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Kaplan in New Business Week Column: Energy Innovation Should Trump Job Creation
In his most recent column for Business Week, BIF founder and Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan sounds off on the country's obsession with green-collar and the effect this obsession has on efforts to innovate around new solutions to global warming and oil dependence.
Nursing Home of the Future Update: Innovation in Medication Management Sorely Needed
Soon after BIF launched the Nursing Home of the Future (NHoF) laboratory, medication (and the management of that medication) clearly emerged as a part of the elder experience that has a big impact on quality of life.
Managing medications can be difficult and confusing for everyone and a great deal of focus has been placed on developing products and systems that help people take the right medicines, at the right time and in the right way. We also know that people with especially complicated medication regimes have come up with thousands of ways to manage medication—from novel ways to store and take their meds to excel spreadsheets and logbooks that bring order to an otherwise confusing routine. Helping elders and aging people manage medications is an important part of helping people maximize the effectiveness of drug therapies and minimize the risks of side effects.
Our work in the NHoF lab has shown us that there is room for improvement in the medication management arena.
Summit Offers Innovators Inspiration in Tough Economic Times
Business Innovation Factory Summit on October 7-8 brings top innovation talent to Rhode Island, forgoes glam for intimate, accessible experience.
(June 22, 2009) Providence, R.I—“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” says Saul Kaplan, founder of the Business Innovation Factory, who insists that when times are tough, innovation is even more important. Although Kaplan doesn’t take credit for coining the phrase, he and his team expect the message to resonate at BIF’s fifth annual Collaborative Innovation Summit on October 7-8.
Lunch With Clay Christensen Prompts Lively Conversation About Disruption and Innovation in Healthcare and Education
On June 2, the Business Innovation Factory hosted a luncheon with Clay Christensen for a conversation about the role “disruption” will (and should) play in transforming the healthcare industry and the American education system. In their dysfunction, these two systems have much in common and analysis of both shows deep systems-level issues that effectively block innovation.
June BIF Bookgroup Selection Is In! Reading Jeff Jarvis' What Would Google Do?
The June BIF Bookgroup selection is in. This month we will be reading What Would Google Do? by noted blogger, digital journalist and BIF-5 storyteller Jeff Jarvis. The book chronicles Jeff’s effort to not only reverse-engineer the success of Google in the Internet economy but also help people apply those laws and lessons to their own industry, company or career.
BIF Summer Wine Extravaganza, Welcome Party for Chris Finlay
Join us at BIF on June 25 at 5:30pm for a summer wine tasting and meet and greet for BIF’s newest teammate, Chris Finlay. We yanked Chris away from NYC a month ago to run BIF’s new Student Experience Lab. Come say hello.
Thanks to Andrea Sloan at Best Beverage / FJN Fine Wines, LLC we’ll be sampling fresh summer whites, a few gloriously chilled reds and whatever else these wine wizards are serving this summer. Andrea will be here to introduce the wines and give you some tips on what to look for in a killer summer sipper.
Update from the Student Experience Lab Team
In the days following BIF’s announcement that we had launched a new Student Experience Lab (thanks again, Lumina Foundation!) we received dozens of emails, Twitter tweets and calls from people who shared our belief that the current post secondary education system is in deep trouble. From financial woes to the appalling barriers adult learners face in accessing the education and training they need to compete in a rapidly changing economy, people from across the BIF network came out in support of the effort.
Field Notes from the Student Experience Lab
Straight from the horses mouth, my mother used to tell me, is the best way to get the facts. BIF puts a high priority on capturing field notes on all project work. These informal reports chronicle the work of the team, as opposed to their findings, which tend to get the most attention. We think a quick glance will give you come interesting insight into the personalities behind the Student Experience Lab team and a peek into what they discover as they move forward. The following notes are from 6/1-6/12/09.
When Product Innovation Isn't Enough
At the BIF-2 Summit U.S. Representative Jim Langevin took the stage in his iBot wheelchair to introduce lengendary inventor Dean Kamen. It's a moment that really stuck with me. The iBot allowed Langevin to do things he previously only imagined - from stair climbing to rolling over curbs to raising himself eye-to-eye with a standing world. The power of the product innovation genuinely touched me. It's potential to help so many individuals move freely into areas previously out of reach seemed limitless. That was three years ago. Today, the iBOT wheelchair is dead.
Continue reading | Business Model Innovation | Business and Economics
Collaborative Platforms: Experimenting the BIF Way
I get asked all the time for recommendations of gurus of open innovation. Always, professor Satish Nambisan from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is on my list. As more and more companies shift from innovation initiatives that are centered on internal resources to those centered on external networks and communities, Nambisan's book, The Global Brain, provides a roadmap for innovating faster and smarter in a networked world.
He's written a new article on collaborative social innovation titled “Platforms for Collaboration.” Published in the Summer 2009 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review it uses BIF’s Trauma Bay project as an example in the article.
Continue reading | Crossing Disciplines | Business Model Innovation
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Recent Blogposts
- Kaplan in New Business Week Column: Energy Innovation Should Trump Job Creation
- Nursing Home of the Future Update: Innovation in Medication Management Sorely Needed
- Summit Offers Innovators Inspiration in Tough Economic Times
- Lunch With Clay Christensen Prompts Lively Conversation About Disruption and Innovation in Healthcare and Education
- June BIF Bookgroup Selection Is In! Reading Jeff Jarvis' What Would Google Do?