Month / May 2008

by Roger Dennis

Innovaro on CNBC

The latest edition of the Innovaro publication “Innovation Leaders” is now available. As the name suggests, it looks across a number of sectors to identify the companies that are leveraging innovation to the maximum benefit. You can download the summary or buy the book from the Innovation Leaders website.

If you are in The States this week, and want to hear more about the book Innovaro, then the founder of Innovaro – Tim Jones – will be doing a live interview discussing the research innovation in Ireland on CNBC for the “Business of Innovation” 2008 series which goes to air in the next couple of weeks.  USA this Thursday at 8pm/ET (1am GMT).

(edited update reflects the changed focus of the interview)

by Roger Dennis

Rich Source of Futures Thinking Resources

The Foresight Department of the UK Government Office for Science has released a new update to The Horizon Scanning Toolkit. “Exploring the future: tools for strategic futures thinking” discusses 24 different futures techniques.

If you are in any way interested in futures approaches, methods and case studies, this is a treasure trove of information which will keep you occupied for days.

It is a project that has been put together by the ever enthusiastic and sound futures/innovation/branding thinker Patrick Harris of thoughtengine.

I’ve made a small contribution to the toolkit via a recording of my thoughts on the subject of using folksonomies.

by Roger Dennis

HBR – excellent article on strategy as a complex problem

Over at HBR, there’s a great article entitled “Strategy as a wicked problem.” This month (May) is a good time to read it, because HBR has a limited time offer of free access this month.

The summary reads:


Many corporations […] have replaced the annual top-down planning ritual, based on macroeconomic forecasts, with more sophisticated processes. They crunch vast amounts of consumer data, hold planning sessions frequently, and use techniques such as competency modeling and real-options analysis to develop strategy. This type of approach is an improvement because it is customer- and capability-focused and enables companies to modify their strategies quickly, but it still misses the mark a lot of the time. Companies tend to ignore one complication along the way: They can’t develop models of the increasingly complex environment in which they operate. As a result, contemporary strategic-planning processes don’t help enterprises cope with the big problems they face. Several CEOs admit that they are confronted with issues that cannot be resolved merely by gathering additional data, defining issues more clearly, or breaking them down into small problems. Their planning techniques don’t generate fresh ideas, and implementing the solutions those processes come up with is fraught with political peril. That’s because, […] many strategy issues aren’t just tough or persistent—they’re “wicked.”

The article goes on to explore the characteristics of a wicked problem, and how complexity is one of the key definers.

It also reinforces the need for constant scanning:

Companies must constantly scan the environment for weak signals rather than conduct periodic analyses of the business landscape. (See, for example, George S. Day and Paul J.H. Schoemaker, “Scanning the Periphery,” HBR November 2005.) It’s increasingly difficult to identify the boundaries of the arenas companies should watch. Changes in one industry or segment often affect companies in others. For instance, who could have imagined that changes brought about by the computer industry and the internet would affect the music industry so radically? Businesses should scan sources of regulatory and technological change in addition to monitoring suppliers, competitors, potential entrants, and customers all over the world.

Increasingly a lot of the work I am doing encompasses not only strategic innovation, but innovative ways of developing strategy. For example during a three day health sector strategy event last year for a multi-billion dollar organisation , I had the attendees examine a massive diversity of learning – from complex marine ecosystems to award winning hotels.

The resulting strategy map – one of the key outputs – delivered an entirely new level of understanding about the future direction of the organisation and the path it needed to take.

It’s interesting to see this sort of different approach to strategy development make it into HBR.

by Roger Dennis

Replies to comments on my Sydney presentation

On the Twitter stream during Interesting South last week, there were a couple of comments which I would like to reply to. While I’d much prefer to debate points of view in person, there was no time in the conference format for a Q&A session.  Secondly the people that made the comments didn’t come and chat during the breaks so I thought I’d answer them here to start an online conversation instead.

Firstly, Mark Pesce remarked on Twitter that I gave “the standard creative destruction talk. And no Marc did not invent the browser.”

In response:

  1. I agree that my presentation is in line with the underlying tenant of creative destruction.  However my point is that increasingly the innovations that lead to industry disruption do not come from within corporations – they come from people on the fringes.  And as organisations become increasingly digitalised they are more and more susceptible to being blindsided by one person working on their own, hence the examples I presented of Shawn Fanning (Napster) and Marc Andressen (the web browser)
  2. This leads me to Marks second point about who invented the web browser. When I refer to Marc Andressen as the inventor of the web browser, I am referring to the browser as we know it today.  This means that it has integrated graphics and text. There were text browsers around prior to Mosiac, but I’d argue that for the vast majority of people a web browser minus graphics isn’t a web browser at all.  I have been online since the early 90s, and I clearly recall downloading and running the first version of Mosaic. It was revolutionary. The fine details of this point could be debated for a long time, but for clarity see the Wikipedia entry.

Secondly Adrian Farouk commented “how on earth does roger know that there is a strain of corn that can sweat oil?? What books does he read?”

Apologies if you missed my commentary around this statement Adrian, but this did not come from a book.  It was a statement of fact by the Chief Scientific Officer of one of the worlds largest agricultural biotechnology companies.

The statement was made during a Shell Technology Futures session and as we run these events under Chatham House rule, I cannot give you his name or company.

Given that he runs a global team of a few hundred people whose scientific qualifications read like eye charts, I have a tendancy to belive that he’s quite credible when he talks about corn that sweats oil.

But Adrian is right about one thing –  you won’t read about this in any books.  Not yet anyway.

by Roger Dennis

Interesting South – Sydney Conference highlights

Last night in Sydney I presented at Interesting South. Modelled on the event of a similar name in London, it was, as the name suggests, damn interesting.

The organisers aimed to capture the feeling of jumping from blog to blog – but in a face-to-face context. They succeeded.

I cried twice – once when listening to Zoe Horton – a genetic counseller – talking about a baby called Ruby being born with an incurable genetic disorder, and the tale of her short three month life.

The second time was for polar opposite reasons when listening to the tale of the Viral Waistcoat. There was a degree of unitentional hilarity when the Powerpoint failed to perform, but in the context I actualy thought this was intentional. Crying with laughter was the best way to mark the end of the evening.

The highlights? Tales of diving with humpback whales in Tonga (now on my to-do-in-the-very-near-future list), Tim Noonan celebrating being different (he has a huge potential as a stand-up comedian) and Michael Lister on how to design bus routes.

The videos should be online soon linked from the site, and if you were one of the many who could not get into the soldout event, I’d recommend a look.

I’m already marking next years event in my diary – it’s worth catching a plane for…

by Roger Dennis

CNN article on mobile sensors

Over at CNN, there’s a piece about the use of patterns found in populations that carry cell phones. I make the point in the article that this data is like watching river flows.

Novel and original applications for consumer technology are not new. For example the packs of hacked robotic dogs that were programmed to “sniff” out harmful levels of chemical emissions from landfill sites.

So why is pattern sensing via mobiles – which initially requires heavy modification of cellphones – emerging now?

In only a few short years the cell phone has morphed from a gadget used to make phone calls into the only computer that you take everywhere, that connects you to everything and never gets switched off. As businesses begin to understand the implications of this, the incidence of unexpected uses will burgeon.

Accompanying this corporate awakening is another trend – the the rise of “techno-tinkerers” – people who are happy to ignore the warranty-voiding stickers that warn against open heart surgery on their newest gadget.

Resources such as YouTube detail exactly how to open your phone, while the best hacks are immortalised in Make magazine. In doing so gadgets are being transformed in ways that the original creators could never have imagined.

It’s almost like years of pent up DIY frustration have been unleashed on Asia’s best technology exports as increasing numbers of people are no longer intimidated by taking a soldering iron to the insides of their precious purchases.

Watch this space.

Update: the Sydney Morning Herald Innovator blog also picked up on this article in CNN.