Many attempts at embedding innovation within organizations have fallen flat for several reasons, including:

1. poorly communicated strategy,
2. lack of resources
3. fear of uncertainty and/or risk, and 
4. the demands for quarterly results.  

• Innovation “tools” such as Six Sigma and Lean have perpetuated the business-as-usual cycle, rather than opening up firms to embracing innovation as a capability.

http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2011/12/14/book-review-relentless-innovation/

This is great example of how constraint can really breed innovation.  

Have a look at this video and see what Gray Chang did to his small 344-square-foot studio apartment.  With a series of sliding doors, hidden handles and movable walls, he is able to transform is apartment into 24 different designs.  

With around 7 million people, Hong Kong's most precious commodity is space.  And it was this scarcity of space that give Gray Chang his inspiration to come up with what he calls "Domestic Transformer."

I like the window and floor finishing -  it makes the apartment feel warm and inviting and the reflections on the mirror on the ceiling and reflective floors further create light and more sense of space.

Truly ingenious.

You can read more about here NYTimes story and check out this video below. 

I love the innovative thinking around this idea of how to introduce TESO to the South Korea market.  In the brand name of HomePlus, TESCO was able to create a presence within South Korea but understand the local way of life and how space, public transport and mobility all play an important part in South Korea citizens pathway. After conducting a study they found that people in South Korea didn’t have much time for shopping for groceries - communing to and from work and the way they commuted was important. TESCO introduce HomePlusn by bringing the shopping experience to their commute home.

Customers use their phones to take picture of QR codes on virtual goods on large display screen and add items to their virtual basket. The items are then shipped to the customers address generally by the time they arrive from commuting.

According to the video, online sales increased 130% and registered users increased by 76%.  More the most important result was TESCO is now 2nd largest offline supermarket.

Here are some of my favourite small business productivity applications to help run your business.

• Xpenser: Record your expenses anywhere, any time via Email, iPhone, SMS, Twitter, etc Export to other software when you do your accounts Get on with your real business

Need to understand your business better and its real position.  Here are some applications that can help with anything from tracking payroll, tax through to your running expenses.

• Outright: Automates bookkeeping, tracks income and expenses, and categorizes it all for tax So you know instantly where your business stands
• Freshbooks: Takes the pain out of invoicing Manage expenses, contractors - look professional Get paid on time Invoicing, banking, expenses – it all takes way longer than it should We need to track cashflow very closely at the moment
• Less Accounting: Streamlines all your bookkeeping tasks Shows you who owes you money and how much you've got in the bank Integrates with other apps Frees up your time for business

I was watching this vblog from Thomas Power (founder of ecademy.com) who put out this interesting question. 

• Facebook will pass Google in terms of traffic over shortly.  Some reports that this has already occured Facebook will apporach billion users by the end of 2012.#
• Facebook hold most detail personal perferences (eg interests, hobbies, likes, dislikes) of its users (essentilly, I self made CRM system) that 
• Facebook can mine and help its users get deals such as Groupon.
• Providers like www.prosper.com and www.zopa.com already already provide borrowing exchange services between real people  -  sidesteping the banks to get a better deal.  While www.mint.com and www.smartypig.com offer its members the opportunity to for people to save for specific financial goals like a wedding, a vacation or a flat-screen TV etc
• It won’t take much for Facebook social-led financial services that combine things like www.zopa.com with mint with Groupon

When you think about good ideas, people often think ideas that come through an "Eureka!" moment. But Steven Johnson shows us a different story. His suggests that ideas evolve like "liquid networks" and that when one's "hunches" is connect with other people's hunches; that's when magic happens. When you have half of an idea and somebody else's other half, as well as the "right environment", idea mature.  When I viewed the video it reminded me of the theory behind Spigit's system - which I think is the 'right environment' for ideas to be connected with other ideas . 

Steven concludes with the comment that ' Chance favours the connected mind',

BTW - I wanted to also ask you all how things are going with your road on the innovation? What is your biggest challenage?   Love to hear your comments....

This a design competition for DESIGN21.

In this challenge, designers had to come up with a design a game that aims to create change by improving lives or inspiring new behaviors.

Background:
A crisis can bring about change. It forces us to rethink our lives and our relationships and lead us to adopt new outlooks or rethink the way we do things. While the world has been rocked by a deep recession, many have seen the flip-side of this crisis as one of opportunity; the chance to start over, or reset priorities, to take initiative to create some positive and meaningful change in their lives, big or small.
My idea?

How do we get more pedestrians crossing our city streets safely during in high traffic times by using pedestrian traffic lights? The following video shows how major cites can help improve lives and inspire new behaviors by using pedestrian traffic lights with street trivia in a clever, fun and safe way.

Website:
http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/26

(less info)

This video was a submission to 'The Living Climate Change Video Challenge - presented by IDEO and hosted by DESIGN 21 and had to be maximum 2 minutes.

In this video we paint the picture of how energy would be optimised not just by humans but machines as they become intelligent and integrated into our daily lives.

While the world's power demands are expected to rise 60% by 2030, it is supposed by the same time, majority of our energy generation will be decentralised. Our local neighborhoods will become energy farms, allowing local communities to exchange energy between themselves via the Smart Grid it would be similar to todays local farmers market - but for energy.

As we become more involve and aware in our energy production, our behavior will ultimately change. We will move from being a conscious customer to cautious ones thus further optimizing our overall energy consumption.

Combined with the semantic web, our home appliances and car will access the internet to discover our daily routines, activities and usage patterns to optimize our overall energy use.

Our future is bright and delightful.

Source & websites:

Music sampled from: Black Grass, 'Toys',
http://www.last.fm/music/Black+Grass

^ World Outlook 2004, Paris: IEA, 2004-10-26, pp. 31, ISBN 92-64-1081-73,
http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/fre... retrieved 2006-06-1

http://www.design21sdn.com/challenges/23

http://www.ideo.com/

This presentation focuses on a Mental Models created on the NSW City Rail system. Using a Mental Model, I was able to discover core issues and opportunities to improve.

A Mental Model is essentially a visual representation of how users view a flow (i.e. consumer journey). It allows us to easily get behind the business problem and gain insight. It also allows us to easily conduct a gap analysis between the consumer action (i.e. does, think and feel) vs. how we as a business can support that task.

Enjoy and feel free to ask any questions or email me for a copy. Happy to share.