have benefited from this approach, encouraging excellence and entrepreneurship through challenging goals that keep employees motivated and engaged.
In the Quest for Innovation, Are Customers an Obstacle?
May 22, 2009
The Web offers designers and innovators an unprecedented and powerful mechanism to test their ideas. They can mock something up, put it online, and get immediate feedback. The approach may be the ultimate experiment in letting users collectively design products. But experts say this crowd-sourcing approach has limitations and downsides. Read more
The Cycle of Innovation…
May 22, 2009
I am still amazed at the number of anecdotes about organizations looking for a “quick fix” to their business growth woes. I know I shouldn’t be surprised…you won’t believe the number of prospective clients I have that contact me looking for a “one-time shot” at getting something new out in the marketplace. Read more
Don’t Be Afraid to Start Innovation
May 22, 2009
Are you still talking about innovation, but not acting to make it happen? It is striking to look at the large number of companies in which the volume of chatter about being bold and innovative is in stark contrast to the deafening silence of their actual achievements in building innovation as a value driving core competence. Why is rhetoric-performance gap so large? Read more
Capitalizing On Innovation: The Case of Japan
May 22, 2009
Japan’s industrial landscape is characterized by hierarchical forms of industry organization, which are increasingly inadequate in modern sectors, where innovation relies on platforms and horizontal ecosystems of firms producing complementary products. Using three case studies—software, animation and mobile telephony—we illustrate two key sources of inefficiencies that this mismatch can create. Read more
Thinking Time = Better Innovation
May 22, 2009
When you work with innovation at a high level, you need time to think and reflect in order to be as good as you can be. Very few of us manage to do this in today’s hectic world, but with a few changes, you can probably free up one hour of time a week for high-value thinking. Once you try this, you’ll think it’s the greatest luxury of your week. Read more
Table Top Foamer
May 21, 2009
The foaming hand soap, which the Airspray Table Top Foamer creates, was hailed by one of the early users as ‘the greatest innovation in the soap market since the advent of liquid soap’. Read more
Open Innovation: Why mindset matters most
May 21, 2009
Author: Stefan Lindegaard
Date Published: May 2009
Many of you have brought up the subject of trust in our interactions on open innovation. I agree that trust is an essential component on open innovation. It also comes at many levels – internally as well as externally. Read more
Dyson Rollerball
May 21, 2009
Dyson says that its intriguing new sucker is the most manoeuvrable upright vacuum ever made. A ballsy claim…Dyson has revealed The Ball. This strange looking dirt-swallower rolls around on a big plastic ball, equipping the upright vacuum with some seriously slinky moves - it can whip round tight corners and snake through spaces with the mere flick of the wrist.
We’ve yet to test-drive The Ball, but considering that your average upright usually requires a ten-point-turn to change direction, Dyson’s new design definitely seems like a smart and far less strenuous solution to keeping your pad clean. It rolls into UK shops this month, costing 320 quid.
Terrafugia, The Flying Car
May 21, 2009
The start-up Terrafugia first popped up on our radar screens in early 2006 with a one-fifth scale model, $30,000 in prize money, and an urge to build a car that could fly. Or is that an airplane you can take on the highway? Some signs point strongly to the latter. Terrafugia describes its Transition vehicle as a “roadable aircraft” and is pitching it in part as giving private pilots an easy travel alternative when bad weather makes flying a bad idea, or simply to avoid having to take a separate car to the airport. Also, in the eyes of the Federal Aviation Administration, the vehicle falls into the light sport aircraft category.
On March 5, Terrafugia got to show that–whatever the eventual business prospects–the Transition can indeed fly. The maiden voyage (the duration wasn’t specified) took place at the Plattsburgh International Airport in New York, with a retired U.S. Air Force Reserve colonel in the pilot’s seat. The flight followed six months of static, road, and taxi testing.
As a car, the two-seat Transition is designed to be easy on garages and oncoming traffic–its wings fold up quite snugly. In folded mode, the approximately 19-foot-long vehicle is 80 inches wide, and 6 feet, 9 inches high. As an airplane, it stands a few inches shorter and has a wingspan of 27 feet, 6 inches.
The vehicle runs off unleaded fuel from your run-of-the-mill gas station for both terrestrial and aerial travel, cruising at highway speeds on land and better than 115 miles per hour in the air.
But Woburn, Mass.-based Terrafugia (Latin for “escape from land”) still has a long road ahead of it. The vehicle that flew earlier this month is still just a proof of concept, and a production prototype has yet to be built, tested, and certified. The company says it expects to make the first customer delivery of a Transition in 2011.
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