Problem with the language? Well, the pictures speak by themselves. The main idea is that the bus and the rest of the traffic share the same lane. The cars drives under the bus!
There are many blog tools out there. The most powerful blog tool is WordPress without competition. That is what we are using here! You can use it to build blog and web pages of all sorts and with the help of thousands of themes and plugins you can get the most amazing designs and functions. The tool WordPress itself is for free and so are most of the themes and plugins as well. if you want to use a free host for your blog you can use WordPress.com. Free is alright, but this is not the most important feature. There are many great free software such as Gmail, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Flickr, Google Search etc. It is of course great to have free access to all this but now we are talking about something more than free.
Here comes the really amazing part.
The most amazing feature with WordPress is that it is Open Source. Several programmers have contributed with their time and code for free. Many users have downloaded test versions, tried them out and gave their feed back to the development team.
A big crowd have participated to develop and test WordPress. By that they produced the most advanced blog tool available and it is for free! Most of us did not contribute anything here, we are just using it and it is also ok! The people behind WordPress think it is absolutely ok to use it without commitments to participate. They know that if one million people download the WordPress source, at least some of them will participate to make it even better. This is the real strength of Internet, we can share knowledge and opinions and be part of the "crowd" and the passion that drives Internet forward! Most of us, that includes even the developers of WordPress, will get more out from Internet than we put in.
How can we create a virtual room in which people meet to discuss, collaborate and express their views on what is needed to drive the business forward? How can we find ways to aggregate data from different connected activities and present this in an understandable way? This is what I together with my prototype partners am exploring right now. The main challenge is to create a virtual “coffee room” and adding “war room” features in a rich user experience format. The focus is on rich internet application but also trying to find new methods to display connected data. The aim is to find a new “state of the art” method and combine that method with a rich user experience. We believe that this will add business value in terms of improved decision quality and speed in execution.
Some examples of innovative visualizations that connect the dots and presents complex data in a understandable way.
I use a local search or my desk and Google on the net. Well, with Google desk I can use the same search engine. I use Office programs on my local data and Google Docs (or even better in my opinion is Zoho.com) for the same type of documents on the net or in the "cloud" that it is called these days. An OS (operating system) is very local and only helps me with things local on the computer. The modern web browser is very capable and can work both locally and on the net. I would prefer that the browser is my interface both locally and on the net. If I have a folder it is not so important if it is local or on a server or both. I just want to find it easily with the same browser and the same search engine. Of course I have to set it up if I want to have it here or there but after that I don't care. I just want to use my data. There may be many reasons for why I would like to have it locally or in the "cloud". Currently I have to remember if the document is on Google Docs, or Zoho.com or stored locally and use the web browser on the net and Office programs for local office data and so on. Let's use the browser and the search engine regardless of if it is local or out there. The next step is when the web browser can organize and start applications as well and understand file types etc. The applications can of course also be located in the "cloud".
Just one step further, let the CPU power be local, on the net or both. Now we are really talking cloud computing!
In the post Innovation and love I talked about passion as the driver for innovation. Passion is also the driver in Social Media. If you haven’t seen Clay Shirky’s excellent speech about Social Media take the time to do it!
His speech from 2005 has already become classic. One thing he talks about is the Long tail as a model for every Social Media site:
The left part of the graph is representing the leaders who take their time to deliver lots and lots of material. Their driver is passion!
When we try to copy and implement the same product inside the enterprise we often see the following graph with big disappoinment:
There are no leaders spending hours with providing material. Don’t we have any passion in companies? Of course we have but our passion is not to upload pictures, writing 140-char messages and so on. We traditionally have other goals within an organization and success is well defined with other parameters. If we really want use Social Media in large organizations there are a few ways to create the long tail curve:
Bonussystem, Events etc, to create an interest
New working roles
Cultural changes
But maybe even better, use the Social Media sites outside the company instead of implementing our own. The long tail curve is already there.
This is somewhat connected to Andreas Open Conduct post before.
Open Conduct can be interpreted as a radical approach to the boundaries of a company or organization for example:
wikimedia commons
Your new shoes has (before they are on your feet)
- travelled xyz km
- caused xyz kg of CO2 emissions
- put xyz people to work – at a fair wage?
- used xyz kg of promotion material, packaging etc
- and ever further – put xyz “communication” agencies to work
Open conduct is to be transparent and openly show all these steps.
Does the term make any sense? Ok, it’s not even a buzz-word, yet… There are however a few indicators that, at least for me, make it possible to explore both the term and its implications.
Why then use the term? Good question – maybe some kind of radical approach to Corporate Social Responsibility and different ways of Codes of conduct – coupled with a notion that both customers, investors, future employees etc wants to know the truth about where, how and why an enterprise are doing things…
Radical enterprise transparency is maybe both utopian and maybe even stupid – why should someone who’s already scrutinized by competitors, customers etc want to, not only declare in a report, but make the demand & supply chain totally transparent?
I think the area of enterprise transparency is worth exploring with critical and opportunity oriented eyes. I can see benefits for the enterprise when it comes to capability to engage in various kinds of dialogues outside current organizational boundaries, that can be beneficial for external ideas “streaming” in, based on that it is more known to the outside world what the organization wants to achieve etc…
Empowering and maybe even promoting a radically more transparent approach from an enterprise creates a lot of challenges in defining and securing what should be kept secret – and where it actually is more long term value for the enterprise to remove boundaries to ensure its relevance…
Organizations are constantly talking about innovation these days. How important it is and how to make us innovative.
Innovate or die! Think out of the box! Yes we have all heard it.
We put it into strategy documents, we create goals, we invent ways to measure innovation and so on. But really, what is the effect? How can we make an organization innovative? Is it possible to order someone to be innovative? Is it possible to create bonus systems in order to increase innovation? What kind of goals can we have?
It is easy to see how we can kill all sorts of innovative activities but how can we create innovative organizations?
Love and passion
by http://www.flickr.com/photos/chitrasudar/
Don’t misunderstand me, this focus on innovation is just great but there is a problem here. A problem that is similar to encourage and increase feelings of love. How can we make goals and measure love? No one really think it is possible to force love to grow. It must come naturally.
Both love and innovation have one thing in common and that is passion
Passion can’t be ordered, it can’t be forced. Either you have it or you don’t. There are ways to encourage and allow love to grow in the same way that it is possible to encourage and allow innovation to grow.
Do you have passion for innovation? Do you always think about new ways of doing things? Do you want to test the unknown? It is very personal, right… Exactly, it is personal!
The first thing to do is to hire the right persons if you don’t already have them. The persons with a passion for innovation, new possibilities and change. The persons that can create both “miracles” and flops. Give them freedom, give them trust and let them create. They will be the “heroes” when it comes to innovation in your organisation. They will help to form the innovation culture for the rest of the organization because everyone can contribute with something even if they don’t have a flood of ideas.
The next thing to do is to maintain a culture that allows for and encourages this passion.
Passion doesn’t really demand for something in return, maybe except for recognition. The driver for passion is passion itself. There are myriads of good material about how to organize for innovation but without passion it will have little or no effect.
Let’s look into the discussion about bonus and reward systems. Can we increase our innovation power with a bonus system? I doubt it but I believe a bonus system is to be preferred just to reward the one who should be rewarded. Not because it makes any difference for business…
In this excellent video from TED-talks we can learn what the latest research says about motivation and rewarding systems.
I found this interesting article on an experiment with Wi-Fi on a school bus, published in New York Times. Turns out the students have access to internet during their commuting to school. So “Wi-Fi turns rowdy bus into rolling study hall”.
Joshua Lott for The New York Times
My commuting bus might not be so rowdy, but I’m sure the 30 minute ride would feel a lot more efficient with easy internet access. On the other hand, 30 minutes of reflection and contemplation might not be so bad either. This always connected and able to work might not necessarily lead to more work efficiency, but at least it keeps us occupied
There has been a lot of buzz around new innovative User Interfaces recently. My personal favorite is Pranav Mistry’s SixthSense technology, presented at TED talks India 2009.
Light Touch by Light Blue Optics
Another innovative interface is Light Touch, by Light Blue Optics. However I wonder when I can just use my brain to control the keybord and any other control
2010 will be the year of the touch screens. Touch screens are not something that is completely new. It has been around for many years but is now both faster, cheaper and gives a better user experience.
Not only will Google try to enter the market with their touch screen mobile Nexus One (made by HTC) but also a a number of phones based on Google’s Android. HTC, LG, Sony-Ericsson, Geeksphone, Dell, Motorola, Acer, Samsung, Archos, Lenovo, Samsung, Huawei and more have one thing in common. They will use Android as the OS in their mobiles.
A vast number of eReaders are announced for this year. In my own opinion many of them are far to expensive. Who will buy an eReader for a price of a PC? Apple is close to launch a tablet PC that, among other things, will try to steel market shares from all the eReaders that are announced to be launched this year. This can be an interesting fight to follow!
All together, we are talking about the year when the touch screens will become more or less standard.
At the same time data and CPU is moved into the cloud. The performance of your device is not that important anymore but the input/output interface is!
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