Inmagic Inc.

Why did Inmagic Choose SydneyPLUS?

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Green) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:01:17 PST

It comes down to three words: Ethos, Ethics, and Excitement. Please allow me to explain.

Ethos

When I speak to users from around the world, I find that Inmagic’s user are most often attracted to our products because you agree with Inmagic’s ethos. Our ethos infuses the way we build software and how we serve our customers. At the core of this ethos is a belief that says - we should build flexible, powerful software that non-techies can use in order to build, manage, and share critical information. Unlike many firms, Inmagic has always focused on building software that serves many industries rather than just one industry. We've served special libraries, archives, museums, associations, law firms, etc. since day one. We did not originate with a hardwired application, but rather a set of powerful tools that customers could easily adapt and bend to meet their unique needs.

While searching for a new partner, Inmagic focused on finding an organization that would enable us to build on this ethos and capitalize on synergies. Happily, we found a like-minded partner / parent in SydneyPLUS. While best known for its long standing ILS, SydneyPLUS now builds highly flexible software that adapts to meet the needs of each unique client. In fact, SydneyPLUS's "Information Manager" product, delivers a flexible and adaptable solution similar to Inmagic products and one that is not available from other ILS vendors or other possible parents. In addition, a sister SydneyPLUS company, Cuadra Associates, develops and implements an information management product called "STAR," that over the years I have frequently referred to as "DB/Text for Unix."

When looking for our next partner and reviewing the market leaders, we found that the fit in terms of ethos with SydneyPLUS was second to none.

Ethics

Inmagic has always felt that strong ethical treatment of customers, staff and partners was not a goal, but a requirement. When we went looking for a partner, we wanted a company that would also meet this high ethical bar. We wanted to know that Inmagic's strong beliefs would not be changed or compromised as a result of a new relationship. From previous experience and as a result of our research, we learned that some organizations make customers pay to export the customer's own data from their products. Others often sell a bare-bones system and then nickel and dime for additional components and capabilities necessary to operate as a complete integrated library solution. At Inmagic, we sell our Genie ILS with all the modules included and then allow you to choose the modules you deploy so that you never have any additional fees. We wanted a partner who was supportive of this approach and where you can export the data any time you want, to either XML or to MARC (if you catalog in MARC).

We wanted a partner / parent that would not compromise these ethical business practices and we found that partner in SydneyPLUS.

Excitement

When Inmagic first took outside investment money from Edison Investment in 2007, we were full of excitement. Fresh capital to pursue our dreams and grow the company. Unfortunately, the excitement and shared vision did not last long. The traditional markets we served were not looked at as being strategic and we were told to find faster growing markets. After finding a few markets attractive to venture capital type investors, we decided that Inmagic's long standing customers would be best served by spinning out the "traditional" business. Thus begin the search for a good, stable, long term partner / parent, for Inmagic. When the pieces began to fall in place with SydneyPLUS, we were thrilled. With SydneyPLUS, we found a partner / parent that understood our market, our customers, and all of the challenges that come from serving non-profits, small archives, and the plethora of organizations that employ special librarians. And they shared our ethos for flexible solutions and our ethics to boot. You bet we were excited. We can now move forward and focus on our customers, accelerate development and be true to our heritage and culture. YAHOOO!

Closing

So why did Inmagic choose SydneyPLUS? Three words: ethos, ethics and excitement.

SydneyPLUS acquires our special library products

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 06:01:42 PDT

We've made a move with global knowledge management solutions developer SydneyPLUS. The company has acquired Inmagic's special library business, as well as the Inmagic brand.

SydneyPLUS and Inmagic share a commitment to delivering world-class knowledge management products, and our companies have natural synergies to accelerate product development and enhance service to our customers.

As part of the transaction, we've also agreed to co-market Presto for Social Libraries. Inmagic, however, retains and will continue to market and sell our Presto technology and products, including Presto KnowledgeNet, Presto AssociatioNet, and Presto IdeaNet.

For more details about the acquisition, read on for the press release we issued today announcing the news. If you have any questions about the new Inmagic business unit, feel free to call us at 781-938-4444 or email us LibrarySales@Inmagic.com.

SydneyPLUS Acquires Inmagic's Special Library Products As Well As the Inmagic Brand

The move will strengthen both SydneyPLUS and the new Inmagic division by bringing together complementary technologies to meet the needs of special librarians, while allowing Inmagic, Inc. to focus on new markets

VANCOUVER, Canada and WOBURN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SydneyPLUS and Inmagic, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Inmagic's special library business by SydneyPLUS. The Inmagic special library business includes Inmagic's DB/Text® Library Suite of products: DB/TextWorks®, DB/Text® WebPublisher Pro, and Inmagic® Genie. Additionally, the companies are announcing a strategic partnership to co-market and support Inmagic's Presto for Social Libraries.

As part of this transaction, SydneyPLUS also acquired the Inmagic trademark, which is strongly associated with the special library market. Inmagic, Inc. retains and will continue to market and sell its award-winning Presto technology and its products, Presto KnowledgeNet, Presto AssociatioNet, and Presto IdeaNet. Inmagic, Inc. will continue to use the Inmagic name until such time as a new company name is established.

Inmagic's special library products will join the SydneyPLUS family. The addition of Inmagic's special library business to SydneyPLUS will extend SydneyPLUS' leadership position in knowledge management and library automation software markets. Phillip Green, former Inmagic, Inc. CTO, will join SydneyPLUS and lead the new division. He will be joined by Inmagic's co-founder Karen Brothers and other core members of Inmagic's special library team of sales, customer support, and engineering staff to form the new SydneyPLUS Inmagic division.

"We are thrilled about joining the SydneyPLUS family," said Phillip Green. "We share a commitment to long-term healthy and productive relationships with customers. We look forward to exploiting the synergies of our combined organizations to accelerate development, enhance customer service, and continue delivering world-class products to our global customer base."

SydneyPLUS is well known for helping Fortune 1000 companies, top law firms, and industry leaders to collect, manage, and exchange knowledge more effectively. Inmagic, a pioneer in information management solutions, is known for its large customer base in special libraries, government agencies, commercial organizations, associations, and other non-profits.

"We at SydneyPLUS welcome everyone in the DB/Text and Genie communities to the SydneyPLUS family. Having our combined customer bases under one roof has been a long-time goal of mine," stated Ron Aspe, President of SydneyPLUS. "Inmagic and SydneyPLUS have long served similar markets, and I believe the combined expertise of both our companies will yield compelling solutions that will bring opportunity, innovation, and more choice to all."

The new Inmagic will continue to protect and reward its customers' investment in Inmagic products by adding new features and capabilities, as well as new applications. SydneyPLUS and its new Inmagic division remain dedicated to maintaining and increasing the qualities that their customers have come to expect-technical innovation, exceptional service, ease of use, outstanding reliability, and a lifelong reputation for integrity.

"I'm looking forward to expanding the development team under the SydneyPLUS umbrella and delivering exciting new capabilities to our customers," said Karen Brothers, Inmagic co-founder and Lead Developer.

Inmagic's Presto for Social Libraries, which the companies will co-market and support under a strategic partnership, is an integration of Inmagic Genie, an integrated library system, with Inmagic Inc.'s Presto. Presto for Social Libraries is a Social Knowledge Network (SKN) application that integrates library workflow with knowledge-based content and the "wisdom of the community" to create a "Library 2.0" environment to support the research and business objectives of organizations.

"This is an extremely positive outcome for Inmagic's large base of library customers and business partners around the world," said Ron Matros, CEO of Inmagic, Inc. "SydneyPLUS has a long and successful history in the special library and knowledge management market and is a great home for Inmagic's library solutions business."

Both SydneyPLUS and Inmagic, Inc. are private companies. Specific terms of this agreement are not being disclosed.

For further information on SydneyPLUS KM and its affiliates, phone 604-278-6717 or email sales@sydneyplus.com with your questions. For questions relating to the new Inmagic business unit, phone 781-938-4444 or email librarysales@inmagic.com.

For further information on Presto technology and Presto applications, phone 781-938-4444 or email prestosales@inmagic.com.

Contacts

Press contact:
Gregory FCA
Alicia Buonanno, 610-228-2096
Alicia@GregoryFCA.com

Adam Hartung on killing 'innovation killers'

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:42:20 PDT

Phoenix Principle's Adam Hartung

If you've read Adam Hartung's blog, The Phoenix Principle, you might have seen him use terms like "innovation killers" and "status quo police." According to Adam, these are some of the biggest barriers to innovation in organizations.

When we read about them, we thought Adam articulated some key points about what impedes innovation in many organizations, including some obvious factors that we think many organizations just aren't thinking about.

We thought you'd be interested in hearing more on this, so we invited Adam on our blog for a podcast. To our pleasure, he was game.

Take a listen to our interview with Adam, where we unfold:

What an innovation killer is
Who the status quo police are
Why they're impeding innovation in many organizations -- and perhaps yours
How to overcome these barriers and ignite company-wide innovation

Thanks for joining us, Adam!

How to allocate time, money, and people to innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:43:00 PDT

Destination Innovation's Paul Sloane

"You don’t get innovation for free. You have to allocate time and you have to allocate money and you have to allocate people if you’re going to generate innovation, if you’re going to find new ways to do things."

That's one of the main points Paul Sloane underscored in our recent interview with him. You can listen to that and much more in the full podcast here.

Paul is an author and speaker on innovation, leadership, and lateral thinking (puzzles where you're given a small amount of information, and have to ask questions to solve them).

He also founded Destination Innovation, a consultancy that helps organizations improve their innovation strategies. Paul's sold over 2 million copies of his 18 books on lateral puzzles, creative problem solving, and lateral leadership.

In our interview, we took a deep dive into Paul's recommendations for allocating time, money, and people to innovation to help you plan and structure your innovation strategy. Paul takes a fun, entertaining, and thought-provoking approach to counseling companies on their innovation strategies, and he shared some of those insights in our interview.

It's worth a listen if you're looking to shake up your innovation strategy with some fresh, engaging tactics and methodologies. We'll also be following up with the transcript of our interview soon.

Thanks for joining us on our blog, Paul!

8 features to look for in an idea management system

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Warren) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:40:15 PDT

Last month we posted a checklist to help guide you as you evaluate idea management systems. We developed it based on what our customers in the B2B high-tech space have told us is important to them in supporting ideation and managing product enhancements.

The result is a brief overview of what product managers and developers should look for in an idea management system. But we thought it would be valuable to expand upon each of the points to give you more detailed guidance.

So here, as part of our B2B Innovation blog series, are eight features to look for in an idea management system to help you collect, manage, discuss, and leverage the creative ideas of your customers and employees to drive innovation.

1. Sophisticated moderating and triaging capabilities. Moderation lets you control the publication of ideas into the system. However, look for systems that have additional functionality around this to support quality control, including the ability to edit and clarify submissions while preserving the original idea. Enhancing an idea -- or just fixing misspellings or other errors that detract from it -- ensures that ideas in the system are valuable and can be understood by other users. Tagging and categorization features help keep ideas organized and easy to find, because you can tag and publish ideas in multiple categories and create new custom categories if needed.

2. Advanced voting. Voting and commenting lets you gauge how other users receive ideas shared in the system, so it's important to understand how the system ranks the popularity of an idea. Some idea management systems assign users a reputation rating based on how popular their ideas are among their peers, the number of comments they’ve left, and other metrics. Typically, higher popularity and participation leads to better reputation. This kind of reputation ranking can, however, be misleading and without clear communication, an idea’s value can be misrepresented. It's crucial that user voting is transparent and balanced. Look for a system that lets you weight internal votes based on key business criteria, such as support level, customer or potential revenue, geography, etc. This lets you distinguish between ideas with strategic potential and those that are simply popular. Also look for a system that lets you limit voting to one vote per user per idea to prevent stacking the deck. The system should let users retract votes as they might change their minds.

3. Flexible commenting. Commenting is important for maximizing the insight extracted through the system. Look for a system that enables users to supplement their votes with comments on any idea. It should provide a tightly integrated discussion forum to promote product-specific interaction among users. Often, ideas will germinate in discussion forums before being solidified and entered as formal ideas in the system.

4. Advanced search capabilities. Because ideas will be submitted by potentially dozens, hundreds, even thousands of users, it can become difficult to search, filter, and sort ideas. Look for a system with a search engine that lets you sort search results across many dimensions, such as specific fields, popularity, or internal factors. Pick systems that let you set up watch lists, alerts, or feeds from personal searches to help you stay up-to-date on the ideas that matter to you.

5. Ability to keep the system clean. Many systems suffer from clutter -- problem reports, duplicate ideas, etc. -- which often frustrates users and can drive them away. Look for a system that lets you manage duplicate and related ideas. It should allow users to easily determine whether a new idea is similar or related to other ideas in the system. So rather than duplicate an idea in the system, users can vote or comment on the original submission of that idea. Grouping related ideas provides opportunity for discussion around the larger concept and can facilitate tracking. Also look for the ability to separate new ideas from non-idea posts, such as problem reports or suggestions for functionality that already exist, to keep the system clean.

6. Granular permissioning capabilities. Highly flexible and granular permissioning can provide security to protect confidential information and flexibility to maximize the usability of the system. For example, enabling users to submit, view, and vote/comment on ideas only for the products they own streamlines their experience and ensures you only see feedback from those who actually use the product. Look for a system that gives you field-level control over what information is displayed. This enables you to segment visibility of information. For example, you might want to make certain information available only to your premium support customers or to customer advisory board members. Similarly, you want to ensure that voting can be segmented so that, in some cases, only certain users are allowed to vote on an idea.

7. Robust reporting capabilities. Reporting helps you select the right ideas to commercialize and communicate product improvement strategy to executive leadership. Look for reporting capabilities that let you analyze data in a variety of ways to understand trends and map data to business strategies. They should also let you segment customer input into categories that are meaningful to your organization, such as vertical or geographic markets.

8. Integrate with other systems. For your idea management system to play a central role in your product management processes, it should integrate with all the systems that support your innovation and product development processes. Look for a system that offers easy integration with or API access to CRMs, portals, and other systems used by the product management team.

Idea management systems are a fundamental component of the innovation process. By adopting the right platform, you can help build lasting competitive advantage by consistently generating high-quality ideas and turning them into features and products your customer want and need.

It's time to rock the vote!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:19:33 PDT

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is holding another Launch Pad competition this year to find the market's favorite new and innovative E2.0 product or service. The competition is well underway, and I'm excited to report that Inmagic has made it to the second round!

If you're not unfamiliar with the Launch Pad competition, it pits companies against one another by asking them to first pitch their product on Twitter with the contest hashtag, #e2conflp. The E2 Launch Pad Jury narrowed down the entrants to eight quarter-finalists who go to the second round.

The quarter-finalists create a three-minute video showcasing their product, which are open to the public to vote for their favorite video. So we've been busy over the past couple of weeks creating our video showcasing IdeaNet. We've submitted it to the judges, who've added it to the voting page online.

Voting is now open, so it's time to get clicking!! Take a look at the entrants and vote for your favorite E2 Launch Pad video. Or for all our fans out there, I won't tell if you just skip ahead to ours and vote for it! ;) We hope we'll get your support. Thank you to everyone who punches the ballot for us!

Feel free to also tell your colleagues about the competition, and share it on your blog or social networks to get the word out to support the E2 Conference and Inmagic.

Voting closes Oct. 10. The four companies with the most votes will be announced on Oct. 14, and will go on to the final round. They will give a three-minute demonstration of their product live on the keynote stage at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference on Nov. 16 in Santa Clara, Calif. The conference attendees will pick the winner after all companies give their demos.

Lots to look forward to! Help us rock the vote before Oct. 10!

Playbook for creating your 'innovation dream team'

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:19:25 PDT

Earlier this week, we posted our podcast interview with University of Cincinnati's Drew Boyd, who dished on how to create your "innovation dream team." I wanted to follow up our interview today with the transcript, a.k.a. "playbook," to help you take your innovation dream team to the field. Read on for Drew's insights about:

Why innovation is a team sport
Tricks for breaking down organizational barriers and getting cross-functional teams working together
How to use systematic inventive thinking to come up with ideas for new features and products
Why "innovation rooms" and "innovation retreats" aren't all they're cracked up to be
Why companies should treat innovation like a regular business process
Business skills employees should develop to make them more innovative

Janelle: Hi, everyone. I'm Janelle Kozyra, your host for another Inmagic podcast. Today we are joined by Drew Boyd. And Drew is a corporate practitioner, teacher, researcher, and writer on innovation, marketing, and persuasion.

He is the Executive Director of the Master of Science in Marketing Program and Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati. He also blogs at InnovationInPractice.com. Drew, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Welcome to our podcast.

Drew: Thanks for having me.

Janelle: So you have an interesting background that's brought you to where you are today. So tell us a little bit about your professional history and what you do today.

Drew: Right. I'm sort of a hybrid practitioner and academic. I've spent 17 years with Johnson & Johnson, all of it in the medical device side of things, and that's where I really learned this stuff about innovation and methods and things like that.

And now I teach this material at the University of Cincinnati and it's been a real nice transition to take my experiences from the corporate world where it's practiced day in and day out where companies depend on their survival for innovation. And to be able to take that into the classroom and teach my students, not just the theory, but how you actually put it in practice, how you use it day-to-day to create growth.

Janelle: So you said you were at Johnson & Johnson for 17 years and one of your roles there was to teach employees about innovation to more systematically invent new medical products and integrate the inventions into their long-term strategic plans.

Drew: All my background is marketing and planning. I started at J&J in marketing and just moved through different parts of the commercial organization -- international marketing and market development. I did a couple of years in Merck as an acquisition.

A lot of strategic planning and things like that and we woke up one day and realized that we had a problem. We had great people and we forced people from all different parts of the company and externally, but they were all speaking a different language about marketing. They were speaking a different language about commercializing products, launching products, etc.

And my boss's boss happened to find out that I had a background in teaching, I was very passionate about it, and so I was asked to start essentially an internal marketing university, a training program, a collection of training programs to give our team a common framework, common vocabulary, and all the courses were taught by external faculty.

One of them, of course, was innovation methodology. So it was a lot of fun. It was fun essentially running an academic unit within a corporation and, of course, it's a big reason why I'm doing what I'm doing now at the University of Cincinnati.

But it allows me to experiment, to find new methods in current practices, best practices, to benchmark with people that did my job at companies like GE and Procter & Gamble, and things like that. It was a lot of fun. And that's where I had a chance to experiment and do things like how do you take innovation methods and how do you take strategic planning and marketing planning methods and fuse them?

How do you get them to work together so the teams are more effective in what they do? And that's really the thing that came out of that experience more than anything. That is what I blog about today and what I'm writing a book about and, of course, teaching at the university.

Janelle: So where did those new ideas come from?

Drew: Where do new ideas come from? Do you mean in general?

Janelle: In your experience at Johnson & Johnson.

Drew: Yeah, you know, it's a great question. I mean, what I find is you really want to give students and people a good underpinning of what anything is, you know, what's the research, how do things work in theory, what do the studies say about a particular issue or topic. But then people have to cut loose.

They have to do these things. They have to use these methods they have to create ideas using brainwork and using tools. We don't want people just using their brain in sort of an unconstrained way. The old notions of brainstorming have been proven long, long ago to not be effective, a thing that most people don't realize.

Brainstorming was invented in the late '40s and early '50s. It doesn't work. It doesn't make sense to have people just think in an unconstrained way. It is far better to have them use a tool that's going to channel their ideation process, that's going to regulate their thinking, and let them come up and generate ideas on a systematic basis.

And that was the whole point of this program at J&J to have people be able to innovate on demand routinely any time they wanted, but also do it within the context of strategy. It doesn't make sense to just come up with ideas that are off strategy with the firm. They need to be brought together to really have viable growth opportunity.

Janelle: So who specifically were you training at Johnson & Johnson to do this?

Drew: You know, it started off as a program that was meant for the commercial team, the marketers of the organization. And what happened was word spread and we found that engineers liked to come to these courses, finance people liked to come to these courses, and people in operations. And it made a lot of sense because at the end of the day, innovation was a team sport.

You don't put a person in a room and let them innovate. You need to have a diverse cross-functional team apply these methods if they're going to get the best results. And that was a big learning for me at the J&J experience. And so we expanded our scope.

We wanted people from different functional departments to be able to participate in these, learn these tools, and still be the commercial organization. I'm committed to the idea that it's the marketing team, it's the commercial leadership, that drives the innovation process, but not in a vacuum.

They can't do it by themselves -- they have to have others involved. And that's why expanding the scope to allow other people to get into these courses made a lot of sense. And, of course, they loved it.

They were able to contribute and give so much value to these workshops that we would do and you'd end up with a team generating great ideas and all being aligned around the value of the ideas because they were all there when the idea was generated. So it had this side benefit, too, of not only creating great ideas for the business, but also a team walking out of these workshops arm-in-arm, aligned in terms of what they're going to do going forward.

Janelle: So there's a few interesting things you touched upon there. And one of them was how you tried to get the teams together and tried to get cross-functional teams working together. So what sorts of tools and techniques did you use to break down whatever silos might have been in place and get teams collaborating together?

Drew: I had a little secret. I would fool people. But if all else fails, just try deception is what I used to joke about. But what I did is essentially give the aura of training. I'd create what looked like on the outside a course when, in fact, what I was trying to do is get people in a room of a cross-functional nature learning the tools, but then applying them to actual parts of their business.

To real products and real services that the teams were managing. And nothing makes a believer out of people more than just having them experience the innovation methodology and seeing the result of it and saying, hey, this worked pretty well. We should do more of this.

And so you start off with a few training programs, word starts to spread, people start to get interested, and want to commission these programs on a more formal basis. Not so much training but real workshops. And then the trick just came down to how do you pull the right 12 to 14 people in the room so you have the diversity that makes all the difference in the world?

You need functional diversity but you also need gender diversity, you need some experience diversity, you want people that have been in the business a long time, as well as some new folks. And if you can get it, you'd like to get cultural diversity as well.

And I've spent a lot of my time working with my colleagues, creating what we would call the dream team, the dream innovation team. How do you get the right people in the room to use this one particular method and innovate new ideas for the business? And when you got those people in the room, it was like magic.

Janelle: So it sounds like you have developed several best practices for turning ideas into innovation from your experience at Johnson & Johnson.

And just from hearing you talk, a few that are apparent to me are having teams working together and coming up with ideas together so everyone is onboard, having these ideas apply to real-world situations, and then having all that diversity you were just talking about. Is that correct or anything else you want to add to that?

Drew: Well, yeah. I think the big thing that I've come to realize, too, is the method. There's a lot of methods out there for generating ideas and I talked about one of them. The issue of brainstorming which comes as a surprise to people that this has been proven in research not to be effective.

So what does work? Well, it turns out that there's a method based on patterns. For thousands of years innovators have been using patterns in their inventions, usually without knowing it. They essentially use these patterns and embedded them into their invention. Those patterns now reside in those products and services like the DNA of the product.

And if you could figure out a way to extract that pattern and apply it to anything -- a medical device, an aircraft, a consumer product, a musical instrument. If you can apply that to those things, you can create new inventions any time you want. And that's essentially the message that we work quite closely with at J&J and the method now that I teach at the university.

And it's highly effective at getting people to structure their thinking -- apply these methods in a systematic way, and the pattern essentially forces you to innovate. You don't have a choice. And it's great to see when people apply the method correctly and get the results and realize how effective and creative it can be by using something like a pattern.

What most people don't know is that creative people of all kinds have been using patterns, but they usually don't want you to know about it. I'm talking about people like the Beatles, Agatha Christie, and Salvador Dali. These highly creative people used creative templates but they didn't want you to know it because somehow it seemed to take away from their creative genius.

And Paul McCartney has actually confided in a biography that he and John Lennon used a template. They had a specific pattern that they would follow to create the many winning songs that they've created.

Janelle: So when you say a pattern, one of your approaches to innovation is to start with the solution, essentially break it, uncover problems that are worth solving, and then solve them. Is that what you mean when you're talking about patterns or is that a different concept of yours?

Drew: Okay, so it works like this. The usual way people think innovation happens is that you start with a well-defined problem, usually derived by going out and talking to the customer. Once you understand those problems, then you try to think of ways to solve that problem. You go from the problem to the solution.

I want to turn that 180 degrees where you're actually starting with the solution and working back to the problem that it solves. That sounds very weird to most people and it's actually something that humans are very good at with a concept discovered by a psychologist named Ronald Fink. He called it function follows form.

The idea that you can start with a configuration and work backwards to what it does better than starting with the benefit you're looking for and trying to figure out the configuration.

So, for example, I want you imagine I'm holding in my hand a baby's milk bottle. And if I told you that this baby's milk bottle changes color as the temperature of the milk changes, tell me what would that be beneficial for? Who would want something like that?

Janelle: Well, a mother, a parent would like to know that so they'd know if the milk is still good.

Drew: They would know if the milk was still good or too hot so it doesn't burn the baby, exactly. Any audience I speak to can immediately come up with that connection. On the other hand, if I said to you, hey, guys, we need to come up with some ideas on how to not burn the baby with milk that's too hot, how long do you think it would take us to come up with a color-changing milk bottle?

It would take a very long time, maybe never. And so where humans are very fluid at going from this idea of a configuration that seems abstract and then working back to the benefit it delivers. What these five patterns do is essentially help you create that hypothetical ambiguous solution that, at first, you don't know what it does.

And only then do you work backwards and try to figure out benefits that it delivers or target markets that it would serve. It's a unique concept and it's a relatively new method. It's only been around for about 15 years now and slowly working its way out into the corporate and academic community.

Janelle: So what are these five patterns, then?

Drew: The five patterns, they have somewhat of a mathematical ring to them, but they're not really mathematical to us. The five patterns are subtraction, task unification, division, attribute dependency, and multiplication. What the patterns do is they take something like a guitar -- let's just say a musical instrument, a guitar.

They take it and they, by applying the pattern, they morph it. They change it into something that is very odd or seems very unusual in this so-called hypothetical solution. And once you've morphed and changed your starting point, that's when you kick in and start to work backwards to benefits that it might deliver.

Janelle: So, Drew, you're an inventor yourself. You have a patent for a device that makes spine surgery easier. When you invented it, did you take this solution working backwards to the problem approach?

Drew: So this particular idea came out of a workshop at J&J and it was a workshop that we did between two different divisions of Johnson & Johnson. It's the first time we actually experimented with working with two different groups.

One was in the orthopedic business and the other one was in the surgical instrument business. And the pattern that we used is called task unification and it works like this. The spine surgeon who operates on your spine has to put small instruments through a little tiny hole that's already in your spine, but the instruments kind of get in the way.

It's hard for the surgeon to look beyond the instrument to see what's in the little hole. So my colleagues and I, using this pattern, applied a pattern and came up with a way for the instrument to basically bend around the corner. So that the surgeon now has a clear view of the hole that he's operating in or she's operating in, yet still is able to place the instrument in there to do the surgery.

It's a simple idea. What's true is this -- I'm not a surgeon and I'm not an expert at all in surgery, but the patterns essentially force you to create these configurations. Then you figure out the benefit that it solves. And it was a nice example of how the patterns essentially can take somebody like me, who is not an expert in this, and still get me to come up with useful beneficial innovations in that particular space.

Janelle: Can these patterns be used by virtually any company in any space? You know, B2C, B2B?

Drew: That can be used in essentially anything that can be broken into components you can apply this method to. We have used it on medical devices, consumer products, food products, pharmaceutical products, capital equipment like motors and engines, and things like that.

I've even taught this to children -- young children, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And even at that age they're able to take the pattern and apply them to come up with new innovations. It's really a wonderful thing.

Janelle: Is there a name that you have for this approach?

Drew: Yeah. It's a method called systematic inventive thinking, or SIT. It was discovered by a guy named Jacob Goldenberg, Professor Jacob Goldenberg at Columbia University. And he and several of his colleagues held together these ideas of pattern, function follows form, essentially a way to extract the pattern out of them, and then reapply it to other things.

Dr. Goldenberg and I are now working together to write a book on this method to spread the word. To get it into people's hands so that they can read the book, apply it, and be able to use it in their particular products and services.

Janelle: When do you expect your book will be out?

Drew: We expect it will be out in the first half of next year. I'm happy to say it's been published by Simon & Schuster and the manuscript is due in December. So just before you called, I was busy working on a chapter, and right after we finish here today, I'll be back at it.

Janelle: Do you have a working title yet for your new book?

Drew: We have a working title and it's only that. I's called Inside the Box and it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek title because there's an interesting story about the famous saying, thinking outside the box. And I'm sure you've heard that term. There's only one problem with that term -- it's an empty idea. There is no box.

What a researcher had done in the '70s is a study that suggested that if you could get people to think outside this so-called imaginary box, that they can be more effective. But another researcher came along right after him and showed that even giving people the instructions on how to solve a problem that was outside the box, they couldn't do any better at it than by getting the instructions than if they didn't have the instructions.

There is no box. So Jacob and I sort of tongue-in-cheek write the joke about better innovation comes inside the box right close to home, right basically right under your nose. He applied a method in a systematic way to think that right near you in your vicinity, you're going to come up with what I call the definition of innovation.

Something that is new, something that is useful, and something that is surprising.

By surprising I mean, have you ever noticed how some innovations you see, some new product or new thing, and you look at it and you go, gee, I never would have thought of that. Or you slapped your forehead and say, gee, why didn't I think of that?

Well that's that third element -- surprising. And I think the best innovations are the ones that fit all three of those definitions -- new, useful, and surprising.

Janelle: So many of our listeners, Drew, are in the B2B space and they're in the early stages of building an even more sophisticated culture of innovation in their organization. What are some guidelines that you would give them to help them build that culture of innovation?

Drew: Yeah, it's a good question and certainly an important one. The advice I would give is that, first of all, you have to see innovation as a skill, not a gift. It's not something that you're born with. It's a talent that you can develop and learn like any other skill. Like a business skill which is accounting or marketing, like learning a new sport like golf or tennis, how to play an instrument, or speak a language.

It's a competency. And if you start with that premise that innovation is a skill, something that we can build into a competency model, then it's something that you can train against and develop like you do other skills.

And I sometimes tell sort of the absurd story like this. Imagine a company like Intel, the CEO comes in front of all the employees one day and says ladies and gentlemen, our future, our success depends on one thing. It depends on all of our ability to speak Latin. Now, just forget why. Just work with me here, OK?

Imagine that was true, that the success of Intel depended on its ability to speak Latin. Can you imagine what would happen? People would be running around going "we need to create a culture of Latin." We need to get teams motivated about Latin.

What would the company do? It would go out and hire people that speak Latin. They would hire consultants to come in and teach people Latin. It would hold Latin competitions. It would do all the things that companies do today to instill things like leadership, productivity, or safety.

Guess what? Do the same things you do for those subjects and do that for innovation as well. Hold innovation competitions. Hold people accountable. Have an innovation plan. Have an innovation development program.

Just fold innovation in as another business process. One of my big frustrations, I think, with innovation is that a lot of the innovation community has created this aura of this mystique about innovation. And it's things like having innovation rooms with bean bag chairs that somehow people think that just creating an innovation room is going to make people more innovative.

I have news for you -- it won't. It won't do that. And I encourage companies to treat innovation like a regular business process and do the same things that they do to get awareness, competency, and sort of an actionable mind-set to do innovation as professionally and as routinely as they do other things like accounting, performance evaluations, and year-end planning. All those routine processes are done well today and companies can do innovation the same way.

Janelle: But isn't innovation more of an abstract concept than learning Latin, for instance? I mean, learning Latin is a hard skill. Innovation is a soft competency, I would say.

Drew: I'll tell you what -- this method is not so much that it's hard to understand, but like anything, it takes some practice. It is something I've taught to many people over the last 10 years and I've seen people at various levels of adoption and I ask myself why do some people learn this much better than others? And the same thing goes with any skill, whether it's tennis or whether it's marketing.

It really drives down to how well people apply the tools, how well they learn the nuances of it. And it's a soft skill in the sense that it's not quantitative, necessarily. I guess we could call leadership a soft skill, as well. But it is something that has to be learned and seen as a skill to develop and perfect and practice over time.

So I just wouldn't dismiss it or categorize it and say, ah, it's a soft skill and it's something that we can put over here. Because not only do you have to teach people how to generate the idea, there are other business skills that have to be packaged around it, too.

Once you have a great idea, how do you build a business case for it? How do you quantify the value? How do you persuade an organization and align an organization around your idea? How do you become a champion for that idea and work to push it through the organization? Just generating an idea in a large company like Intel or J&J isn't enough today.

And it's got to come from more skills. Generating the idea, valuing it, and then pushing it through the organization is going to make all the difference for getting these ideas into the marketplace.

Janelle: What would you say are some business skills to build around the development of innovation?

Drew: Additional skills would be the following. You have to have -- this is where the commercial mindset kicks in -- but the commercial mindset needs to be able to take and test ideas, to solicit customer feedback, competitive feedback, and to get an idea of how a new idea is going to fare in the market. You've got to go out and essentially build the case for what the new invention, the new idea, can do in terms of generating value for the market.

And that is a tough step. But once you quantify it, you also have to be able to turn it into dollars and cents and the basic acumen to say at this price point, at this margin, we could have this kind of impact at the bottom line. So it takes a little bit of financial skills and marketing is essentially a cash-generating activity and great marketers today have to have finance skills.

In fact, some of the best marketing people I know came from finance because they automatically think in terms of quantifying the value of programs. And then one of the things we taught at J&J was the skill of persuasion.

Persuasion can be done in a systematic and ethical way as well, again, using patterns coincidentally, and so we would teach people how to be what we call an entrepreneur -- right? How do they take the idea in the business case but then they go around and they persuade people to their point of view? How do they get people to align with them about the idea?

It's not enough to just have good, well-trained people. These people have to have a point of view and the courage to go out and get people to adopt their point of view. And it's tough. Working in corporations can be very difficult for people who are not cut out for it and especially if they don't see themselves as empowered to go and try to change people's minds.

It's not enough just to do a job today. It's doing a job and seeing opportunity and trying to change people's minds to put some resources and emphasis on your idea to get it adopted.

Janelle: Drew, do you think there are any companies today that come to mind right away that you think are particularly practicing innovation well that our listeners could look to as an example?

Drew: Well, I think the best one -- and believe it or not, I'm not going to say Apple because that's probably thrown out there so much it's almost trite now. But the company that I think practices innovation well, probably my best example, is GE. I think GE is a particularly interesting company because they're so darn big that the mandate to grow is just so onerous.

I mean, to grow at 8 percent a year, that company has to produce enough revenue each year the size of a company like Nike. How do you do that? How do you do that year after year after year? So it's good news and bad news. The bigger you get, the more successful you are, the tougher it is to be successful the next year.

And GE has a pretty well-developed culture up and down starting with top-tier management down to the business units and the teams, people that are working very hard. These people work hard, they are smart, they are no-nonsense, and they want to use methods and approaches that get them to the answers.

They're not into innovation rooms, you know? They're very pragmatic and they practice thoughtful innovation and get good results. They're a great company. That's one company. But there are a lot of companies. Procter & Gamble certainly has a track record of success with innovation.

Companies like Kraft on the consumer side is also very effective. And you look outside the U.S. too. I mean, companies like L'Oreal. I think is highly effective in the kinds of ways that they come up with innovation. Interestingly, not so much listening to the market space -- they kind of define the market. And when L'Oreal says that the lipstick shade should be this, then they're in this unique position to be able to cause the market to come to them and adopt that.

Not everybody is so fortunate. So those are some examples of companies that immediately come to mind. I would say AirBus, the air frame company, and let me think of some others here. There are a lot of medium-sized companies, too, these are very large companies.

You look at a company like Kennametal. Kennametal in Pittsburgh is a machine tooling company, very successful and highly innovative company. They won the award last year for our Outstanding Corporate Innovator through the PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. You don't get that award by accident. That's a tough award to get and so it's not just the big companies that are successful. Big, medium, and small can use innovation methods very successfully.

Janelle: Drew, one thing, you mentioned this a couple of times -- the idea of innovation rooms. You know, Google is well-known for having rooms like that that have the couches and they've got all kinds of perks for employees to chill out and let their ideas flow. What are your thoughts on that when you think about a company like Google?

Drew: If I asked you to walk in the room right next to where you are and speak Latin, would you be able to do it?

Janelle: Personally, no. I don't know Latin.

Drew: I just don't see any research whatsoever that suggests that an innovation room is all of a sudden going to magically make a person come up with better ideas. Now, I get people that push back and say, hey, the work environment can have an effect on innovation. Well, that's true.

The work environment can have an effect on lots of things -- morale, safety, your state of mind, your loyalty to the company. All those things, by the way, help also with innovation. So I just don't buy the fact that an innovation room is going to be successful. I am quite certain Google could shut down all those rooms and nothing would change at Google.

And I recall recently where AOL, you know, a company that's having problems, it's losing -- honestly, it's losing its shirt. And I have my doubts about the future of a company like AOL. They just built a 225,000 square-foot complex on the West Coast with innovation rooms to stimulate innovation. And they believe that that's going to do the job.

When they believe that a building can make a difference in how people think and develop ideas, I get worried because I just don't see any tie whatsoever to the rooms you're sitting in is all of a sudden going to make your brain work in a different way and give you a result.

Now, is it nice to have rooms with white boards and comfortable chairs to do work? Absolutely. But those rooms come in handy for many more things than just innovation. So that's where I had a real bone to pick with this idea of innovation rooms.

And I ask companies, I'll say to them, do you have leadership rooms? Their answer is always the same. It's, no, we expect leadership everywhere. But innovation has to happen in these rooms. And it just doesn't make sense. The same thing with productivity. Do you have productivity rooms out there? No. You expect productive people and the same goes with innovation. So I just don't buy it.

Janelle: So, Drew, then, just to wrap things up, what would you leave our listeners with as maybe your top couple take aways to help them start thinking about a new innovation strategy?

Drew: Well, I think the thing that I'd leave people with is this. My corporate career, I had a lot of experience with a lot of different people in the innovation space. A lot of innovation consultants and academics, practitioners, inventors, patent holders, engineers -- many different walks of life -- scientists, technologists, etc.

And I was always particularly intrigued by methodology. I guess I'm not a creationist. I believe that the creation of the idea is paramount. When companies say, you know, we have plenty of ideas, we just need to learn how to implement them, I don't buy that. If you had plenty of good ideas, you wouldn't be talking to me, right?

But companies lack the creationist power, the creative power. And when I meet people in the innovation space that tell me they have a method, I'm always interested. But here's the point. Here's what I would leave your listeners with.

When we meet somebody that tells me they have an innovation method, you have to ask them two questions. The first question is -- do you know how to innovate? I think that's a fair question for somebody that says they're in the innovation space.

And if they answer yes, the second question should be -- how? And they should be able to explain how they innovate to the degree that you could listen to it, go home that night, sit down with your neighbor, explain it to your neighbor, and your neighbor could start using that methodology pretty much on the spot.

And if they can't, if they start telling you, oh, well, it's a complicated process and we're doing a lot of market research and da, da, da, da, da -- forget it. I just don't buy that. I think people have to hold the innovation community more accountable for stepping up and giving people practical tools that can be deployed by the entire organization. That really isn't too much to ask, and that's the final thought that I would leave people with.

Janelle: Thanks, Drew. Appreciate your insights today. Everyone, that was Drew Boyd who is the Executive Director of the Master of Science in Marketing Program and Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati. And you can get more from Drew by following his blog at InnovationInPractice.com. Thank you, Drew.

Drew: Thank you very much.

How to create your 'innovation dream team'

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:19:49 PDT

University of Cincinnati's Drew Boyd

"Dream team" has been used to describe athletes, businessmen, lawyers, doctors, and others who've come together to become much greater than the sum of their parts.

Certainly, the 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball team was a dream team. So is the Brazil men's national volleyball team.
And who could forget the defense lawyers in the O. J. Simpson case?

But here's an area that you probably haven't seen associated with dream team: innovation. That's about to change though, thanks to our new podcast with Drew Boyd.

He hit upon the phrase "innovation dream team" in our interview with him. In fact, you can witness the spark of the idea when you tune in. He described how to create an innovation dream team that lets companies generate great ideas and execute them.

Drew also discussed many of the nuances of this, including who should be part of the team and how to use the team for your product innovation goals.

Much of Drew's insights are drawn upon his former 17-year career with Johnson & Johnson, where he founded and directed the company's Marketing Mastery Program. It was an internal "marketing university" the company used to train its marketing and other cross-functional teams on products and strategic planning.

Drew talked about this program during our podcast, and discussed some lessons he learned about ideation and innovation from that experience.

Today, he's continuing to practice in the areas of innovation, marketing, and persuasion as the Executive Director of the Master of Science in Marketing Program and Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati. He also writes at Innovation In Practice.

Taken together, Drew has a great deal of real-world insights and advice worth listening to. "Innovation is a team sport," he says, so tune in to our podcast and let the games begin!

6 ways to turn ideas into products that ship

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Warren) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:30:08 PDT

As we talk about innovation on our blog, it's important to note that innovation is not a goal unto itself. It's a crucial ingredient to ultimately turn ideas into products and services that your customers will buy.

This is a core plank we focus our clients on when we work with them on their innovation strategies. So for our next blog post in our B2B Innovation series, I thought I'd break out six of the most important best practices for creating an innovation strategy that will help you ship products your customers want, need, and will buy.

1. Align innovation to your business strategy. Map your innovation and product decision-making processes to your business strategy. This ensures product development efforts are supporting your company’s goals. And since ideas from customers don't always correlate with company strategy, this ensures that ideas -- even good ones -- that are strategically misaligned are not inappropriately prioritized and acted upon.

2. Center your innovation process around your product managers. Product managers are naturally suited to be the hub of your innovation strategy because they have their ear to the ground when it comes to customer needs and wants, as well as company technological capabilities.

3. Gather customer feedback in a way that works for you and your customers. Your customers want to quickly and easily tell you what they need from your products. You want to efficiently capture, prioritize, and act upon this. An idea management system enables you to collect and evaluate ideas in this structured fashion. Look for a system that lets you gather feedback from customers as well as product managers; sift out the noise; and organize, rate, and prioritize ideas from one location.

4. Conduct customer focus groups and surveys. Make your customers a partner in your product development process by collecting their input through focus groups and surveys. They enable you to probe ideas and uncover insights that are crucial for understanding the impetus behind them, which helps you refine and prioritize ideas.

5. Build testable versions. Give your customers beta and test versions of new features and products to try out as you're developing them. This lets you uncover bugs and make modifications early in development, saving onerous and costly development rework later on.

6. Use Agile/Scrum techniques. These are iterative, incremental development frameworks that can enable you to more easily bring new features to market quickly and to make adjustments during the development process based on evolving customer input.

Innovation cannot happen in a vacuum. It requires customer and product development feedback throughout the product development process. The better you collaborate and engage with your customers, the greater opportunity you'll have to collect and execute on more refined and clearer requests that address their pain points and align with your business objectives.

Who's your Steve Jobs?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:48:49 PDT

Every product Steve Jobs developed and marketed with Apple was created to delight consumers. But even though Apple is a B2C company, many of the ways in which Jobs led its product innovation can be applied to high-tech B2B companies that are striving to innovate to meet companies' needs.

This is one important theme we got from our interview with Drew Marshall, Principal of Primed Associates. He also gave us many other takeaways worth noting for creating and implementing a sustainable innovation strategy.

So we're posting the transcript to make it easier for you to save Drew's insights and share them with colleagues as you develop your own innovation strategy to meet customers' needs. Hope it is helpful to you. What do you think of Drew's recommendations?

Janelle: Hi, everyone. I'm Janelle Kozyra, your host for another Inmagic podcast. Today we are joined by Drew Marshall and Drew is the Principal of Primed Associates, which is a consulting firm based in Princeton Junction, N.J. And it focuses on improving the culture of innovation for their clients. Drew contributes to his company's blog which you can find by going to his website at ThinkPrimed.com and he has also contributed to InnovationExcellence.com. So good to have you with us, Drew. How are you today?

Drew: I'm great, Janelle. Thanks for having me on the Inmagic blog podcast. I'm very happy to be here.

Janelle: So let's begin by getting to know you a little bit more. So tell us what you do at Primed Associates and generally about some of your client engagements.

Drew: Sure. A little bit about my background. I come from a management consulting background and a lot of the work that I was doing with clients was focused in and around project management. And over time I became the chief innovation officer of the consulting firm that I used to work for and a partner in that firm.

And I recognized over time that one of the challenges that our clients were facing was in adopting a set of behaviors that could support innovation for the long term. And that's when I decided to found Primed Associates. And when I was looking at the innovation consulting space, I found that many consultants focused on providing support for idea generation or ideation, as some people term it, and also on technology solutions for capturing and managing idea flow through organizations.

Both of those are incredibly important in terms of organizations' innovation performance and innovation success. But my focus when I was founding Primed Associates was to focus on the human factor in innovation. So the question I was asking was how we build the capability of an entire organization to support, promote and sustain innovations for long term.

So what we do is we seek first to understand the organization environment at a holistic level, and then we use a set of tools like social network analysis and organization culture inventories to discover the ways in which the organization is truly designed to perform. And I believe that an organizations' performance is actually a result of the choices that have been made about how the organization is put together, how it's organized, and how it uses and distributes its resources.

Our clients are in the consumer and technology spaces. However, recent projects have included a pretty wide variety. We've worked with contractors in the intelligence sector, pharmaceutical companies on new product development, worked with heavy industries with high-potential employees that are focused on innovation, and most recently, even a science museum out on the West Coast. And so the factors uniting all of these clients for us is their willingness to undertake what we consider the challenging work of building an innovation-capable culture.

Janelle: So in my experience in talking with various leaders in innovation, I found that there is some differing ideas on what innovation is and how they define it. So I'm interested to know how you define innovation yourself.

Drew: Well, the classic consultant's response is it depends. It really does depend on what the innovation intent is at the organization. For us, we take a very broad perspective on innovation. We feel that innovation can occur at all levels of an organization, across an entire organization, and include stakeholders both inside the organization and beyond the organization after all.

And we see the innovation at its most elemental level is the introduction of change into what are inherently stable systems to create value for a user. And that user could be a customer, a client, or some other constituent group that has a specific need that they want to address or that needs to be addressed that they may not know about.

Innovation comes from this Latin concept of to renew or change. And for us that constant renewal is a big part of the way we approach our clients -- how can they make the most of the resources that they have inside their firm? So it could mean the introduction of a new product, a new service, or it could mean innovation in processes or even systems or business models at the enterprise level.

Janelle: So one of the big subtopics in innovation is the idea of culture, and it's also something that is a fundamental part of how you approach consulting clients. So what is a culture of innovation?

Drew: In terms of innovation culture, I think this is really a timely subject with the very recent resignation of Steve Jobs from Apple. A lot of the concern around Apple's future performance is actually focused on whether or not the innovation at Apple is the result of one man's genius or it is now the result of the culture of innovation that he has developed over time.

There's a really great article at Harvard Business Review online which is titled "Why Apple Doesn't Need Steve Jobs." And it really addresses that at the heart the reason why Apple will continue to be successful is because Steve Jobs has actually made it his mission to build a team of people and a culture inside Apple that can sustain innovation over time.

Most organizations, when we work with them, especially large and growing organizations, are designed to drive toward efficiency and effectiveness. That's just the economic imperative that drives the top and the bottom line of businesses. And that drive reinforces the desire for repeatability across those enterprises.

So when you consider organizations such as Apple and its performance in the marketplace as being a powerhouse innovator, their culture is focused on innovation and the direct expression of innovation and innovative ideas in the marketplace.

But for most other companies, their primary focus is on directly driving out deficiencies across the board and avoiding inefficient use of resources. That said, innovation itself demands that something new be created and introduced.

By its very nature, innovation demands inefficiency because you need that inefficiency and spare resources in order to pursue exploration. In order to consume resources in new and interesting ways, it means you will probably end up using some of those resources in ways that may not have positive outcomes.

So an innovation-capable culture, from our perspective, prizes three key attributes -- it provides intellectual curiosity, an abundance of risk taking, and a resilience in the face of failure to be able to bounce back and take another step forward.

Janelle: Drew, you bring up a topic that I actually wanted to ask you about which is Steve Jobs' resignation from Apple. I think it's very interesting to take a look at that because there's a lot of speculation that Apple is going to be losing its competitive edge to other companies like Nokia and HP now that Jobs is no longer at the helm. So, personally, what do you think is going to happen to Apple's innovation?

Drew: Well, I'm a firm believer that innovation culture can actually trump charismatic leadership in the long term. I think a charismatic leader is really good -- it's good for publicity and it's good for marketplace performance because it gives the media a subject that they can latch onto and that they can explore. And it's much easier to tease out what makes a person work and ask inquiring questions about why someone does what they do.

But when you face a company and you have to try to figure out all of the complex inter-relationships across that company, it can become too much like hard work. So I think the default position of the media is Steve Jobs goes away because he's decided that he needs to pull back and take care of himself and his family and seek other ways to express himself, and that just means that the head has gone from Apple and Apple is going to slowly devolve into oblivion, so to speak. I doubt that. I highly doubt that.

And the reason I doubt that is because I think one of the things that Jobs recognized when he was ousted from Apple and saw Apple's struggles from the sidelines so many years ago was that it was great to be a charismatic leader of an organization, but when you remove that charismatic leadership, if you didn't build the systems in place inside the organization to foster and support and sustain innovation, that innovation did collapse in on itself.

So while I do think that leadership is an important facet, I think what Jobs has done is actually probably the true genius of who he is. And that's create a company that can actually continue to innovate without him needing to be at the helm.

This is very much a long-term play because Apple actually has a new product development pipeline that's going to take them through into the year 2015 -- so they've got a road map that takes them through the next three years of quite likely some more potential breakthroughs. So I think the jury needs to basically bide its time until the years beyond that.

So I'd be looking at 2016 and 2017 for the final word on whether or not Jobs' leaving Apple is detrimental to the company overall. I think the play in the market this week was basically people just panicking because they could. I don't think it was based in any sense of what's going on inside the company or what the company can actually deliver in the near term or the long term.

Janelle: So a little bit ago, you were describing what you think it takes to have a culture of innovation and you said intellectual curiosity, not being adverse to risk, and being resilient. And so, in light of what you just said about Apple, it seems to me that Apple has those three elements. With Jobs at the helm and considering what Apple has done for the tech market, is there a fourth ingredient maybe to fostering a culture of innovation and is the fourth ingredient having a charismatic leader?

Drew: No, I don't think so. I think there are plenty of companies out there that don't have charismatic leaders. They might have leaders that are of note primarily because they're leading such innovative companies and the media turns its attention to the executive suite because they seem to understand what's driving them. But I don't think that's a necessary ingredient. Can it be an additive ingredient? Certainly. Can it give a company more room in the market? Yes, it may. But I don't think it's a necessary ingredient.

One of the most innovative companies, for example, in of all places, the office furniture space is a company called Herman Miller. And Herman Miller has not had charismatic leaders. It's basically dedicated itself to innovating in that particular space through a series of quite wonderful partnerships with designers Charles and Ray Eames, for example, who have done some great early work in the 1960s with the flex of Herman Miller and that legacy continues today.

They continue to work with external designers and continue to innovate across the board, both in terms of their business model, the design of their products, and how they relate to those products over the long term. They've become a remarkable organization in terms of their sustainability practices as well. So in terms of the whole system, that organization exists without the benefit of a charismatic leader.

Another firm just up the road from Apple and Jobs is Salesforce. Salesforce.com basically has created a whole new market. They were in cloud computing before cloud computing needed to be considered. Their software-as-a-service, which was primarily focused on client relationship management, has now infiltrated all aspects of business processes.

Now, Benioff, the head of Salesforce has been considered a charismatic leader, but he's nowhere on the same scale as Jobs in terms of this marked persona. And I think the reason he has any sort of note from a charisma perspective is because, once again, the company was being successful and we needed to focus on someone to be able to explain it.

But Salesforce's success is actually the factor of a whole range of inquiry that they've done into how to make software as a service more useful. They have this amazing ecosystem of developers and partners that they capitalize on.

They've created an ecosystem out of Salesforce that reaches beyond client-relationship management into customer support, into project management, into development, and so many more areas. So that's a long answer to a closed question that you asked, is charismatic leadership a critical fourth ingredient and I would say no.

Janelle: So whose job is it to foster innovation in an organization?

Drew: Well, I think it's the ring of leadership because I think innovation is increasingly becoming a necessary competency at the strategic level for most organizations. In order to grow over time, organizations are going to need to figure out what's coming next before their competitors do or they need to define what's coming next, regardless of what their competitors do.

So I think, in terms of overarching competencies, that attention and the elevation of innovation in the organization does fall to leadership. But the practice of innovation can exist anywhere in the organization.

It can exist in finance. It can exist in human resources. It can exist on the factory floor. It can exist anywhere and, by and large, should exist everywhere if you're trying to maximize the use of resources and create breakthroughs that can unleash new value, both inside the organization and for shareholders in the organization.

So the ownership depends at what level you're defining innovation. If we're talking about the overarching culture of innovation, that belongs at the leadership level because culture is actually one of the key components of a leadership's agreement for an organization. They are responsible for the culture of their enterprise. And if they don't pay attention to it, disastrous things can happen.

Janelle: So Apple is more of a B2C company.

Drew: Sure.

Janelle: A lot of our listeners are probably coming from B2B companies. Do you think innovation means something different for a B2C versus a B2B company?

Drew: I think the baseline definition that you're trying to address for specific end user's needs is the same for B2B and B2C. But I do believe there's a difference there. When you look at B2C organizations, they're focused on designing an optimum experience to delight their users.

So they're creating a retail experience or a food consumption experience or an apparel experience so that the person who buys their product or the people who buy their products have an optimal experience. So in the case of Apple, it's not just the product. It's every aspect from consideration of the product to purchasing the product in a Apple store to taking the product and using it at home.

Where B2B is different is B2B is focused on creating what I would consider to be an enabling moment. They're creating a capability, a capacity or a quality that previously didn't exist, so that their business clients can better meet the needs of their customers. So they're usually one step or more removed from an end consumer.

But what they're trying to do, through their innovation, is deliver value that creates capability or capacity or quality for their clients that those clients can capitalize on in the marketplace. So it's a slightly different approach to innovation in terms of the outcome, but the end result is that somebody needs to be delighted by what you're doing. They need to see that what you've delivered is delivering value to them and to their enterprise.

Janelle: So what would you say for a company who is trying to improve or maybe even just create a more sophisticated innovation strategy? What would you say are the top three things that organizations should think about before embarking on its quest for innovation?

Drew: I don't know that there are only three things. I think there are multiple things. I think you have to think holistically about innovation in order for it to be successful. And by holistically I mean you need to look at the system into what you're trying to foster innovation.

But places to start, first and foremost, you've got to align the vision and the strategy of the organization with the innovation intent. So what kind of innovation are you seeking and willing to sustain? And I think it's critical that you answer both parts of that.

More often than not, organizations stop at what kind of innovation are we seeking, you know, we want something new, we want something shiny. But the critical element that needs to be considered is how you're going to sustain that choice all the time. How you're going to sustain innovation so that it just doesn't become another fad and you're another one of those initiatives in your organization that gets pushed aside when the next bright shiny object comes passing by.

So alignment between vision and strategy and the intent at the innovation level. Then ensure that your expectations, commitment, and accountability align with that attempt. And what I mean by that is how do your performance management systems in the organization support the outcomes you desire on the innovation front?

So how do you set expectations for people? What are they going to do differently and how are they going to do it differently? Will they have the capacity and the capability to be able to do something different, to be able to introduce innovation into those stable systems that already exist?

And last, but by no means least, you have to increase the connectivity across the organization. Most organizations are designed along functional silos and that functional expertise enables them to drive efficiency and effectiveness and improved quality over time. But what you need to consider is who has knowledge, skills, or talents that someone else could capitalize on who exists outside their functional area of expertise?

So you need to be able to create a platform that loops people who might not have any awareness that they are a part of the same organization overall.

Janelle: You have written about the idea of front-end innovation. What do you mean by that?

Drew: Well, front-end innovation is actually a pretty common term in innovation circles. It primarily focuses on the idea that you've got a challenge that you need to address -- so an end user challenge, a consumer challenge. And that challenge requires that you also have an understanding of who you're designing for.

So what's the design challenge and for whom are we designing is the front end of innovation. And when we talk about that front end, we're talking about ideation. So what are the ideas that are going to address that design challenge and that particular constituent group?

On the back end, the back end is the execution. You've got to be able to take that idea and make it a reality. It's great to have lots of ideas, but if you can't do anything with those ideas and those ideas never make it into the marketplace, then you're not really innovating. All you're doing is inventing and those inventions are just basically going to die in place.

So you've got to have front-end ideation and you've got to have back-end execution. And there's a great Chinese proverb that says vision without action is a daydream and action without vision is a nightmare. So you've got to have both because many ideas fall at that last hurdle and they simply don't make it into the hands of their intended customer or the client that you hope will be satisfied or delighted by your work because they become trapped inside organizations.

And that's one of the reasons why culture is such a driving force in the consulting work that we do is because unless you address getting those ideas through an organization and through the cultural impediments that exist inside the organization, you're going to have a much higher failure rate than you'd like.

Janelle: So it sounds like this is probably a loaded question, I'm sure. So how do you link the front end to the back end?

Drew: For most organizations, there's a distinct separation between front and back end -- the concept that you have research and you have development. Well, research is ideation and development is, okay, now you've got that great idea -- what? Now what? What are you going to do about it? How can you design for manufacturing or how can you get it into the hands of marketing so that they can begin building a platform that you can sell against?

The key is an integration of what innovation means across the entire business. It's not just one thing or the other. It's the fact that it's a whole process. The concept of ideation needs to come up with a volume of ideas. But you also need a way of transferring those ideas into actionable elements and that conversion process can be handled any number of ways.

It can be handled through new product development systems that have stage gates associated with them and decision-making processes, the application of effective project management that picks up those ideas and begins introducing them into the different functional areas of the organization at the appropriate decision points to be able to capitalize on them at the time.

I think all of that needs to be considered, but the bottom line is how can you take that idea and learn about how that idea meets your customers' needs as rapidly as possible. So taking an idea and wedding it to the customer experience or the end-user experience as soon as possible gives you the opportunity to build a case for that idea and build a case for that innovation much earlier than most organizations would choose to.

Many organizations run the idea through the whole process of systematically breaking down the idea and discovering all of the failure points when you need to leap over that and you need to use simple and cheap experiments to begin testing ways you can make that idea work rather than trying to destroy it.

And that's a fundamental change in the way most people see product development. Many take what we would consider a destructive analysis approach to new product ideas when in actual fact I think you need to take a generative approach. It's mostly trying to destroy an idea early on in the process and hope that you'll find a good idea that can survive, kind of a Darwinian approach.

I think what you need to do is actually take a more nurturing approach to those new ideas and figure out what you can do to add to them and combine them to make them more successful in the long term.

Janelle: So we've touched on this a little bit, the importance of getting the customer involved in the innovation process. And I'd like to explore that a little bit more. So as companies develop their innovation strategies, how important is it to build a dialogue with customers in order to sort of surface, refine, and prioritize ideas, and then basically close that loop between your external communities and your internal communities and know what ideas are the right ones to put into the back end and actually execute on them?

Drew: Sure. Innovation for me is something that is human-centric. If you don't know for whom you are designing a solution, then you really should stop what you're doing and figure that out first before you take another step or spend another moment or another dollar or another resource. By human-centric, I mean you've got the customer or the end user or the client at the heart of what you're trying to accomplish.

Now, I'm a huge proponent and advocate for design thinking as a model for creating a common language around innovation and organization. And that means making your thinking visible. It means reinforcing a common language so that you can drive towards breakthrough innovation that responds directly to a customer need.

If you don't use observational studies or ethnographic studies as part of your innovation processes, you're missing significant opportunities to actually tie your innovation to that user experience. Because if you're not having a profound effect on the user experience, what good are you? I mean, that's the drive from an innovation focus. You should be heading towards having a significant impact on that end user experience.

So those organizations who choose to only test their innovations late in the game, they're missing some significant opportunities for improving their innovation process overall. Bring that process in earlier. Include customers at the outset. Include client groups, stakeholders at the front of the innovation process when you're seeking inspiration for what technical challenges or design challenges you're going to address.

Bring all of that information up front because that's where it can add the most value. Because if you're designing in a vacuum and without the benefit of being able to test that thinking against observation, so how does a customer actually use that product? Do they use it the way we designed it? Do they use it the way we intended them to use it?

I had a great story in terms of a client being very surprised by the way a customer was using their product. This is a personal care products company, and they have a pretty significant distributorship in Japan. And they make a face mask that is sold in a tube which looks remarkably like skin cremes and the like. But it also looked remarkably like toothpaste in the local market and this face mask was a very lovely minty green color. And when they went out to observe customers using the product, they were actually using it as toothpaste.

Now, it didn't have a completely pleasant taste, but the fact of the matter was because it was a clay-based material, it was actually incredibly good at cleaning teeth. I don't know if it was taking enamel off teeth, but their customers had discovered a new use for this. What they discovered was that there was a whole area of personal care products that could be open to them because the customers expected them to produce things that were of value to their personal care.

So there was a re-education process in terms of this particular face mask, but there was also a whole series of opportunities that opened up to them in terms of new product lines because they took the time to go out and see how their products were being used in the field.

Many companies do spot analysis so they might do focus groups to try to get close to that. But if you send teams out to do studies, to actually visit people in their homes, especially from a consumer products perspective, you can get some very rich data.

But I also think the value for the B2B innovator is just as important in going out and spending a day in the life of your clients -- see how they're using your products to help make their lives better. Or, if it's not making their lives better, how you can help capitalize on that poor experience and make it a better one with them?

Janelle: So my final question, Drew, for you that I'd like to leave our listeners with, just as sort of an overarching take away of what we've talked about today, what will make innovation happen in their organization? What is the number one thing, do you think?

Drew: I think one of the biggest challenges for innovation as a concept and as a practice inside organizations is that people fall in love with the idea of innovation. But when it comes to the hard work of actually producing a culture inside your organization that can produce innovations and sustain those innovative practices over time, the will across the organization is lacking.

And that's because people don't recognize that they actually have to pay any attention to that kind of motivation, that kind of excitement and enthusiastic for innovation as a practice. Most people focus on the outcome. But in order to make innovation a viable capability inside an organization, you actually must have the will to make it a part of your culture. You have to ingrain it into all aspects of your organization.

So if you're going to look to innovation to improve your stance in the marketplace, be prepared that you are taking the first step on what could end up being a multi-year journey in terms of transforming the culture of your organization. And, yes, it's hard work. But I would say that the end result is an organization that not only has operationalized innovation -- it's institutionalized innovation. It becomes a habit.

There was a great quote from a business leader recently who said, you know, innovation is all well and good, but I'm going to make innovation so much a part of our company that it's every day. Now, when we talk about innovation, we talk about innovation being something that's spectacular and it's breakthrough and it should be dazzling, and here's a leader who actually gets what innovation should be doing for his enterprise.

He's saying I want to make it every day so that kind of delight, that kind of excitement, is an everyday practice of his firm. And that's where companies need to start. They need to start thinking that innovation needs to be there in their organizations. We need to have the will to change and transform our organizations so we can deliver that kind of value to our clients and our customers.

Janelle: Thanks, Drew. Good to have you with us at the Inmagic blog today. We appreciate all your insights.

Drew: Thanks for your time.

Janelle: Everyone, that was Drew Marshall, principal of Primed Associates.

How B2B companies can kick start innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:02:44 PDT

Gijs van Wulfen, founder, FOURTH innovation method

Our bloggers have been talking to many innovation consultants and thought leaders lately, and have gathered what is shaping up to be a superb cross-section of ideas, opinions, and recommendations for developing and implementing an innovation strategy in a B2B organization.

There are lot of lessons to be learned from these consultants' experiences. I hope that it will shorten your path to understanding the innovation market and its idealogies, and give you some actionable advice to help you start developing and refining your own innovation strategy.

As we head into the holiday weekend, I wanted to tee up some guidance from another innovation thought leader, Gijs van Wulfen. He's the founder of what he's dubbed the "FORTH innovation method" and is the author of "Creating Innovative Products & Services."

Our Q&A with Gijs dives into what innovation means, whether that definition is different for a B2B vs. B2C company, how a company should foster a culture of innovation, and other advice to help anchor your understanding of an effective innovation strategy. Gijs provided his answers to us in email, which we've edited only for typos.

Can you start by giving us some background on you and what you do?

I am the founder of the FORTH innovation method. This method was developed in practice over several years. It has to do with my own development from a marketer in the food sector into a boardroom consultant creating new top-line solutions to grow the turnover, and later as facilitator of creative processes. I experienced how difficult it was for organizations to come up themselves with new innovative solutions.

That's why I developed a very structured process which is designed as an innovation expedition in which business challenges are transferred into outside-the-box ideas, directly tested at customers and brought back to the company as inside-the-box mini new business cases.

When I started to see how successful this approach was, we gave it the name FORTH and I wrote a book about it in Dutch. People were amazed that I gave away all my knowledge, and are really enthusiastic on using it. It is an innovation best-seller in the Netherlands. Recently an English book on the method, "Creating Innovative Products and Services," was published. With the training of certified FORTH facilitators, the method spreads all over the world.

Innovation means different things to different people. How do you define innovation?

Innovation stands for really different: really different new products, services, or business models which offer a substantially better solution to relevant customer needs.

Do you think innovation mean something different for B2B companies versus B2C companies? Why or why not?

The best innovative ideas start with a relevant customer friction. They play a key role in a perfect innovation process. A customer friction is a discovered need or wish from a specific target group, which is not sufficiently satisfied. It forms the basis for new distinctive product or service concepts. This starting point for innovation is the same for B2B companies and B2C companies. The differences in the innovation approach of this sector are smaller than you might think.

One of the big sub-topics in the innovation space is culture, and the idea of having a culture of innovation. How do you think a company should foster a culture of innovation within its organization?

You have to find the right moment for the company to try to create an innovative culture. Finding the right moment is when people are prepared to go beyond their normal way of thinking and behaving. If you try to innovate too early then there's no urgency. If you do it too late then people are so frightened they can't think clearly and go much less outside the box. They're too frightened of losing their jobs because the company's going broke. Finding the right moment is essential.

Often innovation is defined as "ideation" and "finding the next big idea." But many organizations are searching for the next big idea internally. They might have little ability to have a dialogue with their customers and create an ongoing feedback loop to refine ideas in a moderated and thoughtful fashion, where customers can rate and help prioritize ideas. Are you seeing this?

Yes, I am seeing this. It is essential to connect customers in your innovation process, already at the front end of innovation. In the FORTH method, the customers are connected in the process at two moments. The innovation team is identifying relevant customer frictions in phase two, "Observe & Learn." And after new innovative solutions have been ideated, they are tested with customers in phase four, "Test Ideas." So it is very important to involve external communities in your innovation process.

How important is it to also involve internal communities in the innovation process?

One thing I know for certain is that you have to connect everybody who is in the innovation funnel. Normally, marketing will brief R&D, and R&D will brief production, the buying department, and IT. The ideal innovation team is composed of members from every stakeholder group in the company, typically marketing, R&D, sales and service, IT, production, and central support.

Also, if you're innovating for three continents you have to have the sales directors from the three continents involved. You have to find the experts who are relevant to the assignment and will adequately represent their stakeholder group. You also have to connect the decision makers, like the board of directors and most definitely the CEO. Often the CFO needs to be involved in the review process because probably some investments are needed.

Your approach to innovation is dubbed the FORTH innovation method. What is it, in a nutshell?

FORTH is a customer-oriented innovation method to create mini new business cases with an internal team for innovative products, services and business models. On the one hand it's a highly structured method, but on the other it provides enough space for people to be creative. Every phase has divergence -- generation of many ideas -- followed by a convergence phase where the best innovative concepts are described as mini business cases.

Who would use the FORTH innovation method and for what use cases?

For managers who want to innovate, an internal team using the FORTH innovation method will ideate four innovative products, services or business models. The method leads to concrete new concepts, which are attractive because they have been checked with customers and are worked out as mini new business cases. The concepts have great internal support because your employees have ideated them themselves and customers and decision makers were closely involved.

Can you take us through the five steps of the FORTH innovation method?

FORTH is an acronym. "Full Steam Ahead," the first phase, generates the innovation assignment based on the business challenge and it requires sign-off by the company's leadership if the subsequent four phases are going to be successful.

In order to get new ideas you need new insights, so the second phase, "Observe and Learn," was created. The development of new product or service concepts is the goal of FORTH, and these concepts and ideas are generated in the third phase, "Raise Ideas." We may generate great ideas, but if the company's leaders are unconvinced, it's likely that nothing will happen.

As a marketer I used the voice of the customer for getting my inspiration, and this suggested the fourth phase, which is "Test Ideas." We can test the ideas on customers or conduct other tests, with the final result being a mini business case for each of the best three or four product or service concepts.

In the fifth and final phase, "Homecoming," the mini business cases are presented to senior management with a request that the new product or service be taken up into the company's regular development process. The FORTH innovation method gets great results and is used in production companies, services organizations, and in healthcare.

Thanks, Gijs, for providing your insights.

3 qualities of innovative companies: Lessons learned from Steve Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:32:33 PDT

Drew Marshall, Principal, Primed Associates

When Steve Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO last week, it seemed he was taking with him everything that makes Apple the innovative powerhouse that it is today. Or did he? Apple is arguably the #1 poster child for innovation. But was it all a result of Steve Jobs' genius, or rather the culture of innovation he's developed over time?

Our bloggers got into an interesting discussion about this with Drew Marshall, our latest podcast guest. Drew is the Principal of Primed Associates, a consulting firm that helps clients improve the culture of innovation in their organizations.

He believes there are three qualities that make up an innovative company. But is having a charismatic leader one of them? I won't spill the beans here. Hit play below to find out Drew's take!

While you're tuned in, stick around to hear Drew dish more insights and advice for B2B companies interested in developing and implementing an innovation strategy within their organization, including

What innovation means, and whether that's different for B2B vs. B2C companies
Examples of other highly innovative companies and why they are so innovative
Whose job it is to foster innovation in your organization
What you should consider before embarking on a quest for innovation
How to institutionalize innovation in your organization
How important it is to build a dialogue with your customers as part of your innovation strategy

We're also planning to post the transcript of our interview soon. For more from Drew, you can read his blog on Primed Associates and follow him on Twitter. Thanks again, Drew, for joining us on our blog.

B2B executives, are you seeing these barriers to innovation in your company?

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Warren) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 06:02:05 PDT

Our latest white paper about B2B innovation references some interesting industry research reports, one of which comes from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). It's been working with Businessweek to conduct annual global surveys of senior executives on their innovation practices. I thought their latest report would make a great topic for our B2B Innovation blog series, so here we go!

The report, “Innovation 2010: A Return to Prominence -- and the Emergence of a New World Order,” posed many interesting questions to executives, and I encourage you take some time to look it over when you can.

One question that drew my attention in particular was, "what are the biggest obstacles you face when it comes to generating a return on your investments in innovation?" This is a prime question I've been talking about lately with executives at B2B companies, which is why it caught my eye.

Many of the challenges executives have told me jive with the BCG report. So I thought it was worth sharing these findings with you, and seeing if you're experiencing something similar in your organization. Perhaps this is an emerging or developing trend we need to be paying attention to.

The BCG researchers found the two biggest barriers to generating a return on their innovation investments were:

1. Having risk-adverse cultures
2. Lengthy development times

This is similar to what I've been hearing from some B2B executives. They've told me they aren't well-equipped or don't know how to make the transformational moves necessary to foster cultures of creativity and innovation. Risk aversion is a classic barrier to change, and as a result, hampers innovation.

In addition, some of these B2B executives are selling enterprise solutions with often complex and lengthy sales cycles. They say deployment and upgrades can require significant effort. And they typically have to support multiple versions of a product and need to decide how much backward compatibility is required to bake into new versions. This slows their ability to develop new ideas and bring them to market ahead of their competitors.

Some executives I've talked to have said that they need to build a more highly evolved innovation strategy into their product development process to ensure that new products and features address market needs.

They're looking for an innovation process that engages a meaningful dialogue with customers so they can identify high-quality ideas early, which would help them decrease their time to market and ensure that products and features in development are what customers want -- and will buy.

Some of these executives also realize that their product managers must play a central role in their innovation process. Product managers are naturally positioned to engage with customers and incorporate their feedback into the product development process. But these executives are struggling with how to get this initiative started.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you experiencing something similar in your organization? Would love to hear your thoughts.

What does innovation mean to you?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:58:25 PDT

A little bit ago, we started a new blog series called B2B Innovation to help companies in the B2B high-tech sector understand what innovation is, why it's important today, and how they can get started putting together a sophisticated innovation initiative. So, moving along today with our series, we thought the next question to address is, what is innovation?

It might sound really basic but it's actually a very interesting and thought-provoking question. Innovation means different things to different people depending on their role, company, industry, markets, competitive set, and the problem they are trying to address.

In a commoditized industry where competition is fixed, innovation might be all about operational efficiency. An example is Ford introducing the notion of an assembly line at a time when the market was exploding. The question was how to get automobiles in the hands of as many people as possible at low price points that the masses could afford, and the assembly line answered that question.

Innovation comes in many forms in software and technology. New products might come out of an advance or breakthrough in technology. The Intel chip, for example, spawned the PC market and with each new advance in chip technology, continues spawning new markets and products. Because of the Intel chip, smaller, faster chips made mobile computing a reality, creating new products and applications like the iPhone and Droid.

Innovation might also mean introducing a new approach to a problem or process. For example, the notion of "agile computing" is a new approach to developing software products. Agile was, in part, enabled through the advent of new technologies, such as service-oriented architecture and object-oriented development. But it's also a response to older methodologies like the sequential "waterfall" approach, where products were rolled out monolithically and all aspects of the product and delivery were developed as one big thing.

In B2C/consumer goods, innovation means something different entirely. There, innovation may come from mining ideas and sentiments from consumers. These ideas may come from traditional research or consumer insight approaches, such as focus groups, new product research, and testing, which spawn new ideas and ways to look at consumers and markets.

A classic example of this is P&G's Swiffer product. Consumers wanted a floor cleaning product that was as easy to use as a broom, as clean and neat as a paper towel, and easy to maneuver and store. Knowing these trends and consumer preferences enabled P&amp;amp;amp;G to conceive Swiffer. Here, innovation was a fundamentally new product that's cheap and easy to use and serves an existing market.

In this world, innovation might also come in the form of applying an existing product to a fundamentally new application or use case. A good example of this is baking soda. Initially, it's usage and market was simple -- baking. But innovative thinking about new applications combined with customer research can lead to new applications and uses. Today, baking soda is used to eliminate and control odors, as a cleaning product, and more. All of these "innovative uses" have opened new markets and applications for the product.

You probably get the picture as the examples go on and on. What are your thoughts on this? What does innovation mean to you and your organization?

Stay tuned to our B2B Innovation series for our next post where we'll unfold more about understanding what innovation is and why it's important.

Why information management is top of mind for an HP research analyst

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:41:00 PDT

Rounding out our cast of SLA interviewees we have Sarah Shulhafer, Research Analyst with Hewlett-Packard.

We posted our podcast with Sarah last week and heard about her role within HP as an information professional, what challenges she is foreseeing in meeting clients needs, and how she plans to overcome them.

In case you missed it, skip back over to our podcast or read our transcript below.

Janelle: Greetings, everyone. I'm Janelle Kozyra, blogger for Inmagic. I'm at the SLA 2011 Conference and I am with Sarah Shulhafer. Sarah, what company are you with and what role do you have there?

Sarah: I'm a Research Analyst with Hewlett-Packard.

Janelle: And what brings you to the show this year?
Sarah: I'm at the show this year just to learn about new and up-and-coming trends for information professionals and what's going on in the industry and connect with my colleagues and I guess that's about it.

Janelle: Have you been to SLA before?

Sarah: I've been once in Seattle a few years ago.

Janelle: Okay, great. So this year's show, the theme is Future Ready, so there's a lot of discussion about what are some of the trends that are going to be impacting the industry over the coming year, three years, five years and beyond. So what trends do you see impacting HP, let's say in the coming year?

Sarah: Well, I can't really say much about HP overall, but my organization specifically, just from the information role, information professional standpoint, I would say that just learning how to add more value for our clients internally with our company is a major thing that we're looking out for. And just how to make sure that we're delivering exactly what they need as their needs change over time.

Janelle: So what sorts of maybe changes or investments do you think you're planning to make sure that your customers are getting the value that you want them to be getting?

Sarah: Well, mainly I think it's about my colleagues and I understanding what those needs are, especially as there's more work competition from outside information sources to prove that we know where to get the information. We know how to distill it and analyze it and provide insights to the business that are important to our clients.

Janelle: So what sorts of challenges do you see, though, as you go about doing this?

Sarah: Well, I think that one of the biggest challenges for us is probably learning how to make that role visible to our organization and make sure that they know that we're there to provide them with insights that they can't get other places.

Janelle: And what are their needs exactly that you're seeing?

Sarah: I would say that they are looking for like a higher level of analysis, a higher level of outside generation as opposed to just giving them something that they can find elsewhere. It's like actually going that extra step.

Janelle: Gotcha. Well, thank you Sarah. Enjoy the rest of the show.

Sarah: Thanks.

CMSWire and Information Today like the idea of IdeaNet

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Warren) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 07:53:47 PDT

The public and pundits like the idea of IdeaNet. CMSWire's Barb Mosher recently wrote an article breaking down how IdeaNet supports B2B product innovation. According to Barb, "many believe that involving customers in the product idea process is the perfect way to ensure that you are building the products customers want. Kind of obvious, I know, but it's still not common place in many organizations. Applications like IdeaNet may be the answer to changing that."

Mosey over to CMSWire to read the rest of Barb's coverage.

Paula Hane also covered IdeaNet on Information Today. She discussed how IdeaNet helps B2B product development teams generate ideas, manage the ideation process, and drive innovation. Paula details how IdeaNet differs from social CRM applications and what led to our creation of IdeaNet by InMagic. She also discusses how workforce management solutions provider, Kronos Incorporated, is using IdeaNet.

Give Paula's article a read on Information Today.

Thanks to Barb and Paula for their continued coverage of IdeaNet.

ASAE 2011 going strong in St. Louis

noreply@blogger.com (Kipo Saysongkham) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:42:54 PDT

When in St. Louis, have an ice cream cone. It
was invented at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.

The Inmagic sales crew arrived in St. Louis over the weekend for ASAE 2011. And I have to say, if there was any doubt we weren't in the right place, well, one look around dispelled it all.

ASAE has clearly made its mark on St. Louis. The organization has a welcome table at the airport. As we were driving into downtown St. Louis, a huge ASAE billboard welcomed us to the show. All the streets around the convention center are adorned with ASAE flags. Pretty cool!

We set up our booth (#311) on Saturday and were ready to rock and roll for the first day of the show yesterday. Lots of people have come by to drop off their business cards for our "Open Community" book giveaway. Author Maddie Grant came by yesterday and signed the books, so everyone who wins will get a signed copy.

If you haven't been by our booth yet to drop off your card, make sure you do before today is up so you'll be entered to win a copy of "Open Community."

We have everyone's business card in safe keeping and will be drawing the winners once we get back to the office. Check our blog for when we announce the winners.

That's all for now! As they say, on with the show. Hope to have more ASAE 2011 updates for you later!

More digital ink for IdeaNet

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Green) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:26:23 PDT

More great coverage of IdeaNet! We interviewed Terri Griffith, Ph.D., Professor of Management at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University a few months ago, where she highlighted the importance of social media technologies. Not long after our interview, we saw that she had written about idea management software for GigaOm. With the impending release of IdeaNet, we let her know about our latest technology. The result is a sparkling article about our approach to B2B collaboration.

Dr. Griffith applauds IdeaNet's simple yet effective design and, "thinks the combination of the application’s features and the power of customization to match particular workflows and communities is sure to make IdeaNet a player in the growing innovation management ecosystem." Pop on over to Dr. Griffith's review to see what else she has to say.

How to evaluate idea management systems

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:22:01 PDT

Like nearly all technologies, idea management systems are not created equal. Ideally, an idea management system should help you collect, manage, discuss, and leverage the creative ideas from customers and employees to drive innovation.

However, many idea management systems lack crucial functionality that hinder you from optimally generating and managing product enhancements.

In talking with our customers, several major features and functionalities have continually come up in conversation as crucial parts of their idea management technology approach. We thought it would be useful to put them together in a checklist that you can easily refer to when you go about doing your own research and evaluation of idea management systems.

I hope it gives you some guidance to ensure you get all the important capabilities you need to support your innovation process. You can download the checklist now from our website by going to the IdeaNet page and clicking the checklist on the left side.

And as you're evaluating and testing new technologies, let us know if we're missing anything on this list, or if you think something should be changed. We love getting input!

HP research analyst tells her #1 information management goal

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 07:37:00 PDT

I'm rounding out our interviews from SLA 2011 today with our final victim: Sarah Shulhafer, Research Analyst at HP. Our blogging team got a slice of Sarah's life as an information professional with HP, including the biggest need her division's clients have today, and her plan for meeting it. Tune in below. Thanks, Sarah, for talking with us!

Going to ASAE 2011? Enter to win "Open Community" while you're there!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Cassettari) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 09:16:36 PDT

If you're an association professional, here's a book that should be on your reading list: "Open Community" by Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer. It's a handy read to help any association professional use social media technologies to support their online community-building efforts. And we're making it real easy to get it.

We're giving away six copies at the ASAE 2011 conference -- three on Sunday, Aug. 7, and three on Monday, Aug. 8.

To enter, all you have to do is come to Inmagic's booth, #311, and have your badge scanned or leave us your business card. That's all. You're entered to win!

Maddie let us know she will also be at ASAE 2011, so keep an eye out for her if you want to say hi. We interviewed her recently on our blog, so I know the Inmagic team is looking forward to seeing her! (Check back on our podcast and transcript with Maddie in case you missed it.)

We'll be announcing the book winners on our blog. Good luck and see you in St. Louis!

IdeaNet vaults onto ReadWriteWeb's radar

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Warren) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:22:09 PDT

No sooner did we prepare to announce IdeaNet than the application hit the radar of ReadWriteWeb's David Strom. He featured IdeaNet in an article today on ReadWriteWeb with the basics of what our new application is all about. Thanks for covering us, David.

We just lit up our latest Presto application, IdeaNet

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Warren) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:03:23 PDT

Whoa. It just got a whole lot brighter in here. It looks like a million light bulbs are shining all around. I can feel the creative energy surging through the office.

That can mean only one thing. We just released our latest Presto application, IdeaNet. Now that all the light bulbs are on, I'm just waiting for the brainstorm clouds to move in and the ideas to start pouring ...

Here's the idea behind IdeaNet: It's a system to help B2B product development and management teams manage the ideation process and fuel innovation. It works by helping teams bring together their knowledge and expertise with customer feedback and insight to generate, moderate, prioritize, and act upon ideas.

I've pasted our press release below so you can read more about what IdeaNet is and how it can help your organization.

You'll also learn how workforce management solutions provider Kronos Incorporated is using IdeaNet to enhance the innovation dialogue and participation between its software developers and customer community.

For more information on IdeaNet, hit the links in Press Resources section of the release. Get those wheels turning!

Inmagic Introduces IdeaNet -- a Next-Generation Innovation Application

Kronos selects IdeaNet to transform the idea management process

WOBURN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Inmagic®, Inc. today brings its latest application to market with the introduction of Inmagic® IdeaNet, built on Presto technology. IdeaNet helps business-to-business product development teams bring together their knowledge and expertise with customer feedback and insight to generate ideas, manage the idea development process, and fuel product innovation.

Kronos Incorporated, the global leader in workforce management solutions, selected IdeaNet to enhance the innovation dialogue and participation between Kronos software developers and its customer community. As a result, Kronos expects to gain the ability to more quickly identify its highest-quality ideas, greater customer insight, and an enhanced ability to prioritize product development resources.

IdeaNet features an intuitive and flexible user interface so product managers, engineers, and customers can contribute to and benefit from a collaborative innovation process. Unlike other Social CRM and idea management providers, IdeaNet does not consider internal collaboration with staff and external communication with customers to be mutually exclusive. IdeaNet fosters collaboration across all constituents through new features and functionalities, including:

Moderated Idea Management. Idea submissions can be screened and/or archived to keep the quality of input high. Product managers can flag ideas to remove duplicates, and end users can opt to ‘follow’ an idea through automated alerts and watch lists, making it easier to track relevant ideas.

Integration of Idea Management and Community Feedback. Ideas can be submitted by customers and product managers for community voting. Users can vote in favor of an idea, and get insight into the popularity of a particular idea. As ideas move through different phases of the innovation cycle, product managers can communicate updates to both their team and customer community.

Advanced Search and Reporting. Users can slice-and-dice information for a more accurate representation of ideas. For example, a product manager can view top ideas by product, customer type, industry, geography, or any number of criteria.

Idea Refinement. As an idea morphs over time via discussion, product managers can redefine the idea while preserving the original input. This creates a more holistic view of the idea-to-innovation process.

Authentication and Authorization. User participation in the idea voting process is contingent on product ownership, so participants may only vote or have a dialogue about products they use. IdeaNet provides single sign-on (SSO) security with out-of-box integration with Active Directory or through Presto’s external SSO API, enabling authentication and authorization via CRMs and other third-party systems.

“Ideas are the basis of all innovation, and without the right support structure in place, even the best ideas can’t be put into action,” says Ron Matros, CEO of Inmagic. “Organizations are facing more pressure than ever to develop and bring new products to the market faster so they can stay competitive and relevant. We are excited that Kronos is embracing the creative and collaborative innovation process fostered by IdeaNet to add another dimension of excellence to its award-winning workforce management solutions.”

For more information on IdeaNet, visit http://www.inmagic.com/ideanet.

ABOUT INMAGIC, INC.

Inmagic® is a leader in developing and implementing Social Knowledge Networks (SKN) for enterprise organizations. Inmagic has helped information and knowledge-driven organizations manage, access and publish information. Today, our award winning Inmagic® Presto SKN application helps business users access and search relevant content and community insight across enterprise silos to create an environment focused on addressing high-value business processes and objectives. Organizations across a range of industries including ACLU, City of Edmonton, Laureate Education, Maple Leaf Foods, MRA, NASA, The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, the San Francisco Symphony and Wyeth Consumer Healthcare (now Pfizer), rely on Inmagic to improve productivity and collaboration, retain and preserve knowledge and foster greater innovation. Find out how much your organization really knows. Visit Inmagic at www.Inmagic.com and blog.Inmagic.com

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Press resources

IdeaNet product page with brochure, webinar, and video demo: http://www.inmagic.com/ideanet

IdeaNet screen shots: http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/2011/07/great-ideas-are-easy-bringing-them-to.html

Innovation blog posts: http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/search/label/Innovation

Ideation blog posts: http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/search/label/Ideation

B2B Innovation blog series: http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/search/label/B2B%20Innovation

“Addressing the Innovation Imperative for B2B Companies” white paper: http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-white-paper-to-help-you-spark.html

Contacts

Press Only:
Gregory FCA
Alicia Buonanno, 610-228-2096
Alicia@GregoryFCA.com
or
Inmagic, Inc.
Mike Cassettari, 781-287-6225
MCassettari@Inmagic.com

Great ideas are easy. Bringing them to market is hard.

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Warren) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:01:33 PDT

How many of you have said to yourself, you know, wouldn't it be cool if we could communicate online using video? But it was Connectix that first brought webcams to market with its QuickCam (later acquired by Logitech).

Or how many of you have you thought about a smartphone that could dock onto a laptop and become a full computer? Yet it was Motorola that brought this to market with its Lapdock.

For people in product development and product marketing, coming up with great ideas isn't hard. The hard part is taking your great idea and bringing it to market -- a process called idea management.

If you've visited our website recently, you might have seen information on our newest application created just for this, IdeaNet. Maybe you've looked over the product brochure or video demo we have over there. If you've been wondering, hey, what's this?, well wonder no more. Today we are filling you in on what we've been working on to bring the application to life.

So, first, a little primer. IdeaNet is our fourth and latest application built on our Presto technology, joining the ranks of predecessors AssociatioNet, KnowledgeNet, and Presto for Social Libraries.

It's a system to help business-to-business product development and marketing teams bring together their knowledge and expertise with customer feedback and insight to generate ideas, manage the ideation process, and fuel product innovation.

We strove to create an intuitive and flexible user interface so product managers, product marketers, engineers, and customers alike can contribute to and benefit from a collaborative innovation process from one location.

IdeaNet is already in place at workforce management solutions provider Kronos Incorporated. The company is using IdeaNet to enhance the innovation dialogue and participation between its software developers and customer community.

Our press release announcing IdeaNet will be coming out soon with more details on the features and functionality of the application, as well as how and why Kronos is using it.

But for now, I wanted to give you a look inside IdeaNet by sharing some screen shots of its major functionality. You can flip through the slide show here, or, if you view the screen shots on Flickr, you'll also be able to read full descriptions of each image.

New white paper to help you spark innovation in your organization

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Warren) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:29:15 PDT

The other week I told you about how we're working on publishing a new white paper about innovation in the high-tech B2B space. It's now available for download from our website under the white papers tab in our Resource Center. Surf over to grab it now. It's titled "Addressing the Innovation Imperative for B2B Companies."

The white paper is a good starting point to help you think about your innovation strategy. The major topics covered are:

Why you should have an innovation strategy. This provides some research and analysis from Gartner and Accenture about the "innovation imperative," and what it means for high-tech B2B companies.

Six best practices to ensure success of your innovation strategy. These pointers help explain how to integrate your innovation strategy into your overall business operations. They'll also come in handy to refer back to as you roll our your innovation strategy.

Seven things to look for when evaluating idea management systems. A good innovation strategy needs the right technology to support it. This provides guidelines to help you sift through idea management systems on the market and make heads or tails of what you're seeing.

I hope the white paper is useful to you. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a line. You can also follow our B2B Innovation series on our blog and take a gander at our other innovation and ideation posts for more on the subject matter.