Monthly Archives: April 2012

Innovation Quotes of the Day – April 25, 2012


“Figure out how to take risks that keep you in the game even if you fail.”

– Seth Godin


“Over the last couple of decades, companies have increasingly found that employees who pursue what they do with passion will outperform an employee with a gun to their head every time.”

– Braden Kelley


“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”

– Albert Einstein


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

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Innovation Quotes of the Day – April 24, 2012


On Einstein’s quote “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” from yesterday:

“I don’t think it is either/or proposition. Imagination leads to new knowledge and new knowledge leads to imagination. At end of the day, you need a balanced team of imaginators and knowledge practitioners/executioners to move the needle.”

– Sanjiv Karani


“Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.”

– Mason Cooley


“In our hyper-competitive, always-connected world, organizations are increasingly becoming focused on improving both their speed to market and their revenue per headcount. In this environment, more senior leaders every day are seeing innovation as the primary way to gain competitive advantage and to simultaneously increase revenue and cut costs.”

– Braden Kelley


“But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.”

– Steve Jobs


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

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Can Microsoft win the Android and iPhone Haters?

Can Microsoft win the Android and iPhone Haters?Nobody, including people inside Microsoft, would argue with the fact that Microsoft beat Google and Apple to the Mobile OS marketplace, but lags them both in terms of market share.

According to Wikipedia, the IBM Simon was the world’s first smartphone and was released to the world nearly twenty years ago. This means that the smartphone market is yet another example of a market where mass adoption has lagged behind initial product introduction by 20-30 years. For the inventor audience this is important to note, because it shows that #1 – innovation takes time – and #2 – that being first is no guarantee of being number one in the market when mass adoption arrives.

Well, mass adoption in the smartphone market is now upon us.

The only question is – which operating system maker will dominate the golden years of the smartphone market?

Will it be Apple or Google?

Or do Microsoft and RIM have a change to counterattack and make themselves relevant again?

Invention does not guarantee innovation. Innovation requires that you create value above every existing alternative and that you achieve wide adoption. The reason we often see changes in the leadership of the marketplace of an emerging innovation is that often the market creator does a worse job than new entrants of adapting their solution offering for the evolving desires of the customers. New entrants generally see an opportunity to solve problems that the incumbents don’t, and an create new value that the incumbent solutions don’t deliver.

But can an incumbent react to newer entrants and rebuild momentum in the marketplace?

Motorola’s revitalization in mobile handsets shows that a competitive response focused on leadership instead of reaction can in fact get you back in the game.

So can Microsoft do the same thing and steal share from Apple and Google in the smartphone OS market?

The answer lies in whether Microsoft can do a better job than Apple or Google (or even RIM) of understanding why people hate their current smartphones, while also anticipating:

  1. What the needs of customers will be in 6-12 months
  2. What customers will want in 6-12 months
  3. What emerging technologies will make possible in 6-12 months

Timing is one of the key components to successful innovation. You can invent things at any time, but you can only turn an invention into an innovation when customers and other parts of the value chain can see the value and are ready to accept it. Whether customers and the value chain can see the value is of course dependent on how well you translate for them how a potential innovation will fit into their lives.

Can Microsoft and Nokia come up with the answers that the marketplace will accept in 6-12 months? Are their existing phones the right answer for customers now?

I don’t know. But I can tell you that I hate, absolutely hate, the Google Android operating system on my Samsung Galaxy S. The Samsung device itself seems relatively well-designed but the Google Android OS is always crashing, doesn’t make smart use of the SD Card (the internal memory is always filling up), and leaves me constantly frustrated.

I bought two Samsung Galaxy S phones on T-Mobile over two iPhones on Verizon or AT&T for my wife and I, because they will cost me $1,000 less over the two-year commitment.

I can tell you with certainty that my next smartphone when I’m eligible for an upgrade will NOT be a Google Android phone. At the same time I know people who hate their iPhones and their Blackberries as well, so this represents an opportunity for Microsoft to convert disgruntled iOS, Android and Blackberry customers. Plus, there are a still a lot of people without a smartphone that will buy one in the next 6-12 months.

These two market dynamics represent a huge opportunity for Microsoft to get back in the smartphone OS market. The only question is:

Will they take advantage of this opportunity?


Article first published as ‘An Opening for Microsoft and Nokia?’ on Technorati.

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Innovation Quotes of the Day – April 23, 2012


“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

– From the movie ‘Meet the Robinsons’


“I have a relationship with the IRS, but I don’t have conversations with them. Value comes not from relationships but from conversations. Lifetime value only exists if you have an on-going, two-way conversation with your customers.”

– Braden Kelley


“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

– Albert Einstein


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Innovation Quotes of the Day – April 22, 2012


“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”

– David Sable


“As the innovation velocity of an organization becomes a more crucial competitive differentiator in the global marketplace, it is mandatory that innovation becomes everyone’s responsibility in the organization.”

– Braden Kelley


“An innovation is one of those things that society looks at and says, if we make this part of the way we live and work, it will change the way we live and work.”

– Dean Kamen


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Innovation Quotes of the Day – April 21, 2012


“America’s growth historically has been fueled mostly by investment, education, productivity, innovation and immigration. The one thing that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with America’s growth rate is a brutal work schedule.”

– Fareed Zakaria


“The relative skill and speed with which you extract insights from the voice of the customer, and adapt your organization to deliver the required insightful products and services, will determine whether you win or lose in tomorrow’s marketplace.”

– Braden Kelley


“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

– Albert Einstein


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Innovation Quotes of the Day – April 20, 2012


“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you, and you don’t know how or why.”

– Albert Einstein


“To build a brand, you must start a conversation with your customers. Your customers have to know that you stand for something and that they can count on you to deliver upon your brand promise.”

– Braden Kelley


“Today you can buy knowledge by the pound – from consultants hawking best practice, from the staff you’ve just hired from your competitor, and from all those companies that hope you will outsource everything. Yet in the age of revolution it is not knowledge that produces new wealth, but insight – insight into opportunities for discontinuous innovation. Discovery is the journey; insight is the destination. You must become your own seer.”

– Gary Hamel


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Innovation or Invention? – Portable Personal Mobility Device

Innovation or Invention? - Portable Personal Mobility DeviceIn writing my article yesterday – Innovation or Invention? – Gyroscopically Stabilized Electric Motorcycle – I came across an interesting video from 2009 of an invention called the U3-X from the research labs at Honda.

While I found the Lit C-1 to be an interesting gadget but unlikely to be widely adopted given the other solutions already available at much better price to performance ratios to the problem it is trying to solve, I am a bit more optimistic about this intriguing design from Honda through a slightly different lens than they might examining its possibilities through.


(Oct 2009)

Here is a second video released along with an announcement of a new installation in France:


(Mar 2012)

Regular readers will know that I feel that innovation is all about:

  • Value Creation
  • Value Access
  • Value Translation

There is no doubt that Honda has created a lot of potential value here. The problem is that they’ve done a really poor job to date with Value Translation. Notice that in both video examples the users are small females. This introduces doubt unconsciously into the viewers. Will this work for a person who is large and/or tall?

Another point that I often highlight is that disruptive innovations require more than explanation, they require education. This is definitely a device that will require a fair amount of education to get people comfortable with the idea and start to see the need. Honda needs to do more education to help with that. They also need to better visualize where the greatest need for this device will be.

For me this is an amazing device because at 10kg (22 lbs) it is a truly portable personal mobility device (if you integrate a strap or two so that people can carry it on their back).

One hour of battery life seems like a big challenge though. But, not if people are using the device in place of crutches or for when they need a break from standing or walking, and don’t need to go far at any one time before plugging in.

I think this device has real potential, but I have no idea what it costs (and that could change my opinion). But for now it is clear it is a solution in search of a problem. So Honda needs to better identify what the problem is that the U3-X is solving before it will gain any traction, and then educate people so that they feel comfortable with it.

Too many companies invent things and feel the need to announce them too early before they find an application where their solution will be more valuable than all existing alternatives. Don’t make this mistake yourself.

But, what do you think? Invention or innovation?

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Innovation Quotes of the Day – April 19, 2012


“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

– Thomas Edison


“Growth and innovation are driven by customer insights discovered through customer observation and conversation.”

– Braden Kelley


“The hardest part of ending, is beginning again.”

– Linkin Park


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Innovation or Invention? – Gyroscopically Stabilized Electric Motorcycle

Innovation or Invention? - Gyroscopically Stabilized Electric MotorcycleI came across the C-1 from Lit Motors in an article by Donna Sturgess over on Innovation Excellence that made me wonder, will this be an invention or an innovation?

As you may know my definition of innovation stresses that a new offering must transform the useful seeds on invention into solutions valued above every existing alternative. An there are lots of existing alternatives in this space including:

  • Bicycle
  • Public Transportation
  • Skateboards and Razr Scooters
  • Smart ForTwo
  • BMW C1 (launched in 2000)
  • Standard Motorcycle
  • Standard Scooter
  • Segway
  • Segway Hands-Free
  • Nissan Leaf (and variants)

Is the gyroscopic stabilization and electric drive enough to distinguish it from some of these other options?

What about at a price of $24,000 – up from earlier estimates of $16,000?

For me there are a couple of key questions. Are they going to try to keep it categorized as a motorcycle or try and get it categorized as a car? And if so, will it survive the car crash safety tests. Although getting it re-classified as a car might make it more accessible (no motorcycle license needed), I have a hard time thinking the greater access would offset the publishing of head on and rear crash test results (and pictures). So, I would place this one in the invention camp – unlikely to reach wide adoption.

What do you think? Invention or innovation?

Is this something that will catch on with commuters around the world?

Build a Common Language of Innovation

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