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Enterprise Garage Consultancy
Enterprise Garage Newsletter | February 21st, 2016

When Incremental Innovation Is Just Meeeh!

Vertical FarmingMoonshot projects are those, where the minds behind them are not just aiming for a few percentage points of improvement, but for a factor of 10 and more. Instead of 5% they aim at 1,000% improvement. Google (now Alphabet) is doing that with Makani (harnessing wind power), Loon (balloon-powered Internet for everyone), and most prominently self-driving cars.

What criteria does such a project have?

  1. Look for a huge problem in the world that affects many millions of people.
  2. Then try to propose a radical solution for solving that huge problem.
  3. And third, there needs to be some reason to believe that the technology for such a radical solution could actually be built. Some glimmer of hope to get us going and some clear first few steps we could take along that journey.

Naturally, these are very risky projects and may not lead to anything. We heard about Glass, but maybe not about the dozens of others. Astro Teller (what a name!!!), director of Google X, talks about some of those projects in a recent blog post. Automated vertical farming and buoyant cargo ships were among the 100 projects that Google killed.

But here is the thing: as crazy as those ideas may sound, if you never try them you will never know. And in the overall picture it's better to spend a bit of money on many projects, with most failing but some really taking off, instead of betting everything you have on one project that must succeed but has more probability to fail. And once you succeed big, the small innovations will look just Meeeeh!

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Das Silicon-Valley-MindsetInterested in great talks and folks at some EVENTS in the next weeks in Silicon Valley? Here is a collection:

EVENT #1: This Monday founders of the largest startup event PIONEERS will be in the Bay Area and their talk at Stanford's European Entrepreneurship series is a chance to learn more about where the founders Andreas and Jürgen are taking this global event and service, and of course to mingle with them. Here are more details.

EVENT #2: A Fireside Chat with me (right, I am the author, yeah!) about my new book Das Silicon-Valley-Mindset. Although the book is in German, the event will be conducted in English and I will talk about what behaviors and attitudes we can learn from Silicon Valley and combine them with our strengths. Register and reserve your book copy here.

EVENT #3: Innovation Outposts and what needs to be considered if you aim at understanding Silicon Valley will be the topic of a talk on March 23rd at the Vodafone Outpost in Redwood City. Mark the date, details fill follow soon.


IoT TourThe Internet of Things is happening, and the data that comes with it is mind-blowing. In the last two years humanity created more data than it its whole history before. We use Fitbits, Nest, Pebble, Apple Watch, iPhones that we carry with us all time. Modern cars have hundreds of sensors and computer chips installed, and this has just been the beginning.

To see what's happening, Silicon Valley Inspiration Tours organizes a three day deep dive into IoT & Wearable startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. If Mid-March is still available for you, fill it with the future. See more tour details here.

Upcoming SILICON VALLEY INSPIRATION TOURS:

  1. March 16th - 18th, 2016: Internet of Things & Wearables
  2. April 25th - 27th, 2016: Campus Tour
  3. May 2nd - 6th, 2016: Food Innovation
  4. May 23rd - 27th, 2016: Innovation & Automotive
  5. June 15th - 17th, 2016: Medical Future
  6. September 26th - 28th, 2016: Working Environment
  7. December 5th - 9th, 2016: FinTech

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GamificationIf you are like me, then you've read everything from Malcom Gladwell. He has the talent to bring really interesting view points to things we've thought we understood. Now in some of his latest work he talks about why people resist change and may fall back to their old habits. And it may have to do with other people showing a new behavior.

Gladwell introduces us to a concept known as thresholds — the idea of how many people need to be doing a thing before you feel comfortable doing it yourself. A radical is a person with a threshold of zero — they'll do it no matter what, even if no one else is doing it. A person with a threshold of 100 has an extremely high threshold, meaning they'll be the last to follow a trend. But read more about it here.

Articles I liked around GAMIFICATION & BEHAVIORS:

  1. NPR: What Kids Need From Grown-Ups (But Aren't Getting)
  2. TechBeacon: Enterprise gamification: Anything but child's play
  3. Harvard Business Review: Meaningful Work Beats Over-the-Top Perks Every Time
  4. The Atlantic: When Success Leads To Failure
  5. Happiness is here: Learning Is Not Linear: How Unschooled Children Learn

Pre-order my book on Amazon or Plassen. €19,99, available March 1st, 2016

IntrapreneurshipI am nearly finished with my new Online Course on How to set up an Intrapreneurship Program. And it's been very interesting insofar, as my research and interviews with many companies have shown that they follow a similar playbook, but the successes couldn't be differing more. 

  • Train on Lean Startup
  • Run Ideation Challenges
  • Transform the Culture
  • Partner with Startups
  • Invest in Startups
  • Acquire Startups
  • Tour Silicon Valley
  • Partner with an Accelerator
  • Launch an Accelerator
  • Start a Lab in Silicon Valley
These items above are on their checklist, but it all comes to behaviors and attitude. Companies have access to the same sets of tangible production goods, but the outcomes are vastly different. Well, my upcoming online course will talk about that. Stay tuned.

Articles I liked around INTRAPRENEURSHIP:

  1. CapGemini: Why and How Businesses are Investing in Innovation Centers
  2. Medium: Breaking New Ground with Modern Corporate Venture Capital Strategies
  3. Digitalist: Best Practices: An Intrapreneur’s Best Friend – And Why It Should Be Yours Too
  4. Afce: Building a Culture of Innovation
  5. 4inno: The Brave New World of Corporate Venturing. Part I: The Traditional Models

Silicon Valley MindsetAre you familiar with one or more of the following sentences? (use the check box)
[ ] "We struggle with turning ideas into concepts and bring them to market."
[ ] "This new stuff won't help us get out of the troubles we are in."
[ ] "Our management doesn't support this."
[ ] "If it ain't broken, don't fix it."
[ ] "We have to have proof first before we invest into it."
[ ] "Nobody needs that." or [] "Nobody understands that."
and my favorite: [ ] "This is a solution that is looking for a problem."

If those sentences are common reactions to new ideas in your organization, then run! Or better, change the culture. And culture change is not something that is a big bang, it requires small steps. Show me, is one of those little steps you can do to start changing yourself. And many small creativity techniques help you change your attitude as well. A long journey to cultural change starts with small steps.

Let me know how many of those sentences you have heard before, or tell me ones that I haven't listed here.

Articles I liked around SILICON VALLEY MINDSET:

  1. Bloomberg: The Never-Ending Story: Europe’s Banks Face a Frightening Future
  2. Washington Post: CDC investigates why so many high school students in wealthy Palo Alto have committed suicide
  3. TechCrunch: Silicon Valley Keeps Winning Because Non-Competes Limit Innovation
  4. Business Insider: What Google looks for in entrepreneurs when it's thinking about acquiring a company
  5. LinkedIn: Strengths and Weaknesses of German Startups

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READ MY PAST NEWSLETTERS HERE.

NSFW - The Self-Destructing Origami Robot

Origami RobotToday's NSFW - internet lingo for Not Safe For Work - is about a tiny robot that can fold itself, swim, walk, and self-destruct. Which on the one side is totally awesome, but then it it creeps the hell out of me. Not least, because I have read Stanislaw Lem's scifi novel The Invincible. Anyways: no risk no fun! Watch the video here.

Have fun, risk things, but stay safe!

Mario

 

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