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  • Ian MacMillan Explains a Quick Net Present Value Tool

    Ian MacMillan says it is better to be "roughly right" than to be "precisely wrong." That is a driving notion behind the BareBones NPV tool that MacMillan, professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Wharton , and Rita McGrath , who teaches at Columbia University Business School . NPV stands for Net Present Value, and the tool is designed to give innovators and investors a better sense of whether a business idea will generate necessary revenue, and for how long it will remain profitable in a highly competitive business climate. MacMillan explains the tool in this video from Ideas@Wharton: Rita McGrath has more information available on her blog, and provides a downloadable version of the tool here .

  • James Dyson: 'Examining Failure' on the Way to Success

    Add British inventor James Dyson , he of the bag-less vacuum fame, to the list of successful innovators who say that the road to success is paved with failure. He tells the Wall Street Journal "there are failures all day long." And his job, as with so many engineers and scientists is "examining failures all day long and correcting failures all day long."

  • Max Cuellar: Change the Lightbulbs Now--The Benefits of Sustainable Business

    Max Cuellar of Booz & Company says that a set of factors will inevitably force companies to seek "green" and "sustainable" approaches to business, so the best move is to get out in front of those demands and make changes now: Cuellar spoke as part of a Carnegie Council conference titled Sustainable Branding: A U.S.-Japan Corporate Dialogue. You can find more information on the conference here .

  • The Waiting Game=A Losing Game for Small Business

    Lisa Barone of Small Business Trends lays out some straightforward advice for entrepreneurs and small business owners: if you are waiting for the "right time" to launch a great idea, you'll probably miss your chance. Barone: We all suffer from this type of paralyzing perfection. The voice in our head that says it’s not ready yet, that it’s not good enough to go live. But at that rate, you’ll never take that next step. You’ll sit on the product until it’s not “new” anymore, you’ll suck the excitement of everything that you do. One of the great things about being a small business is the freedom you have to experiment. Things don’t have to be perfect right out of the gate. You can try things. You can launch unfinished. You can fail and you won’t be crucified for it. You may even be applauded for your efforts. As a small business owner, you need to take chances. Your whole business is a chance. Be true to that. Get rid of the negative thinking and just do it. If you wait for “perfection”, your business will never grow. There will always be enough distractions and more important work before you can launch. Iteration is an important part of a design process, and it only makes sense to put ideas forward as they are developing rather than waiting for them to be perfect. Read How To Kill Your Small Business here .

  • IBM's Corporate Social Responsibility Leader Pushes Innovation as Means to Solve Golbal Problems

    IBM 's Jeffrey Hittner says "sustainability and profit go hand in hand." And if a business wants to be a global leader, according to Hittner, there are ethical concerns that go along with driving growth. With a "more intelligent world," Hittner, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Leader for the IBM Global Business Services, puts his company forward as just one example of business being at the forefront of using innovative business practices to address global challenges. Here he is speaking with Devin Stewart of the Carnegie Council : You can listen to a longer version of the interview here .

  • New Age of Innovation in China

    The Churchill Club convened a panel on potential business opportunities in China. Despite being about 30 minutes too long, and have one panelist too many, there is a good deal of information to be gleaned from the discussion. We were most struck by Jacob Hsu of Symbio, who says that technology development in China has moved past the days of copying technology (a "C to C" business model, he jokes) to being truly innovative. And his fellow panelists echo the idea that Chinese business is at the dawn of a truly innovative period. Take a look (fast forward five minutes in):

  • Going Green During the Downturn

    Andrew Winston , author of Green Recovery , says going green during the recession is sound business, and may help assure that a company is poised to grow faster during economic recovery. He writes, in the Harvard Business Review , that "greening your business, and involving everyone in the process, can keep people motivated and help your company ride out the storm." I suggest approaching your people on three levels: First, support their efforts at home. Wal-Mart’s Personal Sustainability Project has allowed more than 500,000 workers to make and keep commitments to their planet and to their health by, for example, using less water or biking to work. Second, form “green teams” to harness environmental concern and tackle symbolic eco-waste around the office (for instance, by eliminating plastic water bottles). Third, and most important, encourage workers to move past this base of awareness to focus their energies on the core business. The ultimate goal, especially during a recession, is to improve your company’s performance and competitive position through green strategy. In this video from Harvard Business Publishing , Winston discusses approaches various businesses are demonstrating energy-efficient practices that are innovative and smart business:

  • Human Centered Design and a $25 Incubator

    I'm a big fan of designer/innovator/educator George Kembel . He's a co-founder and executive director of Stanford's d.school . The d.school is a multi-disciplinary design institute centered on teaching design thinking. Design thinking, to put it simply, is a human centered design approach. Kembel spoke at the Chataqua Institute earlier this month, and he shared an example of a product that d.school students developed--a $25 incubator. Those students have since launched a company, Embrace , through which they plan "to help the 20 million vulnerable babies born every year around the world, who can not access traditional incubators that cost up to $20,000." Here's Kembel in an excerpt from the speech. Kembel's full speech is titled Awakening Creativity , and in it he talks about how to tap into creativity and innovation. You can watch it by clicking here .

  • Guy Sorman: Innovation Will Lead US out of Recession

    Noted French intellectual and free marketeer Guy Sorman is confident that the economy is headed in the right direction. He feels this way in spite of his belief that the stimulus measures and government bailouts are “political statements, which are rather neutral vis-à-vis the economy.” He says measures like saving GM don’t make “a big difference,” and that governments should respond to crises by doing nothing. But he recognizes that politics doesn’t allow inaction, so he’s not as critical of recent government action as some of his peers on the Chicago school side of the fence. And in speaking at the Carnegie Council , Sorman explained that his optimism is based on his belief that innovation will lead to recovery: My major reason for optimism right now in the United States and also in Europe is by visiting emerging companies inventing new products. I'm quite sure that we will get out of the crisis not because of stimulus, not because of regulation, but because of new techniques in biotechnology, in nanotechnology, in communication technology. Like it in the past, it is innovation which will be the real engine of the economy and the real reason why we will get out of this crisis. Here is an excerpt of Sorman’s address: Sorman's latest latest book is Economics Does Not Lie: A Defense of the Free Market in a Time of Crisis . He spoke to more issues in the book in the speech , which you can watch by clicking here .

  • Innosight's Anthony Says Innovate or Die

    Back in December, when then-General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner was apologizing to Congress for his company's failures, New York Times reporter Micheline Maynard wrote about GM's innovation problem : G.M.’s biggest failing, reflected in a clear pattern over recent decades, has been its inability to strike a balance between those inside the company who pushed for innovation ahead of the curve, and the finance executives who worried more about returns on investment. The two views were rarely in sync — in effect, fighting over the steering wheel that controlled G.M.’s direction — and the internal battles distracted G.M. from spotting shifts in the marketplace. Time and again over the last 30 years, G.M. has spent billions of dollars on innovative ideas like its Saturn small-car company in the 1980s and the EV1 electric vehicle in the 1990s, only to then deprive those projects of further financing because money was needed elsewhere or because they were not delivering enough profit. As president of the business consulting firm Innosight , Scott Anthony has become a bit of a pied piper for innovation. He says there is no choice but to innovate. In this interview with Harvard Business Review, Anthony discusses his new book, The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times , and stresses, "If you choose not to innovate, you are sowing the seeds of your own destruction": You can read an excerpt of Anthony's book here .

  • 'Discovery-Driven Growth' for Innovators

    Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillan say their new book, Discovery-Driven Growth , is based on the idea that innovators can create "predictable, manageable, and disciplined process[es]" for business ventures even when they are tacking something brand new. In this interview for the Harvard Business Review , McGrath , a professor at Columbia Business School , says that when you operate without the benefit of institutional knowledge, you operate on assumptions rather than experience. But that doesn't mean you have to fly blind. She says innovators have to "plan to learn" rather than "plan to be right." You can read the first chapter of Discovery-Driven Growth here .

  • Outside Voices, Inside Innovation

    If you want to truly innovate at your company, you have to welcome outsiders in, and listen to them. So says Vijay Govindarajan , professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and author of 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators . In this interview with Harvard Business Review, Govindarajan talks about how to bring He also discusses the value of collaboration, and developing tolerance for failure. And he names his three favorite examples of successfully innovative companies in recent years: Google, Apple, and Indian automaker Tata.

  • Nightly Business Report Names Top 30 Innovations from Last 30 Years

    The PBS program Nightly Business Report went on air in 1979, and in marking thirty years of business coverage, the program teamed up with KnowledgeWharton in an interesting exericise. The program asked viewers to name the top 30 innovations of the past 30 years. A panel of faculty and administrators at the Wharton School then combed through the nominations, judging each based on questions like "Did it improve quality of life?"; "Was it a fresh breakthrough with a 'wow' factor?"; and "Did it spark an ongoing stream of innovations on top of the original innovation?". The program released the final list this week. Here is the top 10: 1. Internet, broadband, www (browser and html) 2. PC/laptop computers 3. Mobile phones 4. E-mail 5. DNA testing and sequencing/human genome mapping 6. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) 7. Microprocessors 8. Fiber optics 9. Office software (spreadsheets, word processors) 10. Non-invasive laser/robotic surgery (laparoscopy) Catch the full top 30 in a slideshow from Nightly Business Report here .

  • Global Trends for Small Business in 2009

    For successful entrepreneurs, it appears that, with capital hard to come by, the buzzwords of 2009 are optimism and innovation. And indeed, they are a recurring theme over at Small Business Trends , where Laurel Delaney of GlobeTrade.com has posted a list of the Top 10 Global Trends for Small Businesses for 2009: 1. Disruptive innovation will be both the coolest and hottest new growth strategy in 2009 because it will transcend all boundaries and transform businesses. 2. dotMobi will take global root in 2009. 3. Diverse global business partnerships will shine and outperform those businesses that don’t make these critical alliances. 4. Exporting (from the USA) will prevail in the first quarter of ‘09 and might start to strengthen later in the year. 5. Twitter will replace the “call me” statement with “Twitter me” due to technology, convenience and time constraints. 6. Entrepreneurs and small businesses will learn, if they haven’t already, everything there is to know about how to take a business global. 7. Optimism will fuel global small businesses that have the guts to press on, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles. 8. Women entrepreneurs will rule the global marketplace. 9. Trusted crowds will become profitable clouds. 10. Green and global are a marriage made in heaven because everyone wants to save the world. Read Delaney's explanations here .

  • Innovation Lessons from The Great Depression

    DuPont, Polaroid, RCA, Hewlett Packard. What do these companies have in common? 1) While they aren't all faring so well right now (RCA has been gone for over two decades now), they were all had extended periods of success in the middle-late Twentieth Century; and 2) They all used aggressive R&D strategies to innovate during the Great Depression and came out as highly influential comanies as a result. Harvard Business School's Tom Nicholas shares some instructive history from the 1930s in The McKinsey Quarterly . Overall, the 1930s were not a period of widespread innovation. As Nicholas points out, patents--a strong indicator of innovation--followed the volatile business cycle, lagging behind GDP by a year (following growth, patents were up; following contraction, patents were down). But some of those companies that bucked the trend saw significant long term benefits. Like DuPont: In April 1930, a noted DuPont research scientist, Wallace Carothers, recorded the initial discovery of neoprene (synthetic rubber). Although the company’s price levels and sales fell by roughly 10 and 15 percent, respectively, that year, DuPont boosted R&D spending to develop the new technology commercially. A buyer’s market for research scientists and low raw-material prices helped the company to keep the cost of its research investments manageable. Neoprene, which DuPont publicly announced in November 1931 and introduced commercially in 1937, became one of the 20th century’s major innovations. By 1939, every automobile and airplane manufactured in the United States had neoprene components. Similarly, DuPont discovered nylon in 1934 and introduced it in 1938 after intensive R&D and product development. Earlier this week we highlighted the Independent Street blog's prediction that this would be the "Year of the Entrepreneur." So what kind of opportunities for innovation are out there in 2009--for companies of all sizes? Who are the Duponts and Hewlett-Packard's of this economic crisis?