The Power of Innovation: The Seed Makers Who Don't Pray for Rain

Global warming does not only cause higher temperature that could result in sea-level rise and coastal flooding, but also drive weather in roller coaster fashion – flood and draught. Scientists have been working very hard to stay ahead of the game. Market leaders such as DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta has come up with drought-tolerant corn, allowing farmers like Lance Russell in Hays, Kan. to grow corn in the areas, which are traditionally considered too dry and hot for corn. The technology could change the economics of farming by reducing the need for irrigation, lowering crop insurance premiums, and boosting land values in water-starved regions. With agriculture accounting for 70% of global freshwater use, "The biggest single issue in farming going forward is...water availability," says Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant…


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Idea Generation: Individual and Group Contemplation

In a wide variety of organizational settings, teams generate a number of possible solutions to a problem, and then select a few for further investigation. Researchers at Wharton examines the effectiveness of two creative problem solving processes for such tasks— one, where the group works together as a team (the team process), and the other where individuals first work alone and then work together (the hybrid process). The effectiveness of the approaches is defined as the quality of the best ideas identified by the group and the theory relates group behavior to four different variables that characterize the creative problem solving process: (1) the average quality of ideas generated, (2) the number of ideas generated, (3) the variance in the quality of ideas generated, and (4) the ability of the group to discern the quality of the ideas. Prior research defines effectiveness as the quality of the average idea, ignoring any differences in variance and in the ability to discern the best ideas. In an experimental set-up, the researchers find that groups employing the hybrid process are able to generate more ideas, to generate better ideas, and to better discern their best ideas compared to teams that rely purely on group work. Moreover, they find that the frequently recommended brainstorming technique of building on each other’s ideas is counter-productive: teams exhibiting such build-up neither create more ideas nor are the ideas that build on previous ideas better…


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What Chief Executive Really Want? Creativity as the Most Important Leadership Competency

A survey from IBM's Institute for Business Value shows that CEOs value one leadership competency above all others. Can you guess what it is? What do chief executive officers really want? The answer bears important consequences for management as well as companies' customers and shareholders. The qualities that a CEO values most in the company team set a standard that affects everything from product development and sales to the long-term success of an enterprise. There is compelling new evidence that CEOs' priorities in this area are changing in important ways. According to a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM's Institute for Business Value (IBM), CEOs identify "creativity" as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future…


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Is Your Advertising Not Working? Try Games

Traditionally, sellers push their advertising messages to customers. The problem with this approach is that people don’t want to be sold to and they usually resist the selling unless the offerings are overwhelmingly attractive. Consequently, messages of many good products fail to get across. If people instead pull bits of information into their lives through a game, they are more likely to feel a sense of ownership. And, if the game is cool enough, it can bring you the viral success like the ones achieved in social media…


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Do You Have to Ask Your Customers to Pay for Your Products and Services?

One of my former students is in a process of building a new online business. When it comes to the question of business model, I suggested that she validate her assumption that the online users will indeed be willing to pay for her services. If her customers are not willing to pay for the services, she does not have to squeeze money out of their wallets. Innovation in business models has made it possible to separate the users and payers, allowing the users to enjoy the services for free, the advertisers to reach their target audience and service providers get paid through ad revenues. Horizon Air started to provide ad-support foods to its passengers now…


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iPad DJ Rana Sobhany Gets in Touch with Music’s Future

iPad is cool, Right? Take a look at this video. The touch screen of the tablet allows you to do way more than you could imagine…
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Intel launches First Smartphone Chip

Recently, Intel announced its long-awaited entry into the smartphone market with the launch of the Atom Z6xx series processor – codenamed Mooretown – which is the first Intel processor low-power enough to be used in handheld devices. While innovative products such as iPhone, Android and iPad are selling well, people are wondering whether we really should have multiple devices. Intel’s Atom Z6xx can turn smartphones into mini PCs, potentially eliminating the needs for PCs – you can have a docking station and external monitor at home and work…


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Why Businesses Don’t Experiment

Several years ago, I was involved in developing a video on demand business in hospitality industry in China. After months of research, simulation and deliberation, we came up with the business strategy and a set of business models. While we were excited about the future of the business based upon the business plan that we had developed, we wanted to validate our ideas and tested in three hotels. Only after the ideas proved to be effective, we set out to raise investment fund and spin the unit off from its parent company. Many companies, however, don’t experiment. The article published at Harvard Business Review describes an failed case of experiment and discusses about the reasons that some companies avoid experiment…


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The Tea Thieves: How a Drink Shaped an Empire

By the mid-19th century, Britain was an almost unchallenged empire. It controlled about a fifth of the world's surface, and yet its weakness had everything to do with tiny leaves soaked in hot water. By 1800, tea was easily the most popular drink in the country. The problem? All the tea in the world came from China, and Britain couldn't control the quality or the price. So around 1850, a group of British businessmen set out to steal tea seeds and trade secrets from China and create a tea industry in a place they did control: India…


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Facebook Makes It Easier for Users to Share Interests across Web

Recently, Facebook unveiled a platform that will make it easier for users to share their interests with friends on other sites across the internet. Once signed in to Facebook, users visiting other websites can view modules displaying their friends' likes and comments about that site's content. For example, a user on Pandora, the music site, will see which artists and songs their Facebook friends like – without having to return to Facebook…


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Co-Creation: Not Just Another Focus Group

Several years ago, I conducted simulation for product innovation at City University’s MBA classes for future concepts of iPot. Students were divided into competing groups. They are required to view themselves as and communicate with teenagers – typical iPot users, gather and prioritize the requirements of the target customers, and develop future concepts of the products. As they saw how similar the features of new iPot and eventually the iPhone are to the concepts that they had developed, they were very excited. This approach of getting customers involved in product innovation has been named as co-creation and become increasingly popular in industries. This article talks about how this approach has been successfully adopted by companies like Unilever…


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Are You a Walt Disney or a Roy Disney?

Everybody knows Disney. The next time you are marveling at the wonders of Disney, make sure you remember Roy. While Walt was dreaming about his Magic Kingdom and making a mouse talk, his brother Roy was actually making sure that Walt's dreams would come true. Roy was the operational genius; a yin for Walt's yang …


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Monsanto: Winning the Ground War

While products of disruptive innovation may lead to great business opportunities, market acceptance and readiness could be a life-or-death challenge. When Hugh Grant took the top job at Monsanto (MON) in May, 2003, the company's nickname in some quarters was "Mutanto." A growing chorus of critics warned that Monsanto's genetically modified plant seeds would wipe out the monarch butterfly, give people virulent new allergies, and reduce the planet's agricultural diversity. During the 12 months preceding Grant's elevation, Monsanto's stock price fell nearly 50% to $8 a share. In fiscal year 2002, the company lost $1.7 billion. Fewer than five years later, Monsanto is thriving. The company’s net income leaped 44% last year, to $993 million, on $8.5 billion in revenue. Monsanto shares, which closed at $104.81 on Dec. 5, have risen more than 1,000% during Grant's tenure. At 58.6, the company's price-to-earnings ratio is about two points higher than Google's (GOOG). Here is a fascinating story showing how Monsanto capture stakeholders’ needs and concerns and came up with its product mix and marketing strategy to attain market acceptance…


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Chips with “Designer Salt”

PepsiCo will soon introduce a secret new ingredient that improves the healthfulness in its Lay's potato chips: "designer salt" whose crystals are shaped and sized to reduce the sodium intake consumers ingest with each chip. Pepsi recently pledged to reduce the average sodium per serving in its products by 25% over the next five years. As consumer and government pressure for healthier food products mounts, PepsiCo's move attempts to get ahead of the curve of potential demand shifts or new regulations…


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The Fundamentals of Innovation

As the economic environment stabilizes, there's a temptation for executives to return to business as usual. And although much about the future of the economy is uncertain, an expert says that a return to the recent status quo would be a colossal mistake…


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Innovation and Air Sandwich

Chances are, you're already familiar with the concept of the Air Sandwich, if not the term itself. An Air Sandwich is what happens when the leadership within an organization issues orders from 80,000 feet and lobs them down to the folks at 20,000 feet. A former Autodesk employee talks about how air sandwich prevented vision from being realized…


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New York Isn’t Silicon Valley. That’s Why They Like It.

When it comes to selecting a place for innovation, people usually think of Silicon Valley. However, New York has become a hotbed of innovation, with great infrastructure, tech customers in backyard and sources of financing right in town…


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Nike: Alive and kicking

Nike has a research & development process that is very well aligned with marketing objectives. It hopes that the two-pronged approach – the detail of product innovation and "premium club" feel of online – will give the global sports company the edge when it comes to its titanic battle with the two other sports behemoths – Adidas and Puma – for supremacy in the sportswear and leisure market…


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‘Natural’ UI Will Be the Wave of the Future

There's a new computing revolution coming and it's not based on a keyboard and a mouse. Instead, it will be based on touch, gestures, spoken language, and even painting -- what is becoming known as "natural user interface" or NUI…


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How Google's Ad System Stifles Innovation

The European Commission has launched the first-ever official antitrust inquiry into Google's search and search advertising services. Despite Google's estimated 90 percent share of the European search advertising market, it hasn't necessarily done anything illegal. But its stranglehold may still be a prohibitive barrier to competitors, present and future…


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Why the Rock Band Network is the Greatest Innovation since Colored Buttons

Rock Band Network, which was announced last year, has just been released in open beta, which means anyone with the gall to hit up their multi-track recorders can begin programming songs into the system by downloading the software. Of course, this all comes at a price, since creating your own songs will technically classify you as a developer you'll have to register at the XNA Creator's Club for $100 a year before you can start running the software…


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Innovation beyond Apple

Apple’s success in its new product, especially the iPhone, has triggered the “Apple thrill” – executives are increasingly interested in pushing product innovation in an attempt to replicate Apple’s success. However, experts are saying that focusing exclusively on product innovation may be a mistake for most companies and innovation is not only about product…


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A Little Chip Designed by Apple Itself

The most notable aspect of Apple's new iPad is the A4, the chip that powers the tablet device and was developed in house. As we first highlighted last week, the A4 chip is the first fruit to come of Apple's 2008 acquisition of P.A. Semi, a low-power chipmaker. Recent upticks in supplier and channel risk have made vertical integration an especially attractive strategic decision for many firms. In periods of increased volatility, a collection of diversified businesses provides executives visibility into currently volatile leading indicators of performance, and this information could lead to smarter capital-allocation decisions…


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Is This Innovation Too Disruptive for My Firm

One of the trickiest decisions in business is to assess: is this innovation too innovative for my firm? You need to decide whether the core business will embrace the new product or service or reject it. Xerox, which invented the laser printer, Ethernet, and the personal computer, actually rejected the new computer and network — but adopted the laser printer. Why?


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Where innovation creates value

Value innovation is defined as delivering exceptional value to the most important customer in the value chain all the time, every time. Unlike other forms of innovation, the most important customer can be internal or external to the organization. Exceptional value can be delivered in many other ways besides a new product or service. It could be a new process, a new way of going to market or business model, a new way of delivering the product or service, new packaging, or new services. Any organization of any size, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, an association, a government agency, a school board and so on can use the value innovation methodology. Support groups within an organization such as IT, finance, purchase and human resource can use these tools to deliver much greater value to the most important customers in their business units…


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In the midst of Recession, People Want Value, Innovation

CEO Thomas Falk did things most executives ran from during the recession: He plunged money into innovation and marketing, and raised prices…


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Is Your Company Brave Enough for Business Model Innovation?

IBM is in a process of introducing its "Spoken Web" to help market its ERP program in areas where literacy rate is low. Historically, the company has come up with new complementary business models when it brought new products into the market…


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10 Ways to Identify an Impending Product Launch Disaster

Pragmatic Marketing presents 10 ways to identify an impending product launch disaster: 1) there are no goals for the product launch; 2) the launch strategy is based on a set of deliverables from a launch "checklist;" 3) the launch plan contains unrealistic timeframes and expectations; 4) sales enablement training is based on product features; 5) significant effort is spent creating collateral for people who never read it; 6) no single person is responsible for driving product launch results; 7)the launch plan is based on hunches, not market evidence; 8) the launch plan mimics your competitor; 9) existing customers are not adequately considered in the launch plan; 10) the launch team isn't a team. This article points out solutions to each of the problems.


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Five Technologies That Could Change Everything

Space-based solar power, advanced car batteries, utility storage, carbon capture and storage and next generation biofuels are the disruptive technologies which will likely change everything in the next few decades…


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How Ford Got Social Marketing Right

Ford gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. And away they went. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, "agents" used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter…

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Innovation Made Incarnate

When employees are inspired by their leaders, innovation becomes much more fruitful. Much of Apple's success relies on the inspiration CEO Steve Jobs has fostered in employees. This article lists seven steps to turn inspiration into innovation: 1) make inspiration an imperative; 2) install and empower a chief innovation officer or CIO; 3) set goals and create enthusiasm to meet them; 4) create the right culture; 5) imbue inspiration as a start-to-finish endeavor; 6) observe, measure, and know; 7) never relent…

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