Innovation Story: Who the Dickens was that???

Posted by admin on March 29, 2006

Last year I was blessed to tell a story at BIF's first Business Innovation Summit in Providence RI. We are a small company that until then had managed to stay off the radar screen in Rhode Island [and everywhere else for that matter]. My story was about the sequel to Charles Dicken’s Christmas Carol.

My partner (SquareMan) and I (GeekBoy) had started over in the year 2000 with a clean sheet of paper after selling a large public company. Our quest was to “do it again, only mo’ betta”. We decided that Friends Enjoying Work would be on everyone’s business card and that we would innovate everyday. We are and we have! There are now over 150 Friends Enjoying Work in seven States.

During BIF-1, I was riveted by businessmen and women, law enforcement professionals, politicians, and educators. There were some great stories. Many people approached my after my story and promised to get together after the summit. I had heard it all before. “I’ll have my machine call your machine and we’ll e-chat or perhaps break e-bread.” I wasn’t holding my breath. I just felt fortunate to have been able to tell our story and make fun of my partner at the same time.

To my delight and surprise, I’m here to tell you that people were truly interested in the concept of Innovating Everyday. I have been contacted, met and dialoged with many local and remote new friends about my story. Some, just to see if it was a story or reality. I usually just let them e-participate for a couple days so they see what I mean. Some don’t even need that:

The CTO at GTECH (Joe Nadan) saw what we do, and in less than 5 minutes wanted us to show more of his team how the innovation engine works. Bill Taylor of Fast Company and author of Mavericks at Work has visited and asked to “play for a day”. Booze, Allen and Hamilton friends have visited, Bearing Point folks have dabbled. The State’s Innovation Leaders like Mike McMahon (an innovator himself) and Saul Kaplan (the summit quarterback) have visited on a Saturday to learn more. The list of people who are truly searching for the secret to provoking knowledgeable people to engage in a State/company’s future seems endless.

We still remain under the radar screen (no marketing or sales staff), but thanks to Don Stanford (also a storyteller), we were nominated to receive the State’s first Excellence in Technology Application Award for an innovative product that improves productivity and collaboration within a company. Life is good!

My thanks to the Business Innovation Factory for the chance to tell the story of our sequel.

Jim Lavoie is CEO of Rite-Solutions.

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