Noise Between Stations

  • Books on European Innovation

    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, so nothing new there. It could be interesting for Americans to better understand how Europeans view themselves in relation to the U.S.

    In The Next Superpower? Rockwell Schnabel argues that the EU is a serious global economic force, and Americans need to pay heed. No argument there. He worries about overregulation and Europeans’ inability to take risk in order to make progress.

    It’s Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century that looks like the really interesting read for its counter-intuitive stance. The author, Mark Leonard, points out that two billion people now live in Europe’s “zone of influence” and gradually adopt European ways of doing things. This includes the EU’s 80,000 pages of regulations which, while seeming to hobble flexibility on the surface, is also dramatically changing any country that must obey them upon entry to the EU. So whereas the U.S. uses force to achieve regime change in Afghanistan, Leonard argues that the new power will be softer, as with the EU’s peaceful transformation of “all of Polish society.”

  • If an 8-year old can do it…

    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.

  • The Innovative Europe

    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 the advantage German car makers have when employees receive public health insurance vs. American car makers allocating more and more money to rising health care costs. Modifying these benefits could encourage a “free agent nation” where talented individuals can freely move from contract to contract. Many people will feel a personal insecurity about this compared to a regular job, but the government can show the way by putting the right policies in place now. America, ironically, is behind on this issue by continuing to tie health, retirement, and other benefits to a particular job (usually at medium or large companies only).

    Europe should embrace immigration     for all the benefits of diversity that America enjoys. It’s not an easy road, but with the example of America’s civil rights movement and South Africa’s apartheid behind us, Europe is not blazing a new trail here. France’s elitism results in rioting, Germany’s prejudice results in conflict, and the Danish media is mistaking blasphemy with freedom of the press. The EU and member nations need to see integration as inevitable and be more sensitive, sophisticated, and progressive about sharing their cultures. Power needs to be shared and will be over time, the question is only whether it’s a difficult process or not.

    Preserving culture vs. benefiting from globalism is a false dichotomy, and the media’s representation of the issue as protestors against free-market purists isn’t helping any. Each region needs to think about preserving what’s important to them and preserve it, while doing what is necessary to remain economically viable. Tuscany is a great example of putting very strict architectural restrictions in place while encouraging tourism. They don’t profit from giant tourist attractions, but they have built one amazing brand that is proving resilient.

    Unions (and worker’s councils) must become a competitive advantage rather than a source of friction. Again, management needs to recognize they share power with unions and leverage that relationship through collaboration to improve their operations. This is not a new road as the Japanese have already shown us the way with relationships of higher respect and processes that value collaboration and constant feedback (e.g. the Toyota Production System).

  • Who’s innovating?

    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

    1. Sweden
    2. Switzerland
    3. Finland
    4. Japan
    5. Germany
    6. United States
    7. Denmark

    …in that order. But of course it’s the most shocking sound bite that has gotten all the attention: “…would trends for the 25 EU Member States remain stable, the gap with the US will not close within the next 50 years.” But focusing on the US generates the wrong metric. I tend to find everyone I know — in the US and Europe — underestimates how the EU influences European prosperity. It’s rarely ever discussed here in the US, but Europe is gradually building the kind of large, diverse trading environment that exists in the United States, trading not only goods but knowledge and expertise. A metric I’d like to see is the amount of innovation before and after EU initiatives, and how trading labor costs for knowledge across borders can bring innovation from the high innovation areas to the low innovation areas.

  • Swallowing stones

    “Some thoughts are like the digestive stones that birds swallow.” — Owen, in a conversation on change.

  • The wonderful world of concrete

    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.

  • Everything written about innovation is shitty and useless

    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 world, it’s the need for passion. Arriving home I read, hot on the heels of Culture eats strategy for breakfast, this beauty from Tom Peters…

    If Drucker and Bennis and Collins and Peters and Co. (charter members of Guru Nation) are/were so damn smart-wise, why is corporate performance so shabby in general? …the “solutions” were not actionable by “real people” under stress….

    Strategy don’t matter for diddly if the “corporate culture” [an anathema word at McKinsey at the time], is disfunctional/mis-aligned.” That is, if the “strategy” ain’t implementable, it’s de facto a shitty-useless strategy.

  • Interaction Design as Language Design?

    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 better interfaces. The goal of the topic is to create a grounded practice using the explored principles. The seminar is not meant to be a completed theory, but a work in progress that participants get to explore with Marc during the seminar and after on their own work.

  • Four Things

    I usually don’t participate is such folly, but I’m feeling frivolous…

    Four jobs I’ve had:

    1. painting playgrounds
    2. building houses
    3. administering computer networks
    4. writing about music

    Four movies albums I can watch listen to over and over:

    1. Steely Dan’s Aja
    2. Death Cab For Cutie’s We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes
    3. Mahler’s Tenth Symphony
    4. Led Zepplin II

    Four places I’ve lived:

    1. West 23rd, between Ninth and Tenth
    2. West 25th and Seventh and Eighth
    3. West 87th between Central Park West and Columbus
    4. 28th St between Ditmars and Twenty-Third, Astoria

    Four TV shows I love:

    1. M*A*S*H
    2. The West Wing
    3. The Newsroom
    4. Connections

    Four places I’ve vacationed:

    1. Charleston
    2. Sienna
    3. Berlin
    4. Dublin

    Four of my favorite dishes:

    1. koenigsberger klops
    2. fish tacos
    3. pasta fagioli
    4. anything from Ben & Jerry’s

    Four sites I visit daily:

    1. New York Times
    2. ?
    3. ?
    4. ? …besides scanning RSS Feeds, it’s interesting that the sources I look to on a daily basis — books, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal — are still more satisfying offline, though I’d rather have them online.

    Four places I would rather be right now:

    1. the bathtub
    2. a sidewalk cafe
    3. cycling through the countryside
    4. with friends

  • Is Angie a design thinker?

    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.’“

  • MIG Seminar in Vancouver, March 23

    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 companies to work through tricky business issues. Now we want to return to the design community and teach the many skills we’ve learned.

    Here’s the official description:

    While the skill level of the average information architect has increased dramatically over the last several years, many IAs still lack the tools necessary to understand and articulate the broader implications of their work within a complex and dynamic business environment. The most successful information architects are better at recognizing the roots of strategic change and opportunity, assessing the potential impacts on their organization, and determining what to do and who to involve in getting it done.

    This workshop introduces participants to a new way of thinking about cause and effect in complex organizations—within functional groups, across departments, beyond business units, and across industries. Participants come away with a set of tools to identify social, cultural, economic, and technological change, match products to emerging and changing markets, develop strategies to capture market value, and change organizational capabilities to reflect changing market and technological dynamics. Special attention is given to learning how to create and maintain a workplace and culture that facilitate and sustain innovation and change.

    Here are some of the basic questions that we will help participants answer, both in general and in the context of their companies:

    • What is a business model? A value proposition? A business strategy?
    • Given my role, what contribution am I making to my company’s success?
    • How does IA/UX deliver value in my company’s business model and value proposition?
    • How do I determine how to choose my battles wisely: which high-value projects to push and which can stay on the back burner?
    • How do I say “no” to bad projects? What language will be most convincing to my management and stakeholders?
    • How can I get more visibility for IA/UX in my company? How do I build alliances with like-minded stakeholders?
    • How do other functions typically understand business problems, and how does that compare to the IA perspective?

    This session is designed specifically for managers and leaders who seek to use IA as a strategic tool to understand and influence organizational change. While a deep knowledge of advanced IA principles is not necessary for this session, participants should be willing to explore their roles as leaders and change agents within their organizations.

    Types of attendees most likely to find this workshop compelling include:

    • Managers of IA/UX teams
    • Product Managers
    • Entrepreneurs seeking to build a culture that values IA/UX design
    • IA/UX practitioners who report to a non-designer manager
    • Anyone who aspires to enhance their role as an internal change agent

  • The Innovate-Dominate Imperative

    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 (SaaS) was the number one item on the agenda of 70 percent of software executives.

    I’m here to tell you that this is a mistake.

    …The enterprise software companies that move to innovate and dominate today will be the most successful companies five years from now.

    software company size and innovation

  • Ford’s “Way Forward”

    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 eats strategy for breakfast.”

    Among other maxims on the wall: “Culture is unspoken, but powerful. It develops over time — difficult to change.”

    …implores employees to remember “conflict is healthy.“

  • A Recipe for a Decision-Making Bottleneck

    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, “Who has the right to decide which features will be standard?”

    64% of product developers said, “We do.”

    83% of marketers said, “We do.”

    When we asked, “Who has the right to decide which colors will be offered?”

    77% of product developers said, “We do.”

    61% of marketers said, “We do.”

    Not surprisingly, the new models were delayed.

  • European School of Management and Technology

    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 European School of Management and Technology.

    This is a curious thing, as the Germans embrace a greater sense of class equality than, say, the United States. Private schools are rare, and the absence of a world-class management or economics school is conspicious when the Brits, Swiss, and French sport such institutions. My wife explained the formation of this school was controversial, and when laws govern whom a university may hire as a professor, I’ll be interested to see how entrepreneurially they can function.

    I will say the spirit of the place, based on the language on their website, strikes a chord with a progressive, creative type like myself. Listen to this:

    Our school is inspired by the Bauhaus vision. Our commitment to this tradition places us in direct line with the principles of the founding members of the Weimar Bauhaus around the person of Walter Gropius. The latter gave substance to the daring idea to make creativity in architecture and design subject to the mastery of technical craftsmanship, and in this manner, to eliminate the boundary between free and applied arts. In the same way that the Bauhaus elevated the role of craftsmanship at the time, the application of managerial knowledge is intended to attain a radically new status at esmt…

    This means engineers and scientists who can turn technology into profitable business, financial professionals who can go beyond analysis, architects and lawyers who can develop and lead new business…