Managing in Information-Intensive Companies

http://www.fastcompany.com/1707684/harnessing-ignorance-to-spark-creativity

This post on Fast Company frames the Not-Invented-Here barrier to collaboration in a rather provocative way, by saying that innovative solutions lie in harnessing ignorance and naivete. Insular groups may find themselves in a rut by constantly reinforcing the same ideas and beliefs. Fresh eyes, even those that may not be entirely familiar with the problem, can provide a much needed new point of view and completely novel solutions. Of course, one underlying assumption behind this is that your network is diverse enough to have access to people with different backgrounds and experiences.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-06/payroll-tax-holiday-on-the-table-as-negotiators-debate-bush-rate-extension.html

HCL, a global IT service provider based from India is sponsoring an innovation and idea competition for MBA students. Ideas will be judged based on potential impact, feasibility and popularity. Looks like HCL management is looking for collaboration with outside parties, in this case students, for idea generation. I think bringing students into the innovation chain is a good idea in terms of generating new and fresh ideas. However, there is this problem of having too many entries in competitions like this and there should be some process in place that bubbles up worthy enough ideas. Looks like in this case, the competition organizers use crowd source to rank up good ideas. Though this seems to work for problem/solutions forums like Stackoverflow, I am not sure if this strategy would bring out ideas that work best for the organizations running the competition.

Between, check out some interesting ideas under barriers for innovation category.

I thought this NYTimes article offers a nice bookend (no pun intended) to our presentation today on the future of physical booksellers: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/business/29borders.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=borders&st=Search.

In our group’s recommendations, we focused primarily on Barnes & Noble because Borders has been arguably the latest to the online retail and digital distribution game. But Borders has the right idea with temporary “pop-up” stores that the company is opening just for the holidays in small urban areas across the United States. The stores, called “Borders Express,” will carry limited inventories that include bestsellers, new releases, childrens’ books and holiday-themed items. The pop-up store model is an example of the smaller, strategic retail models that some big retailers (like Best Buy) are pursuing. It might be too late for Borders to climb out from under its mountain of debt, but the pop-up store concept is a great example of how superstores in various industries can leverage physical locations — innovation in the form of a return to the physical store concept — in their fight against online retailers and big box stores. It’s worth noting that according to this article, Target is also looking to capitalize on the pop-up store as a “flexible, attention-grabbing” way to showcase its products — but I think that physical booksellers have more to leverage in the ambiance department than your average Target.

http://bit.ly/iftfhh

When we discussed the NASA Columbia Shuttle mission, it seemed clear that financial constraints and budgetary limitations at NASA were interwoven into the circumstances that led to the disaster. But, the tensions around NASA funding are ongoing. The final quote from the article is telling, “You just can’t finalize your plans until you have the overall funding…” Decision making in complex organizations like NASA is difficult enough without financial consierations. However, when cost becomes a real part of the equation of things where lives are on the line, the challenge is mangnified even more.

http://yhoo.it/fZzIEq

Kevin O’Connor, the founder of DoubleClick, has launched another website: findthebest.com. The site addresses the challenge users face when researching various products or services of the same type to inform decision making on which to buy. The service covers a variety of topics and pulls data from various resources to provide the user with his or her options. In the third module of the course, we have discussed the importance of structuring decision making processes. Here, the core value of this service is in having structured and automated the annoying and time-consuming task of going from site to site to compare offers. The decisions at issue here are more trivial than those discussed in class, but this seems to be an example of the value of structuring decision making nonetheless.

The question was raised during class why anyone would attempt climbing Everest. Though Craig Mod didn’t summit Everest, here’s his experience at another high-altitude Himalayan base camp. It’s worth reading in full, but you’ll want to stop by if only for the gorgeous photography.

Annapurna Moonrise

In another effort to nurture their Innovation Value Chain, Google is considering an incubator model-over and beyond their famous 20% time. This could move Google away from a hybrid model to a stand-alone operation to nurture innovation.

By Schmidt’s own words, Google sounds like it’s having a conversion problem:

“There was a time when three people at Google could build a world-class product and deliver it, and it is gone. So I think it’s absolutely harder to get things out the door. That’s probably our biggest strategic issue.”

But the article points to discontent at Google that suggests a stand-alone operation is not the solution. Engineers are frustrated by working on exploitative problems, which may drive away top engineers who want to innovate. If retaining those top engineers means they end up in the stand-alone unit, will it make the conversion problem that much greater?

Full article: