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I really don't have to add much to this post as the notebooks speak for themselves. A lot of great thinking here about process, design, creativity and different ways to solve problems. If you're smart you'll bookmark his Flickr set, share it with others and try to hire people like Paul. And damn, I'm jealous—they look good enough to devour.

The number one concern for many organizations today (beyond mere survival for some) is cost reduction.

If you can give them the chance to do this quickly, they'll be willing to pay you a premium to do so.

This line of thinking came to line when I spent time two weeks ago in Silicon Vally. I was there to speak to a group of CIO's from throughout the hi-tech industry.

I met a client from a few years back in the hotel lobby while checking in. He's now involved in a different IT venture. While catching up on things, I realized that this was the exact value proposition that his new organization was selling.

They've got a solution that, when implemented, can help organizations save quite a bit of money on their overall technology spend, Given the scope of the potential savings, and the fact that this company has maintained growth despite economic turmoil, they've got a key innovation strategy nailed.

You can learn from this line of thinking. The key things to think about:

• how can you partner up with your customers to help them achieve cost savings with what they do?
• how can you help them quickly achieve those cost savings : faster, say, than in the alternate economy of a few months past? Remember, faster is better.
• are there changes that you might make to your product/service line that can help to accelerate cost savings?
• can you innovate like mad -- thinking about what you do and how you do it -- to generate cost savings for those who rely upon you? you do it -- to generate cost savings for those who rely upon you?

Think about it in the context of any industry. If you are in travel/hospitality, and you offer cost savings with what you are selling, you've got a leg up on the competition. If you are selling a service, get the potential cost savings that the service provides out front, and clearly defined -- highlight them. If you are selling an industry solution, re-examine the cost savings that your solution provides -- and see what you can do to make them bigger.

Think about the phrase, and look for opportunity in it.

West Michigan inventors say they’re flourishing, with new products set to hit the market by year’s end while others already have reached impressive milestones.

That’s good news in an economy where even large traditional industries like automotive and newspapers have had to do their share of reinventing themselves.

Some financial experts believe personal innovation is the key to getting the broader economy back on track. They call it “innovation economics,” and it focuses on new ideas, products and processes to restore economic growth.

Rhonda W. Geneva, a Spring Lake inventor, is doing her part to advance “innovation economics.” She is the inventor of the Style ‘n Wrap, a heat-resistant travel organizer for hair tools, and has a patent pending and opportunity to showcase her product on QVC.

One of the area’s most prominent inventions, the Klever Kutter by Jeff Kempker, Matt Jacobs and Orville Crain, recently surpassed 1 million units sold. Their company, Klever Innovations, sells the box cutters on the Internet for $2 each. They are manufactured at Advanced Molding Solutions in Grand Haven.

“Inventors are some of the people who can bring us out of the recession — I’m absolutely convinced of that,” said Muskegon inventor Orville Crain.

Photo by Muskegon Chronicle.

What has become evident is that the most pressing issue for leaders today is focus. While volatility rocks global markets, there continue to be fundamental truths: your industry, products, competition, skills requirements, organizational capabilities, and ability to respond to rapid change will define your future success.

Here's my advice on what you should be doing right now to ensure that you are ready for what comes next, based, in part, on a blog entry I wrote last April!

• think growth: It's all too easy right now to lose your enthusiasm and sense of purpose. When economies contract, so too does your motivation. Don't let that happen -- now is the worst time to lose sight of the future! Think opportunity: study my "Where's the Growth" document, and think about what it implies
• check your speed: it's the high velocity economy. Markets, brands, products, industries, competition, and globalization are changing faster than ever before. Make sure you've got a team that can operate at the pace of change. Agility is the key word. Search this blog for insight on that!
• immerse in ideas. The global idea-cycle is collapsing. New ideas are launched, analyzed, and developed to concrete product at a speed that is astonishing. Rapid product change is the new norm: I'm dealing with the CEO of one organization that is involved in a rapidly emerging, multi-billion dollar market that will appear, go super-nova, and disapper, over the course of about 18-24 months, before it is superseded by the next generation of product. That's fast, and that's the new reality.
• check your bench strength. After the cutting begins, value goes out the door. Yet your abililty to access ever more scarce, specialized skills will define your future success. It's your ability to establish a fast, agile, quick-to-assembe collaborative team that will define your ability to grab all the opportunity that is emerging out there.
• assess your threats. where could emerging technologies, fast science, radical business models, new industry dynamics, new regulatory macroeconomic, political or social trends impact your bottom line in a way that you hadn't thought of before? Two years ago, China and quality wasn't an issue.
• invest in experience. Experiential capital -- the depth of capability that you have from exploring, taking risks, trying things out -- is the financial capital. It's a precious resource, and might be in short supply if you aren't working to build it up.
• set the tone. If you let the current economic headlines drive your corporate spirit, you're sunk. You have to keep people focused on the future -- otherwise, your team will smell your fear. Leadership is all about keeping your team focused on opportunity and goals, not on ongoing and regular ("new normal" volatility.

Paying attention in history class actually pays off.

South Elgin High School senior Joe Basile recently won the Chicago Young Inventor’s Challenge for his “King of Kingdoms” game, a board game where Henry VIII, Alexander the Great, King Arthur and others battle over power and territories.

In addition to receiving prizes for his creativity, Basile’s game stood out enough to impress officials at Hasbro, who have put the 17-year-old under contract for two years as an official inventor, charged with inventing products for the toy company to sell.

If the games he invents become popular, Basile said, he’ll receive royalties.

After testing out the game with his friends and family, it quickly became a favorite. The game is set in the Middle Ages. Five to seven players, set up several sets of cards around a small board that’s considered a dungeon, Basile said.

“What makes the game cool is that when a player attacks another player someone else can interfere,” he said. “You can create alliances.”

Despite his success, Basile says he intends to keep game-making a hobby.

Photo by Daily Herald.

Does the economic downturn terrify you? Or are you plotting a new strategy for life with less money?

Your reaction offers a peek into your psyche, say researchers who study how personality shapes people’s reactions to uncertain times.

“People think about themselves and others in terms of typology — you’re this type,” says researcher Peter Jason Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge in England.

Many academics who study personality rely on the “Five Factor Model” (”Big Five”) a system that describes personality in five dimensions, such as neuroticism vs. emotional stability, or conscientiousness vs. not being very thorough.

For those with higher levels of neuroticism (seen as being tense or anxious), these uncertain times make for lots of angst, says Jacob Hirsh, a University of Toronto grad student who co-authored research in the October issue of Psychological Science. Uncertainty made some people even more anxious than negative feedback did, he says.

But some personality types appear to thrive amid flux, says psychologist Frank Farley of Temple University in Philadelphia. He suggests that “Type T” personalities are thrill seekers who tend to be self-confident, are often creative and innovative, have high energy and believe they control their own fate. He says they may view the economic uncertainty as “an opportunity.”

Optimism and resiliency are also positive traits for a down economy. Psychologists say most traits are about half due to genetics and half to environment, but Suzanne Segerstrom, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky-Lexington, says optimism seems more externally influenced and changes over time.

Whether you feel you control your own destiny also plays a part, says economist Arthur Goldsmith of Washington and Lee University. Those with an internal locus of control feel they have a strong influence over events in their lives. Those with an external locus believe most things are beyond their control, he says.

Those focused on money and possessions also may struggle, says Richard Ryan, a psychologist at the University of Rochester who studies materialism and shopping.

But those who focus on the here-and-now fare better, his research shows. “People who are able to focus on the present are more able to enjoy things going on in the moment that really do make us happy — like relationships, being in nature, giving to others,” he says.

Photo by corpitho.

Have you always wanted to design your own jewelry or furniture?

Well make your dreams a reality with Ponoko.com. It’s a site that gives designers the opportunity to be creative and make products. Designers can make a product and put it up for sale on Ponoko.com.

In order to make and design a product you must be a member and register, but if you are just interested in browsing around the showroom and buying something you can get in contact with the designer and buy the product.

Products range from furniture to jewelry to tops and more. if you are a designer you can create your own showroom that displays your products. People can search for your products by browsing through tags, your name or by visiting the browse and buy section.

Besides selling a product you can sell the blue prints of your design. You can mingle and get design tips from other members.

Photo by Ponoko.com.

The new issue of frog's design mind magazine is out. It focuses on the theme of "Motion" with feature stories including:

- La Chute > A cover piece by French photographer Denis Darzacq, who interprets the downfall of a generation of Parisians in his photo essay, La Chute or "The Fall."

- Slow Innovation > Associate Creative Director David Hoffer examines what makes for a lasting idea. Why do new ideas have a tendency to ricochet like pin balls around the cultural landscape, while ideas that really last move more like molasses in winter?

- Mind the Gap > Executive Creative Director Tjeerd Hoek explains why designing the space between moments is key to creating an engaging user interface.

- The Unique Brain > frog President Doreen Lorenzo writes a touching essay about the link between Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder and creativity, in which she discusses her son's successful bout with the diagnosis and how it has helped her to better manage uniquely creative talent.

- Alonzo King > Famed choreographer Alonzo King talks about the risks and rewards of collaboration in an interview by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Rachel Howard.

- Driver Experience Design > frog designers look at how we drive and why innovation in the cockpit, rather than under the hood, may be the auto industry's salvation.

- Confessions of Extreme Air Travelers > Seven intrepid travelers are profiled in this story on those men and women who spend more than 300 days a year working the security lines and angling for the exit row.

As of late I've been thinking a lot about the difference between managing and leading, whether creativity can be led or managed, and what might happen if you pushed those two questions together.  Here's an in-progress answer:

Hang around long enough in around the coffee stations of any Fortune 100 company, and you're bound to hear the question "how can we better manage creativity around here?".  While it may taken different forms, this is not just a tough question, it's also the wrong question. We can't manage creativity.  Period.  We can't implement a process that will create creative outcomes with a high degree of reliability.  If you look around, the killer innovations of our time are coming from organizations like Google, Mozilla, and the X Prize Foundation, who've each stopped trying to manage innovation in traditional, top-down ways in favor of leading it.  And they lead it in a very specific way: they see the leadership of creativity, in all its facets and complexity, as something akin to the act of cultivating a garden. Particularly when it comes to harnessing the power of emergent behavior, where creativity morphs in to world-changing innovations, leaders must all -- in fact, can only -- tend to their gardens.  They must learn to become cultivators of creativity. 

Some essential thoughts on creativity.   We at metacool hold these truths to be self evident, that everyone is potentially creative, that creativity is endless, that each individual is capable of being an agent of change in the world when properly supported by their surrounding ecology and society.  We do not subscribe to the myth that there two types of people: "creatives" and everyone else is not an idea that will sustain modern organizations. To be certain, differences in life experience enable some folks to be more creative, but a critical task of leadership is to enable every individual to be as creative as need be, rather than to choose the seductive path of tapping a select few to do the dreaming for the rest of the pack.

With the challenges we face in the world, it is incumbent upon leaders to unleash the creativity of the many, not the few.  Modern organizations tasked with delivering ever more holistic customer experiences must be able to tap in to the creativity, intelligence, and initiative of everyone affiliated with the brand, not just the talent of a select creative few. If the success of an open sourced Firefox over "closed" competitors such as Microsoft's Explorer can show us anything, it is that charging the generation of new sources of value and wealth to a limited few results in suboptimal outcomes in the form of disgruntled users and unhappy shareholders. Firefox is created largely by a community thousands of volunteers who work for ego satisfaction alone, organized by a small group of people -- creative cultivators -- wholly responsible to that community. Cultivating creative behavior within this type of community has much more in common with behaviors and attitudes associated with the successful cultivation of gardens than it does with traditional, top-down, centralized, command-and-control notions of what effective management looks like.

To realize a community, organization, or even an entire society capable of reaching its creative potential, we need a wholesale shift in our conception of what effective organizational leadership looks like. That leadership model can be found in the following four defining behaviors of creative cultivators:

1) Being at the bottom of things

Flourishing gardens come from being at the bottom of things. Instead of pursuing the traditional management goal of being on top of things -- with the lucrative by-product of being at the top of things -- the leader-as-cultivator makes it their job to live simultaneously at the bottom and in the middle and on the edges, dealing with things that might seem like plain manure to outsiders.  Unfortunately for those caught in old models of leadership, it's not lonely at the bottom. The bottom can be a messy place, but it is the wellspring of success when it comes to fostering creativity. With plants, as with people trying to act in creative ways, you can't tell them what to do, but you can try to support what they need to do, matching essential resources to tasks at hand. This is not traditional, I'm-the-heroic-boss leadership. Instead, the creative cultivator takes satisfaction from tending to the health of the overall garden, and wisely leaves the kudos for smelling great and looking good to the roses.

2) Trusting what is there

Creative cultivators trust what is there. A wise cultivator resists the temptation to "dig up the seed", as it were, to check if people are being creative enough. Many breakthrough innovation initiatives are stifled by linear project timetables more appropriate to incremental efforts. The paradox of cultivating creativity is that confidence in outcomes is the fundamental enabler of creativity itself; a wise gardener knows that roses are the best authorities on the creation of rosiness, and until they bloom, only checks in to see if they need more food and water. Furthermore, creative cultivators trust that the right answers -- though not the ones they would have thought up themselves -- will emerge from their gardens. Cultivators at Wal-Mart chose to move the needle on sustainability by engaging thousands of their store associates in a Personal Sustainability Project, with each individual choosing to reshape a life behavior. Trusting what was there, Wal-Mart rewarded "crazy but good" ideas emerging from the PSP program by promoting them across the company network. Likewise, ideas bubbling up within the PSP system which were negatively deviant -- like a strange tomato that received too much fertilizer -- were treated as a positive learning opportunity for the originator.  So much about what makes a creative organization tick is tacit.  It's about what's there and what it creates, rather than what a few brains wish to have happen via explicit processes and goals.

3) Seeing the ecosystem

By their nature, gardens are part of larger ecosystems. As shown by the recent success of P&G in bringing in outside sources of innovation in to the company, healthy gardens readily accept inputs from the outside world.  Rain, water, seeds, nutrients -- we don't care where they came from, we just care about their integrity and how they help us grow good stuff.  Encouraging variance -- the creation of weird or unexpected ideas -- is a key goal for someone cultivating a creative culture. Anything that encourages variance through the cross-pollination of ideas from outside sources (very much the function of bees) should be reinforced. And as we're sadly seeing out in the world, gardens without the benefit of bees soon stop producing. Thinking about the long-term health of all stakeholders in an ecosystem is also a signature act of the leader as cultivator. Innovating is a long-term endeavor and requires a great deal of patience, investment, and fortitude. Actions that value short-term productivity over the long-term health of the garden and its larger ecosystem are ultimately anti-creative.

4) Taking a bird's eye view

Finally, creative cultivators do all of the above while simultaneously curating the garden from a bird's eye view. Managing a portfolio of creative endeavors requires knowing how many plants a certain piece of land can support and then pruning or as culling appropriate. Steve Jobs has stated that the iPod's development would have been impossible to support had the company also invested in other attractive opportunities, such as a PDA. This notion of garden as portfolio extends to strategy and brand: creative cultivators recognize that terroir matters, that some things (think wine grapes) just grow better, taste better, in certain places. Doing the most with the resources at hand, listening to what works and what doesn't, and guiding growth to be something unique and wonderful – that is the essence of strategy, and of gardening as well. Most importantly, a creative cultivator creates the context for plants to grow in accordance with a strong vision of how the garden should evolve. In organizations, this means having points of origin that can inspire individuals to be creative in certain ways, and not others, and to innovate in certain directions. For example, Whole Foods has created tremendous value based on the proactive decision-making skills of thousands of employees, each guided by a carefully crafted set of Core Values.  BMW, Virgin, Prana, and a host of other strong brands do this well, too.

Taken together, these four ways of leading should help creativity and its children grow and flourish.  Instead of trying to manage creativity, we must move to a model of leadership that's all about cultivating it.

"America is probably the best culture in the world at failing. We're willing to navigate in a fog and keep moving forward. Our competitive advantage tends to be at the fuzzy front end of things when you're still finding your way. Once the way has been found, we're back at a disadvantage."—Geoff Moore, Mohr Davidow Ventures, on the importance of investing in innovation (New York Times, 0104.09)

"We normally shoot a few takes, even if the first one is terrific, because what I'm really hoping for is a 'mistake.' I think that most of the really great moments in my films were not planned. They were things that naturally occurred and we said, 'Wow, look at that—that's something we want to keep.' That's when you hit the truth button with the audience."—Robert Altman, on his Academy Award winning Gosford Park

Both emphasize the role of failure and the unplanned—the twin centerpieces of effective innovation.

Meneley teacher Cathy Hackler, organizer of the school’s annual invention convention, said the event gives students the opportunity to problem solve and look at the world in new ways.

“Students were asked to think about problems in their lives, or in the life of someone they knew, that could be solved with an invention or innovation of an existing product,” she said. “They had to think about how to make the world better, and that helped them see the world from different perspectives.”

Fifth-grader Claire Christopher, 11, swims four times a week with the Douglas Dolfins. She loves swimming, but she hates it when her goggles fog up.

“So I invented the Fog-Free Goggles,” she said.

Claire fashioned a lever on the side of her goggles, attaching it to a pair of zip ties above the lenses.
“You move the little bars up and down and they wipe the fog off,” she said.

Fourth-grader Dean Cummins, 9, made a model of his idea, the Family Home Trash Chute.

“I came up with the idea watching my mom take out the trash,” he said.

His model, made of cardboard and tin foil, showed how a laundry chute-like structure could be built under a kitchen sink and run through the exterior of a house to a trash can outside.

“My mom’s sick of taking out the trash, I’m sick of taking out the trash, but with this invention, you won’t have to take out the trash any more,” Dean said.

“These students have to think these whole things out, and it’s really a process,” he said. “They have to make changes and revisions, and that requires a great deal of thought, of going beyond and engaging. They no doubt feel good about themselves.”

Photo by western dave.

Check out these creative and unique advertisements from around the world:

3M Security Glass Advertisement

3M was so sure their Security Glass was unbreakable, they put a large stack of cash behind it and shoved it in a bus stop. [gizmodo]

Radiant Gym “Running” Advertisement

Obesity finds it hardest to catch up with those who are running. [lemonflip]

YKM Bag Advertisement

Where’s your child?

Canon Bus Advertisement

Premiere “Spiderman” Advertisement

Your TV program takes a break when you do.
Personal digital TV with delayed viewing. [adsoftheworld]

Creative Adidas Advertisement

Funeral Services Advertisement

Stop’n Grow Bag Advertisement

German product that stops nail biting. [flickr]

Denver Water Advertisement

Use Only What You Need.

Sharpie Permanent Markers Advertisement

Samsung “Express Yourself” Advertisement

“Reserved for Drunk Drivers” Advertisement

Dettol Instant Hand Sanitizer Advertisement

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The first chapter of my upcoming book is called "Ignore Everybody".

1. Ignore everybody.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn't I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?

You don't know if your idea is any good the moment it's created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason why feelings scare us.

1. "Good ideas have lonely childhoods". When I say, "Ignore Everybody", I don't mean, "Ignore all people, at all times, forever". No, other people's feedback plays a very important role. Of course it does. It's more like, the better the idea, the more "out there" it initially will seem to other people, even people you like and respect. So there'll be a time in the beginning when you have to press on, alone, without one tenth the support you probably need. This is normal. This is to be expected. Ten years later, drawing my "cartoons on the back of business cards" seems a no-brainer, in terms of what it has brought me, both emotionally and to my career. But I can also clearly remember when I first started drawing them, the default reaction was "people scratching their heads". Sure, a few people thought they were kinda interesting and whatnot, but even with my closest friends, they seemed a complete, non-commercial exercise in futility for the New York world I was currently living in. Happily, time proved otherwise.

2. "GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED." The older I get, the truer this sentence seems to be. Especially in industries that are more relationship-driven, than idea-driven.

3. "Fight The Power". The good news is, creating an idea or brand that fights the powers that be can be a lot of fun, and very rewarding. The bad news is, they're called The-Powers-That-Be for a reason i.e. they're the ones calling the shots, they have the Power. Which is why the problem of selling a new idea to the general public can sometimes be a piece of cake, compared to selling a new idea internally to your team. This is to be expected: having your boss or biggest client not liking your idea and firing you, hits one at a much more immediate and primal level, than some abstract housewife in rural Kansas hypothetically not liking your idea, after randomly seeing it advertised somewhere. Which is why most team members in any industry are far more concerned with the power relationships inside their immediate professional circle, than what may actually be interesting and useful for the customer.

4. Idea-Driven vs Socially-Driven businesses; which one are you in? The answer is, of course, both. "What you know" determines what kind of access you're given to people. "Who you know" informs what kind of access to ideas you're given, and when. Though all businesses tend to skew differently in either direction. My experience in the wine trade is a good example of an industry that's primarily socially-driven, at the expense of being idea-driven. I've heard a lot of wine trade folk over the years yakking endlessly on about "Innovation!" Why? Not because they necessarily had any actual new ideas worth talking about, let alone acting on, but because "Innovation" seemed to be a word that their big customers [the supermarkets] liked hearing. So they used the word whenever possible, gratuitously or otherwise. In other words, they were acting in a socially-driven manner. Primarily, they just wanted to be liked.

5. "I want to be part of something! Oh, wait, no I don't!" I've seen this before so many times, both first-hand and with other people. Your idea seems to be working, seems to be getting all sorts of traction, and all of a sudden you got all these swarms of people trying to join the team, wanting to get a piece of the action. And then as as soon as they get a foothold inside the inner circle, you soon realize they don't really understand your idea in the first place, they just want to be on the winning team. And the weirdest bit is, they don't seem to mind sabotaging the original idea that got them interested in the first place, in order to maintain their newfound social status. It's probably the most bizarre bit of human behavior I've ever witnessed first-hand in business, and it's AMAZINGLY common. [AFTERTHOUGHT: "People are not primarily governed by their own self-interest. People are primarily governed by their own self-delusion."]

6. Human beings are messy creatures. I suppose the main thesis to this post is; the hard bit of having a "good idea" is not the invention of it, nor the selling of it to the end-user, but managing the myriad of politics and egos of the people who are supposedly on the same team as yourself. Managing the vast oceans of human chaos that all enterprises ultimately are, underneath the thin veneer of human order.

1. Learn to thrive in unstable times—our lot (and our opportunity) for the foreseeable future.

2. Only putting people first wins in the long haul, good times and especially tough times. (No "cultural differences" on that one! Colombia = Germany = the USA.)

3. MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. Stay in touch!

4. Call a customer today!

5. Train! Train! Train! (Growing people outperform stagnant people in terms of attitude and output—by a wide margin.)

6. "Putting people first" means making everyone successful at work (and at home).

7. Make "we care" a/the company motto—a moneymaker as well as a source of pride.

8. All around the world, women are an undervalued asset.

9. Diversity is a winning strategy, and not for reasons of social justice: The more different perspectives around the table, the better the thinking.

10. Take a person in another function to lunch; friendships, lots of, are the best antidote to bad cross-functional task accomplishments. (Lousy cross-functional communication stops companies and armies alike.)

11. Transparency in all we do.

12. Create an "Innovation Machine" (even in tough times). (Hint: Trying more stuff than the other guy is Tactic #1.)

13. We always underestimate the Innovation Advantage when 100% of people see themselves as "innovators." (Hint: They are if only you'd bother to ask "What can we do better?")

14. Get the darned Basics right—always Competitive Advantage #1. (Be relentless!)

15. Great Execution beats great strategy—99% of the time. (Make that 100% of the time.)

16. A "bias for action" is a "bias for success." (Great hockey player Wayne Gretzky: "You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.")

17. No mistakes, no progress! (A lot of fast mistakes, a lot of fast progress.) (Australian businessman Phil Daniels: "Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.")

18. Sometimes "little stuff" is more powerful than "big stuff" when it comes to change.

19. Keep it simple! (Making "it" "simple" is hard work! And pays off!)

20. Remember the "eternal truths" of leadership—constants over the centuries. (They say Nelson Mandela's greatest asset was a great smile—you couldn't say no to him, even his jailors couldn't.)

21. Walk the talk. ("You must be the change you wish to see in the world."—Gandhi)

22. When it comes to leadership, character and people skills beat technical skills. (Emotional Intelligence beats, or at least ties, school intelligence.)

23. It's always "the little things" when it comes to "people stuff." (Learn to say "thank you" with great regularity. Learn to apologize when you're wrong. Learn the Big Four words: "What do you think?" Learn to listen—it can be learned with lots and lots of practice.)

24. The "obvious" may be obvious, but "getting the obvious done" is harder said than done.

25. Time micro-management is the only real "control" variable we have. (You = Your calendar. Calendars never lie.)

26. All managers have a professional obligation to their communities and their country as well as to the company and profit and themselves. (Forgetting this got the Americans into deep trouble.)

27. EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS. (What else?)

[Of course, you can get a PPT version of the "Top 27" also.—CM]

I spoke to this issue from a number of perspectives. One issue I touched on was the inevitability of a rebound in the fortune of IT. If we cast our minds out two to five years, or perhaps even sooner, there are certain key trends in which we see a massive amount of innovation:

• pervasive connectivity: we've barely scratched the surface of the era in which everyday devices gain connectivity and intelligence. The Internet enabled thermostat in my home is but a harbinger of what is yet to come. With it's own Web browser, it has become a fascinating tool by which energy usage can be more closely monitored. The same device is deployed throughout the Arby's chain, and offers a significant new method of controlling energy-spend.
• continued growth of mobile: One recent survey of consumers suggested that while they might be willing to give up buying the latest plasma TV, there was no way they'd give up mobile or the Internet. Mobile is weaving itself into daily life, sophisticated platforms are finally here, devices are fashion, developers are on board in a big way, and the emerging applications are either real and useful, or just a tremendous bit of fun.
• location intelligence: we're barely scratching the surface with this one. Every device around us is becoming connected (pervasive connectivity), and we'll gain knowledge as to its status through sensory awareness. Not only that : we'll know exactly where it is. Search for "location intelligence professionals" online, and you'll discover a group of people who understand how unique our future is set to be.
• computational analytics: I've written about this before, in the context of this being "the next billion dollar industry." I remain some of the biggest challenges we face and the solutions that we find for them -- in terms of transportation, energy and the environment -- will come from applying massive computing power and complex alogorithms to them. Think about smart highway infrastructure as an example: it would be ludicrous to not believe that we will see 5, 10, 15 or 20% incremental increases in energy conservation that will come from ever-more automated traffic systems.
• staggering new mass markets: six months ago, it was believed that in the next 10 years, 1 billion people worldwide would move into the middle class. Maybe it's only half that now : who knows? But 500 million is still a staggering number. There is plenty of potential for connectivity, mobile, hardware and software to newly emerging mass markets.
• bio-connectivity: if I were a betting man, I'd have my money on this trend. Simply put, the global health care system is massively broken. Ten years out, home health care will pre-dominate, supported by a sophisticated infrastructure of smart health care energy devices. Yes, I've written about this trend on this blog too; see below.
• transformational thinking: an entire generation has been stuck in an older paradigm of how to network; the election of a younger President, wired to the nation and the world, who thinks, interacts, moves, plans, and acts differently, sets even more velocity to the power of connectivity. The Internet, mobile, social networking and blogs changed an entire presidential race; they're set to change everything else in society on a continuous basis.

• Read about what happens When Thermostats get connected
• Read the article about bio-connectivity, The Doctor is in around the clock
• Read the article Minds of their own
• Read "Bioconnectivity and the rapid emergence of new markets"
• Read the article Command and Control - Opportunity Awaits Companies that Master Hyperconnectivity

Differentiating in a Commodity Market

In response to a question on Ask a Good Product Manager, Alain Breillatt of Picture Imperfect, demonstrates that he is a very good product manager.  When asked how to differentiate a product in a commodity market, Alain starts with the stock answer - differentiate.  He immediately scores points with us for talking about differentiated innovation.

It’s important to frame this thought in the triangle of consumer values – sometimes called the Value Mix. Consumers evaluate the benefits they gain from a product across three variables as described below.

This is an important framework to consider since with a commodity product[...]

How do you differentiate in an overcrowded market?

As we’ve referenced before:

Geoffrey Moore is a big thinker and author of Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, and now Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of their Evolution. (Chasm and Tornado are two of my favorite books about innovation - great ideas, and quick reads). He recently posted an article - Top 10 Innovation Myths, that is in line with his new book and definitely worth a read. One of Mr. Moore’s points is that innovation isn’t the goal - product differentiation resulting from innovation is the goal. He’s absolutely right. An innovative way to minimize the window of an application isn’t likely to differentiate the product from it’s competitors. An innovative way to automatically validate requirements would be the proverbial better mouse trap.

Prioritizing Software Requirements - Kano Take Two

That makes all the difference in the world.

We really get excited when Alain applies some science to innovation.  He notes that companies have to differentiate on one or more of three axes - functional, economic, and psychological.  A commodity market is one where there is functional equivalence, and over time, all (significant) economic opportunities are removed as well.  That leaves psychological.  You have to segment your market, and appeal to the personas within one of those segments.  You can attack multiple segments, but you need to do it with multiple products.

It is easy to take on the task of discovering hidden requirements, developing innovative solutions to the same problems, and inventing economic advantage through process and product design.  But to apply insights against a commodity market is hard.  After presenting a theoretical foundation, Alain wows us with examples of “differentiated pencils” that blow us away.

One minor nit-pick: I’m not convinced that the differentiation he presents is psychological.  I believe he has found functional problems that are unique to the personas in the different market segments.  Perhaps it is a matter of semantics, and that these distinct capabilities really do manifest as psychological value.  Regardless, each approach creates value (solves a problem) for the customers in a market segment.

Pencils?  Really?

Alain’s examples are great - check out the article to see several, along with the rationale for each.

One other example to add to the mix: pencils for carpenters.  Carpenters use flat rectangular pencils (the wood is flat) because they rarely have a perfectly horizontal surface to rest a pencil on, and a flat pencil will not roll off.  The graphite inside the pencil is also larger, because carpenters tend to sharpen their pencils with a knife.  I learned this trick from my grandfather, who was a contractor for years, and when I was framing houses in college, everyone used flat pencils.  A ten-pack of pencils from Sears is $6.00, a much higher price than the dollar-a-dozen for the garden-variety pencil.

Alain’s examples provide comparable examples, really driving the lesson home.  Each market segment is defined with distinct problems, presenting an opportunity for a differentiated solution.

To be a CEO these days is an especially difficult task. The economic crisis can unexpectedly shorten your legacy and your tenure. Your competitive advantage might be eroding and you are constantly worried your top talented individuals might feel disappointed or want to leave. While CEOs are asking everyone and anyone where they see the next wave of growth, they pray their competitors won’t detect it first.

The disruptive innovation model can help CEOs find the next wave of growth. Our research, using disruptive innovation, has isolated the impact the crisis will have on almost any industry. This research has been distilled from the last six months of data we have from our clients in Europe that, overall, operate in 16 industries.

Here’s what the current landscape looks like when viewed through the lenses of disruptive innovation:

1. Upsurge in overserved consumer demand: More and more consumers are migrating to products that deliver less for less. Their willingness to pay for almost any product has decreased. They have finally realized they are just as well satisfied with a good-enough solution that is more simple, convenient and affordable. In a way this is a massive upsurge in demand that has been left unattended. It is also a demand that is not going to return to where it was before the crisis emerged. We have found that the best recipe to tackle this opportunity (before your competition does) is picking from your portfolio a cadre of your worst-performing products and making them more simple and foolproof. They must be carefully adapted to a very specific moment of consumption and the features your corporation values the most must be dramatically reduced. How do you know you are doing this assignment well? If you and your organization think the product is getting unacceptably worse… then you are on the right track!
2. The fastest learning moment: This coming year 2009 will be one of the best years ever for entrepreneurs and new business ventures. The reason is that the crisis has shortened substantially the time you need to realize you made a mistake. If you launch initiatives based on “invest a little, learn a lot” this is the year when you will learn “the lot” very quickly. This is because when the economy is thriving consumption is incentivized and that generates an inverse-selection problem, that is, consumers you are not interested in are buying your product without realizing its full value. Unfortunately since they appear in the market research studies, they subsequently drive investment bias in the next sustaining innovation. This biased input makes the product less attractive to consumers who do find its true value. Paradoxically, the payoff for experimenting in a crisis scenario is tremendously high.
3. Main competitors will be frozen: Corporations focused on chasing the next high-margin consumer have frozen their initiatives because of uncertainty. The reason is that getting approval from the board is now very difficult. These days you might only get it if you are proposing a cost-reduction initiative. In my opinion this is a gift from your competitors. They are going to be paralyzed for the next couple of years! Next year their projects aren’t going to pass through the board scrutiny. The year after they will have to update their pitch and put the resources and team together, as you know, a very time consuming process. When was the last time you knew what your main competitors were going to do for the next couple of years?

Here is a winning formula for those planning to launch a new product or to start a venture in these crisis-imposed circumstances: Pick an industry that is very fragmented, that has three or more weak economic substitutes (same need served with different technologies), that has more than 80 percent of its demand overserved, and has demand that is underserved and has remained so for at least five years.

This should be the central point of your conversations. There are quite a few industries that meet these attributes. If you don’t start this initiative somebody else will. If so, solid research shows that will be the last mistake your company will make.

Juan Pablo Vázquez Sampere is a Partner at Stratemic and an Associate Professor at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain.