The Innovation Summit 2004

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AlwaysOn 2004, The Innovation Summit, took place at Stanford University in July of this year, and the sessions are available for free viewing. I took the time to listen to a 56 minute panel discussion on Silicon Valley, Anywhere – featuring venture capitalists and IT executives. I found this to be a frank discussion about the perils of developing and selling new IT products and services in the global marketplace.

Daniel Gatti, CEO of Big Bangwidth, talked about conducting R&D in Canada. To summarize, he said that the centres of excellence developed in Canada are a real boon to technology companies, and that doing development in Canada makes a lot of sense for any IT company.

Joe Schoendorf, of Accel Partners, also made some interesting comments from the VC perspective. He said that if you are introducing a new technology to the market, then you should look at the USA, China and Europe – normally in that order. Europe is slower to adopt new technologies than either the US or China. He also said that the key to innovation is getting products to market, and that as an investor he looks at two things:

  1. The strength of the core team, and
  2. How fast the company will get its product to market

Many people forget that there is only one measurable indicator when it comes to innovation, and that is improving the livelihood of people. If you do not generate wealth from new products and services, then all of the R&D in world is of little value.

There are many other presentations available for viewing, so sit back with a glass of wine (as I did) and listen to the dialogue.

Via Engineering Technologies Canada.

M-Learning from Canada

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Local company, Engage Interactive, is bringing e-learning to handhelds. With its PDA courseware, Engage is looking at expanding its markets:


“We expect our PDA courseware technology to be especially popular outside North America,” said Mr. Heinstein [VP Software Development]. “According to the market firm IDC, China has become the second largest market in the world for handheld computers. Mark Perkins at iBIZ claims the PDA and handheld market is exploding in Europe. And Latin America already has more wireless Internet subscribers than land-based. The market for small wireless internet devices is expected to grow to $73 billion dollars in 2005.”

A demo course, Caring for a Diabetic Patient With Acute Coronary Syndrome is available for viewing.

Learning States

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RTI International has been developing a framework for international development over the past two years, called Learning States. This is a new approach, with significant funding from various multinational corporations (MNC), focused on the base of the world’s economic pyramid (BOP). As MNC’s see their first world markets becoming saturated, but without a strategy to meet the needs of emerging markets, RTI has created this initiative to foster sustainable job and livelihood development.

The Learning States for Growing Economies white paper, co-authored by Hal Richman, gives an overview of the strategy.

Using the lens of learning and innovation,
Learning States is brokering a series of
partnerships to connect (1) the world’s leading MNCs seeking to grow new markets at the BOP; (2) local business, government, and economic development leaders in emerging market states (EMS); and (3) donor organizations
interested in economic and job growth. These learning partnerships will be guided by a new model for growing markets, jobs, and prosperity. Specifically, the Learning States design process creates a space for innovation by selecting pilot sites where traditional business models will not work. As MNC and local business leaders generate ideas for innovative
products and services, the Learning States team brings in local stakeholder groups, such as educators, policymakers, and government officials, who are committed to identifying new opportunities and creating new value in emerging markets.

Perhaps some of the insights on learning and innovation can also be used here in Atlantic Canada, especially since Hal lives in Nova Scotia.

OpenOffice Celebrates Fourth Birthday

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OpenOffice, the free and open source office application, turned four years old this month. I have been using it for two years, and swear by it. OOo (as it’s referred to) is similar to MS Office, with a word processing application, presentation creator, spreadsheet and HTML editor. With free software, I can insist that my sub-contractors use it, at no additional cost to them. The applications are just as easy to use as Corel’s or Microsoft’s, but there are fewer errors. I have developed +100 page documents in OOo and then exported them as Adobe PDF files (a great feature), without a glitch. OOo files are about 1/5 the size of equivalent MS Word documents, and about 1/3 the size of the same PDF. This makes shipping documents to those on dial-ups a lot easier.

You can download OOo for Windows, Mac or Linux, and try it out to see if you like it. You can also purchase one of several available books, including Open Office for Dummies, if you need a manual.

So here is a free software suite that is compatible with MS Office (you can save as .PPT or .DOC or .XLS ), is easy to use, and is supported by a large user community. You can also purchase support packages from one of several vendors. So what are you waiting for? You have nothing to lose but your upgrade fees.

SmartDraw 7 Released

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I’ve been using the new SmartDraw 7 Suite, and like what I see. I purchased SmartDraw last year when I was looking for a cheaper MS Visio replacement, as I create a lot of diagrams and flowcharts in my business. Version 7 is a significant improvement and the SmartDraw Suite is $200 less than Visio Professional. Like Visio, files can be converted to other formats. SmartDraw allows conversion to JPG, GIF, EPS, PDF, etc.

Open Source Medical Journal

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PLoS [Public Library of Science] Medicine is a peer-reviewed medical journal available free online, with a Creative Commons license for use. Here is one reason why it was created:

Whereas some would argue that medical journals should not be accessible to patients because patients are unable to use the information effectively, we believe it is our responsibility as publishers and members of the medical community not only to give patients access, but to provide them with tools to use the medical literature wisely. Medical research is a partnership between medical scientists and millions of voluntary human participants, conducted largely with public funds. What better way to acknowledge the public’s contribution and ensure their willingness to sponsor and participate in future research than to openly share the product of this research with them?

It could be interesting to examine the differences in usage between PLoS Medicine, which is geared toward both practitioners and the public, with another source built expressly for use by the public, such as the Canadian Health Network.

Free social software sandbox for teachers

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James Farmer is offering a place for teachers to test out social and pedagogical software technologies:

So, by providing free-for-teachers hosting, installation, support and consultation for weblogs, wikis, CMSs and more, I figure I get to learn an enormous amount (which will certainly help me in my career), help some frustrated teachers out and show the light to others who would have a lot of trouble technically getting there. Well worth a few bucks a month I think.

The software suite also includes synchronous tools and discussion boards; and the CMS is Drupal. Go ahead and try it out.

Drupal 4.5 Released

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Drupal, the open source content management system (OS CMS) that this site is built on, just keeps getting better. This is a dynamic developer community that takes to heart the comments of users in order to build better "community plumbing". With the release of Drupal 4.5 we are seeing mutiple themes, a tabbed interface and a new look on the Drupal site, as well as many other features. Drupal is a major player in the OS CMS space, and I think will stay the course, due to the commitment of so many in the community. Thanks to Chris and Cameron for seeing the potential of Drupal many months ago.

For those new to CMS’s, take a look at the Drupal brochure (PDF).

The Talent Myth

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In a recent ChangeThis manifesto, Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, states that “The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it’s the other way around.” He cites Enron and WorldCom has examples of the continuing quest for the best individual talent gone awry; while Southwest Airlines and Wal*Mart are companies with inclusive, and more effective business cultures. This search for individuals with star potential, at the expense of the organisation, is what Gladwell calls the “Talent Myth”.

They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.

To me, this is just another example of businesses grabbing on to the latest management gimmick to solve all of their problems. It also shows how human performance technology would have been a better approach for these companies in managing their workforce. HPT looks at the alignment between the culture and business operations, as well as the role of individuals within the system. As James Hite describes HPT, ” …human performance is placed in context along with other subsystems that constitute the presence of the organization.” It’s the relationship between individual performers (especially the “stars”) and all of the other components that has to be examined and understood. Or as Earl Mardle says, “Effective Executives are not a product that we can make, but an emergent property of correctly functioning organisations.”

Gladwell’s stories of narcissistic star candidates, many being paid more than they were worth, are interesting to view from a performance analysis perspective. A cursory look would show that this misalignment of rewards and consequences could cause systemic problems. HPT may not be glamorous, but it works.