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Cool Thing Of The Day: The iPhone Remote-Controlled (Real) Car

Brad Kenney — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:05:08 GMT

Using a set of video cameras, lasers, sensors, a wifi network and a "drive by wire" system, an engineer at the Free University in Berlin has equipped a Dodge minivan with an iPhone remote control application called iDriver that looks like it actually works pretty well. (Warning: German-level bad music.)

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Twitter And Kaizen

Brad Kenney — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:47:32 GMT

Guest blogger Valeria Maltoni has a post over at the Pistachio Consulting blog about how blogging has helped her "to practice kaizen, the art of continuous improvement for writing, ideas, and community-building."

According to Maltoni:

Beyond the obvious ability to have a fast dialogue or point of access with customers, they can learn to understand what to listen for, to help guide and connect people to resources, and connect to what’s next for ideas, trends, and executions.

She also makes the point that "Continuous practice of sharing and community building yields productivity improvements."

It does make a sort of sense -- the idea of an engaged community around a process, continually interacting, all empowered to pull the cord and stop the show. After all, isn't kaizen a way of crowdsourcing accountability?

Another interesting observation:

"One interesting application of the microsharing idea . . . is the polishing and improvement of stories by clustering – adding additional data points and resources from the network."

Although it still seems a tenuous connection (and although some might argue that Twitter is by its very nature a waste of time), between her points about continuously improving customer service, and improving internal storytelling and knowledge sharing (which can help in teambuilding, knowledge retention and collaboration) it seems like with a little continuous improvement of the #kaizenblog idea, Maltoni et al might really be onto something.

Of Collaboration, Innovation And Hockey

Brad Kenney — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:44:20 GMT

Came across an interesting factoid by way of Daniel Pink's blog:

“A study of the top fifty game-changing innovations over a hundred-year period showed that nearly 80 percent of those innovations were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field in which the innovation breakthrough took place.”

A powerful argument for improving collaboration across organizational silos (an activity that's getting easier every day) -- as are the arguments for resourcing it.

Consider the results of a sociological study conducted in the supply chain group at Raytheon (from the Spigit blog):

"Employees who do not access the knowledge, perspectives and ideas of others generated lower quality ideas. Their network constraint consistently hurt them in the idea evaluations. But more importantly, look at the quality of scores for those employees with better collaborative networks. Being well-connected to colleagues across the organization resulted in generating high quality ideas. . .Creation of work-based communities has many benefits in terms of raising organizational IQ. It turns out collaborative networks play an important role in improving innovation of companies' innovation as well."

By the way, Pink got this factoid by way of a book entitled See New Now by Jim Ericson and Jerry De Jaager. Here's another interesting quote:

Signature Move: A hockey Hall-of-Famer tells rising stars, “The way to get the scouts to remember you is to develop a signature move – something you do so well that whenever your name is mentioned, everyone will have a picture of you in their mind.”

Brings to mind several hockey players I've known whose "signature move" was a nasty crosscheck, but still -- an interesting, and sticky, image to take away.

How To Work Less In Order To Produce More

Brad Kenney — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:44:48 GMT

Working the clock around is the normal order of business for many of us. We work at the office, in transit, at home, on vacation, from the first thing in the morning right up until we go to bed.

New research shows, however, that working all the time could be a camouflaged form of laziness. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Sue Shellenbarger, we could actually get more done by working less. She cites a major four-year study to be published in this month�s edition of the Harvard Business Review that reveals a surprising find: when 12 groups of employees were forced to take time off (and some of them literally had to be forced), their productivity increased, primarily because they had to utilize the time they did have more efficiently. They ended up planning ahead more effectively, communicating better, developing closer relationships with their colleagues, and streamlining their projects. This increase in productivity was all wrapped up by better end client reviews.

Shellenbarger also cites examples of executives (such as the president of Bobrick Washroom Equipment) who have been requiring the employees of the 500-employee manufacturing company in North Hollywood CA to be home for dinner every working day. In Mr. Louchheim's view, employees who continually work late hours might be revealing poor work habits.

And what about staying abreast of that exploding galaxy of unstructured information out there? We need to be constantly info-surfing to stay ahead of the competition and be able to articulate the requisite level of expertise, right?

According to an article in the Harvard Business Review by Paul Hemp, maybe not. Hemp cites research that shows it takes about 25 minutes for a worker to resume a project after an email interruption, and expresses the obvious fact that this type of interruption is more costly than is credited, spelling bad bottom-line news for companies and individuals. Hemp writes that the information-undertow that so many of us feel compelled to engage day in, day out, �can adversely affect not only personal well-being but also decision making, innovation, and productivity�.

A while back I wrote an article about how we are becoming a working nation of compulsive email checkers (Checking The Mail? F9? F9?). It turns out that this behavior might just be a part of a burgeoning culture of what can be described as "information addiction" in the modern workplace. For my part, I�ve found that staying abreast of RSS feeds, email messages and blogs are an indispensable way to stay on top of what�s going on in the manufacturing world; I like to think that it gives me an informational edge in my day-to-day work. The idea that maybe it�s actually decreasing my productivity is counterintuitive at first glance, but maybe I�ll give this whole �less is more� idea a shot. How about you?

Chamber Of Commerce Gets Punked -- As Does Fox Business News

Brad Kenney — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:08:57 GMT

With the US Chamber of Commerce already under fire and bleeding members due to its vocal opposition to climate change legislation, a recent press event held to announce the withdrawing of that opposition didn't seem entirely out of line.

Except for the fact that it was a hoax.

According to news reports, the performance artist/culture jamming/ne'er do wells known as the Yes Men held a fake press event this week. According to the event writeup on BoingBoing, the event "... broke up when a spokesman from the real chamber burst in. What followed was a spectacle not usually seen in the John Peter Zenger Room at the National Press Club: two men in business suits shouting at one another, each calling the other an impostor and demanding to see business cards."

The funniest bit of it all is this reporter from Fox Business News who announces the development as a breaking news story, tries to explain it away, then gets informed that the story is not true (at which point he tries to blame it on Reuters). Hilarious.

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Top 10 (Formerly) Born In The USA Products Now Made Elsewhere

Brad Kenney — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:14:17 GMT

The editors at financial site Minyanville have put an interesting list of the top 10 "American" brands that are no longer made in the USA -- and there are some surprising manufacturers and products on the list.

Here are a few:

Gerber: Despite being owned by Swiss conglomerate Nestl�, "Gerber still owns a solid majority of the U.S. baby food market and it sells its products in 80 countries, with labeling in 16 languages."

Fender guitars: (This one broke my heart.) According to the Minyanville story, "Fender still produces some high-end models in its Corona, Calif., plant, (but) most of its instruments are built in Mexico, Japan and South Korea. The company also produces lower-priced guitars under the Squier brand in China, Indonesia and India."

Ben & Jerry's ice cream: The iconic and eponymous Vermont owners "sold the company to Dutch-British conglomerate Unilever (UL) for $326 million. The sale put it in the hands of the world's largest ice cream manufacturer, right beside other formerly American ice cream icons Good Humor and Breyers."

Levi's blue jeans: What could be more American than blue jeans (now that Fender stratocasters are out, at least?) Noting that global demand calls for global production, the article notes that: "Levi's has responded by opening more than 50 plants and offices in 35 countries. Today it sells its products in 60,000 retail outlets around the world and derives nearly half its revenue from operations in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region." The story also says you can check your label to see if your Levi's were by chance made in the USA, with the inference being that not many are, these days.

Miller beer: Bought by South African Breweries, the combined company is called SABMiller and markets its beer in the US http://www.minyanville.com/articles/beer/index/a/24061/from/msn"]through a joint venture with Canadian brewer Molson.

Firestone tires: Bought by Japanese firm Bridgestone in 1988 for for $2.65 billion, a sum that was "less than half its worth 15 years earlier."

Ford's Latest Innovative Product Placement

Brad Kenney — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:33:45 GMT

We all know that social media can get us to click on an endless stream of virtual diversions. (Witness the sheep throwing and superpoking and quiz-taking of the Facebook newcomer for ample evidence.) The question for marketers is, can it influence consumer decisions when it comes to big purchases? Like, for instance, a car?

That's what the marketeers at Ford are obviously betting. A free, online game named Hover Kart, created by a company named OMGPOP, has become the latest vehicle (ahem) for Ford's brand-name product placement by way of a "cheat code" (if you don't know what this is, ask your kids) that, according to Adam Ostrow's writeup at Mashable, "unlocks a virtual Ford Fiesta that comes with some special features versus the standard vehicle you use to race around the track."

Ford�s presence on the social web is undeniably a leading force, but reaching out to their target product markets with throwbacks such as the Fiesta placement in Hover Kart is a clever move indeed, especially when paired with other parts of Ford's Fiesta Movement campaign (including a six-month long event in which 100 twenty-somethings will drive a new Fiesta and share their experiences online via blogs, tweets and Facebook updates.)

According to Wired Magazine's Keith Barry, the incentive is clear:

"...the healthiest of the Big Three wants to generate buzz for the car among "millennials," those born between 1979 and 1996. Some 70 million millennials will be driving next year, and Ford is targeting the Fiesta squarely at them. A Microsoft study found 77 percent of millennials use a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace daily and 28 percent of them have a personal blog."

Hence the Fiesta showing up in odd places like a free online video game. It's all about the millenial buzz. Like all "conversation marketing" there is risk involved -- several users have complained that the virtual Fiesta actually slows them down in their pursuit of Hover Kart glory (which is definitely not the intended conversational effect Ford was going for).

Enterprise Software Can No Longer Remain Unusable

Brad Kenney — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:43:48 GMT

OK, I know it's a hyperbolic title, but I'm speaking in the comparative -- with consumer apps becoming ever-easier, enterprise software can no longer hide behind the wall of their installed base and say, "We don't need to focus on usability; users simply must adapt to our frankly unusable applications." To use an apt expression, such an attitude no longer computes.

What brought this idea up was the usual free-associative meanderings from the web. I read a post in the business strategy/innovation blogosphere from a smart guy named Idris Mootee who was waxing ecstatic about the wonders of Swedish design, when I remembered some of the newer screenshots I'd seen of the latest enterprise portal from Swedish ERP provider IFS that features onboard map mashups, sticky notes, an iPhone-style interface, and all sorts of little usable widget trickery that makes it attractive to the types of users who will be performing many of those customer-facing, entry-level jobs that feed data into your essential planning systems. The idea is, keep these crucial users engaged (or at least not tuned out) and you've got a better chance of that ground-floor data being accurate. The CTO of IFS, Dan Mathews, talked about the concept as being "informational ergonomics" (here's the report I filed from an IFS user conference: Globalization, Swedish Style) which, given the pressures of the modern, mulitple-firehose knowledge workplace, is an idea whose time has come.

Here's a nice-looking shot or two of enterprise software eye candy (yes, that phrase is no longer a joke) from IFS.

Ripoff Alert: Shady 300% WSJ Subscription Price Increase

Brad Kenney — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:27:34 GMT

I will freely admit here at the top that I don't pay as close attention to as many of the details of modern life as I should. For instance, I have quite a few of my financial affairs set on autopay autopilot, which opens the door for cascading chaos should something go wrong with my checking account autodeposit.

Unfortunately, this over-reliance on automated payments also opens the door for scams, such as the one described in this recent post by Debbie Wilson on the Gartner Blog Network.

In Wilson's words:

...I opened a letter from the Wall Street Journal. �Renewal Savings Notice,� it proclaimed, along with an offer to add a year to my subscription at the wonderful price of $8.49 per week. That�s $441.48 per year � almost enough money to buy both of my younger sons a season pass at their favorite ski area � and nearly three times the amount I paid last December for a year subscription � $149.00. (And yes I know this because I tired years ago of publications counting on me to forget that my subscription is not yet up for renewal, to get me to ante up for another year or two of money way ahead of time. I track this stuff.)

Wilson's speculation was that "the WSJ was hoping that I would re-up subscription and just submit the bill to my employer." She also references business class airfare as an area where extreme premiums are routinely applied. However, at least with business class you get a bigger seat -- I for one wouldn't pay a single extra dime for the WSJ's "new features" (some crappy sports coverage and a crossword) much less the 300% markup that Wilson reports.

It all reminds me of another scam I had to endure, where Hilton Hotels tried to sneak about $1000 of false charges onto my hotel bill with the expectation that I'd just pencil-whip the AMEX charges through my T&E system.

Attention to Hilton Hotels, Rupert Murdoch and company: I may live my life on autopay autopilot, but thousands of dollars of bogus hotel charges and shady 300% subscription markups far too much turbulence to go unnoticed even by the likes of me.

Editor's note: Here's the original post, and here's a post in response to an IndustryWeek reader who wrote me after a disturbingly similar situation.

Have you suffered through a scam of this nature? Doublechecking your WSJ bill as we speak? Leave your thoughts and stories in the comments.