Wall Street Journal article on how tinkering — a source of innovation beyond R&D spending — is making a comeback amid the crisis.
During a recent hectic week in NYC we had a chance to meet with all kinds of people. George Lucas was one of them and another was Antonio Perez, Chairman and CEO of Kodak. It was interesting to observe their different approaches to innovation.
Lucas clearly says that he isn’t on top of the technology even though his business is driven by it. He doesn’t see the need to be when he can give a clear idea of what he wants to his people and they get on with it. For example, the big breakthrough in Star Wars was being able to track a computer created image – Kubrick in 2001, the Space Odyssey, had shown a rocket going from left to right across a frame but Lucas managed to actually pan across the frame and follow the image. I know, I hadn’t noticed that either.
Meanwhile, this is very different to Antonio Perez who at the drop of a hat loves to get into the technology. He is very hands on and provides leadership through a contagious enthusiasm for the technology itself. (For example, here are some of his ideas on intellectual property, in conversation with Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal.)
Both men keep their audiences enthralled but with a philosophy on technology that is completely different.
By Paddy Miller and Azra Brankovic
Have you noticed that more and more video interviews and podcasts are done by amateurs (someone in the office) with a Flip or a Kodak Zi8 camera. Easy to use and download images that are good enough for any internal company presentation and come at 100th of the cost of getting professionals in to do it. Take a look at YouTube and you’ll find millions of homegrown movie makers doing their own material. Many podcast and webinars are done directly from the office and with minimal technical ability. Wired (10/27/09) talks about it as “The Good Enough Revolution” — where just-good-enough products are gaining share (cheap netbooks, shaky phone calls over Skype, watching movies on laptop screens) because we are prizing accessibility and ease of use over quality, and indeed the notion of “quality” is being re-defined to mean cheap, accessible and easy to use. We’re busy, mobile, and wanting something that’s going to work.
Vijay Govindarajan writes about GE learning fast how to turn the good-enough-revolution into big bucks in his HBR article “How GE Is Disrupting Itself.” Vijay talks about GE spending $3 billion to create at least 100 health-care innovations that would substantially lower costs, increase access, and improve quality. Note the correspondence of those last three terms with the above. We believe “quality” here does not mean premium quality, but improved quality in the sense of just good enough. Read the rest of this entry »
Booz & Co.’s annual Global Innovation 1000 survey results. Also, an article on innovating across the business at Pitney Bowes.
Paddy Miller interviews George Lucas at World Business Forum 2009
At the recent World Business Forum in New York, we had the opportunity to talk to George Lucas about his role as a leader and the interplay between trust, salaries and company culture.
Lucas, as most people are aware, has been a defining force within the mainstream movie business, if not on our cultural heritage as a whole; rare is the person who does not instantly recognise the theme music of Star Wars and Indiana Jones. His understanding of the business side of movie-making is equally renowned; his company Industrial Light and Magic fathered the digital effects revolution, and his early decision to keep and exploit the merchandising rights to Star Wars was not just personally profitable, but also defined a new business model for the industry.
We decided to talk to Lucas about a lesser known aspect of his work, namely his role as the leader of LucasFilm, the now 2,000 person big organization he founded in 1971 on the outskirts of San Francisco. What is the relevance of Lucas’ experience for managers outside of Hollywood, in regular companies all over the world? Read the rest of this entry »
The music industry is much discussed in terms of missed opportunities of major players like Universal Music and EMI, and the ability of some companies like Apple to outflank all competitors like Sony. But there are other companies that are busily moving below the radar. One of them is Music Intelligence Solutions, or uPlaya to its customers. uPlaya allows artists to upload their music and have it analyzed and promoted without the intervention of a major label. It has recently signed contracts with iTunes and MTV to give it credibility. The company recently won an innovation award.
An innovation such as developed by MIS – essentially the ability to identify hit potential patterns within any music – may be anathema to some music fans but it has a solid research base. The company is an extension of a company called Polyphonic, founded in Barcelona. Its story was covered in a Harvard case co-authored by a colleague of ours, Juan Villanueva (“POLYPHONIC HMI: MIXING MUSIC AND MATH”). It is fast morphing into something quite exciting. Does it provide a seismic shift in the music industry, judge for yourself.
Wall Street Journal interview with Columbia Business School professor on mistakes big companies make with new ventures.
New York Times interview with the head of IDEO discusses leadership and the company’s “emergent culture.”
Wired article on an idling mind touches on some similar ground as recent New York Times article about joint code-writing that mentions the Pomodoro technique.
