Victor
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Books on European Innovation
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2 min read
A day after my recent musings, the Wall Street Journal looked at three books on European growth… Cousins and Strangers is written by the last British governer to Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner. Most of the text seems to mirror the kind of Bush administration bashing that progressives in the US already do,…
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If an 8-year old can do it…
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1 min read
Here’s a great story from David Hornik of how his 8-year old son started an Internet business. All the things we’ve struggled to make will be tools our kids use to build wonderful new things.
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The Innovative Europe
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3 min read
Continuing on the Europe theme, I see a lot of potential for innovation there if the EU, governments, and companies are willing to address the current challenges with a view of the current situation as helpful constraints rather than roadblocks. State-based benefits are a competitive advantage that should be leveraged more. The obvious example is…
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Who’s innovating?
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1 min read
While pretty much everyone everywhere is freaking out about the future rich country status of China and India (can you say self-fulfilling prophesy?), the ability to innovate is what will keep the rich countries rich. So who’s innovating? According to this EU report, the innovation leaders are Sweden Switzerland Finland Japan Germany United States Denmark…
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Swallowing stones
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1 min read
“Some thoughts are like the digestive stones that birds swallow.” — Owen, in a conversation on change.
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The wonderful world of concrete
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1 min read
If you’re in Washington D.C., do see the concrete exhibit at the National Building Museum, where you’ll learn that concrete does not have to be heavy, solid, opaque, flat, gray, or ugly. Quite the opposite.
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Walking home from work tonight I was thinking that most everything written about innovation is useless. It’s generic banter. Fixing companies must be done in the context of their problems by people passionate enough to constantly push against the dead weight of status quo. If we learn anything useful from the Tom Peters of this…
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Interaction Design as Language Design?
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1 min read
Marc Rettig, one of the most thoughtful practioners in the user experience world, will be in New York next month discussing Interaction Design is Language Design… …The notion of a “design language” has been with us for years, but if we take the idea seriously, perhaps ideas and frameworks from linguistics can help us design…
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Four Things
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1 min read
I usually don’t participate is such folly, but I’m feeling frivolous… Four jobs I’ve had: painting playgrounds building houses administering computer networks writing about music Four movies albums I can watch listen to over and over: Steely Dan’s Aja Death Cab For Cutie’s We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes Mahler’s Tenth Symphony Led…
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Is Angie a design thinker?
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1 min read
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is making waves at Davos. I like her attitude: “She acknowledged the political necessity to move ‘in small steps.’ She added, ‘In Germany, sometimes things never get going because one doesn’t know how it will work out, and maybe it’s better to do nothing. That’s not my maxim.’“
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MIG Seminar in Vancouver, March 23
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3 min read
We’ll be teaching a full-day seminar prior to the IA Summit called Enhancing Your Strategic Influence: Understanding and Responding to Complex Business Problems. I’ll be joined by John Zapolski and Scott Hirsch of MIG, Harry Max (formerly of Dreamworks), and Mark McCormick (Director of Design at Wells Fargo). We’ve been designers. And we’ve partnered with…
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The Innovate-Dominate Imperative
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1 min read
This essay by Ray Lane of Kleiner Perkins offers some useful models of the software industry that could easily apply to similar industries in a state of major transition. This year, many software companies will be busy trying to convert their offerings from products into services. In fact, I would estimate that last year, software-as-a-service…
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Ford’s “Way Forward”
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1 min read
Quotes from the Wall Street Journal… Ford will announce a plan tomorrow called “The Way Forward” that will involve 30,000 layoffs and target “the root of the auto maker’s recent woes: a stifling corporate culture.” [In the war room,] high on the wall, hangs a big, white sheet of paper on which is written: “Culture…
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A Recipe for a Decision-Making Bottleneck
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1 min read
The latest HBR offers a pleasing overview of decision making. The below callout is from Who Has the D? by Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko… A Recipe for a Decision-Making Bottleneck At one automaker we studied, marketers and product developers were confused about who was responsible for making decisions about new models. When we asked,…
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European School of Management and Technology
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2 min read
In Berlin over the holidays, we walked passed this beautiful building with a classical center and modern wings. It’s the former Staatsratsgebäude (East German government center), the portal from a pre-war city palace which the East Germans built around. It was recently restored and only days away from the becoming the Berlin campus of the…