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 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)

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 June 27, 2008 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)

Learning Outside the Classroom: The Medici Effect in Singapore

Frans Johansson is doing really well these days – “phenomenal” in fact, he says. When I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago he was headed to Singapore to launch a program to 60,000 Singaporean kids based on the concepts outlined in his wildly successful innovation book The Medici Effect.

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

Meet BIF-4 Storyteller Cat Lainé: Disruptive Innovator in the Social Sector

When I first spoke with Cat Lainé a few months ago I was so impressed with her passion and conviction. She doesn’t shy away from the underside of life, a personality trait that led to her decision to leave academia, where she was studying infectious disease epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. A self-described “autodidact,” she prefers to be in the field, analyzing problems and creating solutions from the ground up. Today, she’s trying to solve some of our world’s most pressing problems. We knew she had to be a BIF-4 storyteller.

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Posted June 11, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

IBM’s David Yaun Joins BIF Research Advisory Council

I'm thrilled to announce that David Yaun has joined our research advisory council. He will also be a storyteller at the BIF-4 Collaborative Innovation Summit in October.

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Posted June 03, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

BIF Research Advisor Bruce Nussbaum on the need for a national innovation policy

BIF-4 co-host and BIF research advisor Bruce Nussbaum writes about America's need for a national innovation policy. In Time For a National Innovation Policy. McCain And Obama Need To Get Real Bruce challenges his readers - and our presidential contenders - to start a conversation in earnest on the need for a policy that goes beyond federal government support of technology, math and science.

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Posted by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

BIF Research Advisor John Wolpert's Top Three Innovation Books

During the course of a recent conversation, BIF research advisor John Wolpert offered his top three innovation books of all time:

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Posted June 02, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday Linkage from our BIF community

Following are a few noteworthy blog entries from members of our BIF community reflecting processes of innovation which I don't think get enough attention these days: talent and trust.

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Posted May 30, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Innovation and Collaboration: The BIF Way

An interview with BIF Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan is posted on Steve Hardy’s Creative Generalist blog where the two talk about everything from Rhode Island’s position as a national innovation hot spot to the real world innovation lab BIF is developing to what it takes to really drive systems change.

If you’re looking to break down silos and cross boundaries, this sample from the interview extols the necessity for thick skin:

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Posted May 28, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to the Men and Women Who Serve

Memorial Day is an important day of reflection for me. Baseball and barbecues aren’t bad either. I am grateful that so many American men and women choose to serve our country by serving in the military. We owe each of them our gratitude, respect, and support. I recently had the opportunity to see the amazing dedication and heart of our U.S military up close and personal. I was asked to participate in the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference (JCOC 75). It was an experience I will never forget.

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Posted May 26, 2008 by Saul Kaplan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Changing Business Models: Clay Shirky on why media is a triathlon

Last weekend I was watching Costas NOW on HBO and heard a tirade against blogging like no other. Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights unleashed a fury against Will Leitch, editor of the popular sports news site DeadSpin.com. From bloggers' writing skills, to their ethics deficiencies to their lack of credentials, Bissinger believes our moral fiber is in jeopardy because of the dearth of consumer-produced sports media. “I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty, they’re dedicated to dishonesty, they’re dedicated to speed,” Bissinger said.

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

More on hiring for collaborative innovation: Pixar's Brad Bird and his flock of black sheep

Following up on my blog post last week - Spanning Silos...Fostering Collaboration...How do you hire for that? - a friend passed along a great interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird from last month's McKinsey Quarterly. In the article, the director talks about how he pushes teams of animators beyond their comfort zones, encourages dissent, and builds morale. He also explains the value of "black sheep" - restless contributors with unconventional ideas.

What's interesting about Bird's hiring at Pixar is that he joined the company in 2000, just at the height of Pixar's success with Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2. Rather than wide the wave and continue on the tried and true path (as so many established companies are prone to do) senior executives at Pixar worried about complacency and that feeling that they "had it all figured out." So Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter hired Bird to "shake things up." (Ironically, Bird himself was coming off a huge financial failure with a film called The Iron Giant.)

Bird: "For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failure and say, 'Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up' - when do you run into that?"

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

Dancing with Complexity: Roger Martin on The Opposable Mind

Yesterday I spent some time at the offices of Continuum. The Boston-based design firm was hosting a book signing soiree for Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School in Toronto and author of the new book The Opposable Mind.

Martin has spent the past few years searching for patterns in thinking among great leaders. His conclusion: success comes from an ability to utilize tensions between different business models in order to build a better one. He calls it 'integrative thinking' and it's a direct assault on the reductionist, either/or approach to decision-making, which is typically taught in business schools. This holistic - and yes, more complex and often times ambiguous - approach to thinking, Martin says, is at the heart of many great, new business models.

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Posted May 01, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Report from the Field: Designing Networks for Innovation

A study last year conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership found that nearly 92 percent of the executives surveyed believe the challenges their organizations face are more complex than they were just five years ago. How do you innovate within such a dynamic, unstable and unpredictable environment? “Innovate together,” says BIF research advisor and UC-Davis professor Andrew Hargadon.

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

Innovation Process: The Art of Building Creative Tension

I can't imagine a more difficult job than working to transform Ford Motor Company. Sunday's New York Times had a good profile of Ford's new CMO James Farley. Hired six months ago, this former marketing whiz from Toyota has a daunting job ahead of him : orchestrate a comeback for the struggling automaker which lost $15.3 billion during the last two years.

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Posted April 21, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

BIF Research Advisor Andrew Hargadon on the Design of New Ventures

In anticipation of our workshop on the design of networked innovation, bestselling author Andrew Hargadon passed along an article he wrote a while back called Leading with Vision: The Design of New Ventures. Great primer before our hands-on workshop next Thursday, April 24th.

Most innovators today readily acknowledge that design is essential to the enterprise. In this article, Andy argues that as designers, we must go beyond the making of individual products or brands to cut across the traditional boundaries within firms to creative innovative business ventures. Advocating a new profile of design leadership, he explains how design principles and practices are uniquely suited to this multidimensional task.

Get the article Leading with Vision by Andrew Hargadon

If you're interested in attending next week's workshop - there's still limited seating available. Registration is free - learn more here.

Posted April 18, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

BIF Board Member Ellen Levy Accepts Key Post at LinkedIn

Congratulations to BIF Board Member Ellen Levy who was just appointed Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy at LinkedIn Corporation. In her new role, Ellen will play a critical role in overseeing business development, identifying and managing strategic partnerships and assessing new market opportunities.

Connecting the right people to the right ideas and opportunities has always been a passion of Ellen's and she has years of experience doing just that through her work with startups, large companies, venture capital firms, research labs and universities. I often relay a story she told me last year about how her enthusiasm for making connections evolved:

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

New Book by P&G CEO A.G. Lafley

Bruce Nussbaum of BusinessWeek has written a glowing review of A.G. Lafley's new book co-written with Ram Charan called "The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation." Writes Bruce: "Lafley, the remarkable CEO of Procter & Gamble, gives us the state-of-the-art in innovation. It tells you exactly what the best practices are in the one non-techie company that has embraced innovation as a total corporate strategy and as an organizational culture."

I wrote an article about P&G a couple of years ago called ‘Even Giants Start Small’ In it, I use a quote by Elting Morrison to describe the company: “No intellectual heroism or psychic leap will take you from the development of the wheel immediately to the internal-combustion engine and the automobile.”

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Posted April 15, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Can modeling and simulation enable collaborative innovation?

I was watching the Master's Tournament this weekend and enjoyed the incredible high-definition television images from Augusta National. As a true geek wannabe I was most impressed with the use of a simulation model of the entire golf course and how it enhanced my viewing experience. If modeling and simulation technology can improve the experience of watching a golf tournament surely it can help to improve more important experiences for us as patients, students, citizens, and consumers.

I believe that modeling and simulation has an important role to play in enabling system innovation in the areas that matter most - little problems like healthcare, education, public safety, and quality of life. These tools can help the BIF community accomplish our mission to enable collaborative innovation by accelerating the transition of new business model ideas from the white board on to a real world test bed.

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Posted April 14, 2008 by Saul Kaplan | Permalink | Comments (1)

Building Purposeful Networks: Are You a Dead Node?

How do you establish credibility and authenticity online? Do you find yourself often times in the middle of information? Are you a connection maker? Or are you a dead node? These questions and more were answered last week when entrepreneur and network impresario Ellen Levy was in the house for a casual meet-up with a dozen or so innovation heads here to learn more about building meaningful virtual networks in purposeful ways.

Whether you use LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or some other network platform, one thing is for sure, online networking is here to stay. Each platform represents a way to not only grow your network, both personally and professionally, but also substantiate it through a self-regulated forum. You can just imagine the possibilities of bringing an entire network of talent to bear on a particular problem.

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Posted March 24, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Irving Wladawsky-Berger on the LIfe-Cycle of a Business

This is well worth a read:

A Delicate Balance by Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Irving just wrapped up his first semester teaching at MIT and managed to succinctly condense thirteen, three-hour seminars into a nice post. The seminar was about technology-based business transformation and he examined how companies can leverage emerging, major technologies to significantly transform a business or even a whole industry. There are so many factors that go into developing a business based on technologies as broad and complex as the Internet and in his post Irving talks about the delicate balance that exists within the life-cycle of a business:

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

Charting an Innovation Direction...The Eli Lilly Way

Lois Kelly of BeeLine Labs wrote recently about a conference she attended at Columbia University where Mark Kershisnik, the executive director of Eli Lilly's market research and US marketing services, spoke about his company’s innovation mission. Kershisnik said that Lilly’s sustainable success is rooted in a shared, common purpose that everyone in the global company is passionate about:

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Posted March 06, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Event Reminder: Ellen Levy on the Art of Mobilizing "Purposeful" Networks

This is an event reminder: Make the most out of your lunch hour and join us on Thursday, March 13th for a casual meet-up with entrepreneur and network impresario Ellen Levy. (The event is taking place at our very cool headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island.)

If you attended the BIF-3 summit, then you already know that Ellen is pure energy - she's a self-proclaimed opportunist who has an uncanny ability to make powerful connections between people and concepts. Over lunch, she'll discuss her experiences building purposeful networks — networks that go beyond social networking—that bridge across geographies, (business) cultures and topical areas. How do you bring together people pursuing similar interests and questions, but from very different backgrounds and perspectives? Ellen will answer this question and more on March 13th.

Some background on Ellen - she's currently the founding Managing Director at Silicon Valley Connect. Silicon Valley Connect is the umbrella company for most of Levy's initiatives these days, whether it is working as the Network Advisor to global venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, serving as a Deputy Chair for the Clinton Global Initiative, advising a handful of startup companies or working directly with Fortune 500 companies on their technology and innovation strategies.

Please note that while this event is free and open to our community, we have a limited number of seats and a deposit of $100 (by check or credit card) must be made. You will have your original check or credit card form returned at the event sign-in. If you are a "no show" for the event we will deposit your check or charge your credit card for the $100.

Registration details can be found here

I hope to see you there!

Related: Learn more about Ellen Levy

Posted March 03, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rhode Island's Bid to Become Technology Hub

Staff reporter Carolyn Porco of the Boston Globe wrote a great article last week on Rhode Island and its emergence as a hub for technology and innovation. I have to give her props - she uncovered activities here in the state that I wasn't even aware of - which furthers our rationale that Rhode Island as a high-tech hub is more than just an aspirational goal, it's quickly becoming reality.

In the words of our Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan:

"We’re trying to create an innovation economy. The whole state is 1,000 square miles with 1 million people in it and we all know each other - in an innovation economy, that’s a huge advantage. Connecting the dots across sectors and silos is what innovation is all about, and we have the perfect real world test bed."

Place power is everything and here at the Business Innovation Factory we're building the models that weave together different disciplines to find a new tool box for business model innovation - one that addresses the systemic nature of problems. I firmly believe that the diversity of experience encountered here will lead to the understanding of the practices involved in institutionalizing innovation - and, just as important, translate those practices into higher-wage job opportunities for all Rhode Islanders.

Posted by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rewriting the Rules in R&D Doesn't Mean Starting Over From Scratch

BIF Research Advisor Alph Bingham and I shared an interesting exchange last week about new organizational models for R&D. Alph is the founder of and former CEO of InnoCentive - a Web-based community launched in 2001 that matches companies facing R&D challenges with scientists who propose solutions. It's one of the few open innovation models that has found financial success. It's worth heading over to Alph's blog for a full run through of our conversation but what I want to explore here is something Alph mentioned about sticking with the old (and how that "just ain’t gonna cut it") versus abandoning the old (which is equally short-sighted).

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Posted February 26, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (2)

Don't Build Your Experimentation Practices on Eureka

He may have retired as President and CEO of Innocentive, but BIF Research Advisor Alph Bingham is far from retired. He recently launched is own blog - Innoblogger - writing about the wide-open rationale for open innovation. His recent entry, Edison, Archimedes and Solution Space goes indepth on a subject near and dear to us here at the Business Innovation Factory - what's the right way to organize around problem-solving and experimentation?

From Alph's blog:

In a nutshell, the distinction is one between the thoughtful application of trial and error (admittedly informed to varying degrees) and that of serendipity or the “aha” in which novel breakthroughs present themselves not in analytic response to prior experimental results but as sudden flashes of insight.

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

The MinuteClinic Disruption: Classic story in the 21st century

The Boston Herald ran a story over the weekend about Rhode Island-based CVS’s plans to locate low-cost health care clinics in retail stores in Boston. I'm sure CVS knew they were in for a fight considering the lengths many Rhode Island primary-care physicians have taken to block their efforts to do the same here in our state.

From the article Competition won’t ail you:

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is concerned about CVS’s plans to locate low-cost health care clinics in retail stores in his city. Limited service medical clinics run by merchants in for-profit corporations will seriously compromise quality of care and hygiene, he has said.

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Posted February 12, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Kao Q&A: How the U.S. Can Reclaim its Innovation Edge (and why Rhode Island may hold the key!)

Today’s conversation on innovation typically focuses on individual companies or market sectors, but with his new book, Innovation Nation, Business Innovation Factory Research Advisor John Kao takes the talk to a whole new level: how can you innovate a country?

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Posted February 05, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eric von Hippel Joins BIF Research Advisory Council

If you've been following my blog entries of late, you know that I'm a huge fan of Eric von Hippel. His guidance in recent weeks in helping me shape a BIF initiative driven by his lead-user innovation research has been invaluable. So I'm thrilled to announce that Eric has joined our Research Advisory Council. He joins an amazing cast of characters comprised of leading business executives, academic and consulting innovation thought leaders who are helping our BIF community shape our research initiatives as well as provide direction on the best practices and next practices that are most valuable for our members to understand.

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Posted January 30, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Building Lead-User Research into an Innovation Platform

The real exciting thing about the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) is that we’re trying to figure out how processes work from a systems perspective and then provide a real-world environment where those systems can be innovated upon. More than the typical action-oriented research that just takes one slice of one issue and follows the thread down the rabbit hole, we’re providing a platform that generates true collaboration; bringing in disparate, and often times analogous points-of-view into our experimentation process.

Part of my research of late has included studying the lead-user phenomena. (For background on lead-user innovation, ready my blog entry from last December.) Intuitively, my gut says that employing a lead-user strategy will enable us to rapidly prototype those robust and systemic solutions at the business model level we’re talking about. I believe that tapping into lead-users will allow us to front-load the experimentation process and allow us to run early experiments that force organizational interactions, communication and joint problem-solving among individuals and groups separated in space and time.

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

Chris Meyer on Recombinant Strategy

I always enjoy my conversations with BIF board member and research advisor Chris Meyer. Chris is the CEO of Monitor Networks and a great thinker in the field design-thinking. His work since 1995 has revolved around recombinant thinking and figuring out ways that diverse groups can collaborate around a single issue.

Chris talks a lot about what design strategists can learn from complexity theory, molecular biology and the cross-pollination of disciplines. During our latest conversation, he took me down the path of "directed evolution."

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Posted January 24, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wanted: Chief Integration Officer

I had an interesting conversation last week with BIF research advisor Stefan Thomke and MIT professor Eric von Hippel about the role of the integrator. What's more important, we asked, the various components that go into a successful innovation or the foundation/platform that the components are built upon?

By now it's clear that technology has changed the way we interact with everything. Many innovations have been found through singular technology platforms. Moving forward, the greatest challenges and opportunities will not be found in an existing network but rather in the ability to unite various networks. So how do you create the capacity to pursue networked innovation?

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Posted January 22, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (2)

BIF Research Advisors Head to Davos: Collaborative Innovation Goes Global

This week, the global elite converge on Davos for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. The agenda: The Power of Collaboration. BIF research advisor Larry Keeley is speaking on a panel about innovation and Bruce Nussbaum will be blogging the event for BusinessWeek and moderating an innovation workshop.

Industries are discovering that much of their future growth depends on the ability to collaborate with different actors to build public-private partnerships, galvanize multiple stakeholders and work with fast-growing competitors. What is the framework for the modern MNC to evaluate and initiate alliances and partnerships across multiple countries, interests and sectors worldwide?

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Posted by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

BusinessWeek Assistant Managing Editor Bruce Nussbaum Joins BIF Research Advisory Council

I have exciting news for the BIF community: Bruce Nussbaum has been appointed to our Research Advisory Council. Bruce is an assistant managing editor for BusinessWeek, responsible for coverage of design and innovation.

For years, Bruce has been at the center of a global conversation on the discipline of innovation and is a fierce advocate of the field of design thinking. He has written extensively about how organizations, both inside and outside the corporate sphere, should apply design thinking concepts to their innovation strategy. His blog, NussbaumOnDesign reflects his personal and provocative take on what smart companies are doing (or should be doing) in the U.S., Asia and Europe.

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Posted January 15, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

The TopCoder Business Model: Collaboration by Competition

When Dan Pink first introduced the concept of a free agent nation back in 1997, I wonder if he imagined a world where testosterone-driven, competitive collaboration would be the engine for a new free agent business model.

BIF-3 storyteller Jack Hughes is the founder and president of TopCoder, a Connecticut-based company founded in 2002 that has institutionalized programming competitions. These software competitions are a novel way to both showcase programmers from around the world for companies seeking top-flight talent, while at the same time develop computer applications for blue-chip clients who recognize TopCoder’s ability to tap a global talent pool.

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Posted January 08, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ringing in the new year with Anpan-man

Before the holiday, I wrote a blog entry about John Maeda's appointment as RISD's next president. John has maintained a blog for quite some time. And if you go back and read some of his earlier entries, you can tell he's been thinking a good deal about what it takes to be an effective leader. I want to share a portion of his entry from November 17th, Always keep a stock of spare heads which tells a delightful story of Japanese comicbook hero Anpan-Man.

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Posted January 04, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lessons for Innovation from Hollywood

In preparation for my interview with BIF Research Advisor John Kao later this week, I came across another interview he gave several years ago about how to weave together different disciplines to find a new tool box for business model innovation. One of John's major career accomplishments is Hollywood producer (he produced and financed sex, lies and videotape). John is as close to a contemporary renaissance man as you're likely to find. He says his life always been about making journeys back and forth between different contexts. As it turns out, he found that Hollywood offers some of the best conditions and environment for innovative change.

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Posted January 02, 2008 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Risk-takers vs. Risk-Shapers: Achieving Paralllel Innovation in Profitless Times

I came across a good paper published by Oliver Wyman called The Discipline of Business Model Innovation. One of the co-authors is Adrian Slywotzky, author of several popular business books including The Profit Zone. He's spent a career helping companies work with the strategy of risk taking.

The paper offers a fresh perspective on the 'how' of business model innovation and outlines why it's easier to trace large shifts in the market value of companies by the business model decisions they've made rather than the unique product inventions they brought to bear.

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Posted December 18, 2007 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Video stories about sustainable design now available

A follow-up to my earlier blog entry Increasing the Ripple Effect of Green Design. Our friends at Continuum have posted the videos from their recent symposium on green design. There were so many inspired ideas worth spreading. From short-term strategies that can have an immediate impact on our atmosphere to long-term technologies that might render fossil fuels obsolete, from profiles in courage to a vision of a footprint free company, 7 innovators in the realm of green design gathered to share their thoughts on the necessary convergence of design thinking and thinking green.

Head to BIF Member Continuum's Studio

Posted by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alph Bingham Joins BIF Research Advisory Council

Alph Bingham was one of my favorite storytellers from the BIF-2 summit. I'm so happy to announce that he has been appointed to our Research Advisory Council. Alph is the co-founder and President/CEO of InnoCentive, a Web-based community launched in 2001 that matches companies facing R&D challenges with scientists who propose solutions. His experience in developing new R&D organizational structures and new approaches to harnessing human intellect will be a tremendous benefit to our BIF community.

Basically, Alph’s 'pay-for-play' approach to innovation allows companies to extend their knowledge base to include tens of thousands of 'solvers' eager to tackle problems that R&D departments have been unable to resolve. In return, these solvers are paid a fee. Of the several hundred challenges posted on InnoCentive since it opened, about a third have been solved. The average posted reward is about $30,000; the highest awarded amounts to date have reached $75,000 (though higher bounties have been offered.)

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Posted December 17, 2007 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Increasing the Ripple Effect of Green Design

Last Thursday, 60 or so green designers gathered at BIF member Continuum’s Newton, MA offices to spend the day talking about green design. Included in this conversation were 8 green believers who are trying to change the world. They came from all walks of life and from their stories, we were all trying to answer two big questions: what is sustainable design and how do you build (or evolve) a business model around it?

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Posted December 10, 2007 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (1)

Do Lead Users Have a Role In Business Model Innovation?

Let’s talk about lead user innovation. I traveled to MIT last week with BIF chief catalyst Saul Kaplan to spend some time with legendary innovation guru Eric von Hippel. A 45-minute packed conversation later, we left armed with a whole lot of questions about what it means to innovate and whether it might be prudent to put the lead user (as opposed to the average user) at the center of our innovation process.

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Posted December 03, 2007 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Clay Shirky Joins BIF Research Advisory Council

I'm thrilled to announce that Clay Shirky has joined our research advisory council. Clay is a writer, consultant and teacher who has spent years talking about the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He teaches New Media as an adjunct professor at New York University's (NYU) graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). His courses address, among other things, the interrelated effects of the topology of social networks and technological networks, how our networks shape culture and vice-versa. His current course, Social Weather, examines the cues we use to understand group dynamics in online spaces and the possible ways of improving user interaction by redesigning our social software to better reflect the emergent properties of groups.

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