Meet MIT Tech Review's Innovator of the Year: David Berry

I first met BIF-4 storyteller David Berry last fall during a ‘Green Design’ symposium at the offices of Continuum in Boston. David is a principle at Flagship Ventures, a company well known for funding clean and environmentally sound technologies and he shared some mind boggling possibilities for the future. His firm is looking at everything from carbon nanotubes to solar quantum dots to synthetic biology. David is more than just a venture capitalist – he’s also an innovator with 44 patents under his belt. His talk highlighted some of the many untapped possibilities in the future of living green.

He’s one of the brightest guys I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know. BIF sat down recently with David and here’s his game-changer story…

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Posted August 19, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don't Delay! Early Registration for the BIF-4 Collaborative Innovation Summit Ends Friday

Early registration for the Business Innovation Factory’s BIF-4 Collaborative Innovation Summit on October 15-16 ends this Friday, August 15th.

Join BusinessWeek editor Bruce Nussbaum and bestselling author Bill Taylor for two days of conversation with two dozen innovators from across the country who bucked the system and found their own way to create change.

Tickets are selling fast! So don't delay...all the details, including the full line-up are here.

RELATED - Get to know some of our BIF-4 storytellers
Kathy Cloninger: Changing Business Models: Courage, Confidence, and Cloninger
Tony Hsieh: Back to basics: For a good time, call Zappos.com
Marc Ecko: Fashion icon turned business mogul (with heart)
Dr. Richard Satava: A pioneer in surgical robotics and telemedicine
Debi Brooks: Medical Research Change Agent
Jacqueline Novogratz: Congratulations to BIF-4 Storyteller Jacqueline Novogratz

Posted August 13, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Changing Business Models: Courage, Confidence, and Cloninger

Kathy Cloninger is an ENFP. In Myers-Briggs terminology, that makes her an “Idealist Champion” personality who values personal authenticity, is a keen and probing observer of others, and is always on the lookout for what’s possible. By her own account, she loves to be in a room full of people, developing relationships, collaborating, or as she explained during a recent BIF interview, being “constantly surrounded by the voices of the organization” she heads. Only 5% to 10% of all CEOs have this personality type, which perfectly suits the special group of customers she aims to please: the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA). In fact, Cloninger epitomizes the Girl Scout mission statement: Courage, Confidence, and Character.

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Posted August 07, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back to basics: For a good time, call Zappos.com

Four million pairs of shoes of all shapes, sizes, colors and trends currently reside in a warehouse in Kentucky. Twenty-four hours a day the shoes are being shipped out to consumers all across the country to the comfort of their own homes. Don't like the pair once they arrive? No problem. You can ship them back, free-of-charge. That's the allure of online retailer Zappos.com.

Tony Hsieh is Zappos.com's rising star CEO and he'll be sharing his story at the BIF-4 summit in October. His back-to-basics approach to company building has propelled Zappos to the near billion dollar mark in revenue sales.

How did he do it?

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Posted July 29, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meet BIF-4 Storyteller Marc Ecko: Fashion icon turned business mogul (with heart)

I first met Marc Ecko last year during a symposium I attended in Providence on vocational and technical education. You might think it a strange place to be for a billion dollar fashion empire mogul but quite refreshingly, Ecko was low-key, down-to-earth, and really passionate about the youth development program he created called Sweat Equity Enterprises.

This fall, Ecko will take the BIF-4 stage to share his personal story of innovation: Although it may not be the case that everything Marc Ecko touches turns to gold, it sure does seem that way.

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Posted July 16, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meet a pioneer in surgical robotics and telemedicine: Dr. Richard Satava

I spent the holiday weekend with a close friend from Minnesota who is a physician. I happen to have a BIF-4 flyer lying around (ha-ha) and mentioned to my friend that Dr. Richard Satava was going to be one of our storytellers at the summit in the fall. Initially, the name didn't mean anything to her. Then I said he co-developed the first surgical robot. That's when her eyes lit up: "that's a serious game-changing surgical technology," she said.

I've profiled many storytellers over the years. Satava is prone to neither hyperbole nor rhetoric - but honestly, it's hard to tame down his story.

He's done many things in his life – from deciding which cutting-edge medical technologies the U.S. military will pursue, to saving lives as a surgeon in the heat of battle, to teaching surgery at Yale and the University of Washington, to serving on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – yet he would have you believe that all his accomplishments stem from one thing: failure.

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Posted July 09, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

New Book by BIF-3 Storyteller Dave Balter: The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II

As consumers, we are all word-of-mouth marketers. We buy a product, love it and share our opinion with a couple of our friends. Conversely, if we hate the product, well we don’t keep that view to ourselves either. Either way, what we say can have a dramatic impact on a company’s bottom line.

Of course the difficulty for marketers is creating the right kind of buzz with enough momentum to carry it over the tipping point. Dave Balter, founder and CEO of BzzAgent and his network of 450,000 volunteer “agents” believe they’ve figured out a way to crack that code.

We first met Dave last year when he spoke at the BIF-3 summit last fall. He brought his artist-in-residence, Seth Minkin in tow. Dave has just published a new e-book called The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II.

If you saw Dave at the summit, then you know he's an open and transparent kind of guy. Which explains why he's opted for a different sort of publishing route by offering his book for free download through several thought leader sites. (Thanks to Dave for considering BIFSpeak one of them - you can download your free copy here.)

BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter presenting at the BIF-3 summit while artist-in-residence Seth Minkin paints. The bee is an older painting.

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Posted June 27, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meet BIF-4 Storyteller Debi Brooks: Medical Research Change Agent

Benjamin Franklin said if you don’t watch your workers, you might as well leave a bag of money in their midst and walk away. Applying this principle of oversight to a group of scientists from esteemed institutions is surprisingly unconventional,. And that's exactly what Debi Brooks, co-founder of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research is trying to do.

Brooks will be a storyteller at our upcoming BIF-4 Summit in October where she'll talk about the "shockingly unmonitored" medical research funding process and the new model MJFF has created during the past eight years, positioning itself as a “strategic intermediary” between science and its funders — private philanthropists as well as industry — in an urgent effort to find a cure for Parkinson's disease.

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Posted by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Congratulations to BIF-4 Storyteller Jacqueline Novogratz

BIF-4 storyteller Jacqueliine Novogratz was named one of the 73 biggest brains in business by Portfolio magazine. Novogratz is the CEO of Acumen Fund, a private equity company she founded in 2001 that has invested in 32 entrepreneurs who are building systems to bring affordable basic services to low income people in India, Pakistan, Kenya and Tanzania.

By applying business metrics to philanthropy, Novogratz is changing the model for catalyzing change in developing countries. She does not treat the poor as passive recipients. Instead, she sees them as customers and uses the market to understand their needs and preferences. For instance, she's learned over the years that people don’t want technology per se; they want services. Understanding what services are in demand requires an accurate perception of the people who will use them—even if they are poor.

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Posted June 20, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

BIF Bookshelf: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work

It's no small feat to add to the body of work created by BIF research advisor Clay Christensen. It's been more than 10 years since Christensen changed the innovation landscape with his seminal work on disruptive innovation called The Innovator's Dilemma. Since then, he's published two additional books on the subject and co-founded a successful consulting firm Innosight.

Now, three members of Innosight - Scott Anthony, Mark Johnson, Joseph Sinfield - and Elizabeth Altman of Motorola have written a new book called The Innovator's Guide to Growth which takes Christensen's theories and puts them into practice. Through frameworks, tools and templates, the authors provide an accessible roadmap for transformation that any corporate manager or entrepreneur can follow.

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Posted June 19, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)