Pizza-making vending machines on their way to the U.S.

 

Remember how people reacted when McDonalds announced that it was going to start selling pizzas? Well, if buying pies from a chain best known for cheap hamburgers might have been difficult for some folks to get their heads around, they will likely find this even stranger – buying them from a vending machine. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what Dutch company A1 Concepts is hoping Americans will do, when its Let’s Pizza machines arrive in the U.S.

First of all, it should be pointed out that the machines don’t just spit out premade pizzas.

Instead, the process begins with the client paying, then selecting one of four types of pizza available at any one time. The machine then mixes flour and water, kneads that mixture into dough, rolls the dough out into a 27-centimeter (10.5-inch)-wide crust, adds toppings, cooks the pie in its infrared oven, then dispenses it in a take-away box. The whole process takes under three minutes.

Each machine can store enough ingredients to make 90, 100 or 200 pizzas, depending on which source of information you go by.

 

All of the ingredients are fresh (as opposed to frozen), and are kept refrigerated in single-dose vacuum-packaged containers until needed. The company is very big on emphasizing that the pies are made “in a human-free environment” – so if you pictured an actual person making the pizzas inside each machine, well, there isn’t one.

 According to the Pizza Marketplace website, the machines have been around in Europe for the past three years, but will make their North American debut in the third quarter of this year. A U.S. headquarters will be opened in Atlanta at that point, with a rollout of machines soon to follow in various markets.

The suggested price for each pizza is US$5.95. If any of our readers have had the chance to try one of the pies, we would be interested in hearing what you thought of it.

A Let’s Pizza machine can be seen in action, in the video below.via gizmag.com

 

After X Years, the CEO Should Go

The thought behind this essay began in an unlikely, noncorporate place.

I was checking the proofs of the latest book by my wife, Meredith Hooper, published for the centenary this year of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott’s fateful last expedition. She describes how the death of Scott and his four companions returning from the South Pole (having been beaten to it by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen) overshadows and rewrites the whole story of the expedition: “Accounts of what happened shifted to take account of what was to happen. Writing, and thinking, accreted ‘hindsight bias’: understandable, unavoidable and insidious. No one wished to challenge the overriding narrative. To dislodge the tone and beat of the powerful and moving story that had swept into the imagination of a world audience.”

It suddenly occurred to me that chief executives sooner or later, after x years, inevitably fall into the trap of hindsight bias. Consciously or unconsciously, they become more concerned with justifying yesterday’s decision and creating the ”overriding narrative” of their legacy than with making the optimal decision for tomorrow. Yet, the best decision for the company’s health tomorrow may require acknowledging that yesterday’s decision was a bad one. At some point then, irrespective of performance, might not the CEO begin to be a liability?

Nonexecutive directors like me are, according to Britain’s Combined Code, probably past our sell-by date after six years: “Any term beyond six years for a nonexecutive director should be subject to particularly rigorous review and should take into account the need for progressive refreshing of the board.” Could this not be equally true of executive directors?

I was discussing this idea with a chairwoman recently, and she made the point that it is not just the individual CEO’s problem. She pointed out that over time the whole company “becomes lined up behind the CEO’s idiosyncrasies.” When I mentioned this to Joel Kurtzman, the editor in chief of Briefings, he immediately thought of the considerable amount of research devoted to Groupthink, the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Hindsight bias overlaps with another form of bias. We process data in skewed ways. Information that supports existing views is welcomed, while that which does not is rejected. This phenomenon is known as confirmation bias.

If you accept that the CEO should go after x years because of the growing dangers of hindsight and confirmation bias and Groupthink, then what is the value of x? It is probably in the range of five to seven years — which is when nonexecutive board members in Britain are encouraged to move on. Among other reasons, it is thought that they become too close to management, losing objectivity and distance from the canvas.

I believe that the CEO should depart after a fixed term irrespective of performance. Boards and shareholders (not to mention CEOs) may find this a step too far. But there are a number of good reasons. Hindsight and confirmation bias are insidious. They do not happen suddenly; they creep up on the organization and may not become visible until it is too late. In managing the CEO’s expectations, the chairman and board may find it useful to state up front on appointment that the CEO should expect a term of around, say, five years. This obviates the need for difficult, surprising and embarrassing discussions with the CEO around Year 4.

There are two problems with my argument — one almost the inverse of the other. A predetermined tenure could lead a CEO to focus only on short-term goals, seeking to ensure that he or she is a hero after x years through profit-pumping. This could actually jeopardize the longer-term future of the company. It is often said that a great engine of the German economy has been the small and medium-size Mittelstand companies and that their success can be attributed to long-term thinking. Such companies are often family-owned, and the CEOs have clear motivation to leave the companies in great shape for sons and daughters in succeeding generations.

The second problem is known in the City of London as “kitchen sinking” and concerns the behavior of the new CEO. A new chief executive may be motivated to pour scorn on his predecessor and to initiate one-time accounting actions to clean up unsuccessful past actions. Such steps reduce profits and the share price, but improve the outlook for the CEO’s own share options and future heroism. A recurrence of this every five years would damage the accretion of shareholder value.

There is no obvious solution to this conundrum. Awareness of it would be a good start. All of us on boards should be actively and continuously aware of the power of hindsight bias, confirmation bias, legacy building and Groupthink in ourselves and in others.

Indeed, boards and chairmen should sharpen their skill at foresight bias. Niccolo Machiavelli got it right in 1532: All wise princes ”consider not only present but also future discords and diligently guard against them; for being foreseen, they can easily be remedied, but if one waits until they are at hand, the medicine is no longer in time as the malady has become incurable; hectic fevers ... at their beginning are easy to cure but difficult to recognize, but in course of time when they have not at first been recognized and treated, become easy to recognize and difficult to cure.”

-----------------

Richard Hooper has devoted his career to the media and communications universe, having held senior executive posts in the BBC, government research and development, British Telecom, new media and satellite television. He was named a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 for his service to the communications industry.
 

via kornferryinstitute.com

Hiring: 5 Tips to Find True Innovators

It's not just a matter of finding creative dreamers; you need people who can turn ideas into money. Here's what to look for.

Flickr/OnInnovation

Walking through Times Square recently, I came upon a hot dog vendor promising something astounding. On the side of his cart hung a giant sign advertising "Hot dogs with an innovative new design!!!!" 

Since I work in innovation--and am a huge fan of all things carnivorous--I had to check out this miracle of modern gastronomy. 

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the "innovative new design" consisted of three elements: a bun, a cylindrical serving of meat (i.e, a hot dog) and Heinz ketchup. 

Convinced the subtle nuance of his artistry must have blown right by me, I quizzed the chef about the innovative nature of the design (I let the "new" part slide because I assumed it was just marketing). 

He stopped working, looked me right in the eyes, and absolutely beamed when he revealed his mysterious secret: His hot dogs came with the ketchup so you didn't have to ask for it. 

And right at that moment, I realized just how troubling the innovation craze has become. The idea of innovation is popping up everywhere. On everything. And as this beef-peddling savant demonstrated so eloquently, it can mean virtually anything. 

For a company whose entire business pivots on innovation, this poses two problems. First, we run the risk of being lumped together with a wide range of "innovation firms" selling the strategic equivalent of snake oil for clients desperately in need of something new. 

And second, we get bombarded with résumés all claiming to have rich innovation experience. In fact, in the last year alone, we received 4,000 resumes for just 10 positions. While some applicants clearly had experience creating products, businesses, and services that delivered groundbreaking utility, others bore a striking resemblance to the Ferran Adrià of dirty-water dogs I met on 47^th street. 

Sifting though applicants over the past five years has helped us figure out how to spot a genius within the genus. Hopefully, the lessons we've learned will be useful for other firms looking to hire true innovators.   

The Keys to Hiring Effective Innovators 

Our hiring philosophy is guided by two truths about the pursuit of growth through innovation and the market gap that lies between them. 

The first is that there is no shareholder value in a brilliant growth strategy without the creative synthesis of tangible, compelling offerings to commercialize it.

The second is the converse--that creative pipe-dreaming disconnected from commercial realities isn't worth much more than an inspiring afternoon. 

We are on a mission to bridge this gap by bringing together historically isolated capabilities: potent commercial strategy and inspiring creativity. Or, in our parlance, the Money and the Magic. 

Central to our ambition is being able to consistently attract a unique group of people who are walking embodiments of this balance. To find them, we look for people who possess five key characteristics: 

1. Intellectually Restless:

Great innovators get a thrill out of defining a bold vision and then wrestling with the data, insights, barriers, and opportunities to unlock what needs to be true to get there.

2. Inspiring Rather Than Convincing:

Applicants who come from traditional consulting are often proficient at framing opportunities, yet unaccustomed to creating outcomes. We want people who can do both. Those who recognize that innovation, by its very nature, is at odds with certainty. Breakthroughs can't be proven. They need to be envisioned and driven.

3. Proven Ability to Drive Innovation:

There's a big difference between recognizing a great innovation and understanding how to create a great innovation. Unlike financial markets, past performance in innovation is, more often than not, an indicator of future performance.

4. Have Scaled a Peak:

We look for greatness in some aspect of an applicant's life: successful entrepreneur, published writer, Ivy League graduate, Division I athlete, etc. The metric of success is less important than the success itself. We want people who are comfortable defining a high-order goal and then doing what it takes to accomplish it.

5. Willing to Commit to Something Bigger Than Themselves:

 This is important on two levels. At a firm level, we want people who are excited by the belief that we're on a mission to create a fundamentally new type of business. On a personal level, we want talent who believes in something that doesn't exist today. This type of belief is the core of innovation. Therefore, we look for candidates who've already demonstrated their commitment to a higher-order ambition. It can be sports, religion, a philosophy, or a charity. The object of devotion is much less important than the proven willingness to invest passionately with a group of people to realize a dream. 

It's tough to find people who possess all five characteristics. But when you do, you've found something special. And although it's a big call, I would argue... even more special than pre-loaded ketchup. 

Pete Maulik is Chief Strategy Officer at Fahrenheit 212, an innovation consultancy engaged to deliver top-line growth. @Fahrenheit212

via inc.com

 

4 Reasons You Can't Execute

THE SYNERGIST | Les McKeown

4 Reasons You Can't Execute

Feel like nothing ever gets done? Here's how you can figure out what's slowing you down.

Mamboman1/Flickr

Today's Editor's Picks

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• Shark Tank's Accidental Entrepreneur: Robert Herjavec
• Host a Company Picnic: 5 Reasons
• 4 Reasons You Can't Execute

Stop and think for a moment.

How many great decisions have you made this year that never got off the ground? Do you feel that you and your team are coming up with smart, competition-beating ideas, but you've lost the ability to execute on those ideas?

If you're missing the sense of achievement that comes from translating ideas into results-delivering reality, then chances are, it's because of one or more of these four reasons:

1. You have no idea how decisions are really made. Whether you manage a business, division, department, project, or team, you have to understand the path of information. How does information arrive into the group, how is it processed, and how is it turned into action? Understanding this process is the single most crucial determinant of your ability to execute.

Once you understand the process, ask yourself: Does the information flow get snarled? Does a decision have to be run by three different people before being approved? Or does your accounting software fail to give you high-quality data in a timely fashion? These examples are gaps in the process--gaps that will come between the ability of your group to make a decision.

You may want to really map out this process. Trace the path of the last two or three decisions your team made that weren't effectively and efficiently executed. Map where the necessary information came from, the main communication lines and key decision points.

When you're done, if you can easily make sense of what you see, all is good. If it looks like a rat's nest of intertwined, overlapping, dead-end-reaching lines, then you need to simplify your group's decision-making process.  

2. You're a micromanager (Yes, you!). The ability of a group to execute effectively can be crushed by just one micromanager. 

You know the type: The person that insists everything is 'run by them' and then becomes so overwhelmed by the volume of stuff being 'run by them' that they can barely come up for air.  

Look around. Can you see the micromanager in your group? They're easy to spot. Find them and make them stop.

But if you can't find one, here's the thing: It's probably you. Micromanaging is so easy to see in others, but is much harder to see in ourselves. 

Here's a full-proof test: Pick out the single most productive person in your group. Watch closely at how they get things done. If it includes finding multiple innovative ways to bypass you, then you're the problem.

3. You're rushing the decision. Remember when your business was small and life was simple? When a board meeting was a ride up in the elevator? When you could make three great decisions before breakfast and have them implemented by lunch? When communicating a decision was as simple as saying it out loud, because everyone was within hearing distance?

Now, life isn't that simple. Your business has grown and now has many more moving parts. And, chances are that the growth in complexity happened iteratively, over time, and like the proverbial frog in slowly heated water, you haven't noticed the effect on your decision-making. 

Here's the difference: In the smaller, simpler business, you can make a decision fast, and implement it quickly. Now you have a larger, more complex business, making decisions fast actually slows down the implementation process--sometimes crippling it entirely.

Why? Because you made the decision so fast you didn't take into account all the variables (people, customers, systems) involved in your now more complex business.

Once a business has grown beyond infancy, speedy and effective implementation depends on slower decision-making. Not slow--you don't need to descend into to paralysis by analysis--just slower. Take a little longer to make the initial decision, and watch the rate of implementation rise. 

4. You've worn everyone out. You're a passionate, engaged leader. You're intellectually curious, innovative, and not afraid of risk. You're full of great ideas and keen to implement them. Your people respect and admire you... and they're exhausted.

Do your team members avoid you on Monday mornings? Do they look apprehensive when you return from a two-week vacation?

If so, it's because they know weekends and holidays are dangerous times because that's when you come back to the office with five  brilliant, must-do projects--even though they haven't finished implementing last month's brilliant, must-do projects.

If you suspect this might be you, then do yourself and your team a favor. Keep a list of all current projects. When you have a blinding flash of creativity which produces a new project, instead of simply adding it to the list, make a conscious, explicit decision about which existing project to drop off the list in return. 

You'll find that compared with your existing priorities, many of those 'brilliant must-do's' just aren't that important, and those that do make the list will stand much more chance of actually being implemented.

Les McKeown is the author of the best-seller, Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There and is the CEO of Predictable Success, a leading advisor on accelerated organizational growth. His latest book is The Synergist: How to Lead Your Team to Predictable Success. @lesmckeown @lesmckeown

via inc.com

Nonconforming, Angry people are the innovators - InnoThink Group Blog

« Think of Start-ups as Shots on Goal - Robert Litan | Main

06/11/2012

Nonconforming, Angry people are the innovators

I am often chastised albeit politely or as deftly as unfriending me on Facebook, that I am belligerent. In fact I am called downright offensive. One person wrote recently that I am vitriolic in espousing my ideals. She has a point. 

Another email suggested, (“hyperboles” best omitted) that I fail to realize people are doing the best they can. Hmmmm. 

In an extremely competitive world where no job or company is guaranteed “doing the best we can is the drum beat of irrelevance. 

My reply is, “Tell that to the inhabitants of Jamestown building the fort as fast as they can while the indigenous people bang on the door demanding their land back.” Doing the best they can? How happy would you be if human resources lost your payroll information which caused your check to be late for two more weeks?     

Each week I probably read three books. Most business in one way or another. 

Many of the books I read encourage the reader to strategize, create an innovation process, establish focus groups and how to organize this and organize that, and figure out what the heck customers want most. 

The authors do a great job of hocking these books to the masses. They aren’t bad ideas. Just bad ideas in a world where the fast and highly innovative eat the slow and conventional. 

There is only one source of innovation regardless of whether we are discussing human resources, IT, talent development, marketing, front office, back office, supply chains etc: Hiring and promoting angry people.

Angry people are the ones who initiate change. Furious people will push toothpaste back into the tube. They become incensed with talk, talk, talk. 

Think Congress moves slowly? In an organization changing anything meets resistance. People like things the way they are. It’s why bureaucracy and protective silos exist. People like change when it occurs externally.   

Complacent content people don’t push the envelope. Take Pan Am’s founder Juan Trippe who was impatient with “good enough.” Someone wrote, “What drove Trippe? A fury that the future was always being hijacked by people with

smaller ideas—by his first partners, who didn’t want to expand air mail routes; by nations that protected flag-carriers with subsidies; by elitists who regarded flight, like luxury liners, as a privilege that could only be enjoyed by the few; by the cartel operators who rigged prices. The democratization he affected was as real as Henry Ford’s.” 

This week, you’ll likely make the mistake of asking a new hire how’s things are going. The new hire doesn’t quite understand the system yet. Beaming with joy at being asked for the first time, “What do you think,” the intern snaps a sheet of single spaced ideas into your hand. The first is how stupid the customer service department is being operated. The other is a litany of ideas on how to improve sales. You take the paper in clenched hands smiling politely. 

That my friend is how things get innovated. Not just changed. We are talking about creating value. Not a buzzword safe haven. Typically companies will find imaginative ways to replace such a person with someone who has never had an original idea, or an aberration on their resume. Someone who will when asked in a strategy meeting, “Any questions? They’ll reply, with silence. You’ll learn to ignore the raised hands challenging your opinions. And so the beat goes. 

In time what could have been a bright spot of rolling anger with “why do we do this,” slowly becomes absolution of purposeful change i.e. innovation towards embracement of mediocrity. Another word for pitched irrelevance. 

Now, be irritated with “This is the way things have always been done around here.” Take the energy from people who don’t give a crap. This is what makes an organization stand out. Jim 

Be sure to follow us on Twitter @innovatingbig

 

Posted at 12:26 PM in Business, Innovation, Marketing | Permalink

Technorati Tags: customer service, hiring best talent, human resources, Innovating, innovation, innovators, non conformist, radical innovation

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Think of Start-ups as Shots on Goal - Robert Litan

With concern running high about the prospects for continued economic growth, two recent e-books show where the debate is centered now: on the question of whether we can, through sheer inventiveness, keep driving the productivity gains that lead to higher incomes. George Mason’s Tyler Cowen is pessimistic, seeing a “great stagnation” setting in. A counterargument comes from MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, who find in the rapidly advancing technology of robotics and other productivity enhancers every reason to be optimistic. These opposing conclusions suggest once again why economists as a group are not all that good at predicting the future.

We’ll know who was right when the productivity numbers finally come in. But let me point out a number we can look at now to learn whether we’re on track or in trouble: the number of business starts.

That’s a number we know how to move. The key is to understand that innovation is not just invention. Even more, it’s a matter of commercialization. And the truly disruptive technologies that have advanced living standards most over the long run have usually been commercialized by entrepreneurs rather than established companies. Think of the telegraph, the telephone, the car, the airplane, computers (mainframe, personal, and mini), most software, internet search engines, air-conditioning—innovations that define modernity. All were brought to market by entrepreneurs.

To be sure, most start-ups don’t get very far, and only a tiny fraction grow to have the impact of Ford, GM, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, or Google. But the number of start-ups launched can at least tell us what the odds are that companies like those will be generated. Other things being equal, the more business starts there are, the more “shots on goal” an economy has to produce great results.

Unfortunately, things don’t look good at the moment in the United States. In the dozen years preceding the recession, somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 new firms were launched annually, seemingly impervious to the business cycle. The crisis-induced recession of 2008–2009 changed that. In 2009 (the most recent year for which we have reliable data) new starts plunged to 400,000.

No doubt this depressing statistic helped to rally the bipartisan support we saw last spring for the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act—legislation designed to promote new and growing businesses, especially those that want to go public, by reducing their cost of capital.

But more-comprehensive legislation is needed, to go beyond entrepreneurs’ capital requirements and also to facilitate their access to talent and opportunity. We need immigration reform to attract and retain high-skilled immigrants, particularly those who hope to start new businesses right away. We need reform of the technology-licensing practices at research universities that are heavily funded by the federal government. We need regulatory reform to update, modify, or eliminate excessively costly existing rules and to require cost/benefit justification for new rules.

Proposals to do all this have been introduced in the Senate. Given the impending presidential election, it will be a (welcome) surprise if Congress seriously considers them this year, although they have broad-based and growing support. But start-up legislation should become a congressional priority for 2013.

We can argue over the details, but we’ll make progress if we begin by agreeing on what drives economic growth and what must be encouraged: start-ups.

via hbr.org

How to Manage Employees and The competition in Lean Times - Jim Woods

In this hypercompetitive age managing is a difficult task. Perhaps even more difficult considering in this age of empowerment and easy access to new opportunities, no one really wants to be managed. Which is one of the reasons so few managers are good at their job. Management quality guru Deming once remarked, that less than 15% of what managers ever learn is effectively articulated and implemented. That is sad wouldn’t you agree? Particularly at a time when companies and municipalities rely upon an entire organization to reduce costs and increase revenue. 

To innovate, the task of acquiring customers and retaining customers better than ones competitors rely on a few simple unconventional truisms: 

1. Never pass the buck
2. Accept responsibility
3. All yourself as accountable as you would your employees
4. Treat your employees as employee partners. Employee partners create more towards the bottom line.
5. Lead do not manage. Managers are a dime a dozen. Leaders are few. By leading you increase your effectiveness and value immensely.
6. Praise easily
7. Treat everyone as if they are a volunteer.
8. Keep meetings short
9. Never embarrass or berate anyone openly
10. Never promise what you can’t deliver on.
11. Understand you are on stage everyday. People are always watching you. Everything you say, the way in which you say it, sends clues to your employee partners.
12. Help all of your employees reach legendary status. 
13. Help them become more than who they are in every aspect of their life.
14. Recognize even at your best you cannot change people. The best you can do is to facilitate.
15. Never allow your employee partners to feel you are discouraged and without solutions.
16. Celbrate special occassions big. 
17. Do more than the cursory birthday card passed between departments. You want to know your people. 

Lastly, expect your employees to rise to the occasion. They will meet your expectations. Everyone has insecurities. This goes for leaders, managers and employees. 

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