notes on innovation

Thank you to Jeffrey Huang, I attended the Copenhagen Innovation Symposium… Here are few notes and pictures:

Daniel Hjorth, professor at CBS: Entrepreneurs bring creativity to an organization but shuffle old mindsets… which can be difficult to deal with. An entrepreneurial spirit is an act of resistance against the continuity of institutions. “Every new idea faces old dogmas”. “When you open-up, you loose control”.

Roberto Verganti: Presented two case studies, the Wii, and Alessi’s kettle 9093 designed by Michael Graves in 1985 to discuss about the difference between design-driven innovation and users-centric innovation. Users-centric innovation is about “How do you understand how people give meaning to things” while design-driven innovation is about “How do you change meanings of things”. Design + Technology makes innovation possible. Users-centric investigators are not experts in any given area, while design-driven researchers are highly skilled “interpreters” [NB: I would prefer the word TRANSlator for that it relates to movement. So we are almost talking about nomads versus settlers here!]. For doing something RADICALLY different you need to do research… and design is about that. Design is about the innovation of meanings. “Design-driven is innovative, while users-centric is imitative”.

Richard L. Nolan: “Professor Nolan is studying business transformation, the process of creatively destroying industrial economy management principles and evolving a set of workable management principles for the information economy.” Nolan presented the Boeing case-study. Innovation processes varies on a scale from a simple process (The single artist) to a highly complex and integrated process (global network). “What causes companies to change? … The HELL of a CRISIS!” In 2003, Airbus was a fierce competitor to Boeing. To win the competition, Boeing built a 21stC plant, TRANSFORMED the company and worked on the 787 Dreamliner (Nolan was on the project). The 787 is “3.5 millions parts flying together in close formation”. It is highly high-tech and no failure is permitted… There was the challenge of transforming management, with so many parts being designed and built in various locations. Information technology is central to management innovation.

Thomas presented the Danfoss Universe, Man on the Moon project, which is an internal competition meant to foster creativity within large corporations. “How do we get to know about knowledge in a company?”. As explained on the homepage, “Entrepreneurs are not necessarily people who start up their own businesses. Plenty of employees also have the right idea for the next big hit product in an existing company. Impact helps to realise that potential with its Man on the Moon concept“. Team winners are rewarded with an educational support (By working with education and research establishment like Harvard and MIT), and with the implementation of their project.

Jeffrey Huang: Architecture has been radically transformed. Buildings are a dying species. Technology challenges the way people do things in the physical space. [NB: I found interesting the way Jeff listed a list of verbs like “Play”, “Work”, “Shop”… The list of verbs I used for my blog categories made suddenly sense]. Each of these actions have changed with technology. Technology has also an effect on the cost of transactions. New building typologies (On the back end as well as on the front end) have emerged: call centers, server farms, gaming environment, physical portals to the virtual world like the Google store in NYC… The workplace has been challenged by the 24/7 and visualization, the increased complexity of problems, and the war on talent. OPEN DESIGN shifts the authorship and control to design, so the need of a new design paradigm. Jeffrey showed the 2001 House of the Teachers project, Blinkenlights, by the European largest hacker group, Chaos Computer Club. [As I was hypertexting for more information on the project, I found an interesting article by Peter Hall: Living Skins, Architecture as Interface. Here is the living_skins .pdf.

R.M. Mason showed us the contrast in attitude and style between digital natives and baby boomers (Baby Boomers: born between 1946-1964, Generation X: 1965-1977, Millenials (Digital Natives): 1978-1994):

Find here a .pdf of interest: netnativesreport. Mason also mentioned Kzero research, “The industry leader in understanding the marketing dynamics relating to virtual world”. Find here Kzero’s map of Virtual World of Registered Accounts 2008.

Tony Buono has been researching Leading Innovation in Knowledge Intensive Firms (I.e. consultancies). Organizational changes are determined by two different factors, the business complexity (If you have similar stake holders and a common location or diverse stakeholders and multiple locations) and the socio-technical uncertainty (From definitive to non definitive solution). There are three different organizational changes, directed (Top down), planned (Road map) and guided (Evolving).

What is innovation?
D. Hjorth: “Innovation is about the gaps”
Roberto Verganti: “Innovation is about creating new meanings”

Professor Flemming Poulfelt has initiated the CBS Leadership Lab along with Robert Austin, Daniel Hjorth…

A big applause also for the organization: thank you Nicolaj!