Practice of Innovation

Finding High-Impact Opportunities

Posted on March 10, 2018 by Curt

Colliding Exponentials

Jack Ma with Curt Carlson and John Zhang. The book is "Innovation" by Carlson and Wilmot. — Jack Ma with Curt Carlson and John Zhang. The book is “Innovation” by Carlson and Wilmot.

Executive summary: Solutions to many unmet customer and market needs are enabled by the convergence of exponentially improving technologies. Convergence science requires intensely collaborative and sustained value creation methodologies.

At the Internet of Things (IoT) conference in China last fall, with a thousand participants and many from manufacturing, I listen to Alibaba’s Jack Ma. He talked about his early career and some of the mistakes he made. He then, surprisingly, told the audience that they were all losing money, whether they knew it or not, because most of them were going away. (more…)

Disrupting Others

Posted on July 24, 2017 by Curt

Your Value-Creation Playbook Is Core to Your Strategy

Executive summary: Creating sustainable customer and enterprise value is the purpose of a company, and all company functions must support those objectives. Each functional area in a company has a unique “playbook” that defines its goals and operating processes. Perhaps it is surprising, but remarkably few companies include a value-creation playbook as part of their strategy to assure success. Even fewer have a value-creation playbook at the strategic level to establish shared value-creation concepts and processes across all functions. The benefits from having a comprehensive, company-wide value-creation playbook can be transformative, as illustrated by SRI International.

Disruption: Established companies, when confronted with a disruptive change to their business model, almost all go away. The odds of adapting are likely less than 5%. Today we are seeing this play out in retail, transportation, and finance. (more…)

Meaningful Work

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Curt

Innovation for Jobs: I4J

16996360_10154825933781508_7972711192435125292_n-2 — Vint Cerf, David Nordfors, and Curt Carlson at the I4J conference.

According to Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, “The American workforce has more than 100 million full-time employees. One-third of those employees are … engaged at work. They love their jobs and make their organization and America better every day.

At the other end, 16% of employees are actively disengaged — they are miserable in the workplace and destroy what the most engaged employees build. The remaining 51% of employees are not engaged — they’re just there.” (more…)

A Competitive World

Posted on January 16, 2017 by Curt

Taiwan Silicon Valley Innovation Center

President Tsai, the Taiwanese delegation, and speakers at Plug-and-Play on January 14, 2017. I am second from the left.

President Tsai of Taiwan came to Silicon Valley to open a new center devoted to innovation and entrepreneurship between the two countries. It is an example of how regions are working to improve their competitiveness by seeking out and leveraging the best global partners and resources, including venture capital. Below is a summary of the comments I made at the ceremony. (more…)

A Solution to Poor U.S. Economic Growth?

Posted on December 28, 2016 by Curt

Law of Accelerating Cost

Executive Summary: America’s economic growth has been in decline for decades and some feel nothing can be done. The “Law of Accelerating Cost” (LAC) postulates that to maintain economic growth as a constant percent of GDP, exponentially more R&D resources over time are required. We have not been making these investments since the 1970s. These resources can be effectively obtained in three ways:

Increased federal and corporate investments.
Better use of existing funds by using value-creation best practices.
Movement away from areas of low economic return to focus on areas of major impact to the economy.

An important part of the solution that addresses our economic decline lies in satisfying these factors. The largest and most efficient solution is achieved when these factors are combined. (more…)