Now seems like a good time to remind you that you can’t ride on your past accomplishments for very long.  If you aren’t working to stay ahead of the curve, your company is going to be left behind.
Years ago I was bemoaning to a friend about how I had missed the opportunity to invest in BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM).  They were on top of the world.  Now app developers are leaving them, and everyone believes they are dead.
This shouldn’t be shocking, especially to those people that study and …

Innovation is about the future.  And the start of every year brings one set of future predictions after another.
The best list I’ve seen I discovered reading Fred Wilson’s A VC blog.  He posted a presentation (that I’ve embedded below) from the marketing firm JWT titled “100 Things to Watch in 2011”.  Apparently they’ve been doing this for years, and appear to be fairly good at their predictions.   I highly recommend going through the presentation (though odds are you already have – as of this writing its been viewed 349,000 times, …

Each month Blogging Innovation publishes a set of “Innovation Perspectives” articles focused on a particular subject.  October’s topic was “Thinking about the future: what big innovation do you expect within 10 years?”, and I contributed an article titled “What happens when we are all reduced to an algorithm?” (click link to read the full article).
The premise of my article is that our roles as both consumers and producers will change dramatically over the coming years as more and more information is available about us online.
Now, the most obvious application of …

We took the kids to the Carnegie Museum of Art yesterday.  To keep little kids interested they have a scavenger hunt, where they describe a painting in each gallery that the kids need to find.  I always appreciate businesses that provide these types of family activities, or at the very least a way to distract the kids (like a restaurant that hands out crayons and coloring paper to kids – every restaurant should do this).
As I walked around the museum I had two separate thoughts on innovation.  First, I began …

Google has just mailed out window stickers to 190,000 businesses that contain 2-dimensional bar codes (or “QR” code), which when scanned by a mobile phone will call up the business’s local directory page on – you guessed it – Google.  There are over 1 million businesses that have filled out their Google local listings, but the company has mailed these stickers to the 20% that are most searched for on the web. (Source article from TechCrunch, image from Gizmodo article.)
Great distribution model
What struck me first was the efficiency of Google’s …

Telemarketers work hard to earn their bad reputation.  They’ll call at work or at home.  They try to talk non-stop without taking a breath for as long as possible so that you can’t say “not interested”.  If you stay on long enough to tell them you aren’t interested, they don’t believe you and try to convince you that you are wrong.  Sometimes their strategy is to be very nice and polished so that you won’t hang up on them.  Other times they are rude and will hang up on you …

I read an interesting article on WebWorkerDaily about coffee shops and their sometimes-free WiFi connectivity.  (Read it for some more detail and links to a good article from the WSJ).  It seems that as some coffee shops add or expand this perk, others take it away.  Some shops are even posting signs limiting the hours when laptops are allowed; others are putting locked covers on their electrical outlets.
The recession compounds the coffee shop’s problem: as people cut back their spending at the shops their revenues go down, and as more …

Can someone please innovate the school fundraiser?
Like most people, I’m happy to support local school fundraisers.  They usually don’t cost more than $10-$20, the money goes to a good cause, and I usually either get something of value (like wrapping paper or frozen pizzas) or I’m sponsoring the efforts of the kids (if say they are “running for dollars”).
But I can’t stand being interrupted at my house. 

Like most workers my office building has a “no solicitation” sign posted on the front door.  Not that it stops anyone – at least every other month someone wanders into our office with coupons for a pizza place or bagel shop. They probably make it to half a dozen offices in our building before the property manager finds them and chases them out with a broom.
But I have to admit that I was impressed with how our last visitor almost made us believe that it wasn’t a solicitation at all …

If you haven’t heard of the “Green Box” yet, it is a pizza box made of perforated cardboard that enables you to tear the top into 4 plates, and the bottom into a smaller box to store leftovers.  Genius.
Chalk this up to one of those “everyday innovations” moments that didn’t take a rocket scientist to develop, and has you saying “why didn’t I think of this”?
Can we build on this idea?  Future crazy idea: How about 12oz plastic cups with tops shaped to connect to each other, so that you …