GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Together we approach the end of 2012. Twelve Twelve Twelve had such a nice ring to it! Then December 14^th broke our collective hearts as we watched the events in Newtown unfold, destroying lives and so much of the joy of the season.

Here we are on December 23^rd, mourning still and picking up the pieces, at least here in America, where mass murder happened (again) in our back yards.

But no matter where we are, and what tragedies and disappointments befall, all can never be lost while we can still find the courage to act. In the face of disappointment and worse, we can still act, and, must act and invoke our best selves to make it, invoking Lennon and McCartney, better, better, better, better. We believe one reason our IX community continues to grow with such vibrancy is that the word innovation is a powerful magnet for the best selves in all of us. The promise of innovation, however you define it, is a more enlightened way forward, especially when we can activate it in the broader conversation and create new irrefutable value.

This year, I’m consumed with a particular conversation inspired by Whitney Johnson, and indeed betting on dreaming as a key to our way forward. We may have to be a little more open and childlike, a little less cynical, to really dream. But this time of year has a certain sweetness to it, and offers the time to pause, reflect, and yes, do some active dreaming. Borrowing from the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Children’s Hour…

“Between the dark and the daylight,
When the light is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupation,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.”

Pause and join me for the webinar interview Innovation Excellence did recently with author Whitney Johnson, whose book, Dare, Dream, Do, is interrupting or better yet, disrupting our notion of the role of dreaming in innovation and in life, and in doing so, challenging us to rethink what dreams mean to us.

Whitney is a deliberate strategist and investor, a big picture thinker who defies easy description. It is no surprise to me that a community is building around her on the HBR blog, on twitter, and in her speeches and classes, as she calls us to deliberately dare to dream fully enough to invest in and reshape our worlds. According to Whitney “it’s our privilege to dream” but we have to first dare to step up and take that privilege.  As the year ends, we invite all of you to step up and claim that privilege for yourselves. The world really needs you.

photo image: whitneyjohnson.com

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

We live ten miles from Newtown, Connecticut. I learned about the horrific event in an email from my friend Kim, mother of three gorgeous little girls who go to school in nearby Danbury, Connecticut, and whose lives, like so many, were forever changed in a single instant of tragedy. My husband, a former high school teacher who’d gone through all the lockdown trainings in our last community, where he coached baseball and was called Mr. Bob everywhere we went, wept at our dinner table last night.

We are all weeping. And we are all collectively watching another senseless tragedy unfold.

Our response is what matters now. We need more better angels.

Earlier this week I interviewed the author Whitney Johnson, whose book Dare, Dream, Do is all about recognizing that our humanity and our greatness lies in claiming our privilege to dream. And then to dare to do something about our dreams. It’s not easy. It takes courage. We either have to repeal the second amendment or do something equally powerful to stem this tide of gun violence.

I believe that one of the things that makes innovators different is that we not only see what’s missing in the world around, we are unafraid to step out and and create to fill the void.

What will we create now? Violence threatens the fabric of all our lives, public and private. The only possible response to Newtown is to act collectively for a solution.

We have to snap out of the comfortable and have the courage to act against violence and to put our arms around the vulnerable, the unstable, the messed up kids and people on the edge and realize that we are all one.

Business Model Innovation, Design Thinking, all the Ted Talks in the world, are the not the answer. They are fuel for the fire but they are not the fire.

There are role models and there are people who are working this issue that we might now need to elevate into the national dialogue with greater urgency. Two such people are Al McMichael and Teny Gross.

Al is the former Sergeant Major of the Marine Corp. He spends every minute he can in the classrooms of disadvantaged communities instilling citizenship. When his foundation works with schools, graduation rates rise and drop out rates fall. After serving for over 30 years in the Marine Corps and at NATO, he lives to serve kids and families. He is a true American hero.

Teny Gross is executive director of the institute for the study & practice of nonviolence (gang prevention, youth development, innovating back to civilization) in Providence, Rhode Island.

He has the peaceful warrior temperament and hard boiled realism to work with gangs and troubled communities and his results are nothing short of amazing.

But they’re only two men, and a true minority of people who are willing to go straight into the breach. Who will go with them? We have have a new kind of breach after yesterday and it’s bigger than the Grand Canyon and it will last for the rest of our lives.

As someone who’s lived with the aftermath of instant tragedy and the weight of shocking irreversible loss, my mothers’ suicide, for 30 years, I can honestly say that the first and most important thing we can do, as we mourn, and after we mourn, is to talk about what just happened and then to take action. I was with a good friend in D.C. this week whose father in law passed away while we were working together. We talked about the unreality of death — until it hits you.

I’ve spent my life filling the void that my mother’s suicide left, and celebrating her loss and life by finding the courage to keep going in seeking and celebrating others’ beauty. It is really the only thing that has helped me become whole and be OK.

I pray that we, especially the we that is the Innovation Excellence tribe of brilliant, courageous people, will make what happened yesterday important enough, meaningful enough, that we will honor the dead and the living everywhere by finding the courage to act against violence. There are role models for how to innovate a response to violence (McMichael, Gross, Janet Benshoof and many others) and there are plenty of reasons, at least 26, who from now on will be our better angels, not to slide back into complacency, and not to forget.

photo image: Andrew Sullivan, Beloblog, Providence.com

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

We love meeting serious roll-up-your sleeves, get-it-done innovators. When Marie Clarke Arturi told us her story about how raising 40 million dollars for medical research inspired her to create buncee, we wanted to share it with you.  With a Madame Curie sense of purpose, CEO Arturi speaks of two strong desires that intersected, and motivated her. Drawn to using the renaissance tools of the web, she wanted to uniquely acknowlede the people she met who are moving science forward. Buncee, Communication through Creation, is the startup that resulted.

Julie Anixter: You have a powerful life story that has informed everything you’ve done for the last 17 years?  Can you share it?

Marie Clarke Arturi: I created buncee LLC®, to be a fun online and mobile digital canvas where users can create interactive multimedia messages to better express themselves across all their social and private networks.

The start of our journey began many difficult years before I was even ready to dream of  buncee, though.  Our family lost one of our daughters, Daniella, to a very rare disease, Diamond Blackfan Anemia (DBA).  To honor her much too short, but remarkable life, we decided to channel our grief into the development of a medical research foundation in her name with the goal of helping to cure this little known disease for the children and families living with DBA. Over the years, the Daniella Maria Arturi Foundation has been very fortunate to help raise millions of dollars for the cause that has not only let us fund individual research projects, but also host several international medical conferences that have helped inspire and multiply research initiatives around the world.

Julie: How did you raise so much money?

Marie: Our family spent years hosting fundraisers in all the traditional ways foundations do – golf tournaments, cocktail receptions, silent auctions, you name it, and we have dedicated personal finances, as well. We also spent time helping people in Congress and within the relevant federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and Center for Disease Control understand the value of rare disease research and the complex and important connections DBA specifically has to other disease areas. We really did our homework and tracked down as many doctors and researchers that may have known about DBA as we could in the beginning. With them, we formed a wonderful team that has grown remarkably over the years. They have helped us articulate to Congress and the agencies the tremendous promise in researching DBA, both for the children and families living with DBA, but also for communities living with other blood disorders, birth defects and cancer. We are grateful that the researchers and health policy experts within the NIH, CDC and Congress agreed with the research potential and that this work is yielding exciting discoveries for each of these disease areas. There is still a lot to do however and we’re thrilled that buncee has come together as a way to give something fun and useful to people to use, while hopefully also helping us raise awareness and funding we need to cure this disease and help other disease communities find their cure, too.

Julie: What is Buncee?

Marie: buncee® is an online content sharing platformand mobile app that helps users create and share their everyday memories, interests, greetings, digital scrapbooks, and business stories in a fun and social way.

To create a ‘buncee’, you simply log on and open your digital buncee canvas where you can grab a background (ours or yours) and add as little or as much multimedia content as you’d like, then share anywhere, via email or by posting across your social networks with just a few clicks.  We provide users with multiple easy-to-use tools to add photos, text, messages or quotes, drawings and online content such as YouTubes, Soundcloud, flickr, Google images and even public Instagram images into a postcard sized buncee, which can be expanded into multiple slides if you like. We also have an iPhone and iPad mobile app, buncee bits, for quick, on-the-go ‘bit’ sized buncee creations.  Click here for video presentation (1:20 sec).

Julie: What kind of innovation does it represent?

Marie: Creative communication. In a time when so many of the outlets we use for communication today, the twitters and facebooks of the world,  have become more and more truncated, we give people an easy tool to say a little more….share a little more…! We’re a group of people that doesn’t think a “happy birthday” post on your wall cuts it. We appreciate the drive toward quick, digital communication, but don’t believe it should limit our personal connection to people, particularly the people we love. It seems to me there are times where we need to say a little more, be a little more personal, get a message across more effectively, and buncee is a tool to do just that. You can mix as much or as little digital content as you like to get your point across and easily share with one person or all “your people” in just a few clicks.

Julie: Why did you start the company?

Marie: It was upon leaving one of our medical conferences, while writing email thank you notes (I know, horrible…) to the amazing doctors and researchers that attend our conferences that the thought came to me.  I wished I had a way to share the picture we took of all our doctors on an attractive background, with the all the personal text I was writing, so that I could create a digital “thank you” that would really feel special to them. Not a canned e-card, but something truly unique, creative and personal – online!  I googled around for something like buncee.com, but there wasn’t anything out there.  I’m happy to say – now there is! We thought that by creating buncee, we could help fill the void for people like me who were searching for a flexible, easy to use platform like this, while also becoming a fun new way to help us raise awareness and funding for our DBA research efforts.

Julie: You’ve just started up a startup!  How do you feel about this?

Marie: I underestimated by a monstrous order of magnitude how challenging this would be. While I have a business background, I’m also a Mom and one that until now has been dedicated to rabidly learning medical lingo and the basics of running a foundation for more than a decade. Embarking upon a tech “start-up” at this stage in my life wasn’t exactly what I anticipated. But, here I am. Living out on the east end of Long Island, NY, on the North Fork, has also presented some challenges as well as some perks. While the “east end” would not be considered a hotbed of technical talent, we were fortunate to discover the wonderful talent that Stony Brook University has within their Computer Science department. With outreach to Stony Brook and other local colleges we began hiring graduates and now have a very talented and energized team. We’ve also benefited from our proximity to NYC where we’ve been able to set up a small satellite office within the very cool shared co-working space at the Alley NYC, which has given us great access to networking and creative talent in the City.

All in all, I’m really proud of where we are as a start-up. I’ve also realized there is a huge upside to doing something like this at an older age.  As you get older, you learn about force multipliers.   You have done enough different things in your life to know that when your team is on the same wavelength… which is when you feel it in your bones that together you can achieve just about anything.  Our medical effort has been somewhat miraculous in this way and I can feel this happening at buncee now, too.  You can feel when energy begins to converge and marvelous things await you.  I’m not trying to sound too “new age” here, but prior to that moment I’ve had to simply…. Stick to it! Stick to it! Stick to it!  That pretty much sums it up.  Don’t get too excited, don’t get too devastated – stay focused and keep going.

Julie: What “job” does Buncee allow people to do?

Marie: buncee allows people to create, share, express themselves and even market their brands in a way that you can’t on other sites right now. As I’d hoped when I was first wishing I had a way to send a more interactive, attractive and personal thank you message to our doc’s following our medical conference, buncee has truly become THE solution that now allows me to get as close as I possibly can to articulating a feeling or a message in this new technological world we find ourselves in.  There is no other platform that allows you to be warm, professional, cute, corny, sophisticated and/or funny in what your email or post quite the way buncee can.  buncee is an outgrowth of your personality – online. We are all, each one of us at different times, silly, professional, poignant, artistic and loving. An “e” site like this needs to accommodate all components of our personalities.

In addition to giving everyday online social users a fun tool to express themselves better, we think buncee will grow into a platform that can help small businesses and not-for-profits that can’t afford expensive web designers and marketing staff by giving them an easy, interactive way to keep in touch with their customers. Whether announcing new products, advocating a cause or sending customizable e-greetings and announcements, these small scale organizations will have the tools to leverage buncee’s customizable canvas, social media integration, embedding functionality, and hyperlink capabilities to expand their reach and engage their customers.  We see an application for the “big companies”, too, where buncee would not only enable the same great product reach initiatives, but would also be a new way for say a Coca Cola to team with a great cause for an advocacy or contest campaign by inspiring their customers to express their support or stories in an interactive way using buncee’s. buncee is also an ideal educational tool, providing students and teachers with a functional and fun alternative for interactive school reports and presentations.  We hope to partner up with a ‘perfect-fit company’ in the future, to offer users a print functionality for their unique buncee creations, as well!

People often say that buncee brings out your creative side, but as my self-proclaimed “no-creative-bone-in-my-body” husband said it best, buncee allows a person that never believed they even had a creative side to become creative.

Julie: What have other people done with Buncee?

Marie: buncee is a site where one person will being using it to create an e-greeting or interactive “I miss you” or “happy birthday”, while others are using it to market their products, make a school project, share memories, create a digital scrapbook of their vacation, or simply share their latest finds from new music and videos, to inspirations, fashion, and DIY tips….

Some are very simple – just a great photo with an inspirational or funny video on a cool background, where others utilize more of the functionality to share their story. People will share a collage of photos and a “happy birthday” youtube with a fun birthday background and messages and post for friends and family birthdays, and others have used it as to amplify their small business marketing. For example, if you’re a realtor, you could use an interactive buncee to help market your homes. In a buncee you can add multiple images of the home, hyperlinks to local community amenities, a youtube with a virtual tour of the property, and any personal text and branding you want, then “email” to specific clients, embed on your website, and post to any social network all within buncee. It’s a ideal as a leveraging tool for businesses in this way in addition to all the fun social uses people are using it for.

Julie: What is your hope for Buncee at the very moment in time?

A: While our buncee “viewers” are growing tremendously, we’re hoping the number of buncee “creators” will begin increasing, as well. We believe that the upcoming holiday season is the perfect opportunity for people to try buncee out!  While there are plenty of great e-card options out there, none have the customization and integration capabilities that we have. We believe the ability to easily upload limitless photos, custom text, videos even, will appeal to people wanting to create more personal e-greetings, whether they’re sending holiday wishes, sharing family stories from the year, or simply sending a fun digital Happy Birthday or Thank You message.  And, while artists and those who are a bit more technically advanced can have a field day with the customization tools on our site, it’s also important to us that those who do not consider themselves “naturally creative or tech-savvy” also have a very easy-to-use tool to create special, personalized e-greetings, as well – buncee provides that.

All in all, as we find our way, we hope buncee remains fun and inspires people to want to say more… and share the love!

Julie: How do you hope buncee will fund DBA?

Marie: Monetization strategies.

We will be working hard to implement a number of monetization strategies, which includes partnering with a print company so that when a buncee user creates a personalized e-greeting, digital scrapbook or “lookbook”, they will have a digital-to-print option.  We also hope to build partnerships with companies and not-for-profit groups seeking new ways to promote their brands, reach new communities, build their outreach and share their stories. We know firsthand how buncee has helped our not-for-profit, from sending out an announcement or sharing stories from our medical research community, buncee has been a terrific tool to have at our fingertips. Ultimately, we hope that buncee becomes wildly popular and whether through any of these monetization strategies or by selling it to a company that can take buncee to even greater heights, we hope we’ll generate funding that will allow us to fund, fund, fund, the DBA research we need to find a cure!

Julie: What has surprised you?

Marie: Many things have surprised us, but one we’ve been particularly delighted by is viewing the fun back and forth when people are “commenting” on each other’s public buncee’s.

Other things that have surprised us is how challenging this space is…. how high the bar is held and how quickly that changes. And, what users need in order to give you their most precious resource – their time!

image credit: buncee.com

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Jobs is the big issue in the upcoming U.S. election.  ‘It’s the economy stupid‘ isn’t stupid, and whoever wins the U.S. presidency will face the same “hard stubborn facts” as Arianna Huffington calls them:

• “The worst recession of our life time
• Ballooning debt
• Stagnant job growth
• An anemic global economy
• Some people giving up on getting jobs
• Congress working together a distant memory

As one of my favorite people said to me last week…”don’t quote me but we’re screwed.”

The language of  fear and uncertainty dominates the political discussion because fear is a natural tool of elections,  and it’s much easier to incite it then to offer up thoughtful solutions to intractable problems.  Glass half-empty national fear — no matter what country you live in — powers a vicious circle of lowered consumer and corporate confidence to spend, invest, hire, and…imagine.

Imagine what?  Imagine where growth will come from.  The espoused solution coming out of both the U.S. Republican and Democratic conventions sounded sort of like “Trust us to deal with this mess.”

But when we talk to business leaders about their view of the way out of this, the calculus goes like this:  “The public sector can make a bigger impact with the right policies, but even in the worst recessions great companies have been born, launched and sustained.   So great leaders — whether corporate or startups — can make a bigger contribution — through bringing great products and services to the marketplace that people want and that create value — through innovation.”

And that’s the hard part.  At the heart of innovation lies the will to make very personal and consequential leadership decisions.  At P&G, American Airlines and Pepsi, on Wall Street, in startups, studios and incubators, and on Main Street’s dry cleaners, deli’s and daycare centers, the CEO’s or business owners have to make decisions about where to invest, where to place bets, and how to balance those investments with cuts.   She has to gather the facts and then trust her gut.  It’s painful arithmetic, a hard process that requires the highest blend of leadership art and science, and hopefully a moral compass that is the antithesis of greed.   From our vantage point, particularly from ongoing conversations with seasoned corporate executives and Innovation Excellence editors like Dean DeBiase, Kay Cameron, Jane Stevenson and Donna Sturgess we believe we need to turn up the dial. We need more!  We need more decisive action to invest in innovation from the C-suite and the board rooms around the world.  It’s been our theme for a while and it will continue unabated — as you’ll see in Paul Hobcraft and Jeffrey Phillips’ series this week.

While the mess is sadly real, there is one very heartening trend that we’re observing as the drumbeat for CEO action gets louder, and it is this –  better data driven tools are emerging, and a new discipline that uses them is springing up. CEO’s have always depended upon data.  What we’re seeing now is a new acceptance of new approaches to data visualization as a platform for the agile decision making required for innovating.

To wit:  as Greece makes decisions about its shall I stay or shall I go currency, 24/7 war rooms have sprung up at banks around the world to track the action, ready to institute new currency platforms and pathways overnight.  As the federal government and its vast network of suppliers deal with the darkness that is cyber-terrorism, the requirement to visualize that which cannot be easily seen has become pro forma.    It’s become more common for a leader to say — “show me the analysis — on one page.”   The German behemoth SAP even has a Chief Imagineer.  An imagineer!  Who do they think they are,  Disney?

Well actually, that’s the point.  Imagineering with data might just be the code-breaker in this economy.  Isn’t it ironic that the very bane of our current existence, information overload, is spawning its inverse – the diamond-like beauty of data, interpreted with mastery for impact.  In the past year we have talked to, interviewed, and seen emerge a new class of businesses and inventors who are using data in mind-bendingly visual ways to tell stories, to make complexity comprehensible, to forecast future scenarios, and help CEO’s see.  And after they see, to have the guts to bet on, and make, hugely complex decisions.   Decisions that might just get us out this mess.

Up for Some Action?

For a preview of this brave new world you might want to check out the Big Data Innovation Summit, in Boston this coming week and in Dublin in October.   It’s a sign of the times that information scientists from NASA to Zynga will be convening, and Innovation Excellence will be there covering it for you.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

Tiffany Shlain is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of  the international Webby Awards. Tiffany directed the acclaimed documentary CONNECTED: an Autobiography about Love, Death & Technology and the LET IT RIPPLE series. She creates disruptive innovation in the way she makes films and the way she uses social media itself to further global conversations about the digital age in the 21st century. 
  Her work is exploding globally, currently translated into 65 languages, and her newest film ENGAGE will premiere on Saturday September 8th in Los Angeles at the Interdependence Day Celebration 2012.

Julie Anixter: We loved your documentary film, Connected, which is about why people have the desire to connect and what it means for our world today. Your goal is to start conversations about what it means to be interdependent in the 21st century, and your approach to making films models that message. You are now curating and collaborating with other people and filmmakers in a very different way. Is that what you mean when you talk about Cloud Filmmaking?

Tiffany Shlain: Yes! Cloud Filmmaking is our way of bridging people and ideas across the world. We use the cloud to source creative content — video, artwork, photographs, etc. — then edit it together to create impactful and educational films that are then customized for free and given back to the individuals and organizations that helped to create them. All of the films from our Let it Ripple: Mobile Film for Global Change Short film series are collaboratively created, collaboratively translated, and collaboratively customized. By translating these films into as many languages as possible, we are able to make the films even more global.  We have a Cloud Filmmaking Manifesto on our site where anyone can learn more. This could be interesting for your online global community — to understand how we use mobile technologies in new ways to make films in new ways.

Each of our films, starting with our feature documentary Connected, have focused on triggering important conversations about what it means to be connected in this digital age. Our new film Engage, which we premiered yesterday at the Los Angeles Interdependence Day celebration, is about the importance of engaging in society. Our next film, Brain Power, looks at new research from Harvard and The University of Washington on how to best develop children’s brains and links this new research to ideas on how to best develop the global brain of the Internet. This film will be released in October along with a TED Book.

We are in a period of great creativity – and the Cloud makes it so much easier to create.  This new film series takes the innovative ideas we started to propose in Connected and puts them into play with filmmaking social activism, and communication.

Julie: Tell us about the innovation that Connected represents.

Tiffany: Connected really looks at the history of connectedness in the 21st century.  It starts in the beginning of civilization.  It asks the question “why do we have this desire to connect?”  What is that desire based in?  I use a very personal story to crack open that subject. The film then moves through history, exploring the world and what happens as we all become more connected – the good, the bad, and the potential.  At the end of the film we ask what will it look like when everyone on the planet is online? What is the potential, what do we need to be mindful of, and what’s the “bad”? We mostly focus on how innovative ideas can come from various perspectives to tackle the biggest problems of the world… the potential is endless.

Connected premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011, screened in movie theaters all over the country and received great reviews. It also got selected by the U.S. State Department as one of 19 documentary films from the last decade representing the culture of the United States as part of the 2012 American Film Showcase.  I was honored that Connected was selected to kick off the Showcase in South Africa this summer.  Connected will also screen in Russia and Thailand this fall and many other countries in the coming year.  Really, we never just saw it as a film; it was always a bigger trigger for a deeper conversation about connecting in the 21st century.

Our “worldwide host a screening tour” allows anyone to host their own screening, and our discussion kit, that helps guide post-screening conversations for hosts and educators, features the DVD of the film, a book, conversation cards, curriculum, and a free, interactive mobile app. We published these kind of companion pieces to go with the film that allow you, or any group you’re part of, to delve deeper into the issue — whether you work at a company or whether you want to explore it personally, globally, or a myriad of ways.

Incidentally, the last line of the film was “After centuries of declaring independence, perhaps it’s time to finally declare our interdependence!” This line, in essence, launched our foray into Cloud Filmmaking and the Let it Ripple series was born!

Julie: Wow.

Tiffany: From that last line, we thought, “let’s put the potential of all this innovation into practice.” We know that 2 billion people have cell phones, and we make films. We began looking at how to make films with people from all over the world. So, we rewrote the Declaration of Independence to create A Declaration of Interdependence. We posted it on the Internet, and invited people with cell phones or over the web to send us artwork and videos of themselves reciting the Declaration. We received amazing entries, from each continent.  We cut it all together to create our first four-minute Let it Ripple movie that premiered at Interdependence Day last year in New York.

As a filmmaker, some of my other films that have done very well, and at most they were translated into seven languages. This would be done over the course of being three years out in film festivals.  To compare, within six weeks, our four-minute film, Declaration, was “volunteer translated” by people from all over the world into 65 languages!

Julie: Amazing.

Tiffany: That is just so huge.  I couldn’t believe that our message could be translated into so many languages within a few weeks.

Julie: I love that you were surprised!  You know, I think I told you we connect to people in 175 countries, so you may see an increase in your numbers after this launch.  I hope our community will take you up on your offer. Will you tell us more about your newest work?

Tiffany: Yes! Well, we mentioned yesterday’s premiere of Engage, the second in the Let it Ripple series. It’s a two minute film… a ‘big picture’ inspiration about the importance of engaging in the world. Starting today, we’re offering free customized versions for any organization that wants to use it for the purpose of making the world better from where they stand, through engagement.

Tiffany: Yes, totally free! Individuals and organizations can request a free customized film on our website. We’ll include the organization’s call-to-action, logo, and URL.   To-date, in one year, we’ve already made 100 free customized versions of our first film for organizations all over the world.

We understand that so many organizations do great and important work in the world, and yet they don’t have exciting media to engage people.  Now, with the Internet, organizations can use emotionally engaging video to help encourage people to act. Through the Let it Ripple series, non-profit organizations now have access to free films that can be used for fundraising or to enhance the communication of their message or mission.

Julie: I love what you said about how many great organizations just don’t have good media. They don’t have the budgets or the wherewithal to develop it and that’s a huge issue for their outreach and advocacy.  It’s just radical of you to be creating media that anyone can co-brand and re-purpose.   You – your project – has declared your interdependence by teaching others, by showing someone else that they too can innovate, and this is part of our mission in the world.

Tiffany: We love doing this work.

Julie: We heard you just received a Disruptive Innovation Award from the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival for your filmmaking. First, congratulations…that’s a big honor. Tell us why you think they gave it to you.

Tiffany: Thank you.  It meant so much to me and my team at the Moxie Institute. We received the award because of the way we’re approaching filmmaking and using the Cloud to make it a global participatory medium. We did it with our feature documentary Connected, and then with the Declaration of Interdependence and Engage. We just came out with a free mobile app for our Connected film, which is an innovative in the film space.  At my film studio, we are always thinking of new ways to reach people and to inspire discussions about the important issues of our day.

Julie: What’s the next big issue you’re tackling?

Tiffany: In October, we have another movie coming out called Brain Power. Brain Power looks at how to best nurture the brain and how to best nurture the global brain of the Internet.  And simultaneously, with its release, there will be a TED Book that will expand upon all the subjects we tackle in the film. This is a new book series by the TED conferences – you know TED…

Julie Anixter: But of course!  Who doesn’t!

Tiffany: So the same day that we release Brain Power the film, we’ll simultaneously launch the TED eBook that will feature videos, links to talks, music and other ways to really expand on the film’s main ideas.  This is going to be another really different approach to releasing a film–inviting people to delve deeper into issues for themselves.

Julie Anixter: Well, I think that our global community is going to be  thrilled and feel very lucky to be able to connect to these tools.

Tiffany: The big picture is all about encouraging conversations through our films, discussion guides, eBooks, mobile apps and our other tools.  The second part would be, to literally engage, and this would be requesting a free customized ending of our film.

Julie Anixter: Okay, I got it, ideally it’s a one-two punch.

Tiffany: Yes.  We’d like organizations to have the foundation.

Julie Anixter: I want to ask you one more question.  I see you fueled like a speeding bullet train, in your desire to open up this conversation about connectedness, and I want to ask you again…. why?

Tiffany: Well, in 1996 I founded the Webby Awards, during the Web’s infancy. It’s presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences; which includes a 1,000-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, visionaries and creative celebrities, and other Internet professionals.

So, I’ve spent the first part of my career, nearly a decade of my life leading The Webby Awards — looking at the Web’s impact and implications, the pioneers of the Web, and how the Web is changing the way we live.  Also, people are using technology to connect faster and faster today and it’s changing every aspect of our lives, yet we’re not taking a moment to have a bigger conversation about what it means — what’s the good, what’s the bad, and what’s the potential. So now I run my film studio full time and make films coupled with using the internet to engage people new ways.  But The Webby Awards are such an important part of my life.

Julie:  Yes.  And btw we’ve heard about those 5-word Webby acceptance speeches too!

Tiffany: Yes, we instituted the 5-word speeches in year one and no one ever goes over–even to this day. Love that! The Webby’s continue to shed light on the best of the web, which as we all know is changing the way we do everything so rapidly. I think as a society, we are all moving so quickly, and it’s important that we take a moment to have a bigger conversation. A real conversation about what’s the good, what’s the bad and what’s the potential. There is so much good, but there are also some things that are not so great…like being distracted all the time. One day a week I completely unplug with my family, and that’s been really profound for me.  I talk about this in my work and in the films too, which is to say that all this technology is amazing but don’t let it supersede those important, real life interactions.

Julie: Yes, I think a lot of us are feeling this way.

Tiffany: I encourage people to take a moment to explore how technology can be great for their company, their organization, their personal life, etc. and then think about what does it take away and what can be done about it. Lastly, and this is the fun part, where can this all lead? What is the potential for innovation?  What’s the potential for humanity? What tools need to be made? What do we need to be thinking about as we move forward?

Julie: The reason I find your films so compelling for innovators is that in my own work, I continue to see this schism between, on the one hand the people who are dying to innovate, the brave ones or the brave companies who are taking risks; but on the other hand, the huge number of companies and people stuck and afraid and not wanting to risk the business or jobs they have and fail.  Or the more cynical ones will say, “Innovation, isn’t that a buzz word?”  Recently, a lawyer who works on intellectual property said to me, “Innovation, that’s not something you do, that’s something you respond to.” That’s indicative of what many people think – that innovation is only created by a privileged and lucky elite. What I love about what you’re doing is that you’re giving people all over the world an opportunity to co-create with you.

So, as we close, specifically how can our community engage with you?

Tiffany: There are three ways.  First, any of your readers or community members that would like to host a screening of Connected can contact us at Host Your Own Screening page.  Secondly, we’d love to have Engage translated by your audience for use in their countries. Details are available on the Get Involved tab of our website. Finally, because our mission is to start these conversations, we will work with your community to customize versions of Engage or A Declaration of Interdependence for non-profit organizations. Here is more information about film customization for organizational use.

Visit Connectedthefilm.com to see the trailer and learn how to host a screening, Like Connected on Facebook and follow Tiffany Shlain on Twitter @tiffanyshlain.
image credit: stefan nadelman

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

As we get ready at Innovation Excellence for the Back End of Innovation (Oct 9-11, Boston) I’ve been reflecting on the role that conferences play in innovation, the way they offer intense communities of interest, and the multitude of ways that they have caused, provoked and spring-boarded innovations in my life, and the lives of everyone I know. How? Well, if it weren’t for the memes of social media, this piece would be called the Seven People I’ve Met at Conferences that Changed My Life. Good conferences are petri dishes for relationships that inspire and nurture your work, your imagination and your willingness to push beyond your comfort zone.  They are fuel.   And they are fun.   Like a good TV Drama, they’re highly curated experiences – with a narrative arc all their own, serving up people who want to share their own personal bests via speaking, curation or attending.   At best they’re a Corporate Burning Man that produces a very different kind of environment then your daily workplaces   As such they make the perfect place to submerge your team or CEO for a day or two, because they won’t leave without having their molecules rearranged.  Ask Joe Dyer who now runs strategy for iRobot.  I watched him do it in Norfolk with 300 Navy and Marine brass.  It can happen.

When you can feel a hundred or thousand other minds exploring and breathing life into a critical issue, it ignites (and I know this in my bones) the neural network of creative empathy and energizes own explorations.   I have literally gone for a whole decade on the inspired steam of one experience at one conference, one client found, one line uttered (see Tom Peters, Council on Foreign Relations below), or one friend made.

Here then goes a brief hopscotch through the past three decades and a scratch on the surface of the fun and learning that has been foundational to my courage to take risks and push the next idea through.

My hope is that it will inspire and encourage you to join us for the expert mash up at the Back End of Innovation or turn and go to the next conference when you need, want or are simply ready for some powerful, actionable inspiration. We all know that the work of doing innovation, creating, and making any kind of new product, service or model happen, and then sustaining it is very very hard work.  Especially in this economy.  It takes tremendous patience, will, humor agility, and fortitude. For me, going to conferences has evolved into a strategic choice about how and where to invest my discretionary time, because as I’m about to testify, anything (important) can and will happen when you show up.

1. You May Discover Your Tribe, and Tribes Help You Grow – Anixter Intl. Conferences

In my 20’s, I had the privilege of attending Anixter Intl’s worldwide managers’ conferences, along with hundreds of other entrepreneurial hopefuls. It was my first exposure to the tribe of wire & cable daredevils and the Great Corporate Meeting where sales and operations and engineers came together with a sole purpose – to GROW. And grow we did. Without living through decades of those 15 to 25% growth years, it is near impossible to explain to anyone who wasn’t there the drumbeat of eloquence, entertainment and motivation that Ray Geraci pounded into 3 days. Because I sat at his knee and stayed up all night planning, then partying, then attending those meetings from sunrise on, the Anixter tribe became my tribe, and those conferences set the tone for our culture. I belonged, along with thousands of others, to something we believed in. Those conferences kept a vision of what we stood for palpably ALIVE and as result I poured my soul into my tribe for 15 years.   The business grew,  and I grew every day as we cycled through 3, 4, 5 business models globally.  It was totally worth it.

2. You Validate What’s Possible by Seeing It in Others – Conference Board’s Management Development Conference

As a young training director I needed to learn from peers and professionals, not just professors. At the Conference Board’s Management Development Conference I sat in the audience and listened to the eminence gris,  John Adamoli, head of a Martin Marietta division, share in stunning detail how they’d transformed the culture from frozen hierarchy to high performing participatory shared-decision-making team. He helped usher in the era of Kaizen and Total Quality Manufacturing. As an encore, I encountered a woman who would later ensure that I’d meet my life-changers Sally Helgesen and Tom Peters.   Nancy Badore, then head of executive development for Ford, gave a detailed description of how she facilitated the then CEO’s meetings as a true give and take and opportunity for dialogue. She made me sit up and realize that conversation was a physical tool, to be wielded as easily as a magic marker, and could be used to make leadership accountable. Nancy would later introduce me to Celemi and Klas Mellander who set me (and Maga Design) on the course to make maps. It was my first business conference and one of the best.
3. You’re Exposed to People’s Life Work – Systems Thinking Conference

While seeking to explore the MIT Systems Thinking thinking, I heard fmr. Royal Dutch Shell head of planning Arie de Geuss talk about their work in scenario planning around the 1970’s oil crisis, and the research that became his book, The Living Company. The findings in his research and talk were the culmination of his life’s work – he was committed to help Shell understand what it takes for a company to live more than 100 years, to be sustainable for the human race, and the man himself, were so profound that they entered my nervous system and have never, to this day, ever left.  In summary he found that companies that lived more than 100 years changed their lines of business, fully, at least once. His research and grounded wisdom have given me (any many others) the key to the courage to sell and embrace change with his very well grounded research as a guide.

4.  Your Wildest Creative Nature Gets a Shove in the Right Direction

When my friend Joan Steel invited me to a Chicago Council on Foreign Relations lunch featuring business author Tom Peters speaking I had no real expectations. Little did I know I would hear him utter the line that set my heart and career on fire: “If half of the people working for you aren’t weird, you’re in trouble.” They were, and I wasn’t (in trouble.) In fact, I was on to something big.   I went back to my rainbow coalition of diverse, crazy, incredibly smart, beautifully technical types (embodied in Louis Stankaitis, Jeff Starzec, Diane Lanigan) who made up the Anixter Global Training & Learning Systems team and we continued to experiment like crazy.   It prepared me for the moment when I’d meet Jerry Miller, CEO of Wyncom’s Lessons in Leadership, at, a conference, and he hired me to work for Tom Peters as his product developer.   Life works in mysterious ways and people who want to connect mysteriously show up at conferences.

5. Your Standards Get Challenged and Raised

When Col. Herb Harback called and invited me to the US Army’s National Security Seminar because I was Roger Schank’s grad student, I could not know that (in no particular order) I would fail to bring my wallet and sense of protocol to the no-host dinner, and thereby launch a decades-long teasing rant by said Col. Harback…and that I’d also see first hand the War College’s simulation center, and not only really understand the power of simulations for the first time but learn volumes about how the Army fed continuous simulation data to commanders in real time hot spots, or hear General John Nash talk about using economic development strategies to stand down the ethnic conflicts in Bosnia, or sit at dinner with the Commandant, General Richard Chilcoat, who had been Colin Powell’s aide, and talk about the importance of storytelling to a learning culture. Was the Army really more creative and curious than all my corporate counterparts?  Roger that. It was my first exposure to the US Military’s culture and ethos of continuous learning, experimentation and lean innovation. I have held every other organization since to its standards, and mine were raised that week indelibly. Find any veteran or active duty military you can buy coffee for (or better yet hire) and you’ll see for yourself.

6. You Meet Life Changing Clients Who Become Friends and More – Fast Company, Philadelphia.

When we interviewed Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance this week (and we met him at a conference – MediaBistro’s Social curation summit, too!) he said that “we get to know each other through our interests.”  I now have the great pleasure of working with visual mapping gurus Scott and Rebecca Williams at Maga Design in Washington, DC.

At Fast Company’s 2000 Philly conference I spoke about our interests and work at the Tom Peters Company on “Brand Inside.”   Tom was his usual 5 minutes ahead on the powerful and intimate relationship between corporate brands and personal aspirations/talent aka brands and cultures that absorb that lesson about talent, too.  One of the people in my session was a young, highly original thinker and Navy civilian named Scott Williams. At the time he was Deputy CIO of Desktop Apps at Naval Aviation (imagine that job and you’ll get a sense of his wiring.)   He’d been studying Tom Peters in his Navy Exec Development program and afterwards and over a few short months before 9-11 he began a conversation with me that changed my career, my fortunes, my friendships, my travel schedule, and my life.  He was at the conference at the behest of his leadership, primarily three-star Admiral Joseph L. Dyer, who ran the business of Naval Aviation for the Navy, and had a storied career that included leading Test Pilot school and many other less public but equally noteworthy accomplishments, and Susan Keen Dyer, who was the CIO and head of operations. They were struggling with a serious alignment problem among 12 far flung bases and 22,ooo people. The consequences were potentially life threatening to the fleet and as such had real implications for national security. They brought us, the Tom Peters Company in to help. Don’t forget Tom was a Navy Seabee in his civil/mechanical engineering days. They brought me into their community of interest. I brought them into mine. We worked it. We devised a strategy to get the command aligned.  One of the tools we used early and often were maps – roadmaps, visual maps, co-created maps,  pre-info-graphic-craze maps.  All of these maps were directly inspired, in an important nod to linneage, by Klas Mellander and his Swedish company, Celemi.   (I learned how to make maps from Klas at a Ford Exec Development session Nancy Badore held – who’d I met at the first business conference I ever attended.)   May the circle be unbroken.   May you learn and connect with every step you take.  Conferences just help you do it faster.

7. You Can Learn from Your Role Models Live and In Person – Crave Conference, San Francisco

It turns out that meeting your heroes can be much more exciting and disquieting than reading their books. When Tom Peters, IDEO’s Tom Kelley and (then SiegleGale, now PopTech’s) Andrew Zolli and I launched the Crave (Design) conference in 2000, Andrew Zolli led us to Peter Lawrence who led us to Robyn Waters, VP of Trend and Design at Target at that time as a potential sponsor.   I called her from a cab on the way to the Chicago Zoo, and she actually agreed to sponsor the conference on the spot, but only because she was reading BOTH Tom’s at the time and quoted them back to me from an article she had on her desk.  Call in Synchronicity or what you will – but the conference made the meeting possible and the meeting made the next couple years very special.

And though we couldn’t quite get the white and red bullseye flower arrangements she requested to work, she became a dazzlingly important friend and co-conspirator and we got to hear first hand how she dealt with being tossed the very first Target-Goes-Hero Designer, Philippe Starck line to market and promote.   Robyn became an important influence on everything new thing we did at the Tom Peters Company, a person to test new ideas, new products, and new plans with and get no-nonsense incredibly valued and valuable litmus-like feedback.   She remains to this day, zooming around somewhere in the Southwest, on her motorcycle, that platinum hair flying, an Icon Woman when it comes to Innovation, Trend and Design, capital I, capital T, capital D.   Simply put, for us at the Tom Peters Company circa 2,000, no Crave Conference, no Robin. End of story. Period.

I could not end this piece, this testimony to the power of innovation va community via conference-going, without honoring one more person we met at the Crave Conference. Tom Kelley brought in Jerry Hirshberg, the CEO and founder of Nissan Design, and designer of the orginal Round II redesign of the Z.  Jerry’s singular career, and work, and deliberate and brilliant approach to building a creative and value-creating company are described in great detail in his book Creative Priority and reflected in the X-Terra and everything Nissan has done since. As a Designer-as-CEO he just had that kind of impact. If you haven’t read the Creative Priority, and you’re trying to create or innovate or just need a mega dose of real world and practical inspiration, don’t do anything else but go directly to Amazon and buy it.   Jerry’s book, and Jerry’s life at Nissan Design, and his ability to tell the story of how they did it so simply and directly will affect the way you work.  And if you want to see what a post Nissan Design life looks like, check out Jerry’s amazing bamboo paintings.  I know because it happened to me (see chapter on Creative Abrasion for details.) Stay tuned for that story in the next installment.

Now.  Go to a conference.  It’s good for your next project.   It’s good for your team and collaboration – heck, go together.  It’s good for the economy.   And, it’s very good for your creative heart and soul.

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

We like profiling innovators who are helping to give birth to new industries. I had the chance to talk to one of them yesterday – Robert Rodriguez, who served more than twenty-two years as a Special Agent with the United States Secret Service. He founded the Security Innovation Network^TM (SINET) to advance innovation and enable global collaboration between the public and private sectors to defeat cyber security threats. Today, SINET is a multifaceted platform that serves as the catalyst that connects builders, buyers, researchers and investors in the cyber security domain. – Julie Anixter, Executive Editor

Julie: Robert, where is innovation investment needed most urgently?  The public conversation often revolves around infrastructure, education, economic development, healthcare, and technology.  Yet, tying together, and lurking underneath all of these vast industries is cyber.  And you and SINET are creating awareness that it’s there that we are most vulnerable and that’s why innovative collaboration between the private and public sectors is needed.

Robert: Yes. New models are needed to advance the security field. If there is one word to describe SINET, it is: connector.

Julie: One of the things that I find so interesting about your organization, having spent a little time around it, is how much of an ecosystem you have built and how you conceptualized SINET (the Security Innovation Network) as an ecosystem from the beginning.

Robert: It just made sense to be a catalyst and connect the ecosystem of the entrepreneur; venture capitalists, investment bankers, law firms, academics and the buyers; industry, government and the system integrators. Innovation in its most simplistic form is really about having awareness that it even exists, and we raise awareness between these disparate groups.

Julie: Robert,  you come out of the US Government.  You were an executive in the Secret Service. How and why did you start SINET?

Robert: When I came out to Silicon Valley 12 years ago, I was tasked by the Director of the Secret Service to run the operations for Northern California and also create and build the first Electronic Crimes Task Force. This is really a public/private partnership that was mandated by congressional law… and a couple of things struck me.

Number one, I fell in love with the entrepreneurial spirit of Silicon Valley.  I saw an opportunity to make a difference and to build a community of interest and trust, centered around cyber-security as the theme.  At that time, private industry typically self-healed meaning if they had pain or issues they wouldn’t call the law enforcement community.  One of the main objectives of the Task Force was to build trust that would lead to information sharing, and could build and lead to investigations in collaboration with private industry.

Wells Fargo, Cisco, EBay, Visa, McKesson, Schwab—these are just some of the people that we met as a law enforcement entity and to this day, the Secret Service and I still continue with those relationships, and all are based on one word “trust.”  So we can see the power of one, right?  I mean, one, two people started this and now I think there’s probably 40 task forces around the world modeled after really that New York Task Force that Bob Weaver started in late 1990s.

Julie: It’s interesting that you say ‘the power of one’ because that’s exactly what I wanted to ask you next.  You left the Secret Service and immediately founded SINET.

Robert: Right.

Julie: And as one person who retired from a government job and an important job, you stepped immediately into an entrepreneurial role —  trying to bridge communities that hadn’t had a lot to do with each other, in a threat area that not a lot of people understand.  Where did you get the courage or ability to take the entrepreneurial risk?  Because I think a lot of people, especially people who have been in government for a long time, find that risky.

Robert: I completely rebooted and became an entrepreneur focused on giving entrepreneurs a voice.  But if I really examined myself and my career and even as a policeman before Secret Service, I was always an entrepreneur, I just didn’t know it! I think what happens when you work within a bureaucratic environment that’s very structured and doesn’t embrace risk or failure or exploration readily, you kind of are pushed into a lane and if you go outside that track, you sometimes get spanked back into it.  So it’s a more risk adverse, structured mission focused for a good reason.  Or, let’s take it to another extreme with the war fighter—there is no option for failure.  There’s mission readiness, mission assurance, a dependency on legacy systems, that drives risk adversity.

On the other side, if you took a picture of Google and laid it next to the Pentagon, where, for a good reason, there’s no option for failure.  Google embraces failure but in a ‘fail quick and move forward’ mode, and learn from it and adapt, and be innovative and take the risk.  You have two different cultures and so it’s interesting that my background comes from that structured government environment to now– almost the opposite where I evangelize the importance of: open innovation models, collaboration, reinvigoration of the public/private partnerships and encourage reevaluating risks differently to embrace change, lead change, and not being afraid of change.

Julie: When you talk about not being afraid of change,  I think there’s maybe a lot more change going on in cyber threats than most people know about.  I mean, can you, without scaring us half to death, paint a picture?  You’re obviously very focused on how serious the threat is, and how well the business community really understands it.

Robert: I think you have to frame it like this— if you think about homicide you see a dead body, a burglary you see broken glass, maybe there’s blood, but there’s an effect on the psyche of a person, the visual experience that can impact you.

But Cyber can be anonymous.  You can’t see the pain.  You wake up in the morning and your computer looks the same but it’s really not the same anymore.  So there’s a lack of awareness on the visual front, and then there’s also a lack of awareness on the threat. I am referring to the frequency and sophistication of attacks, the vulnerabilities to our systems as we continue to proliferate with mobile devices and applications, business process tools; everything from toasters to refrigerators to platforms and servers, and everything in between.  We become a world of innovation and technology, which is good right?  Innovation, in its most simplistic form, is to better society but with that can come a lot of risk.

It’s almost like the Oklahoma Land Rush or the Gold Rush.  It was the risk takers that saw the opportunity and went out to obtain the treasures. However, with that comes bears and bad guys right?

Julie: What are the implications for innovators?

Robert: There’s so much that needs to be done. Everything is really about shareholder value and dollars. Security is an afterthought because security is viewed as a cost center, or as a burden to the speed of the efficiency of overall business, and the outcome of capturing consumers and the competitive spirit of America.

So you can see that there are many factors here that play into this, including a general lack of awareness.  However, on the positive side, let’s talk about what’s happening on Capitol Hill—the 65 bills, at least.  I think five years ago there might have been less than 1/3 of that.  I’m disappointed frankly that the Cyber Security Act of 2012 did not pass and that’s another topic I can talk about later.  But the emergent acquisition market is the hottest out there in cyber.  The research and development dollars from the government are either a flat-line or up.  The budgets have not been cut in cyber at DOD or DHS and other entities within the government.  They’re either flat-line or plus up.  The war is winding down and the system integrators are building innovation centers and they’re actually exploring outside their neighborhood.  They’re partnering with the early state emerging companies.  In some cases they’ve made some acquisitions, which really aren’t things that they do a lot.  Also, the entrepreneurs, the early state emerging growth companies, are going to the Beltway.  They are exploring the government opportunity, and venture capitalists are encouraging this move. Where before they said, “Hey, that’s a sale cycle we can’t afford; stay away from the government.”  Private equity firms are now becoming involved.

Julie: So cyber security is really a true growth industry and a job creation engine?

Robert: Absolutely and let me just give you kind of an example of the opportunity in terms of the 18 critical infrastructures deemed by Department of Homeland Security: banking, finance, oil, gas, water transportation, etc.  They’re relatively stove-piped. Some go up and down in those stove-pipes but also go underneath as the underpinnings.  It’s one thing for Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers to go down, that’s painful; but if energy, IT or telecom go down, it is catastrophic because of the dependency on that.

If you think about IT, telecom, energy –  more than ever –  all the infrastructures embedded in this now is cyber security.  Cyber security is essentially becoming a horizontal/vertical market which really increases the expansion of the need and the opportunity and therefore, the investment.

Julie: You’ve got an Innovation Summit in Chicago this Thursday.  What will go on there?  What kind of action happens in a summit like that?

Robert: If you think about SINET and what it represents, one word—it’s a connector.  The Summit connects the investors, the builders, the buyers, the researchers.  It connects communities.  We started off in Silicon Valley.  Stanford was strategically selected; it’s a center of innovation, entrepreneurialism.  The next one was in D.C.—the Beltway—and we brought innovation in terms of highlighting companies. You were there two years ago when we put innovation entrepreneurs onstage. At Stanford we put the government on stage.  We try to always bring uniqueness to a community.

A good example is the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Five years ago I was there with Doug Maughan  who is the Divison Director for DHS S&T Cyber and a big supporter and sponsor of our events. I was highly impressed with the intellectual capacity and the infrastructure and the history there: Marc Andreessen came out of there; Larry Ellison came out of there—and I felt the jets with the entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and investment bankers were flying over the cornfield.

Within 240 miles of Urbana-Champaign are some tremendous centers of excellence of academia.  I have seen this before when you bring the practitioner and the theory together to create centers of excellence in a collaboration on research, and there’s a missed opportunity.  So when I was talking to Doug Maughan we decided that we should bring the model to the Midwest. The message that we want to deliver is the importance of the collaboration between industry, government and academia, and leverage those great minds out there. It’s just a missed opportunity if we don’t take advantage of that.

Industry has hard problems, government has hard problems.  If you look at the history of the greatest public/private partnership in the history of America, the Manhattan Project and look at how we leveraged great minds, and industry was involved.  It was global in the sense that Canada and U.K. were part of it. If you look at the history of Silicon Valley, it was really built by the government. Stanford EE Department was funded by the government. primarily NSA and DOD, Frederick Terman the Father of Silicon Valley led that initiative.  In ‘58, Shockley and Fairchild semiconductor companies were born.  Sixty-five, semiconductor companies ensued after this birth, venture capital got involved in the early ‘60s and ‘70s.  Apple went public in ‘80.  In the late ‘70s policy got involved and capital gains tax was moved to 50%.  The Valley took off.

But if you think about Silicon Valley today, no one thinks of the government.  They don’t think of that bureaucratic entity.  They think of Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc.  So I think in Chicago, and I could be wrong, I’m not a native there, but it seems to me, just from my perspective that it depended on its legacy, industrial and manufacturing period that took them to where they are today.  They didn’t reboot and embrace the digital knowledge age the way that Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and Austin had done in the past, but Chicago has done a great job of ramping up fast with support of entrepreneurial programs within social media, digital etc.

The spirit and atmosphere that I feel and see when I’m in Chicago is powerful.

Julie: So what are you hoping will happen this week at the Cyber Security Innovation Summit?

Robert: A couple of  things. It’s a strategically designed group of people.  For example, the Head of Research for Department Defense, Dr. Stephen King, will be there.  The Head of Homeland Security, S&T for Cyber, Dr. Mann—Head of Research Development for Cyber will be there.  His boss, the Undersecretary of S&T at DHS, Dr. Tara O’Toole will be there.  Pat Mouio, one of the leading Heads of NSA’s Research for Cyber will be there.

I’m hoping that they’ll meet some of the academics in the room and some of the people that are relevant to research and development at the cyber domain and that there’s a connect, and that maybe down the road there’s some funding on critical research. Maybe it’s just some of the corporations are in the room that are doing something that’s interesting to DHS or DOD or NSA, or some of the small business community leaders, the entrepreneurs are doing something that’s interesting to Pat at NSA.  That’s one thing.  That’s the collaboration that I’m there to evangelize. The importance of that message is to reinvigorate the public/private partnership model to lead change, to embrace change and not be afraid it, and to reevaluate risk. Hopefully there’s some valuable collaboration between those different groups.

The last part is that we’re going to be doing one-on-one speed dating, or private meetings, with representatives from the National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the early stage emerging companies.  I’m hoping that they get invited back for further meetings; and maybe there’s some clearances that they are issues that product is purchased, or there’s some funding for whatever they’re working on.

Innovation in its most simplistic form is really just having basic awareness. I mean, where’s the Google boys in their apartment off University Avenue?  Where’s Hewlett Packard in 1939 working in that garage?  Where’s the next cyber security disruptive technology?  It could be around the corner, I don’t know.  But again, we’re a connector and we want to put that ecosystem of the entrepreneur in the room—your venture capitalist, the investment banker, the law firm, the academic, the entrepreneur, and the buyers, industry government and system integrators.

Julie: What is so interesting to me about the way you have built and operated SINET, is that you model your philosophy in the way you go into the marketplace.  There are probably a lot of books written about this and articles, but you are bringing people together – from many different disciplines and sectors; as you say, you’re putting people in the room, and I think it’s exemplary of what innovators do.  They try stuff, they iterate, they prototype and I see you doing that.  I’m excited to be there and I think it’s a really important platform for every industry to understand, not just because it’s a great source of growth and innovation, but because we need to grow and protect our security as a country.  It’s something civilians cannot take for granted.

Robert: Thank you, and it is a model and it’s a repeatable model. The formula has not changed.  The model has not changed since I came out to Silicon Valley 12 years ago.  It works, so I just keep repeating it.  This could be applied to healthcare; it could be applied to energy.  It’s a formula that has worked for us.

I want to end by stressing the importance of relationships towards the advancement of innovation and business. When I made that transition from the public to the private, relationships were paramount for me personally.  I had a lot of relationships and that was important; it gave me a cushion to take risk and leap out into the unknown, kind of like the Nike commercial ‘just do it’.  So it wasn’t like I just went out and I didn’t know anybody.  I was self-taught ROI, business culture.  I had to look up and read what venture capital meant.  When I moved out 12 years ago, I didn’t know anything; and I’m still learning.  I believe that if you are passionate about something everything falls into place.

image credits: security-innovation.org

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

As the Chair of the Back End of Innovation Conference I have the distinct pleasure of being able to ask the incredible line up of speakers some questions, for you, and for me, and get to what’s most interesting. We’ll be sharing your questions with the speakers, and and do live blogging while we’re there to cover their highlights.  We’re getting the ball rolling with someone we’re very excited to talk to: Maria Thompson, Innovation Instigator, Intellectual Asset Management, Motorola Solutions, and self proclaimed innovation mentor, who will be talking about “directed innovation” in her presentation,  Predictive Innovation: Directed Inventing to Ensure Generation of High Value Ideas.

In more than 15 years of planning, conducting and facilitating more than 100 inventing sessions, Thompson has found one major truth: garbage in = garbage out. The yield of novel, patentable ideas from ad hoc brainstorming sessions is predictably low. The Directed Innovation methodology includes preparation and pre-work in the planning phase that focuses the ideation phase participants on the most important and fruitful problem areas to generate novel ideas. Measurements are pre-defined and used throughout the process to assess the value of problems, as well as the ideas generated.

Here are my top questions for Maria — please send us yours by posting a comment. We’ll do our best to get the answers posted here after the conference and in our BEI Conference Recap.

1.  What does an innovation instigator at Motorola Solutions do?

2.  How is Directed Innovation (a new term to me!) different than iterative prototyping?

3.  There has been a lot of press of late about the importance of patents to a corporation’s overall value.  How do companies develop an effective IPR strategy?

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GUEST POST from Julie Anixter

On July 19th, Acting U.S. Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank spoke at the Third Annual Innovation Luncheon of the Global Women’s Innovation Network. Led by Honorary Co-Chairs, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson, the Global Women’s Innovation Network is an educational non-profit organization based in Washington, DC that provides a dynamic forum for women executives and thought leaders in academia, government, and business who are passionate about innovation and its potential to advance critical issues.

The event took place in the Members Room of the Library of Congress, and brought together a diverse group of women leaders from some of America’s most innovative companies as well as the federal government.

The Acting Commerce Secretary spoke on the state of U.S. innovation strategy for long-term competitiveness. Her remarks follow:

When it comes to decision-making in the boardroom, on Capitol Hill, or anywhere else, the best decisions get made when there is more diversity of perspectives and opinions at the table. All of you prove that to be true every day, both in the workplace and by being involved in organizations like this.

Innovation is one of the key issues for anyone who is concerned about long-term American competitiveness. That’s certainly true for all of us at the Commerce Department and throughout the administration.

In fact, in January, we compiled a report about the competitiveness and innovative capacity of the entire U.S. economy.

In it, we discussed a number of what we called “alarm bells”:

•The current federal share of research spending is half what it was in the Eisenhower administration.

•Today, America ranks 14th in the world in terms of the percentage of college graduates we produce. We used to be number one.

•The World Economic Forum now ranks our infrastructure 24th. We used to be in the top 10.

The good news, however, is that none of these trends is inevitable or unchangeable. There are clear policy avenues that we can take to reverse the trendlines.

Today, I’d like to start by highlighting three key areas where the government has a key role to play by making investments that support innovation and long-term competitiveness.

I realize we are facing large government deficits—I’m an economist and strongly believe we need to worry about that. But, the fact is, smart investments now will only help our long-term budget situation as well.

First, we should invest more federal dollars in basic research.

Basic R&D is an area that is under-provided in the private sector. Every major developed country recognizes the need to put public dollars into R&D.

In the U.S., the federal government has played a crucial role in developing key innovations in the 20th century. The Internet, satellite communications, semi-conductors and other job-generating advances would not have been possible without the wise investment of taxpayer dollars.

Unfortunately, since 1980, federal funding for basic research has dropped from 70 percent of all basic research funding to just 57 percent.

To reverse that trend, the President has set of goal of doubling federal funding for basic research and development by 2016.

In the 2011 and 2012 budgets, and in the proposed 2013 budget, there are substantial increases in funding for NSF, for Department of Energy labs, and for the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the Department of Commerce. These all support important core scientific research.

The fact is, governments around the world are increasing their public support at universities and research institutions. So must we.

Second—and to build on our R&D support—we must support the transfer of new technologies to help increase our productivity, especially in areas such as manufacturing.

Production and innovation are inextricably linked. Innovation is an iterative process, where ideas are tested in production, and those lessons feed back into new innovation.

Manufacturing companies in the United States account for 70 percent of private sector R&D and employ the majority of domestic scientists and engineers. Manufacturing R&D is also the dominant source of innovative technologies that are adopted into the service sector.

The government has played an active role in this space. For instance, for nearly 25 Years, our Manufacturing Extension Partnership—MEP—has funded centers around the country that consult with private sector companies facing technological problems. MEP puts them in touch with scientists and engineers who can help solve those problems.

The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership launched last summer and co-chaired by Susan Hockfield of MIT, is another important model to help advance tech transfer. This public-private partnership uses the convening power of the government to bring together top research universities with top U.S. manufacturers.

•As anyone who has spent time at a university knows, we can’t simply assume that scientific discoveries will magically find their way into applications.

•If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read this Partnership’s first report which just came out this week.

Clearly, there is a role for universities, government, and the private sector to collaborate and make the connections that lead to the transfer of technologies from lab to marketplace.

Third, we need to ensure that America’s intellectual property protection system remains strong.

Patents are a critical tool to help commercialize game-changing ideas. They’re the fuel for innovation.

The Department of Commerce recently released a report on the role of IP in the economy. It shows that nearly 35 percent of our GDP—more than $5 trillion—comes from what we call “IP-intensive industries.” These industries support about 40 million jobs.

The report also made clear that IP protections have a ripple effect in the market.

For example, a newly-patented technology in computer manufacturing could increase the demand for products in related industries, such as semiconductors.

For all these reasons, the landmark America Invents Act—signed into law last year by President Obama—is critically important. This new law is playing a crucial role in helping us build a 21st century IP system.

•For example, I was in Detroit last Friday to open the first-ever satellite office of the U.S. Patent and Trade Office—the Elijah McCoy office. It’s named after a Michigan inventor who made lubrication systems for steam engines in the 1800s. His high-quality products popularized the expression, “the real McCoy.”

•We also announced three more patent office locations to open in the next few years—Dallas, Denver, and Silicon Valley. These offices will allow us to interact with more entrepreneurs and innovators, to learn what they need, and to put patents in their hands more quickly.

And I should note that we’re already making great progress to create a more efficient patent system. For example, while patent filing in 2011 grew by 5 percent, our patent backlog actually dropped by about 10 percent.

Overall, whether it’s R&D, tech transfer, or patents, this administration strongly believes that government can and must make smart, strategic investments that pay off. These investments are crucial tools for companies like yours to do what you do best—which is create jobs.

But I’d like to spend my remaining time talking about something even more fundamental to strengthening American innovation—and that is education.

A globally competitive economy requires a globally competitive workforce. There are many important policy issues related to providing effective education and skill training to all of our children, but I want to focus on the need to increase the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates – the so-called STEM fields.

As you know, these fields produce many of the inventors and leaders who bring new ideas from the lab to the marketplace. We need these people now more than ever.

•Over the past decade, growth in STEM jobs was three times as fast as non-STEM jobs.

•These jobs now pay about 25 percent more than others—providing greater economic security for working families.

•And STEM workers help ensure that our businesses can develop the most cutting-edge products – helping us stay competitive in a global economy.

In recent years, however, only about 13 percent of U.S. college graduates got degrees in the STEM fields. That is much lower than in many of our competitor countries like Korea and Germany where 25 percent of their students receive STEM degrees.

One reason we have so few STEM workers is because women are seriously underrepresented in these fields. Women make up nearly half of America’s labor force – but less than one-fourth of our STEM workforce.

That has remained fairly constant even though more women than men now attend and graduate college.

As long as more than half of our population can’t find a path to science-related fields of study, we will have inadequate numbers of STEM graduates overall.

The good news is that women experience what we call a “STEM premium.” Women in STEM jobs earn 22 percent more than women in non-STEM jobs. For men, that jump is only 13 percent.

Because of this, there is a smaller disparity in pay between men and women in STEM fields than elsewhere. This should, in theory, help attract more women to these jobs.

For some young women, this promise of a better, more financially secure life could play a powerful role in their career choice.

So why do so few women enter STEM fields? That’s a difficult question with many possible answers.

Some of it is lack of information and lack of role models or lack of mentors. I myself never met a woman with a Ph.D. in economics until I was a Ph.D. student at MIT.

We need to make sure that women who hold science and technical degrees—including those who work in companies like yours—are visible to young girls, so that they can envision themselves in these careers.

And, from the federal government’s perspective, we need to implement programs and policies that allow girls to ask questions and explore these exciting fields first-hand.

Thankfully, we have a president who gets it.

•For example, back in 2009, he launched Educate to Innovate. This campaign brings together the federal government with private-sector partners like Time Warner Cable—represented here today. Educate to Innovate has a particular focus on inspiring more girls, women, and minorities to explore science and technology.

•Another example is Race to the Top, made possible by the Recovery Act. With about $4 billion in funding, Race to the Top provides competitive grants that support and reward states with high K-through-12 achievement. I should note that the only extra preference allowed in this competition is for states that focus on STEM.

•A third example of the President’s commitment came just yesterday when he dedicated $100 million for a new corps of high-quality STEM teachers at 50 sites around the U.S. These teachers will get up to $20,000 on top of their base salary in exchange for making a multi-year commitment.

On top of that, the Commerce Department itself also has specific STEM education efforts. These range widely…

•from our post-doctoral research opportunities at the National Institute for Standards and Technology—NIST…

•to our (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s) Nancy Foster scholarships for women to study areas like oceanography…

•to our annual event at NIST headquarters where we bring in 300 girl scouts for an event called “Get Psyched!”

•To earn their patch, these girl scouts learn about lasers, metals, and alloys..

•they see first-hand how electric currents work..

•and, of course, no trip to our NIST labs would be complete without seeing what happens to a hot dog at negative 195 degrees Celsius. (Who says science can’t be fun?)

Looking forward, the administration will continue to make investments to help girls and women enter and succeed in the STEM fields.

But we can’t do it alone. I strongly believe that everyone here can help us find answers to the questions that still remain.

•What can we do to introduce and emphasize math and science education at much younger ages?

•How can we ensure that both boys and girls have the chance to be more exposed to high-tech fields?

•How do we raise the visibility of STEM careers throughout our culture, for both boys and girls?

•And, perhaps most importantly: How can we foster greater understanding that gender norms in STEM fields are something that our country simply cannot afford to tolerate nor perpetuate?

America’s future competitiveness depends on all of us to take a personal, vested interest in these issues.

To sum it all up, we need more people like you.

•We need more women who understand why we must make key investments in innovation now…

•We need more women who have the skill sets to propel our private sector forward to compete and create jobs…

•And, yes, we need more women … and men … who have reached the point in their careers where they are able to identify and nurture young people to follow their lead.

In the long run, our ability to innovate and compete as a nation will determine what kind of economy—and what kind of country—we pass along to the next generation.

Thank you for being so committed to issues of innovation and competitiveness. And thank you for working closely with this administration as we move forward together.

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image credit: Ben Droz for GlobalWIN