Design That Moves Business: The Motorola RAZR Effect

By guest authors Charley Bush and Kathy Hwang of brand, design and business strategy consultancy 3Strand Innovation

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a great design is worth a 70% stock boost.

What lies in store for the future of mobile phones? Will it continue to be Apple’s iPhone that drives innovation? Or will the new Google G1 phone take the lead? >>>

Closing the Innovation Gap (Part 4)

From Closing the Innovation Gap by guest author Judy Estrin

Patience and Trust

Patience is a mandatory condition if innovation is to thrive, and it doesn’t have to be a passive process. Innovators need to be comfortable with abiding ambiguity for a time instead of jumping on the first idea or solution that comes along. They also require active patience: the tenacity to overcome technical obstacles and to champion their bold new ideas in the face of disbelief. Because of the persistence of Genentech’s scientists, a drug called Avastin received FDA approval for treatment of colorectal cancer in 2004 — 15 years after the initial research began. >>>

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 3)

SM: How long were you at Oracle?

MB: I worked for Larry for about eight years. I am definitely in the Larry Ellison fan club. He is one of the smartest technicians and hardest driving executives I have ever met. I think the world of him. >>>

Closing the Innovation Gap (Part 3)

From Closing the Innovation Gap by guest author Judy Estrin

Openness

Innovation requires an open mind and an atmosphere that encourages people to imagine, think broadly, collaborate, capture serendipity, and have the freedom to create. Curiosity needs to be coupled with the ability to critically evaluate data, accept input, and be ready to adapt to change. >>>

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 2)

SM: What role did you play at Tesseract?

MB: I was part of senior management and ran all of engineering. Coming into the early 1990s another team was forming to start a company called Scopus Technologies. There were a gaggle of companies going into what we termed field sales automation or a contact center; it was not called a CRM yet. >>>

Closing the Innovation Gap (Part 2)

From chapter one of Closing the Innovation Gap by guest author Judy Estrin

Risk

Failure is an inherent part of innovation. “When you start a project, you don’t know enough about the competition or customer needs. You haven’t developed the best ideas or the best technology,” says Curtis Carlson, CEO of SRI International, an independent non-profit R&D organization. “So it’s the nature of the game that in the beginning, most of what you’re going to do is going to be a failure.” >>>

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 1)

Mark Barrenechea is president and CEO of Rackable Systems. Before joining Rackable he served as executive vice president and CTO for Computer Associates. Prior to CA, he was senior vice president of Applications Development at Oracle and reported directly to Larry Ellison. Earlier, he served as vice president of Development at Tesseract, which was purchased by Scopus, where he maintained the same role.

SM: Tell us where your story starts.

MB: I was raised in New York City. I lived in New York for most of my childhood. I then moved to Stamford, Connecticut where I went to middle and high school. My father was in metals trading, and we definitely had a New York mentality in my family. >>>

Closing the Innovation Gap (Part 1)

[This Thanksgiving weekend I’m featuring excerpts from the first chapter of Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy by renowned entrepreneur and guest author, Judy Estrin. According to Estrin, innovation comes from the interplay of three drivers of creative change: research, development and application, what she calls the “Innovation Ecosystem”. More information about the book is available on Amazon.]

The Core Values & Questioning

People often overestimate the a-ha! factor in the invention process. That process starts with creating the right kind of environment. “The rare thing is not coming up with ideas. It is creating that soup where lots of people are coming up with ideas, and having a system that translates them into something effective,” says Danny Hillis, a former Disney Imagineer and co-founder of Applied Minds, an R&D consulting firm that calls itself the “little Big Idea company.” The soup starts with some common ingredients, a set of human attitudes and beliefs that are so critical that I call them the five core values of innovation: questioning, risk taking, openness, patience and trust. >>>