Recently in Innovation Category

This Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I will be a judge for the semi-finals of the GRA/TAG 2008 Business Launch Competition.

Applicants, then semifinalists, then finalists are competing for a prize that includes a $100,000 cash award and services valued at an additional $200,000, for a total grand prize of $300,000.

This event is conducted by the The Georgia Research Alliance and the Technology Association of Georgia with the goal of supporting the creation and growth of new technology companies in Georgia.

In addition to the cash and services award, entrants have an option to work with a mentor to further develop and refine their business plan. A group of Georgia's most successful high tech entrepreneurs has agreed to serve as mentors.

A preeminent panel of judges consisting of business leaders, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists includes:

Semi Final Judges:

Finals Judges:

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ATLANTA - I recently attended a presentation by Don Tapscott, author of the best selling book "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything". Tapscott explained how businesses can tap the potential of the emerging networked economy and its self-organized, mass-participatory communities. A digest of some of the more interesting insights I heard from Tapscott, along with my own observations:

Tapscott concluded by saying that there is a crisis of leadership. "Welcome the future, for soon it shall be the past."

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What are YOUR thoughts about Don Tapscott and Wikinomics? Post your thoughts in the comment section.

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ATLANTA - I'm attending the Symposium on Computation & Journalism at Georgia Tech, with a capacity crowd of 230 people focused on the intersection of journalism and computer science.

Krishna Bharat, principal scientist at Google and creator of Google News, was a keynote speaker Friday. Some of the interesting points I heard:

Bharat says one thing he has learned about the process of innovation during his time at Google: "innovation happens when you put people together."

RELATED STORY: Innovation at Google: Interview with Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

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What do YOU think about Google News? Post your ideas in the comments section.

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I recently had a chance to interview Marissa Mayer, Vice President at Google, who leads the company's product management efforts on search products. The 90 minute interview was filmed before a live audience at Turner Studios, and I'll publish excerpts here over the next few weeks.

DAVID ECKOFF: How do you evaluate and screen new ideas and products?

MARISSA MAYER: There's a vibe that comes from winning ideas. When I break it down:

First, I think of it as a new company within Google, to understand how we should invest. Is there a core piece of technology that would be interesting and repurposeful in any number of ways? For example, with 1-800-GOOG-411, it's expensive to process the calls and it might not pan out; but we're building a database that will make it possible to build a more robust speech to text model, which could be used in any number of ways... iPhone based search... it could help us deploy car based computers... it could help us do things like take videos and generate closed caption transcripts off of them rather than having them generated by humans.

Second, is this the kind of product that is easily articulatable and that will grow through word of mouth? Meaning, is it a very simple concept that people can express to each other on the street? Very basic concepts that are easily understood and used, instantly intuitive.

The third thing I look for: the overall vibe from the team. When you look at start ups, and founding teams, a lot of times it comes down to the verve and tenacity of the team. Eric Schmidt, our CEO, and I were talking once and I asked him "When you're looking across the entire company, what are you looking for? My area has become so broad, and it's really hard for me to be an expert in everything that I'm hearing about. I can't even imagine looking over the entire company. What do you look for?" And he said, "Sometimes, it really comes down to the vibe in the room. I'll just sit there and when a really good team comes in, I just get this visual image in my head of someone trying to take the mountain. I literally will see the presenters there, and I feel like they're just so fired up that in my head I unconsciously get this image of that team really charging the mountain and no one is going to be able to knock them back."

So that's really what you want: a piece of repurposeful technology; and a very simple and easy to understand idea; and you want a great founding team that's really fired up. So fired up that they won't take no for an answer and they won't fail.

I have a lot of friends who are entrepreneurs. I asked, "How do you decide when to start a company? When does that actual moment happen, when you start a company? I think that same thing is true when you start a product or a team." And he said, "The moment that you start a company is the moment you won't take no for an answer."

Bill Gates penned a column for BBC News in which he talks about how digital technology has transformed almost everyone into an information worker - and the skills needed to succeed. He mentions this in the context of innovation:

"Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs."

Gates also says he places a high value on having a passion for ongoing learning, which I've personally found and observed to be tremendously important.

Related story: a few summers ago I spent a week at Hood Canal, a fjord off Puget Sound in the state of Washington. Bill's summer house was adjacent to my resort. Each evening a helicopter landed at the dock, and Bill would pop out of the copter, briefcase in hand, with his family there to meet him. "Honey, I'm home!" The next morning, the copter would pick him up at the dock to whisk him off to Redmond. He'd kiss his wife goodbye, and you could imagine Melinda saying, "Have a good day at work, honey!" Maybe some billionaires aren't that much different than you and me.

Portfolio magazine has a column by Andy Grove in which he discusses the dilemma faced by large successful businesses: as companies get big, it gets harder and harder for them to grow.

How to overcome the law of big numbers? Grove says:

"...under certain conditions a firm can create a new growth spurt for itself by entering an entirely different industry. The target industry must be stagnant and populated with companies that cling to doing business the way they always have. The corporation that enters this environment with an innovative product or service can shake up the status quo and reap big profits... I call this phenomenon cross-boundary disruption, or XBD for short."

Grove says that the defining example of this kind of cross-boundary disruption is Apple's entry into the music business with the introduction of the iPod and the iTunes music store. At the time, Apple faced market saturation in its niche of high-end computers. Since Apple entered the music business, the company's profit has increased more than 3,000 percent.

Another example cited by Grove: Wal-Mart entering health care with in-store health clinics.

But when you stop to think about it, how much innovation do you see from large companies vs. startups?

As I previously blogged (related to a Sept 2007 feature in the Wall Street Journal), innovation is very difficult to do in most big companies. As Douglas Solomon, CTO of IDEO, described:

"Big companies have resources, but don't always have the processes, skills and permission to think outside their current business."

I'm reminded by an article about Yahoo and product innovation. Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr said:

"There are tons of amazing ideas in big companies, and no innovation deficit. But the obstacle to getting things built is mostly process. There is one kind of process developed for building and maintaining large-scale products... And the development processes for that are very different from what it takes to build a new product in a short amount of time."

For the many big companies that are unable to create a culture of innovation and unable to adopt new processes, they are, perhaps, best served by leaving the specialty skill to startups. And then investing or acquiring; or being a fast follower.

An excellent Q&A feature in the Wall Street Journal about managing innovation. Some key points:

1) Thinking long term:

- Very difficult to do in most big companies, which have resources, but don't always have the processes, skills and permission to think outside their current business. "Corporations inherently have antibodies that come out and try to envelop and kill any innovation."

- An analogy: large companies are like farms, in which you are trying to grow rows of corn. You don't want surprises and you apply incremental innovation to be productive. In contrast, start ups are more like a small garden, requiring a different level of nurturing; or a greenhouse where you want to keep out the elements. The conclusion is the most disruptive innovation comes from start ups and research. Or, you can develop a small garden or greenhouse on the larger farm. But you have to keep them separate. And then the challenge later is transplanting.

2) Changing the culture:

- How do you change the culture of a company to make it more innovative? "With great difficulty." Four main factors: awareness and attitudes (need a degree of discomfort in your business to make the necessary changes); ways of thinking (a shift from analytical thinking to design thinking); processes and tools; and managing risk (through rapid prototyping, etc).

- Companies have to be willing to have project fail. And link this with HR and back it up in annual reviews. Reward people even if they "failed", as long as the failure wasn't for lack of trying or somebody blatantly mis-executing.

- To draw on the wisdom of the crowd, you have to have the openness in a company in which there is collaboration across multiple functions.

3) Barriers to innovation:

- The things companies have done for quality and efficiency are enemies of innovation.

- Everybody will say a new idea is too small. Going in front of a committee, and having to show a return on investment, are processes to vet an idea, but that stop people from trying and kills the surprises that are going to end up being big.

- Cultures kill what's not like them. "Innovation is something that isn't like me today." The trick is figuring out how to protect new ideas.

- Do checkpoints along the way: build a good product, get feedback from customers along the way, look at early market adoption. But ultimately measure by looking back after a few years and asking, "Has this become a successful business?"