Innovation – Page 2 – Markus F. Peschl

July 28, 2020July 13, 2020

Innovation learnings from Google’s ATAP lab

One of the main goals of Google’s ATAP lab (Advanced Technology and Projects) is to make Google hardware as smart as Google software. It is one of Google’s (secretive) innovation factories working on a wide range of hardware innovations for the Google ecosystem. Apart from presenting inspiring hardware gadgets, such as the “house mouse” or a micro radar for gesture recognition, the head of the lab, Dan Kaufman, gives some insights into the lab’s innovation strategy:

Even if one has a zoo of fancy gadgets, you need to develop a cohesive and coherent vision or strategy for a future of smart devices.
Sometimes it is necessary to “re-invent” technologies that seem to work well.
Prototype and iterate.
It is not the head count of the lab that matters for the success of innovation activities, but the fact that one can tap into 100.000 smart engineers of the whole ecosystem the lab is embedded in.

See: https://www.fastcompany.com/90525392/googles-secretive-atap-lab-is-imagining-the-future-of-smart-devices

July 14, 2020July 2, 2020

Amazon: Reinventing retail?

Amazon is a huge lab for retail. It is perfect in making high impact experiments in the field and follows an explorative mindset when it comes to finding new opportunities to sell all sorts of goods. Amazon’s job is “to get you the thing”, not to be a website, so what are the best ways to do it? By doing that it does not even hesitate to go into physical retail. It does not follow an ideology of “internet-only” and even tries out things that have been done before – bringing about interesting results.

The real challenge Amazon is facing: Can it work out how to let us shop rather than just buy?

see: https://www.wired.com/story/amazons-retail-strategy-recycling-old-ideas/

June 16, 2020April 27, 2020

Purpose: How to place purpose at the core of your organization

According to a Fortune 500 survey 93% of CEOs do not believe that the goal of a company should be to focus on making profits only. Especially in times of crisis the power of purpose and the importance of engaging for the benefit of society becomes evident. However, how is it possible to find an answer to what is an organization’s reason for its being and how it may have a thriving impact on the needs of society and the environment? In this article McKinsey develops an insightful list of questions and a roadmap on how to develop and engage in purpose and how to place purpose at the core of an organization.

see: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/purpose-shifting-from-why-to-how

May 19, 2020April 9, 2020

Emergent Innovation: From innovation as extrapolating from the past to learning from the future as it emerges

How do we want to innovate in the next 10 years? What does innovation mean in an exponential and digital (platform) economy and how are we dealing with an uncertain and almost unpredictable and complex future as we are experiencing it right now? How can we bring about innovations „with purpose“, that “make sense”, that are sustainable and have a positive impact?

Most of our innovations are driven by past experiences these days, as this seems to be the only “solid” source that we can rely on. We will show, however, we can go beyond this strategy by tapping into future potentials leading us the way to “learning from the future as it emerges”.

http://www.thelivingcore.com/en/innovation-strategies-part-1/

May 5, 2020April 9, 2020

On Futures Literacies

Most academic and business curricula offer a good training in analytical thinking, critical thinking, planning, or making predictions. Although these skills are somehow concerned with “future issues”, they are implicitly or explicitly based on the assumption that the status-quo and/or on extrapolating past experiences or trends into the future can predict the future. However, our current world is highly unpredictable and follows an exponential dynamic leading to a high level of uncertainty (“VUCA world”). It can be shown that these classic tools simply do not work any longer in such an environment. Riel Miller at al. introduces the concept of futures literacy as a discipline of anticipation, which can be trained and refined to establish familiarity with the unfamiliar and with an unknown and uncertain future. This article develops this discipline and shows why it is key for any business and innovation process having the aspiration to shape the future in a thriving manner.

https://medium.com/copenhagen-institute-for-futures-studies/what-is-futures-literacy-and-why-is-it-important-a27f24b983d8

See also R.Millers (open source) book on “Transforming the future” https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000264644

April 15, 2020April 8, 2020

Innovation from within: Why meaning and purpose are essential in Emergent Innovation

Emergent innovation uses the future as its origin and is based on a deep knowledge of the subject of innovation. A profound understanding of the innermost core of the innovation subject (and its potentials) helps us to see what seeks to evolve or emerge from it. This approach of “learning from the future as it emerges” is based on a number of fundamental premises of innovation: most importantly, innovation must emerge “from the inside out;” it must have a paramount purpose (“why”) and meaning (“what”); and anyone involved must “embrace” reality and be open to personal change.

For further details see: https://www.thelivingcore.com/en/meaning-purpose-innovation-from-within/

May 11, 2018May 11, 2018

The Price of Google’s New Conveniences? Your Data | WIRED

Trading convenience for your privacy.

Google just announced a whole new range of services that are “awfully” convenient (visual search, personalized news services, personalized suggestions for new restaurants in Google Maps, monitoring and supporting your digital well-being, etc.). All this comes at a high price: your data and your privacy, knowledge about your habits, your interests, mindsets, etc., finally your identity. “Proactive” services are convenient, however they are based on prediction models operating on your personal interaction history.

April 29, 2018April 30, 2018

The last question | The EDGE.ORG Question 2018

What is the last question?

The Edge.org asks this year its final question. An interesting collection of questions moving the world collected from brilliant minds.

“Our kind of innovation consists not in the answers, but in the true novelty of the questions themselves; in the statement of problems, not in their solutions. (Paul Valery)

What is important is not to illustrate a truth—or even an interrogation—known in advance, but to bring to the world certain interrogations . . . not yet known as such to themselves. (Alain Robbe-Grillet)”