If you liked my interview with Tony Ulwick a while back, then you should also have a listen to this podcast via Putting People First….
Enjoy.
Month / November 2007
Looking back to look forward
Even to a technophobe it’s very clear how much computers have changed in the last twenty years. However it’s often difficult to try and translate this change back into real world information. Economists do it really well when they make statements like :
“When adjusted for inflation and [……..] (insert your least favourite bit of technical economist speak here), the price of a McDonalds hamburger in 1980 could today finance an entire award winning documentary about fast food.”
So it was fascinating to read a quote on the BBC site which did the equivalent of the above statement (without, of course, the reference to fast food). When talking about the technical advances in Intels new chip design, one of the people on the project had this to say :
“Had we used the same transistors that we used in our chips 15 to 20 years ago, the chip would be about the size of a two-storey building,” said Bill Kircos of Intel.
In Sydney 19th/20th – open to meetings
As an experiment I thought I’d blog my next trip and make an offer of meeting. If you are interested in having a chat about innovation in your context, let me know. I have some meetings already arranged, but lets see what happens. Please mail me directly rather than adding comments (now *at* rogerdennis.com)
Putting a personality to the name : video of Bruce Nussbaum
There’s a great little two minute video featuring Bruce Nussbaum (of BusinessWeek innovation blog fame) and his experience in setting up an “innovation gym.” If anything else it’s a great reflection of – an insight into – the person behind the writing (he comes across as quite amusing). One thing that surprised me was that he is wearing a tie. I’d always assumed that the ‘head and shoulders’ shot on his blog was one of those ‘file shots’…
This does however go someway to soundly disproving my theory that to find the interesting people at a conference, avoid those that wear ties….
Problems with predictions
During a bunch of meetings earlier in the week, I was asked some questions about some of the insights which came out of the Shell Technology Futures programme we ran at Innovaro over the last eighteen months. More specifically, people wanted to know how the work helps to get a better understanding of possible futures.
Then last night, I came across a quote which summed this up quite elegantly. It’s from a draft of a book from Bob Johansen at the IFTF:
Foresight is a particularly good way to stimulate insights. While prediction is impossible, provocation is easy. Insights arise from differences: different ideas, different angles, and different moods. If insights were obvious, everyone would be having them. What new development might be created—given the external future forces that are at play? This is a search for “Aha’s!” It is a search for insights, a search for coherence in the midst of confusion.
One of the outputs from the Technology Futures programme this year was a presentation which went under the working title of “Ah-ha’s and Insights.” It was key comments, quotes and insights into some of the discussions which happened at the workshops in Bangalore and London. It is designed as an entry point into the complexity of some of the material – namely a book – which also came out of the programme.
Rather than endless words, it’s a series of striking images with very minimal text – and it works well to stimulate further thinking in different directions.
Less is always more.
(The original quote above is from Boing Boing (of all places) via a very circuitous route…)