Archive for the 'Innovation' Category

Back in 2006 I was working on a venture I called SocialNet (MySocialMap), based largely on research by dinah boyd and the Vister application she and Jeffery Heer put together. The idea was to build a icon based visual map of relationships across multiple social networks and layer this with a Taste Fabric styled [...]

As someone who watches for trends in technology one of the many sites I frequent is Trendwatching.com. They offer a bevy of free research reports on global Trends with pithy insightful commentary and links. If your not getting their free reports or buying the paid stuff, then your missing out. Their most recent Trend Briefing [...]

Does your pre-teen need both style and stopping power? Tired of all the other survivalist sporting the same AK-47 as you? Well the good folks at GlamGuns have a solution, the Hello Kitty AK-47. It fires 10 rounds per second and has an effective kill range of 300 yards. Making it the best looking assult [...]

Does your pre-teen need both style and stopping power? Tired of all the other survivalist sporting the same AK-47 as you? Well the good folks at GlamGuns have a solution, the Hello Kitty AK-47. It fires 10 rounds per second and has an effective kill range of 300 yards. Making it the best looking assult [...]

A great new Web 2.0 launch that plans on revolutionizing the restaurant and take-out industries. The start-up has an amazingly ambitious plan to help restaurants and home cooks monetize they excess capacity and inventory while delivering quality, low-cost food options. This is an amazing long-tail opportunity that I never even saw coming. Basically the company [...]

This amazing bit of news was forwarded by Fred Benenson of Free Culture @ NYU. It’s amazing news and a critical development for the online music space. You can get more information at the RARA site and I’ve duplicated their message in full below without commentary:
From: Press Contact <respectartistaudience@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 31, 2007 [...]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0]

While exploring GooTube I came across this humorous blueprint of how a company can be its own worse enemy. companies erase innovation through . Taken as a metaphor for the innovation process, it highlights a bunch of steps that get in the way of a great product. Even more amazing is this video was made by the good folks in Redmond.

Innovation is the hard to achieve because ultimately it requires a leap of faith. An emotional connection to an idea or ideal that is so strong it transcends the available information and may in fact contradict it. Its this leap of faith that management cant make, especially when their 401k’s, titles, and careers are on the line.

Business management is a pseudo-science that attempts to establish and maintaining order by institutionalizing processes that allow for control. Innovation is a pseudo-religion that resists control and requires the same faith in its existence that all gods have, since humans started creating them.

The image “http://www.visnet-noe.org/images/eu%20flag.png” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.Our friends across the pond have pulled together some stats about what makes a successful entrepreneur in the EU. The stats are culled from surveys that were conducted by the National Statistics Institutes of 15 countries in the EU. The goals of the survey was to identify some FOBS (factors of business success), which to them means your business survived for 3 years with the same founder/entrepreneur involved in the running the show.

So, what did they find? 1) You dont need experience in the area to be successful. 2) Most of the entrepreneurs found dealing with customers and the details of running their businesses to be the biggest headache, which is just kinda funny. The younger the entrepreneur the faster the business was likely to grow. While women found it easier to get paid for invoices then men, male entrepreneurs felt better about getting to profitability then the women. My favorite finding from the report is that the more degrees the entrepreneur had, the more likely they were to claim their business was “innovative”.

Its an interesting report check it out here.

Munjal Shah is a genius. Well to be more specific “Lisa and Laura” at his PR firm, are geniusi, geniuses. When was the last time you saw someone get front page promo in the WSJ and a profile on press release hit the wires (for an alpha application no less)? If you needed a sign [...]

There is so much I might say about this one but then it would reveal way to much about my life (or lack thereof). The Pronto Condom is a great example of innovation at work based on needs and constraints, not process and “smarts”. South Africa has a huge problem with HIV [...]


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