Month / January 2012

by Roger Dennis

The Economist on 3D printing and making

A short snippet from an article in the Economist that links a new hobby of ‘tinkering’ with possible disruption.  This is something that we could easily see a few years back and identified as part of the Shell Technology Futures programme in 2007.  It’s fascinating to see it unfolding:

“The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit,” writes Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine.

It is easy to laugh at the idea that hobbyists with 3D printers will change the world. But the original industrial revolution grew out of piecework done at home, and look what became of the clunky computers of the 1970s. The maker movement is worth watching.

via Monitor: More than just digital quilting | The Economist.

by Roger Dennis

Creativity and introversion – NYT / Fast Company

I missed this article in the New York Times when it came out a couple of weeks ago, but it’s well worth a read for a view on innovation and creativity.  The overall theme is that introverts and lone geniuses are often the ones that lead innovation.  It also has insights about working environments that lead on from this

Privacy also makes us productive. In a fascinating study known as the Coding War Games, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies. They found that people from the same companies performed at roughly the same level — but that there was an enormous performance gap between organizations. What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their workspace was sufficiently private compared with only 19 percent of the worst performers.

Leading on from this article there’s some informed commentary on the formula for innovation at Fast Company where Fabio Sergio from Frog summarises:

The idea that visionary geniuses are best-poised for radical innovation is simply misleading. Maybe Jobs or Steve Wozniak were visionary geniuses working in uninterrupted solitary isolation … when they weren’t busy working crazy-long hours with the rest of their über-talented crews in the cultural cradle of high-tech innovation.

The answer lies in harnessing positive tension. It’s an art that only a group of talented individuals have proven to be capable of mastering.

Both articles are well worth reading, and highlight the complexity around creating a culture of innovation.

UPDATE: Bob Sutton also weighs in on the NYT article with an excellent post here.

by Roger Dennis

3D printing just got more interesting

Quick update that has implications for distributed manufacturing, supply chains and last, but not least, intellectual property:

The Pirate Bay, announced a new, legitimate direction yesterday: It’s going to host physibles, downloadable models for constructing 3D objects.

 The Pirate Bay’s move into physibles breaks new ground, since 3D printing is territory copyright lawyers have barely begun to fathom.

A “physible” is a digital plan for an object that can either be designed on a computer or uploaded with a 3D scanner. Those plans can be downloaded and used to assemble real, tangible objects using a 3D printer. Printers are getting more affordable, but they’re still limited by the kinds of materials they can use. But that just means it’s the dawn of this technology, and The Pirate Bay is getting in early. “We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare [parts] for your vehicles,” TPB writes on its blog. “You will download your sneakers within 20 years.”

via Forget MP3s: Soon You’ll Download Your Sneakers From The Pirate Bay.

by Roger Dennis

Serendipity, GPS and cities

The topic of serendipity and technology was raised again recently in The Atlantic, with one writer pointing out that the advent of the GPS on phones, combined with services such as Yelp, increase the filtering process that in turn lessens the chance of accidental discovery:

Everywhere you go these days, people are waving their phones around like dowsing devices, trying to find a place to eat, or a subway stop, or a bookstore. Are they finding them? Yes. My question is, what are they not finding? What serendipitous journeys are they not taking?

via GPS, Smartphones, and the Dumbing Down of Personal Navigation – Technology – The Atlantic Cities.

It’s an interesting segue back to my blog post below which outlines three simple ways to increase serendipity in your life.

by Roger Dennis

In Seach of serendipity – article from The Economist

Ian Leslie has penned a lovely piece for Intelligent Life about serendipity, and why it matters in the digital age.  As a serendipity architect it’s tempting to repost the entire piece, but I’ve pulled the highlights out below:

Google can answer almost anything you ask it, but it can’t tell you what you ought to be asking. Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Centre for Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a long-time evangelist for the internet, points out that it doesn’t match the ability of the printed media to bring you information you didn’t know you wanted to know. He calls the front page of a newspaper a “discovery engine”: the lead story tells you something you’re almost certain to be interested in—the imminent collapse of the global economy, or Lady Gaga’s latest choice of outfit—and elsewhere on the page you learn that revolution has broken out in a country of whose existence you were barely aware. Editors with an eye for such things, what Zuckerman calls “curators”, are being superseded by “friends”—people like you, who probably already share your interests and world view—delivered by Facebook. Twitter is better at leading us to the interests of people beyond our social circle, but our tendency to associate with others who think in similar ways—what sociologists call our “value homophily”—means most of us end up with a feed that feels like an extended dinner party.

[…]

…But when everyone can get the same information in more or less the same way, it becomes harder to be original; innovation thrives on the serendipitous collision of ideas. Zuckerman told me about a speech on serendipity he recently gave to an audience of investment managers. As he started on his theme he feared he might lose their attention, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that they hung on every word. It soon became clear why. “In finance, everyone reads Bloomberg, so everyone sees the same information.” Zuckerman said. “What they’re looking for are strategies for finding inspiration from outside the information orbit.”

(via IN SEARCH OF SERENDIPITY | More Intelligent Life.)

So what should you learn from this?  Here’s my top three ways to create serendipity:

  1. Browse the magazine rack at airports or train stations before you’re taking a journey.  Pull out a couple of magazines that you’d never normally read and browse them cover to cover.  Seek out articles/photos or advertisements that could have some relevance to your interests or work.  You’d be surprised what can come out of this simple exercise.
  2. Change the route you take to work each day.  Look for items of interest along the way  – I find that seeking novelty often sparks new ways of thinking.
  3. Mingle at parties. Network at functions.  Start conversations with anyone and everyone.  My preferred technique for doing this starts with looking for the odd person out.  If you’re at an unconference and everyone is wearing jeans and t-shirts, start talking to the guy who came dressed in a suit (this is based on an actual situation where I got totally drawn in to a conversation about religion 2.0).  If everyone is dressed in a suit, talk to the guy in the jeans.

What’s your best tip for creating serendipity?

by Roger Dennis

Culture and innovation – alignment is essential

Booz and Co published a study back in October that’s been on my reading list for a while. It’s had an interesting but not surprising conclusion -spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture that supports innovation.

To quote the study:

36 percent of all respondents to our survey admitted that their innovation strategy is not well aligned to their company’s overall strategy, and 47 percent said their company’s culture does not support their innovation strategy. Not surprisingly, companies saddled with both poor alignment and poor cultural support perform at a much lower level than well-aligned companies. In fact, companies with both highly aligned cultures and highly aligned innovation strategies have 30 percent higher enterprise value growth and 17 percent higher profit growth than companies with low degrees of alignment.

via The Global Innovation 1000: Why Culture Is Key.

by Roger Dennis

Thinking about the future in Singapore

In October last year the Singapore Government held it’s first ‘Foresight Week.’  I was invited to both the International Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning Symposium, but, more interestingly, also the Foresight Conference.   I make this observation about the latter event because it was organised by a team in the Prime Minister’s Office called the Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF). While the Risk Symposium was attended by a couple of hundred people from around the world, the Foresight Conference was held over three days and had an invite-only audience of about thirty.

Included in this thirty were the likes of Paul Saffo, Peter Schwartz, Jeremy Bentham, Neal Stephenson, Dave Snowden and Ian Goldin. The mix of people, backgrounds and theories in the room was extraordinary, and here’s my long overdue notes from the session (note that it was Chatham House Rules so no specific attributions are made).

The richness of the sessions made for one hell of a mind map, and looking at it now I’m only going to pull out the highlights that caught my attention:

  • naturally there was lots of discussion about China: is it too big to govern, how do people participate in China, what will social technology do to the society etc.  One of the more interesting points was that China has never been conquered, and it’s not out of the question to consider a war between China and the USA.  Chinese entrepreneurs also came under examination: apparently 14% of startups in Silicon Valley are “Chinese Chinese” (as opposed to American Chinese. Indian startups are around 17%.
  • The USA is distracted at the moment with economic difficulties and foreign wars.  China is not distracted by either.
  • There is the potential for a new model of international relations based on continual “co-operation – conflict – competition.”  All three of these could happen at the same time but in different arenas.
  • Russia apparently has the highest number if university educated 25 year-olds in the world.
  • We are moving to a ‘G0’ world (as opposed to G8) where no single country or group of countries has power.  More interestingly a group called the ‘I8’ – US billionaires who are big philanthropists – have a combined spend that is equivalent to the entire US Foreign Aid programme.

However the overriding theme through the three days was complexity and how it impacts the world today.  The world today is not the world of 50 years ago, however the governance structures that create order in the world today were created when the world was much more stable.  What do governments of the future look like in a world that screams complexity at every turn?

I don’t know the answer to that but would like to finish my notes with two quotes that resonated with me over the week in Singapore:

“Religions are like operating systems for societies”

and

“Risk is the price you pay for opportunity.”

by Roger Dennis

Innovation in Unexpected Places

Heston Blumenthal apparently presented recently at the Marketing Society’s 2011 Global Leadership Conference in London with a presentation about pure creativity.  In case you’re wondering who he is, Blumenthal is one of the world’s top chefs.  Coverage of his presentation at the conference mentioned his insights about serendipity:

Blumenthal believes innovation more often than not comes from the places you least expect. “You need to be aware that innovation can happen on any level and ideas can come from anywhere; from seeing a leaf fall from a tree to the most cutting-edge design,” he says. “I am personally at my most creative when interacting with creative people from completely different disciplines to my own, whether that be a perfumier, a scriptwriter, a magician or an experimental psychologist.

via SAY Media / Blog / Heston Blumenthal: Innovation in Unexpected Places.