11 innovation lessons from creators of World of Warcraft - Biomedical Innovation with Colin Stewart - OCRegister.com

From 2008, but interesting observations.

11 innovation lessons from creators of World of Warcraft:
1. RELY ON CRITICS
2. USE YOUR OWN PRODUCT
3. MAKE CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENTS
4. GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
5. DESIGN FOR DIFFERENT KINDS OF CUSTOMERS
6. THE IMPORTANCE OF FREQUENT FAILURES
7. MOVE QUICKLY, IN PIECES
8. STATISTICS BOLSTER EXPERIENCE
9. DEMAND EXCELLENCE OR YOU’LL GET MEDIOCRITY
10. CREATE A NEW TYPE OF PRODUCT
11. OFFER EMPLOYEES SOMETHING EXTRA

tags: innovation, management, software, World of Warcraft, blizzard, strategy, success, agile, usability, voice of customer, six sigma

Declaration of Innovation - Commonwealth Conversations: Mass Innovations

Declaration of Innovation proposed by Secretary Gregory Bialecki, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development - for anyone living and working in Massachusetts, this is a great step. Help sustain the innovation agenda - it takes far more than just the government to step up and state innovation is important.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident:
1. Innovation is our edge. For almost four hundred years, our economic prosperity and our quality of life have been advanced through technological and social innovation. Innovation has always been, and still is, our fundamental competitive advantage. Our innovations have benefitted the state, the nation and the world.

2. Innovation is everywhere (Part I). Our innovation instincts show up in every industry sector, from manufacturing to digital technology to life sciences to the creative economy, and also permeate our nonprofit and government sectors.

3. Innovation is everywhere (Part II). There are innovation success stories all over the state and indeed in our neighboring states as well. We must keep in mind that innovation knows no bounds.

4. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Let’s face it, when it comes to innovation, we rock. That doesn’t mean we can’t improve (a lot) on what we are doing, but it does mean that we should stop wasting our time worrying about whether we are really in the big leagues. We are.

5. Together we can. The keys to success for a Massachusetts innovation agenda will be local collaborations among business, academia and government and global collaborations with innovators from around the world.

Here within the Patrick Administration, we strongly believe that the Commonwealth must have a deliberate innovation agenda as a core element of our economic development strategy. We will be using this blog to talk more about that agenda, but our objective is simple: To create and sustain what is widely recognized as the most effective collaboration of industry, academia and government in support of technol

tags: innovation, massachusetts, declaration

Army Orders Bases to Stop Blocking Twitter, Facebook, Flickr | Danger Room | Wired.com

If Intelligence agencies, and now The Army can loosen up and allow viewing/participation in 2.0 - what's YOUR company's excuse for blocking? Hearing real stories from real soldiers is pretty radical transparency - yet with guidelines (not a bad idea).

"The Army has ordered its network managers to give soldiers access to social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, Danger Room has learned. That move reverses a years-long trend of blocking the web 2.0 locales on military networks."

tags: transparency, 2.0, web2.0, army, facebook, twitter, flickr, Del.icio.us, participation, socialmedia

Miles O'Brien - The Paradox of ‘Simplicity’ - True/Slant

Interesting - very interesting take on the failures of over automation and complex systems... Anyone with more experience than I in flying or designing such systems care to comment?

See -> The Paradox of ‘Simplicity’

"Air France Flight 447 went down in a giant, dangerous, violent storm that might not have been survivable under any circumstances. But as the Airbus A-330 penetrated that huge system of thunderstorms, sensors, systems and computers on the plane started failing in a rapid cascade that would make any pilot’s head spin – even if he was not in the middle of extreme turbulence flying blind in the night..."

tags: simplicity, usability, complexity, failure

Disruption: The Risks of Business Innovation - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

Reminds me that I need to circle back with Michael Schrage - his work on prototyping is even more important than ever. Doesn't matter what you're looking at, whether software, cars, houses, business models, etc., building prototypes of some kind as quickly as possible, and TESTING to improve quickly as well, is the only way to survive. Destroy and improve in some sort of lab/experimental area (blog, wiki, twitter, collaborative space for virtual experiments) and you actually a stand of delivering something useful at the back-end of your innovation process.

tags: agile, michael_schage, prototyping, risk_management, innovation_management

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dan_keldsen/~3/-gGLwakkek8/where-have-the-podcasts-gone-psst-over-here.html http://www.biztechtalk.com/2009/05/where-have-the-podcasts-gone-psst-over-here.html Out with the Old For those readers and participants in the grand experiment of BizTechTalk over the last 3 years or so, you may recall I had launch a podcast series, titled, oddly enough, BizTechTalk. Greatly enjoyed the experience, and...

Out with the Old

For those readers and participants in the grand experiment of BizTechTalk over the last 3 years or so, you may recall I had launch a podcast series, titled, oddly enough, BizTechTalk. Greatly enjoyed the experience, and have had the pleasure of discussing a wide variety of topics in over 50 podcasts.

In with the New

As part of the ongoing investigations into what is happening in the business and technology world, I've re-launched the podcast series in my new (December 2008) company, Information Architected.

The series is "IAM Talking" - and is an interview-based series, talking with people from all industries, various roles, and on a variety of topics.

The graphic above shows the 5 most recent podcasts (find them all -> IAM Talking) that have been released and recorded, featuring topics such as:

• Agile development
• SharePoint
• Tagging and taxonomies
• Knowledge management and new business models
• and User Experience

Coming up in the queue are interviews with:

• Matthew E. May - author of "In Pursuit of Elegance" (and who I had interviewed in 2006 on his previous book, "The Elegant Solution")
• Daniel Pink - author of "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko" (most recently) and well known for previous books "A Whole New Mind" and "Freelance Nation" among other work
• and many others - on a roughly weekly basis, as scheduling allows.

Any topics that are of particularly burning interest - please let me know what YOU want to know more about, and if there are particular people or companies that you feel I should focus on.

If that focus should be YOU and YOUR company, book, product, service, etc., don't hesitate to pipe up. If there is a reasonable fit, and you can resist an outright product pitch in the interview, I'm perfectly willing to discuss and magnify the conversation.

Either comment on this post, or get in touch via LinkedIn and/or Twitter as a first pass.

In addition to this public exploration of topics, I am also at your disposal for private, targeted analysis inquiries - analysis being one of the three "touchstones" of our business of analysis, consulting and education focused on the business impact of process, innovation, content, knowledge and search.

For those who are in need of no-nonsense analysis, consulting or education services - please don't hesitate to get in touch.

]]> Podcast Dan Keldsen Fri, 22 May 2009 12:34:25 -0400 http://www.biztechtalk.com/2009/05/where-have-the-podcasts-gone-psst-over-here.html