Thomas Edison’s most important achievement was the development of an effective incandescent light bulb. Most people believe he invented the light bulb but in fact he improved upon a 50 year old idea. 50 years to create what we now know to be one of the most important inventions of the 19th century.
Imagine if he was armed with today’s innovation management tools. Imagine if everyone were. It’s fair to say that perhaps Humphry Davy (the ...
Around 1200 AD a Chinese-Mongol engineer came up with the idea of adding a silk shirt underneath their leather armor. The resulting insulation drastically cut the injury and death rate of Genghis Khan’s army from arrow wounds. Because the loose silk shirt would trap arrow heads and stop them from penetrating the skin. If the arrow happened to penetrate the skin, Mongol warriors and doctors could easily pull the ...
“You simply must fire that guy, he’s after your job!”, said the CFO. “He’s had it in for you since he brought in that ERP system against your wishes.” “I’ve had enough of him. I am going to embarrass him in front of the board next week,” said the CEO. '”He’s pulled one too many tricks on me and he’s going down.” The Visionary CIO The Chief Information Officer’s name was John Grand. ...
It happens everyday. You need a solution to a problem that can’t be fixed by mere mortals. You need the IT department.
The problem is, your IT department is run by an IT Director that believes in hording control and resources. We’ll call him William Mocking. Mocking won’t let his team work on any line of business projects unless he is involved. No quick resolutions, no updates to the ERP system, no excel spreadsheet macros unless he ...
I’ve been writing about FourSquare for business recently by promoting the potential benefits to businesses with customer foot traffic. Now with their release of a Customer Dashboard for businesses, they’ve taken the concept of social location-based networking to a whole new level. A level that businesses need to understand as it will significantly impact their bottom lines (both negatively and positively). (courtesy of the New ...
It struck me in a lengthy discussion with an old CIO friend of mine this weekend at Big Bear Ski Resort. As the great Mark Twain once said, “All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.” Brandon Matthias wasn’t aware of FourSquare or Gowalla or even Google Buzz. Not surprising given how recent these tools have become popular with the early adopters. But after I explained the social geo-location networks and ...
99% of all Venture Capital websites are tributes to themselves.
The typical Venture Capital website is full of former investments, some good some bad. A virtual brochure and usually nothing more.
Not so with First Round Capital. Most corporations can take a page or two out of their social playbook. Some may need to borrow the entire guide.
It’s starts with their tagline: “First Round Capital is a seed stage fund dedicated to helping ...
My first experience as a manager was leading a team in striving to win a large contract from UPS. We worked around the clock in preparing a knock your socks off proposal complete with diagrams, graphs, and complicated ROI analysis that showed a 25 to 1 return. I insisted we use some new proposal process and graphic creation tools that I had introduced into the organization. With the aid of the new technology and process, we created a ...
While doing some Enterprise 2.0 vendor research, we discovered some interesting trends from the E2.0 space. Using Google’s Double-Click Ad Planner, we were able to establish a general picture of the companies’ overall traffic. It’s still very early in the Enterprise 2.0 race, but Yammer appears to be the best horse on a muddy track. But in terms of visitor time on site, Google believes Spigit currently has the ...
