Enterprise Garage Newsletter | December 20th, 2015
Ethics and Respect in Innovation
A few weeks ago TEDxSanFrancisco happened. Fifteen hundred attendees and over twenty speakers shared their stories in an amazing line up, organized by Niki Ernst and his team of volunteers. In case you have missed it, some of the talks including mine are now available online.
I wanted to share with you my very own talk about Ethics and Respect in Innovation. To carry home the points I brought a plush tortoise and some bunny ears. And I leave it at that, not wanting to spill the beans.
On a different note: I know, everyone talks about Star Wars, but I missed that train and sorry to say so, I tried, but as a writer I can't just not notice how bad the Star Wars dialogs and the story are. Pffff! And good CGI cannot fool me for lack of everything else. And when even grapes, oranges, and eggs get the full Star Wars advertising treatment (see for yourself), I just wonder what has hit Disney on their head? A first class sell out, milking the franchise as much as they can. Pffffff again...
On totally unrelated news: The new Star Trek Trailer is out! OMG! I cannot wait for it! Summer 2016!
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The following news on self-driving vehicles is provided by xiQ.io.
I am testing their new bulleting service...
Ford to begin autonomous vehicle testing in California
A pretty robust way to find out if your INNOVATION is on the disruptive or incremental side of the spectrum is looking at what organization or department would be really upset about your approach. And with upset I mean: they would sue you or send the legal department knocking at your door. Imagine an idea where you connect sellers of overstock furniture with buyers? Would anyone sue you? Very unlikely. Imagine a platform that scans offerings from different furniture brands and discovers that one and the same chair is branded and priced differently and you tell your customers about that? You'd get the hell sued out of you by the maker and the retailers. Read more about this in my latest blog.
Like with any new technology and concept it can be used for good or bad. China seems to use GAMIFICATION for a nefarious purpose: keeping their people in party-line and recruiting them as snitches on their friends. How does it work? Sesame Street is concept that rewards citizen behaviors. For what the Chinese government considers good behaviors the citizens behavior is being rewarded a your score (like a credit score) increases. For bad behavior, including being friends with people being considered not good citizens, your score decreases.
How will it work out? We don't know yet, but let me tell you this: it wouldn't be the first time somebody figures out how a system can be cheated and gamed.
Corporate innovation can take a lot of forms. Recently, an interesting documentary about Kodak came out that showed the former innovation power of this company by giving a walk through of the Kodak Technology Vault. One hour spent well...
Are you planning some new projects for next year? Finally writing the book that you having been pondering for so long? Going on that trip you wanted to do for quite some time? Well, don't tell yourself again and again that you will do it as soon as you have more time at hand and the crazy stress at work or at home is done. It will never happen. You will always find an excuse. The SILICON VALLEY MINDSET is to get started and not wait for the perfect moment.
The secret is to even in the craziest moments find the five or ten minutes of opening a Word document and writing some thoughts down. Sending the email to the person you want to interview for the book. Researching the travel destination and booking a hotel now, and not later. A long journey starts with the first step, and before you know it you are half-way there and it doesn't seem so far anymore. Don't wait for the end of the holidays, sit down today for ten minutes and start with it. And then repeat the next day. And the next day...
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STARTUPS don't know what their product is, don't know who their customers are, and don't know how they will make money. That sounds awfully uncertain, and it is. But trying is knowing, and if you know it's not working then do a pivot. Change the product, service, business model. And try again. Thomas Edison tried thousand variants of light-bulbs to find one that worked. Startups are not for quitters, startups are for people who are willing to persist and change.
Today's NSFW - internet lingo for Not Safe For Work - is starring a Squirrel and his buddy. I am talking about Ice Age. In a hilarious short these two unlikely comic buddies again top it. And on their struggle explain how the world was created.
