infoarch

I really enjoy going to conference every now and then. I’m at the great SocialNow [link] conference now. I go to conferences to meet people and to learn more about a certain topic. This is key for a conference. I’m not going if the people and the program aren’t interesting. But in my experience the result of a conference is the greatest thing about conference visits – at least mine. I find conference visits always trigger news ideas. Not always because of the speakers at the conference. More often it’s just because of the different environment I’m in. I’ve always found this a weird effect of conferences. The weekends or a nice long walks also have this effect but to a lesser extent. Can you relate to this? Would love to hear what conferences do to you.

There are lots of good bloggers and blogposts out there. But every now and then I run into a post that is just great. This is one of them: A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100 by Venkatesh Rao. It's a long post! So, make sure you have some time to read and process it. Why do I think this post is so interesting? Well, there's been lots of debate about what social media means for traditional business. Will it change or is it changing the way we do business? Is the traditional, hierarchical way of organizing companies sustainable? Is social media correcting the industrial revolution? Or should we say 'the industrial interruption', like 'The Cluetrain Manifesto'  says. Is this enterprise 2.0 or social business? Much has been and is being written about this topic. Just think of the books 'Wikinomics' , 'Macrowikinomics' and 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' itself. So, what is this post about. In it's own words: The Age ...

It's been a while ago since I read the great Shift Index 2009 report . I've been wanting to blog about it, but haven't had time yet. It's loaded with interesting insights. One big question I had is: This report is focused on the USA; how does this compare to Europe or Asia? One thing from the report that stuck with me, was the importance of 'creative talent' and getting them to engage in 'creative problem solving, often by connecting with peers inside and outside the firm' (p. 11). On page 70 the report goes on to talk about 'worker passion'. The findings are pretty saddening. Lots of workers are not passionate about their work and self-employed workers are much more passionate than the firm-employed. The larger the size of the firm the less passionate workers get... I went back to the Shift Index after reading a couple of things: Steve Denning's post about the H in HR , which also points to the Shift Index and the importance of eng...

Love this quote by the CEO of Kodak, Antonio Perez (the highlighting is mine): In my experience, there are three key elements in the path to disrupt a mature, well-established market--meaningful technology breakthrough, significant supply chain management improvement and valuable business model innovation. The more elements you bring to the table the bigger the disruption and the easier it will be to make money from it. However, before any of the above will have any meaning whatsoever you need to find out the most important part of the recipe--that is the existence of "opportunity," or what I call Notorious Decadence .

Recently I read a couple of interesting posts/articles about innovation and invention. First of all, Dev Patnaik has a nice post about what empathy has to do with innovation . Dev has seen "companies prosper when they're able to create widespread empathy for the world around them". Empathy is: the ability to reach outside of ourselves and walk in someone else’s shoes, to get where they’re coming from, to feel what they feel. And this should be widespread in the organization. People within the company are able to stand in each other's shoes and in the shoes of their customers. They understand what's happening outside and respond to that accordingly. In this way the edges of companies start to blur. Dev says we're lacking empathy not innovation. This is an interesting point also related to the posts stressing the importance of an innovative culture . One of the facets of empathy is praising others. Steven DeMaio over at the HBR blog has an inter...

Can you have too many ideas? I've been musing about this question lately. And can the amount of ideas you have be stalled by the context you work in? With 'context' I mean: your colleagues, your work tools, the culture of the company, etc. I'm curious what your answer would be to these questions. I'll share my experience after you share yours! --- If You Read This and Like It, Tweet This to your Followers: Too many ideas? http://twurl.nl/jr7eov Tags van Technorati: ideas , innovation , culture