by Roger Dennis

The link from foresight to strategy (McKinsey Quarterly article)

I’m of the opinion that there is a continuum between foresight, strategy, innovation and design (in that order).  A recent article on strategy in the McKinsey Quarterly elaborates on this further:

Strategists must take trend analysis seriously. Always look to the edges. How are early adopters and that small cadre of consumers who seem to be ahead of the curve acting? What are small, innovative entrants doing? What technologies under development could change the game? To see which trends really matter, assess their potential impact on the financial position of your company and articulate the decisions you would make differently if that outcome were certain. For example, don’t just stop at an aging population as a trend—work it through to its conclusion. Which consumer behaviors would change? Which particular product lines would be affected? What would be the precise effect on the P&L? And how does that picture line up with today’s investment priorities?

via Have you tested your strategy lately? – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Strategic Thinking. (free registration required)

by Roger Dennis

Things That Should Have Happened By 2011

A lovely post examining predictions that were made about what the technology world should look like in 2011:

When I started to look at predictions for a living back in 2006, I remember how 2011 was this big banner year against which most forecasts were made. I guess partly it was because 2011 was at the end of a five-year horizon, and partly because it was conveniently removed into the next decade. Whatever the reason, I’ve been patiently waiting for this year to arrive to check back on some of the more feisty predictions made in the outset of the 2.0 boom. And now this time has come.

Some of the stuff below has worked out remarkably — surprisingly — well, such as the prediction from Hitachi about commercial availability of mind-machine interfaces (check!). Other stuff — not so much: podcast audience was expected to skyrocket from 11.3% in 2006 to 51.1% in 2010 (eMarketer #084888), but it didn’t, lingering instead at 12% by December 2010 (eMarketer #123668).


Above is Gartner’s Hype Cycle chart for 2006; you will love how tablet PCs sit at the bottom of the trough of disillusionment.

via Advertising Lab: Things That Should Have Happened By 2011.

by Roger Dennis

Future Agenda launch (The Guardian coverage)

The launch of Future Agenda as reported by The Guardian:

The crowd of business leaders, media and government officials has gathered for the launch of a report called Future Agenda: The World in 2020. Commissioned by Vodafone, Future Agenda claims to be the world’s largest “open foresight project”: an exercise in future-gazing involving 2,000 global participants, including the British Council, Google, Shell, PepsiCo and academics, with the aim of “analysing the crucial themes of the next 10 years”.

via The population explosion | World news | The Guardian.

by Roger Dennis

The Number One Key to Innovation: Scarcity

From the HBR blog comes this link to a fascinating study on innovation.  I’ve always held that resource constraints help – not hinder – innovation, but this study goes way beyond a mere hunch:

How should an enterprise go about inventing something novel and useful? Is there a structured thinking process that reliably produces results? Believe it or not, at least 162 different answers have been proposed to that question.

So when it happens that these rigorously researched methodologies independently converge on a common factor — something they all find valuable in an innovation process — it’s pretty safe to assume that it really is important. Having done that kind of meta-analysis, we can tell you the one element that comes through loudest and clearest: the value of scarcity as a spur to creative problem-solving.

via The Number One Key to Innovation: Scarcity – Uri Neren – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review.

by Roger Dennis

So you’re in charge of innovation? Read this…

From James Gardner (Chief Technology Officer at the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK, and ex- innovation guru at Lloyds Bank) comes this ode to senior executives who find themselves in the startling – and potentially exciting – position of holding the innovation candle:

You need to build your innovation effort from the bottom up as well as from the top down. The little people at the front line are just as important as the ones in the center who make the decisions. It is the front line and their managers, after all, who will be affected by anything you do. If they love your innovation effort, they will make sure you succeed. If they don’t, you will certainly fail.

via Dear Senior Executive… – BankerVision.

by Roger Dennis

Future Agenda book released (video of key findings)

Over the last 18 months I’ve been working with Tim Jones and a few other key individuals on the Future Agenda programme. It’s the world’s largest foresight programme (with over fifty workshops around the world) and possibly the first open source programme.

It picks up from the work we did for Shell in 2007 on the GameChanger Technology Futures programme.

The book pulls together the key findings from the programe and has just been released. Tim was on CNBC last week discussing some of the trends as we look out to 2020:

by Roger Dennis

Creating conversations that spark innovation

What do you get when you put a chef, CEOs, architects, entrepreneurs, photographers, an Everest guide, a philosopher, scientists and a lightening sculptor in a room along with thirty other interesting people in a bar?  A damn good night of fascinating conversation.

That’s the recipe for BASE – an event I hosted last week. It’s an acronym for business, arts, science and exploration.  As you can see from the list I covered off all those areas and only invited people that had done interesting things. The result was brilliant.

People made unexpected connections, ideas flew and conversations were animated. Perfect conditions for sparking innovation. Artists talked to CEOs, musicians chatted to explorers, and scientists waxed lyrical with architects.

The mood of the evening was summed up by Doug Wingfield who has his head painted to reveal exactly what was on his mind. In case you’re wondering about the word in blue next to the loveheart, according to Doug “REEB” is a “beer going down.”

by Roger Dennis

Innovation and Govts – you cannot mandate innovation

From BusinessWeek comes this pertinent observation about innovation.  Whether it’s at a national level, or a corporate level, you have to let go a little in order to create a lot:

Governments can’t mandate or manufacture innovation, no matter how much they invest. Clusters happen where like-minded entrepreneurs congregate, start risky ventures, and learn from one another other by networking. Innovation is a by-product of this synergy and experimentation. What is needed is less government control, not more.

via Okinawa’s Doomed Innovation Experiment – BusinessWeek.

by Roger Dennis

Fortune favours the prepared mind : Great (Accidental) Inventions

A great post from Gizmodo about inventions that were not necessarily the result of years and years of thinking, but of accidental discovery.  The first paragraph is a literally a teaser to get you into the story:

Percy Spencer, an engineer at Raytheon after his WWI stint in the Navy, was known as an electronics genius. In 1945, Spencer was fiddling with a microwave-emitting magnetron—used in the guts of radar arrays—when he felt a strange sensation in his pants.

via Whoops! The 10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time.

by Roger Dennis

Seek answers away from the core

A quote that resonated from the book “The Power of Pull” :

A study of Innocentive’s record in connecting searchers with solvers suggested that the solutions were much more likely to come from people in unrelated disciplines than from people in the same discipline as the searcher.

There’s plenty more gems in this book, recently published by the wonderfully named “Centre for the Edge.”

(Apologies for brevity – heavy client schedule for next two weeks).