Nice doing business with you…
Posted by: clareoneill on: February 2, 2010
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining personal wealth without personal responsibility. (Ambrose Bierce)
It was in the early 1900s that journalist Ambrose Bierce came up with this definition, as part of his charmingly cynical ‘Devil’s Dictionary’. At the time, society was emerging from a century of staggering changes in technological progress, economic growth and social turmoil.
Mr Bierce didn’t include a definition for a co-operative business model in his dictionary, although the Rochdale Pioneers had defined and implemented this fabulous concept in 1844. They made an imaginative quantum leap: they dreamed up a business that was run by and owned by its customers and employees, so that they had a true stake in the business.
Once again we are living in times when there is great public cynicism with big business and the banking sector in particular, and we’re heading for a period of major economic and social upheaval as unprecedented planetary changes have their effect on populations across the world.
We need some radical new ways of working and living, like the Rochdale Pioneers created – whether that is in delivering public services, or in developing businesses. Has Manchester got the talent and the chutzpah to get ahead of the curve, and become a leading centre for developing and testing bold and imaginative ways of going about our daily lives?
RAW Business Talent in Greater Manchester
Posted by: Coral Grainger on: January 25, 2010
After a slow and snowbound start, 2010 really got going last week with the highlight of the Northwest Business calendar.
Leading Manc entrepreneurs, Mike Perls, Imran Hakim & Scott Fletcher promised us that RAW2010 would ‘change everything’ - they didn’t let us down! Run by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, the calibre of the event and audience were outstanding – Manchester: Knowledge Capital was pleased to be involved.
The Lowry Centre was awash with talent and cash (according to hilarious scouse compére John Bishop) – but most importantly people met, networked, did deals and learnt. Yes they really did learn new things! Already, the President of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce has been drawing me bell curves from the Ian Gotts session. Now I know about the IMPACT theory of ‘Killer Products‘ I can and will pass it on, and that viral spreading of knowledge is a real sign of success. You can get a copy of Ian’s book here and many other good bookshops, of course!
Doug Richards gives opening keynote at RAW2010
By the way, I missed Ian Gotts talk because I happily found myself in the ‘future of digital‘ session run by Magnetic North’s Lou & Braden. Magnetic North are supplementing their digital marketing work with the *actual production of physical product* - including these cool mix-tapes. The Mixa tapes tap into nostalgia for teenage years when you would compile an analogue playlist for your latest crush. More importantly they signal a growing trend to link media and product design, and a desire for tangible things to touch and feel.
I met some great people in the cafe and Professor Lynn Martin (Director of Centre for Enterprise at MMU) found me using the spotme devices that we all had.
Yes, there’s LOTS to follow up on from that event, and lots of new people to work with in spreading the Innovation Gospel.
Time for Innovation
Posted by: clareoneill on: January 6, 2010
Who’s got time for innovation? How many of us deliberately take the time to sit back, look at what we’re doing, and think about ways to do it better or do something else?
The classic problem with many organisations is that everyone is working so hard on today’s crisis or this month’s targets that they never feel that they can take the time to think about anything else. The end result is that we end up doing ‘more of the same’ each and every day – instead of trying anything new. And that’s a not going to support our competitive edge in the long run.
Famously, companies like 3M and Google are very open about this. When you work for Google your employment contract allows you to spend one day a week on any idea you like. It’s a wide open space – a space for experimenting, exploring and developing breakthrough ideas like Google Earth and Gmail that have helped to keep that company at the top of its game.
Many organisations can’t afford to give employees that much exploration time – but the general principle is of fundamental importance to all of us.
We need to set aside time to come up with ideas and explore them, and leaders need to make sure that employees feel empowered to do this. Staring into space for half an hour can sometimes be far more productive than ‘proper work’.
How the Web is turning into a giant collaboration forum
Posted by: nigelbarlow on: December 18, 2009
Take a look at this video care of Ideas Project
“I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface yet of understanding how to leverage the power of these social dynamics, but I think a key to unlocking the potential is going to be through developing better tools to visualize our human capital, which would be a combination of our strengths, our skills, and our social connections.”
The Difference Engine launches in the North West
Posted by: nigelbarlow on: December 17, 2009
- In: Creativity| Finance
- 2 Comments
Investment in start-ups relies more on mentoring and marketing than concerns about Intellectual property and patents.
That was the message of Jon Bradford,Part-time VC, and technology evangelist who was speaking at the Christmas Northern Start up event held in Manchester last night.
After a journey that has taken from Arthur Anderson’s in London to Newcastle via Melbourne and Silicon Valley,Bradford has launched The Difference Engine.
The idea came from his initial look into investing in technology start ups.He couldn’t see businesses that he wanted to invest in,whereas it used to cost loads of money to build soft ware business,it now cost little
He then asked the question,how do you cope with that and how do you tackle micro investment?
The result is the difference engine,an acceleration programme for early stage digital businesses.It is a is a full-time 16 week acceleration programme which combines investment capital of £20,000 (for 8% of the business) with mentoring, support and office accommodation with various other services provided by partners.
For the first four weeks of the course,the entrants are subjected to what Jon described as a “being given a good kicking ” where their plans and ideas are put under intense scrutiny from every single angle.Only after those initial four weeks are they allowed to start building their programme.
At the end of the course they are ready to pitch and present for venture capital.
What’s Jon looking for? His answer- the entrepreneur who will work on their ideas not matter what and see it as a life style decision.
If you’re interest get applying.Applications close on the 4th January and the the first 16 week course begins 10th Feb
Collaboration is a human process
Posted by: nigelbarlow on: December 15, 2009
What are the eight things that you need to know about collaboration?
Well Dale Arseneault believes that these are the important ones
1. Collaboration is over used and mis-used and is becoming a buzzword for business people and technologists alike
2. Collaboration isn’t the same as cooperation or coordination – each have different processes, practices and depth of engagement
3. Collaboration is a human process – throwing technology at people won’t magically/automatically create collaboration
4. Meaningful, productive collaboration won’t happen without mutuality of desired outcomes, shared values of transparency and information sharing, compassion, compromise
5. Collaboration implies that “the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few or the needs of the one” and sometimes people aren’t really interested in living by that principle
6. Collaboration isn’t always the best process
7. Collaboration is not equal to Web 2.0
8. Collaboration can be a source of real value in the face of complex environments and situations where no single person has the right answer
Art and science: a love story
Posted by: clareoneill on: December 7, 2009
I got a chance to visit the inspiring Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at MOSI a few days ago. The word polymath is perhaps over-used these days – certainly a man of da Vinci’s incredibly diverse talents still puts most of the human race into the shade.
He believed, absolutely, that there is no art without science. His intense curiosity about the world around him led him to be a painter, engineer, inventor, musician, scientist and mathematician.
Leonardo da vinci
I think that is more difficult today. A few hundred years ago, different branches of science and philosophy were more closely intertwined, and scholars often crossed over between what we would now consider to be disparate branches of knowledge. As world knowledge grew, specialisms developed and the sciences (what we would now broadly distinguish as biology, chemistry & physics) grew apart from each other and from the arts and humanities.
With this came culture change – and not in a good way. In the national mindset, arts and sciences became two foreign lands: arts people would perfectly happily confess their ignorance of scientific matters, and scientists would do likewise with art and philosophy. It became OK to be selectively ignorant.
This led to the novelist and scientist CP Snow to give his famous “Two Cultures” lecture in 1959, out of pure frustration with the way that otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable people would put up imaginary barriers to their wider learning.
Innovation often happens ‘at the edges’ – the interface between different groups or sectors or disciplines – but we often have to achieve this despite of our standard school curriculum and national culture. I generalise of course. But there’s much more we could do to bring different arts and science disciplines together. I vote that as a nation we start mixing things up a lot more. It’ll be fun, educational and productive – what more could you ask?
The five skills of innovating
Posted by: nigelbarlow on: December 1, 2009
- In: innovation
- 1 Comment
Havard Business school and Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs and have identified five skills that drive innovation.
The five skills that are seen as separating the blue-sky innovators from the rest associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and discovering.
1.Associating: The ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.
2.Questioning: Innovators constantly ask questions that challenge the common wisdom. They ask “why?”, “why not?” and “what if?”
3.Observing: Discovery-driven executives scrutinize common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers.
4,Experimenting: Innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.
5.Networking: innovators go out of their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives.
What do you think?
In an interview with America’s CNN,one of the researchers,Hal Gregersen said
“The way they act is to observe actively, like an anthropologist, and they talk to incredibly diverse people with different world views, who can challenge their assumptions, adding
“For them, everything is to be experimented upon — for example, if they walk into a bookstore and they’re used to reading history they might try psychology. All these behaviors are powerfully enhanced by a capacity to ask provocative, challenging questions of the world around them.”
The full study can be seen in December’s Harvard Business Review
A bit of humour for Monday morning
Posted by: nigelbarlow on: November 30, 2009
I have just come across this cartoon thanks to Stefan Lindegaard’s Continous Innovation Group.
As he says,”Internal forces are often the worst enemies of innovation.”
Innovation Cartoon
Innovation is at the heart of economic success says NESTA
Posted by: nigelbarlow on: November 26, 2009
The UK’s economic success will depend upon its ability to commercialise and profit from research and ideas and to innovate in the service sector and creative.
Innovation was responsible for nearly 2/3 of private sector productivity growth in the UK between 2000-2007
That’s the conclusion of NESTA who earlier today launched its innovation index.
According to the research,UK businesses invested £133bn in innovation in 2007,representing 14 per cent of private sector output. More than three-quarters of this came from “hidden innovation”, in areas other than research and development.
The index showed that a significant part of innovative performance came not from the tradition area of R&D but areas such as design,organisational innovation and the development of innovative skills.
There was also a firm link between innovation and growth.
The study surveyed 1500 firms in the UK across nine sectors.
You can download a PDF of the full survey HERE
