Author / Roger Dennis

Posts by Roger Dennis

Innovation without the jargon to give clear tangible results.
by Roger Dennis

Crowd-sourcing and Lead User Theory – a current example

In a previous post about crowdsourcing, I highlighted an important point from an HBS Working Knowledge Article:

For user innovation to be a force, the cost of creating a new design must be within the reach of a single user, whose reward is solely the improvement of his or her own experience.

The article referenced the work of Eric von Hippel and the ‘lead-user’ theory of innovation.  This basically states that small groups of people can start new industries, and for corporations to leverage this they need to work with lead users to uncover potential revenue streams.

As an example the article referenced the sport of rodeo kayaking.

It seems there is another example coming through popular culture – longboarding.  As an indicator/weak signal check this quote from an article on the sport in the NYT:

“People are always going to create their own stuff and that’s what’s happening here. These guys are creating skateboarding and reinventing skateboarding.”

via Skateboarding Glides Into a New Phase – NYTimes.com.

by Roger Dennis

Temporary pause to blogging

The last two months have been absolutely frantic, with large scale idea management systems going live, a national conference being organised and Future Agenda workshops setup up around Asia Pacific. The next two months don’t look better with a jammed workload as well as trips to Europe, the States, Australia and Asia.

With that in mind something has to give, and one of those things is unfortunately going to have to be blogging.

I expect normal transmission to resume in August…

by Roger Dennis

The view from the new

Just read this on Bob Suttons blog, and it’s really worth sharing:

As I argued in Weird Ideas That Work, if you are an expert, seek and listen to novices, as their fresh eyes can provide insights that you are unable to see. […] In some organization’s I have worked with, senior executives accomplish this with “reverse mentoring” programs, where they are assigned to listen to and be coached by newcomers. This is an effective strategy if the veterans actually make it safe for the rookies to speak their minds.

Full post here: http://tinyurl.com/2fgo9sa

(apologies for lack of formatting – WordPress maintenance is required)

by Roger Dennis

Trip planning

Over the past few weeks I’ve learnt that some cliches really are true. Like the one that goes along the lines of “not enough hours in the day.” A colleague working on the same projects as me remarked recently that working 24/7 wasn’t enough – he needed 25/8.

This is another way of saying that I’m completed swamped and as a result blogging has fallen down my priority list. However I’m also planning visits to quite a few cities in the next ten weeks, so if you’re in one of the following cities, and want to meet for coffee please drop me a line (now *at* rogerdennis *dot* com): Wellington, Auckland, Melbourne, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai.

Now that’s going to keep me busy…

by Roger Dennis

Healthcare is not complex.

I’ve been working a lot in the health system over the last three years, breaking paradigms and introducing new approaches to delivering sustainable health care in the next ten years. Many people in the system believe it’s a complex system, but I had a fascinating conversation today with someone who totally disagreed with this. When headhunted to be a CEO at one of Australasia’s biggest hospitals he had no health experience but had managed complex multinational corporations with thousands of employees and tens of thousands of products. He said that without a doubt these organisations were complex. Health, on the other hand was not. His exact words were worth repeating:

“Health systems are not complex, they’re disorganised. Healthcare is the only trillion dollar sector that is run like a cottage industry.”

The more I get to work with people in the health system the more I’m inclined to agree with him.

by Roger Dennis

Innovation at a country level – China

From..ahem…a few months back comes this fascinating article from BusinessWeek about growth in China.  It looks across a wide range of industries, but comes back to a key point.  If you are churning out commodity products that do not have a high margin, then growth is hard to sustain.

…delve beneath the muscular statistics and hype about advances in strategic industries, and China doesn’t seem so prepared to catapult into a role of global economic leadership. Experts familiar with highly touted Chinese achievements such as commercial jets and high-speed trains say the technologies that underpin them were largely developed elsewhere. There is no Chinese Sony, Toyota, or Samsung on the horizon. While Beijing’s $586 billion stimulus package and a 150% increase in bank lending have spurred impressive growth, “the question,” says Morgan Stanley Asia Chairman Stephen S. Roach, “is the quality of that growth.”

The question facing many countries – and companies – is how do you develop a culture of innovation to deliver quality growth? Samsung is one example of an organisation that has invested heavily in this regard and is reaping the benefits. The proof is in the pudding – at an annual international product design competition, Samsung won more awards than Apple last year.

The full BusinessWeek article is worth reading…