infoarch

It’s a priveledge to work with many different people and organisations. One reason why organizations work with us is to bring “external reference” to the table. So they want us to share with them what others are doing and what the trends are in the market. I enjoy this role. I find it very important to stay in touch with what’s going on in my area of work (and even the broader context of my work). And sharing our insights is a way to stay in touch. There are others different ways to do this as well: talk to people from other companies visit conferences read books read trend and research reports read newspapers read news and updates on the web work for many different organizations etc. The good thing about today is that there are many tools to help you keep your “trend periscope” up. For instance, I use Feedly for RSS feeds, Pocket for storing and reading online articles and getting recommendations for this to read from followers, Twitter - still one of the best platforms for trend watc...

I enjoy reading Seth Godin ’s daily posts. I share them via Twitter regularly. Recently Godin posted a short one about importance of asking why . I agree, we should ask 'why' more often. It’s an essential question. Easy to ask and hard at the same time. It’s a great way to find out: what the other thinks, what their underlying convictions  are, whether someone really means what he/she is saying, etc. However, can asking 'why' also be wrong? I’ve been in an environment where lots of people asked 'why' all the time. But not for the better… Asking 'why' was a way to kill innovation and slow down the organization. It was used to make sure new ideas were not shared openly and conforming with the status quo was norm. 'Why' was used so that the questioner didn’t have to think about the idea he/she was confronted with before asking 'why'. To me someone can ask me 'why' and I just know it’ll start a great convers...

Martin White recently sent me a review copy of his new book ‘The Intranet Management Handbook ’. I reviewed it in Dutch here (Frankwatching link will be inserted soon). I’m posting slightly different review here on my blog. One with a bit more questions about the book. What is the book about? Not many books have been written about intranet. And the existing books usually address an aspect of intranet. For this reason the publication of ‘The Intranet Management Handbook’ is special.  I’d like to congratulate the author of the book, Martin White, with this event! I really enjoyed reading the book. It is well-written and complete. (For those that don’t know Martin: he’s one of the older internationally known intranet experts.) As I said I enjoyed reading the book. It addresses all or most of the intranet topics. It doesn’t go into too much detail, but enough detail for it to be a real handbook. It helps intranet managers and employees in their daily work. Whether you’ve been in ...

This tweet by Jonathan Phillips ( @digitaljonathan ) triggered to finalize this post, that's been burning in my draft box. I've always been intrigued by how unsuccessful many intranets are. And there are all kinds of good reasons for intranet failure. One of the things that is hardly ever mentioned is: Shouldn't the intranet be smaller? Usually intranets are huge. Lots and lots of pages with lots and lots of content. With complex navigation. The intranet  evaluation surveys almost always show employees only use the news page and people finder. But still we build and maintain nice big intranets. Not only stats point to smaller intranets. There are others reasons as well. I came up with a few. If you have more, just leave a comment. Here's my list: -            user requirements: users don't require large intranet -            search/navigation: searching and navigating a small ...

There are many ways to evaluate your intranet. For instance, by regularly polling your users. You can also look at the statistics: how often is the intranet accessed. Have you ever thought of benchmarking your intranet with the intranets of the world? When I was at Oce, we did. (My ex-colleague Jan van Veen also wrote about this experience here .) We participated in the Intranet Innovation Awards by StepTwo Designs . We didn’t win…, but participating was worth it. Just by filling out the participation form is a great learning experience in itself. You’re evaluating the intranet before the intranet is evaluated by the expert panel of the Awards itself. The Intranet Innovation Awards is about celebrating innovative intranets and/or segments of the intranet. So your whole intranet does not have to be special, as long as part of it is, you’ve got something to submit to these Awards. And if you win, it’s a great way to get international attention for the hard work you put into your web...

For the first time I’ll be participating in IBF24 . I don’t know why this is only my first time. The program is great, interesting speakers and companies are giving talk, also about more general topics like social business and collaboration, and it’s free! I’ll be in the slot on Thursday, May 18 from 7:00-9:00 (Amsterdam time). But I’ll be dipping in regularly. And all the sessions can be rerun afterwards as well. Will you be joining the IBF24 ( #ibf4 )? If so, leave a comment. Hope to meet you there.

I love challenges like in this post . Andrew Winston has an interesting post about asking customers to use less of your product. So you're in the printing business: ask your customers to print less. Or you sell hamburgers or books, ask them to buy less. Thinking in this way can open you up to new opportunities and business. Sometimes you are forced to think this way. Let's make this concrete. If you were a printing company, would you advise your employees to add a footer to every email saying: Please don't print out this email! Of course many would say: Hey, but this would cannibalize my business! True, but as the above-mentioned article says: It's better to do it yourself, than that someone else is doing it to you. I think we can also flip this challenge to ourselves. Think about what you would do if your customer (member of family, friend or client) would use less of your product/service. What would you do?

For some time now I've been helping a new initiative of Oce called Document Services Valley to build up their web presence. In short Document Services Valley is a venture to encourage and speed up innovation in document services in an open network (collaborative innovation). On April 28 a workshop will be organized about Open Innovation and Social Media. Stefan Lindegaard , expert in the open innovation field will lead the workshop. I also have a small role in the workshop. More information about the workshop can be found here . We hope you will join us! Till then.

During the Social Business Summit we were also taken into the wonderful world of Jazz. Michael Gold of JazzImpact told us about creativity, innovation, leading and supporting in jazz. Here are some quotes from his talk. Of course he also showed us what he meant by playing wonderful pieces of jazz and getting us on our feet, out of our comfort zone... Here are some quotes: Lead and support are the two core roles in organizations and Jazz bands. The Liminal Zone: threshold between what we know and don't know. Jazz constantly moves back and forth over that boundary. Business should as well. Elements of a good Jazz ensemble are: A utonomy P assion R isk I nnovation L istening (listening is key) UPDATE April 6, 2011 Added pictures, updated links and corrected text.

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 .

For some time now I've been following the mobile web with fascination. How quickly this market has grown and is still growing! I can remember getting my first (Prepaid!) mobile phone about 9 years ago. Even then a mobile phone was something not everyone had. Some people were even very irritated by "all the people calling in public (on the street) and sitting in the train". I don't hear that complaint very often anymore... Then slowly but steadily the mobile web popped up. Actually it was already there but just way too expensive for mainstream use. I don't think the mobile web is mainstream now, but it definitely is getting there. Recently I bought an iPhone 3GS (I know I'm slow...) and now have my own real experiences with it. And I must say I was impressed without having a smartphone. But I'm even more surprised and fascinated by it now. Like with many technologies, after you start using it, you really feel it. You suddenly actually experience the ...

Note: This post was written with my friend and colleague Rob Veltman ( @robveltman ). We carpool together and regularly talk about innovation and culture. Rob is an innovative product developer always challenging himself and his colleagues to ask the right questions to solve problems and make wishes come true. Rob is deeply interested in new product development, processes for (breakthrough) innovation and sustainability. Introduction How could we contribute to a more innovative organization? We ask ourselves this question regularly, help each other to come up with new ideas in this area and try to lead by example. We would like to share with you an aspect of our daily practice, which is the observation that our colleagues can experience hesitance in being innovative. We will propose a solution to overcome this hesitance. Situation Knowledge companies consist of very smart people, educated in different disciplines. Their knowledge workers are confronted with all kinds ...

3rd keynote at Intranet 2010 by James Robertson of Step Two Designs . Innovation = originality + impact. Uncovering great ideas and approaches to intranet, so you can steal them (ethically of course). James tells how the Intranet Innovation Award is set up. Jane McConnell is one of the judges. She should be one of next year's keynote at Intranet 2011. CRS Australia is the Platinium award winner: seamless connection with SAP (human friendly interface so tasks get done, webforms etc) > done with one technical person AEP (USA) Idea system: $8 million of concrete savings, $2 million in first month first offline organization, then support via platform organize around problems (a specific question!) specific target: min. of $1.7 million dollars of saving None of the generated ideas are anonymous (same for Océ ). Anonymous posts are allowed but not published. They are sent to team. Next example, Russian firm ( CHTPZ ). Integrates intranet wit...

Very interesting Wired article about problem solving, objectivity, creativity and innovation. Two great (and true to my knowledge!) quotes from this article: The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field. And the second one: "But experiments rarely tell us what we think they’re going to tell us. That’s the dirty secret of science." - Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up | Magazine ( view on Google Sidewiki )

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...

If I had no budget limitations, who would I invite to speak about innovation for my colleagues? Recently I was asked to provide a list of inspiring speakers about innovation. The focus of the talk should be in the area of creativity, innovation and invention. This is the list I came up with. If you have other's you would recommend, please leave a comment! My list, again , in no specific order: Scott Berkun, author of 'The Myth of Innovation'. Nice book about what innovation is and what it's not. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of 'Flow: The psychology of optimal experience'. John Seely Brown, ex Xerox PARC director, talks, publishes and thinks about new forms of learning and education and the role of technology. Wrote an interesting report for McKinsey called ‘The next frontiers of innovation’ with the next person on this list John Hagel, thinker/author about mega trends (shifts) in the world and its meaning for enterprises. Clay Christens...

Wow, looks like there's a new interesting book out. It's called Borrowing Brilliance . The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others by David Murray. I'm definitely going to buy it. Why? Well, the review in BusinessWeek triggered me. This book seems to look at ideas, creativity and innovation being sparked by other (older) ideas. I think this point is often overlooked. Your idea has to be brand new to be a good idea. Your invention has to be done all by yourself or else it's not really an invention. This book says: That's not true. Lots of inventions and innovations are sparked by old(er) ideas and innovations. And it provides six steps to help you apply this fact in your personal practice or in your business. As I understand the first step is: define the problem you want to solve. What I'm hoping is that the book will say: Try to define your problem as a wish. My experience is that looking at a problem can limit the creativity...

Chris Brogan had a fascinating post some time ago, called 'The value of wonder' . 'Wonder' is a great concept. It's basically a way of life. He says: ...let’s think about those moments when we see or experience something that makes us breathe in deeply, and then causes us to pause and just be there. And he wonders: Do we experience this enough in our work as we do when we look at our kids for instance? Very good question. Do we look around us, at the people we work with, the technology we use, the things we see happening, a colleague's great idea, and step back in wonder. Do we voice this 'wonder' to each other regularly? 'Fascination' is a comparable powerful concept. It also relates to kids and the way they do things. Blocking out all else, fully concentrated. 'Wonder' and 'fascination' are concepts that keep me going. It helps me look at things in a new ways. Do it with your mouth open, because you forgot to close ...

How do you pick up weak signals and make sense of them? In some cases we'd rather not pick them up at all. This goes for us personally ('what is being said about you?') and for companies ('who's talking about us and why?') MIT Sloan Review ran a very interesting article on this topic: "How to make Sense of Weak Signals" by Paul Schoemaker and George Day (Spring 2009). What is a weak signal anyway? Shoemaker and Day define it as: A seemingly random or disconnected piece of information that at first appears to be background noise but can be recognized as part of a significant pattern by viewing it through a different frame or connecting it with other pieces or information. I was surprised to read that "fewer than 20% of global companies have sufficient capacity to spot, interpret and act on the weak signals of forthcoming threats and opportunities." It would be nice to read some best-practices in this area. A general framework to ma...

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