Rockets, Risks, and the Industrialist's Dilemma

The dominating mantra in rocket science was that it's impossible to land a rocket's first stage back on Earth, thus instead of saving tens of millions dollars, they are getting wasted. Guess what? Two new rocket companies didn't know that and just did the impossible. Both SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos) landed their stages under big applause and excitement.

While in retrospective that seems like an easy task, a self-driving car also had a first: a Nissan Leaf equipped with a control device from Silicon Valley-based Automation Cruise careened into a parked Prius and made a dent - not in the universe - but in the bumpers. Nobody hurt, just a glitch in the matrix.

And then a new course in Stanford deals with the Industrialist's Dilemma and the reason why large corporations fail themselves with innovation. For more about that I also recommend my article on how corporations can have a better decision tool for calculating the risks of innovation projects.

INTRAPRENEURSHIP is one of the newest trends, given the pace of innovation that is arriving and puzzling companies. While we have more and more tool sets at hand to encourage the corporate innovator, they are barely applied or if, then in wrong or limited ways.

We also need to realize that tools that we are very familiar with like NPV or Cash-flow calculations in fact don't work for innovation - and even create an unfair bias to innovation projects. Industrialist's face the dilemma that they play into the hands of innovative newcomers and get disrupted.

Articles I liked about INTRAPRENEURSHIP:

1. Intrapreneurship Conference: Corporate Hackathons: there’s a method behind the madness
2. Medium: Introducing The Industrialist’s Dilemma
3. Harvard Business Review: Companies Are Now Making Innovation Everyone’s Job
4. London Loves Business: What is “intrapreneurship” and why are the world’s most successful companies suddenly all doing it?
5. TechCrunch: The Industrialist’s Dilemma

One month only left until my new book will be out, but a lot of articles give us different perspectives how the Silicon Valley Mindset works. From the moonshots that Google (literally) does, to behaviors such as taking a walk to foster creativity and pondering solutions.

Whatever you do, mindfulness is the first step. Become aware of your surrounding and your own behaviors. And compare them to behaviors of people that you consider creative, or from regions where you see innovation coming from.

Articles I liked around SILICON VALLEY MINDSET:

1. <re/code>: Google’s Best Bet for More Moonshot Money? The Boring Old Enterprise
2. The Guardian: Silicon Valley braces itself for a fall: 'There'll be a lot of blood'
3. New York Times: How Larry Page’s Obsessions Became Google’s Business
4. Harvard Business Review: Renaissance Florence Was a Better Model for Innovation than Silicon Valley Is

More and more urgent becomes the discussion how the massive wave of disruption will affect us and how countries and regions need to prepare. Robots taking away jobs? Self-driving cars changing the way we build cities? Cryptocurrencies do away with government issued money?

And still we have basic problems that nobody tackles. Climate change, refugee crisis, high youth unemployment and after Ebola in Africa another scary virus like Zika in Brazil.

We need to equip ourselves and our future generations with the right tools to solve the problems of the 21st century. For that we could start with the Silicon Valley Mindset or the Renaissance Florence under the Medici.

Articles I liked around INNOVATION:

1. PC World: San Francisco has had its first self-driving car accident
2. Ars Technica: Forget Blue Origin vs. SpaceX—the real battle is between old and new ideas
3. Reuters: Here come the robots: Davos bosses brace for big technology shocks
4. Backchannel: License to (Not) Drive
5. World Economic Forum: Digital disruption has only just begun

When was the last time that you played with Lego? If you can't remember, skip your lunch break and buy a Lego-set. Or sit down with your children or grand-children and ask them if you can play with them. Don't follow the instructions, but get creative with your own designs.

Most importantly, take the finished piece and put it on your desk or your work area. While it may seem as distraction first, or something cluttering your work space, you will realize that it'll become a piece where your thoughts can wander to, or that open a conversation with a co-worker. And this may be the start for finding ideas and solutions.

Articles I liked around BEHAVIORS & GAMIFICATION:

1. Harvard Business Review: How Company Culture Shapes Employee Motivation
2. BBC: The slow death of purposeless walking
3. eLearning Industry: Design Thinking And The Application Of Lego Serious Play
4. Enterprise Gamification: The gamification of risk: how health apps foster self-confidence and why this is not enough
5. The Atlantic: How Do We Make Rules for Self-Driving Cars?

NSFW - Bottle Boys Play Video Game Music

Today's NSFW - internet lingo for Not Safe For Work - is from a group of dudes using nothing else than emptied beer bottles and performing - no, not a drinking contest - music from some popular video games. And I say, the result is quite - how to phrase that, hmmmm - bubbly?!

A refreshing medley with lots of flavors that make you smile and giggle. Well, what are you waiting for? Watch the video here.

Play more music with bottles!

Mario

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