Thoughts on Innovation

It is not easy to foster a culture of innovation in a corporation. Ironically, I have not always felt this way. I have spent the great majority of my career at start-ups, entrepreneurial charged companies, and software makers. Each of these environments relied on the creativity of their people to remain competitive.

When I joined my current firm, we were a small and hungry software supplier in the HealthCare industry. We served a particular niche market and our growth was dependent upon finding new and inventive ways to sell more products into this niche. In my first year with the firm we doubled our number of offerings.

Something happened to that culture of invention when we were swallowed by a bigger fish. It's hard to put a finger on it, but maybe it's our build vs. buy strategy that favors buy over build. Maybe it's our market dominance and entrenched legacy customer base. Maybe it's a culture that meticulously tracks where each hour of engineering time is spent.

You can start with the existing method of starting a project around a new idea. A rigid and exhaustive procedure was established to analyze projects for funding. The firm sets aside money especially for these projects. But the process is long, bureaucratic, and daunting. Only those employees with the greatest perseverance can weather the multiple stages, detailed requirements, and long delays of this process. The process itself, then, serves to prevent innovation.

It's not that the company is not interested in innovation. This year the firm initiated a council of thinkers who are charged with encouraging the submission of creative ideas. On the surface you might think the initiative could be very successful, but I see some fundamental flaws that could stall our efforts.

First and foremost of the flaws is the establishment of yet another process. And what happens when an idea passes through the process established by the idea team? The idea is handed off to the same process as before, but possibly skipping the first stage. In affect we have put a new process in front of the old process. If the old process was a deterrent to innovation, then the new one is doubly so.

Add to the mess of procedures, a subtle lack of focus. This lack of focus was exposed by our firm's COO who made it apparent her goal is innovation in operations. The Japanese auto industry of the 1980s was cited as an example. This is fine enough, except the council had established criteria around the analysis of new product ideas. In other words, we were looking externally for innovation, when the COO expected us to look internally. The criteria to judge projects of these two types are dramatically different.

So far, the results of our council are disappointing. No idea has successfully come to fruition. And the promotion of an innovative culture is stalled.

Of course everyone holds up Google as the standard. Even among my staff, I've tried to encourage the idea of spending 20% of our time on new ideas. The key to the Google concept, though, isn't necessarily the allocation of time. Instead it's the thinking that with a new idea, many people "won't get it", at least not at first. The idea has to go through some element of trial and error before it can be tabled or killed. This is in direct contrast to our approach, which puts rigorous paperwork between the idea and a prototype.

If we really want innovation to take hold at our company, we'll need to change the model. We'll need to empower people to spend time building working versions of their idea, instead of filing a form. We'll need a little of the "just do it" attitude, instead of waiting for approvals. I guess we'll need to regain a some of our entrepreneurial mojo.

Thoughts on some Web 2.0 Sites

The expression Web 2.0 has been with us so long that we can consider it a Tired term. Founded on the principles of collaboration, and built on highly interactive technology (read AJAX), Web 2.0 sites represent the post bubble rebirth of an industry. Some of these sites offer fairly valuable services and some of them are nonsense. Here are my thoughts…

Facebook is seen as the company with the most potential for long term success. I've been using the site almost daily for over a month and I can honestly say that "I don't get it". Sure, I'm a bit of a dinosaur, having attended college (both degrees) long before social networking came to the web. But in all my use of the site over the last several weeks, it hasn't helped me accomplish anything. Facebook has been pretty successful at positioning itself as a platform for micro-applications. Here again, I don't get it. I've tried many of the applications and always end up with the same thought…"so what?". I read somewhere that everyone eventually has an "ah-ha" moment with social networking; I'm still waiting for mine with Facebook.

On the contrary I saw the benefit to LinkedIn the day I started using it nearly five years ago. This site has helped me find work, consultants, and business leads. I've heard it called social networking for business people, but there's really very little that social about it. The site generally prevents people from contacting strangers, at least without an introduction. Ironically, you can pay money to override this fundamental aspect of the site. Paying members have access to InMail messages and can reach out to people directly. Anyone in a career should be active on LinkedIn.

Plaxo is an odd hybrid of Facebook and LinkedIn. I actually avoided using Plaxo for sometime, opting instead for GoodContacts, but when GoodContacts looked like they weren't going to make it, I switched loyalties. Plaxo suffers from an identity crisis. It started as a convenient way of managing business and personal contacts online. I use it as my main address book, and sync Outlook, my Blackberry, and other sites to Plaxo. Somewhere along the way, though, the site morphed into Plaxo Pulse. The new site is a clone of Facebook, right down to the page layout and color scheme. I still use it to keep my address list, but I don't think this company will survive.

Geni is a cute social networking site for families. I checked it out after reading Once You're Lucky. This site is actually pretty good. It is easy to use and has all the capabilities needed to stay in touch with your extended family. Nonetheless I feel this site is doomed. I make this judgment simply because no one seems to know anything about it. My family is so tired of receiving web site invitations from me that they've all but ignored the Geni invites. And without active participation from my family, the site loses its' usefulness. Add in the fact that there is no subscription or advertising; I have no clue how the site expects to earn revenue.

Twitter is dumbest idea I've ever seen. Still, it's pretty addictive. I checked it out because I am starting a project that requires a similar SMS interface. My project, however, will be useful, where Twitter simply generates noise.

I have a love/hate relationship with Flickr. I use the site a lot by storing all my family's pictures there. I uploaded so many pictures that I had to buy a subscription. Flickr was a leader in establishing sharing, but now its UI seems dated. I find it difficult to use, or at least difficult to learn how to use. And I am disappointed in the site's "badge" ability; that led me to seek alternatives including Slide.

Krugle on the other hand is one of the best and most useful sites I've found. Of course you have to be a programmer to appreciate the site's benefits, but for those of us developing software for a living the site is amazing. Forget Google Code Search; Krugle is the place to go for snippets of code and projects in the public domain.

YouTube is silly and innocent fun. If you're reading this far into this post, then you already know all about YouTube.

Some people claim that Google Docs is meant to replace Microsoft Office. Google, of course, denies such claims by saying that Google Docs are meant to augment productivity suites. Frankly I don't care about the pending Microsoft vs Google wars. I like Office and I like Google Docs. I've read that Google Docs is not as feature rich as Office, and certainly the Google toolbar has nowhere near the number of buttons as the Office Ribbon. That said, I've never looked for a feature in Google Docs that it didn't have. I guess that says something for the feature bloat in Office.

Everybody uses maps online. MapQuest was amazing when it first came out. Google, however, really lifted the bar when it introduced Google Maps. Now all the map providers have full screen maps that pan as you drag them. They all have satellite pictures and zoom. Google has Street View and Live and Birdseye View. Of Google, Live, Yahoo! and MapQuest, I like Live best. But they're all good.

I checked out Slide because I wanted a cool way to show pictures on my web site. Slide has some cool features, but I was a little disappointed. I can't imagine building an entire business around slide shows so I don't look for this site to last long.

Popfly is Microsoft's site to demonstrate how cool their Silverlight technology is. It's kind of cool for developers building mashups and who don't mind using Microsoft technology. That's probably a pretty small group, but since I am technology agnostic, I use it and think it's a pretty cool site.

Delicious on the other hand is about as uncool as you can get. I think the site is ugly and serves little purpose. On the contrary, Trailfire, is of similar ilk but is amazing friendly and helpful. What a difference a thoughtful UI can make. Unfortunately, Delicious is the better bet for longevity in this space as they have the backing of Yahoo! and some web 2.0 brand recognition.