Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Growth: The great innovation debate
WITH the pace of technological change making heads spin, we tend to think of our age as the most innovative ever. We have smartphones and supercomputers, big data and nanotechnologies, gene therapy and stem-cell transplants. Governments, universities and firms together spend around $1.4 trillion a year on R&D, more than ever before.
Yet nobody recently has come up with an invention half as useful as that depicted on our cover. With its clean lines and intuitive user interface, the humble loo transformed the lives of billions of people. And it wasn’t just modern sanitation that sprang from late-19th and early-20th-century brains: they produced cars, planes, the telephone, radio and antibiotics.
Modern science has failed to make anything like the same impact, and this is why a growing band of thinkers claim that the pace of innovation has slowed (see article). Interestingly, the gloomsters include not just academics such as Robert Gordon, the American economist who offered the toilet test of uninventiveness, but also entrepreneurs such as Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist behind Facebook.
If the pessimists are right, the implications are huge. Economies can generate growth by adding more stuff: more workers, investment and education. But sustained increases in output per person, which are necessary to raise incomes and welfare, entail using the stuff we already have in better ways—innovating, in other words. If the rate at which we innovate, and spread that innovation, slows down, so too, other things being equal, will our growth rate.
Doom, gloom and productivity figures
Ever since Malthus forecast that we would all starve, human ingenuity has proved the prophets of doom wrong. But these days the impact of innovation does indeed seem to be tailing off. Life expectancy in America, for instance, has risen more slowly since 1980 than in the early 20th century. The speed of travel, in the rich world at least, is often slower now than it was a generation earlier, after rocketing a century or so ago. According to Mr Gordon, productivity also supports the pessimists’ case: it took off in the mid-19th century, accelerated in the early 20th century and held up pretty well until the early 1970s. It then dipped sharply, ticked up in late 1990s with computerisation and dipped again in the mid-2000s.
Yet that pattern is not as conclusively gloomy as the doomsayers claim. Life expectancy is still improving, even in the rich world (see article). The productivity gains after electrification came not smoothly, but in spurts; and the drop-off since 2004 probably has more to do with the economic crisis than with underlying lack of invention. Moreover, it is too early to write off the innovative impact of the present age.
This generation’s contribution to technological progress lies mostly in information technology (IT). Rather as electrification changed everything by allowing energy to be used far from where it was generated, computing and communications technologies transform lives and businesses by allowing people to make calculations and connections far beyond their unaided capacity. But as with electricity, companies will take time to learn how to use them, so it will probably be many decades before their full impact is felt.
Computing power is already contributing to dramatic advances far beyond the field of IT. Three-dimensional printing may cause a new industrial revolution. Autonomous vehicles, like the driverless cars produced by Google, could be common on streets within a decade. The performance of human prosthetics is rapidly catching up with that of natural limbs.
And although it is too soon to judge how big a deal these inventions will turn out to be, globalisation should make this a fruitful period for innovation. Many more brains are at work now than were 100 years ago: American and European inventors have been joined in the race to produce cool new stuff by Japanese, Brazilian, Indian and Chinese ones (see article).
Spend a penny—or two
So there are good reasons for thinking that the 21st century’s innovative juices will flow fast. But there are also reasons to watch out for impediments. The biggest danger is government.
When government was smaller, innovation was easier. Industrialists could introduce new processes or change a product’s design without a man from the ministry claiming some regulation had been broken. It is a good thing that these days pharmaceuticals are stringently tested and factory emissions controlled. But officialdom tends to write far more rules than are necessary for the public good; and thickets of red tape strangle innovation. Even many regulations designed to help innovation are not working well. The West’s intellectual-property system, for instance, is a mess, because it grants too many patents of dubious merit.
Continue the articel via economist.com
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Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Among Innovative Companies Virtuous Leadership Is The Difference
Simply Profound
Saw a great quote about the obvious by Carol Hymowitz:
“Good governance depends primarily on leaders who put integrity and the interest of their companies ahead of their self-interests. These executives are willing to grapple with difficult decisions that may involve personal sacrifice.”
Which reminds me of the Hay Group Best Companies survey.
Hay Group's John Larrere said, "Rapid changes in the world are impacting how organizations do business, and as a result, the old rules of how organizations select, develop and retain good leaders have been turned upside down causing the future of leadership to look very different. ... It's about getting them (people) to be passionate about their work and grooming them to handle the challenges ahead."
These findings fall in line with those of Peter Drucker in the “The Effective Executive,” who highlight "Inspiring" and “Leaders have a commitment to community and to change lives.”
Jim Collins highlights - Their drive and passion isn’t about themselves. It’s about the work, the organization, the purpose. Their purpose isn’t just making money or increasing shareholder value. “You have to have a reason to struggle, a reason to endure,” and they are willing to do whatever it takes for the organization, within the bounds of their values."
The most effective leaders focus on people as well as profits. They treat employees as assets not commodities as in the Jack Welch management dictum fire the “C” players. The truly great leaders have figured out how to select, build, and maintain people's belief that they are being honestly and competently led in today's unpredictable business world. Jim
Hire Jim Woods. 25 Years of Consulting and Coaching Success. Click here to arrange for Jim to speak to or consult with your organization or call +1 719-266-6703. On Twitter Jim is @hyperinnovation and @innothinkgroup Jim Woods is an expert on competitive strategy, uncertainty and innovation. Jim is president and CEO of InnoThink Group, a strategy and uncertainty consulting firm designed to maximize the potential of leaders and organizations. For more on Jim check out his website and follow him on Facebook. For over 25 years Jim Woods has helped organizations and individuals achieve their goals, maximize their effectiveness, become more productive, develop confidence, and overcome the fears holding them back. Click here to schedule an appointment.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The Frustration of Innovation and Rhetoric
I remain frustrated with my associates at the university and management consultants who see themselves as innovators yet are latched to the “tried and true” case profiles of best practices. Clients as well who seek “safe” methods of timid incrementalism. They have become talking heads absent of any original thoughts that could probably lessen their fees by simply asserting to clients and students “go thou and do likewise.
In a world of speed and uncertainty they suggest a slow incremental approach to radical change and innovation that worked well in conventional times of certainty absent of speed and technology. As Gary Hamel muses, “It was hard to find people within the world of management who were asking questions equivalent to what a computer scientist might ask: how do you build a machine that could think? Or that an engineer might ask: how do you master nano-scale manufacturing?"
Hire Jim Woods. 25 Years of Consulting Success.
Click here to arrange for Jim to speak to or consult with your organization or call +1 719-266-6703. On Twitter Jim is @hyperinnovation and @innothinkgroup
Jim Woods is an expert on competitive strategy, uncertainty and innovation. Jim is president and CEO of InnoThink Group, a strategy and uncertainty consulting firm designed to maximize the potential of leaders and organizations. For more on Jim check out his website and follow him on Facebook.
For over 25 years Jim Woods has helped organizations and individuals achieve their goals, maximize their effectiveness, become more productive, develop confidence, and overcome the fears holding them back. Click here to schedule an appointment.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Leadership - Doing What You Say You Will Do
DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WILL DO. We talk about DWYSYWD (pronounced "dwizzy-wid") in our seminars. One of our new clients reminded us of a tried-and-true way to communicate the same message:
· Is a pig's butt pork?
· Does a bear %&$# in the woods?
· Is the pope Catholic?
As a leader, manager, frontline supervisor, are you going to do what you say you are going to do?
YES!
Hire Jim Woods. 25 Years of Consulting Success.
Click here to arrange for Jim to speak to or consult with your organization or call +1 719-266-6703. On Twitter Jim is @hyperinnovation and @innothinkgroup
Jim Woods is an expert on competitive strategy, uncertainty and innovation. Jim is president and CEO of InnoThink Group, a strategy and uncertainty consulting firm designed to maximize the potential of leaders and organizations. For more on Jim check out his website and follow him on Facebook.
For over 25 years Jim Woods has helped organizations and individuals achieve their goals, maximize their effectiveness, become more productive, develop confidence, and overcome the fears holding them back. Click here to schedule an appointment.
