Thursday, September 07, 2006

Good Thoughts and Words


SRI International President and CEO Curtis Carlson and co-author Bill Wilmot have good things to say about InJo in their new book Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want. In the section "Innovation in the Media" they don't take any prisoners when pointing out the need for innovation journalism, praising our InJo program at Stanford:
"Over the next decade, the mainstream media will spend a great deal of time talking and writing about the consequences of our lack of competitiveness and its impact on bid companies. They will be concerned when Chinese firms buy big United States Companies, when software jobs move to India, and when protectionism becomes a political issue. But these stories, absent the bigger context of innovation and competitiveness, represent a disservice to their readers and listeners. The action is not just with the larger companies, which, as we discussed in Chapter 2, are finding it increasingly difficult to survive, but rather at the grassroots level, where new company formation through innovation thrives. The mainstream media are basically missing the story. Perhaps each media-outlet science and technology editor can change his or her job description to "Science, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Editor".

More generally, the mainstream media can increase their active role in helping communicate the challenges, opportunities and excitement of innovation and entrepreneurship in our time. This could help stimulate a productive discussion about how the United States needs to improve its schools, tax policies, government regulations, and research agencies. They too could use innovation best practices as a ruler to measure the United States' performance against that of others. Ultimately, they could help promote and examplify the skills and attitudes needed to thrive in the exponential economy. For example, maybe he creative staffs of the major television networks could make this the ultimate 'survivor' show.

One bright spot is a program at Stanford University called Innovation Journalism. It is not about innovation in journalism but, rather, it is a journalism program about innovation. The program is led by David Nordfors with the goal of advancing the public debate about this critically important topic. He has assembled journalists and students from many countries to be part of the program, who then become innovation-enlightened journalists at major publications around the world."

The book, which has received a positive review by Business Week, describes how a disciplined approach to innovation—the successful creation and delivery of a new or improved product or service—will provide value for customers and organizations alike and offers a systematic way to make innovation practical and sustainable for any enterprise. Carlson is an innovation guru with a lot of personal experience. Before heading SRI International he started and led the team that set the US standard for HDTV, for which his team shared an Emmy.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi David.
"The successful creation and delivery of a new or improved product or service".
Is this your definition of innovation?

David Nordfors said...

Hi Manuel! Yes - the successful creation and delivery of a new of improved product or service can be seen as product & process innovation. But the introduction of new customer value on the market goes beyond processes and products. Value can be created also by creating a new market, a new type of organisation, a new business model. Schumpeters original definition of innovation goes broader than processes and products.

Anonymous said...

Interesting, but in our country i cant buy this book ...

3dtv lover said...

Hi David,

My interest is 3D Television and in my opinion they have made a lot of mistakes with the marketing and communication to the general public.The people are just used to HDTV (and just bought one!) and they come up with 3D Tv.I guess it will be a good choice to let journalism be involved in the innovation.There is a lot of room for improvement

3dtv lover said...

Hi David,

My interest is in 3D Television and I think they have made a lot of mistakes with the marketing and the communication to the public.People have just bought HDTV's and now they come up with 3DTV.''They should have buid the highway first before selling the car''.So I guess to let journalism take part in the innovation is a smart thing to do because a lot can be improved right?