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Highlights from South by Southwest

Mar-15-11 By Aminda
For those unable to attend the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas this week, here are a few notable quotes and highlights. The five day conference is the largest technology/Internet conference in the United States, features a trade show, networking events and an extensive educational program.
 Rebooting Iceland
A YouTube clip shares highlights from an inspiring panel of young Icelandic visionaries who have been part of a citizen group working to shape a new national constitution for the country recovering from a 2008 economic collapse. The process started in 2009, when a group of 1,500 citizens, representing a subset of voices from the entire nation, convened for a day. The event, based on Agile methods and crowdsourcing theory, resulted in a coherent set of values, vision and ideas. A second assembly was held in 2010 as a preparatory step in the development of a new national constitution. Inspired by open-source processes and leaning heavily on social media technologies, these citizens are rapidly prototyping new forms of democracy utilizing the web and open innovation. They are rethinking Iceland’s role in the world; determined for the country to be seen not only a tiny island but as a new developer of democracy.

Governments Making Gains

Mar-14-11 By Aminda
Governments across the globe continue to make a difference by embracing Open Innovation strategies. Here are a few stories.
UK University IP
The Universities of Bristol, Glasgow and King’s College London have won £80,000 in funding from the Intellectual Property Office – the government body responsible for granting Intellectual Property (IP) rights in the United Kingdom – to pioneer easy access to their intellectual assets.
According to a University representative, the pioneering project will advance the use of IP created by the three Universities by innovative growth companies and offers a new way for Universities to contribute to the growth required in the UK economy.

U.S. Patent System Overhaul

Mar-11-11 By Aminda
This week, after a six year effort, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to overhaul the country’s patent system. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the bill shifts the patent process to a first-to-file system from a first-to-invent system. It also allows the patent office to set its own funding, allowing entrepreneurs to pay an extra fee to fast-track the process. An effort to narrow damages for patent infringement was dropped prior to the vote.
The changes are aimed at reducing a growing backlog of some 700,000 patent applications at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, by encouraging filers to prioritize the innovations they need to get to market first by choosing the ones worth the extra fee. However, many fear it may punish smaller firms and independent investors who lack the resources to compete under the new system.

A Creative Solution to Protecting Creative Works

Mar-10-11 By Aminda
The balance between openly sharing creative work and knowledge while still protecting valuable designs and brand-related concepts is still a delicate one for many organizations. This is especially true for small businesses that may lack a formal structure for protecting their work and freelance workers who struggle to protect concepts and proposals during the pitch stage to prospective client.
To address this issue, a UK design team has developed a trust based procurement system called Creative Barcode. The product is an app that produces a unique barcode encoded with the Creators details that can pasted into the header or footer of all written and visual files associated with a project proposal.

Newpapers Need the Crowd Too

Mar-09-11 By Aminda
The age of the paper newspaper may be declining but a positive new door has opened in the field of journalism. News media outlooks probably wouldn’t be considered to have been quick to integrate crowdsourcing. After all, reliable, well-researched, thoughtfully writing reporting doesn’t lend itself to being bid on for the lowest price from an anonymous crowd. But news outlets around the world have found ways to integrate the crowd without compromising the reliability of their work. Here are a few examples.

How Long Will the Crowd Stay in Power?

Mar-08-11 By Aminda
A somewhat humorous commentary on user-generated material was posted by the U.S.’ National Public Radio. In an interview, commentator Andrei Codrescu expressed frustration with a feature on his eBook. The Kindle e-book allows readers to highlight passages and if enough people mark the same sentence, every Kindle user can see those highlights. Says Codrescu:
“I discovered that the horror doesn't stop with the unwelcomed presence of another reader who's defaced my new book. But it deepens with something called view popular highlights, which will tell you how many morons have underlined before so that not only you do not own the new book you paid for, the entire experience of reading is shattered by the presence of a mob that agitates inside your text like strangers in a train station.

Capitalizing on Complexity

Mar-07-11 By Aminda
A recent post shared insight from IBM’s, 2010 Global CEO Study, Capitalizing on Complexity. The report indicated that the most pressing concern among today’s business leaders was how to manage complexity. It then identified current leaders who were rising up to the complexity challenge and providing direction on how to capitalize on complexity. One of the areas in which these “standouts” focused their attention on was creativity, a practice that deserves more attention. Here are some more excerpts from the study.

Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs. Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organizations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realize their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas, and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.

Inspiring Organzational Change

Mar-04-11 By Aminda
Effective internal communication is critical to businesses during challenging times. Whether finances are falling or customer complaints are rising, it takes carefully crafted messaging to galvanize and generate the action needed. Change and complexity need to be expected, organizations cannot be comfortable operating status quo. Following Microsoft and Nokia’s recent partnership, it’s worth revisiting the message Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop used to prepare his company for a shake-up. This internal memo was widely publicized when it was leaked a couple weeks before the partnership was announced. It’s a great example of a well-crafted, motivating message that can be an example to any leader looking to inspire an organization to embrace change and innovation.

The Complexity Challenge

Mar-03-11 By Aminda
IBM recently released the report Capitalizing on Complexity, containing insights from their 2010 Global CEO Study which consists of face-to-face conversations with more than 1,500 chief executive officers worldwide.
The report states that a shift has taken place in what is weighing on the minds of today’s leaders. No longer primarily concerned with how to cope with change, as in the past three studies, the 2010 interviews identified a new primary challenge: complexity.

Toyota’s Time

Mar-02-11 By Aminda
There’s no doubt the past couple years have been rough for Toyota. Now, they appear to be committed to shedding the somber, apologetic stance following a string of safety recalls, and embrace 2011 as their year. The campaign includes a new tagline, “#1 for a reason” (moving away from "moving forward"), the launch of 11 new automobile models and a couple of savvy PR campaigns.