Category Archives: ‘Capital I’ Innovation

The NBN: Are We Bothered… and Should We Be?

Posted on January 25, 2012 | 2 comments

KimmiC chats with Australian technology journalist, author and speaker Brad Howarth about the National Broadband Network (NBN) and business innovation.

Brad Howarth: Capital I Interview Series – Number 11

Brad Howarth is a journalist, author and speaker with more than 15 years experience in roles which include marketing and technology editor at business magazine BRW, and technology writer for The Australian. His first book, ‘Innovation and Emerging Markets‘, was a study of entrepreneurial Australian technology companies and the process of commercialising technology globally. ‘A Faster Future‘ his second, is co-authored, with Janelle Ledwidge. In it they investigate the future of broadband applications and services and the impact these may have on business, society and individuals.

The recently published ‘Australian Industry Group National CEO Report: Business Investment in New Technologies’ noted that forty five percent of responding CEOs, from a wide range of businesses, said they lacked the skills and capabilities necessary to take advantage of the NBN. This has risen from twenty percent just three years ago.

What are your thoughts on this situation; and do you think that their solution of staff training and hiring will solve the problem?

The hiring and training of staff will only solve the problem if we also train our leaders to recognise the problem in the first place and instil in them both a desire and capability to do something about it. I’m regularly receiving feedback that suggests that Australian businesses are struggling to image their future in a high-speed broadband world, and that’s almost regardless of whether the NBN is completed or not. All too often short term issues such as the economy or carbon tax are getting in the way.

It’s not a great outcome to focus all your attention on managing the impact of the carbon tax to find your business has been undermined by new competitors coming in on the Internet, or find that too many of your customers have changed behaviour and no longer need you. Australian businesses need to spend a lot more time thinking about their broadband futures – and there is huge scope for innovation once they start doing so.

You wrote your second book, ‘A Faster Future’ at a very interesting time last year, as there was a great amount of debate around broadband connectivity.

The original idea was conceived not long after the announcement of the Fibre to the Home National Broadband Network model. It was initially written to explore the uses of high-speed broadband and then evolved into a much broader picture.

It was very interesting to watch the debate going on in Australia, about the need – or otherwise – for high speed connection.

If you go into the rural area the debate goes away very quickly. The debate’s been driven along primarily party political lines I suspect; so, it has more to do with posturing.

Are you saying that rurally it’s taken as a given that the NBN is coming, and it will be a positive thing?

Most regional councillors, have fallen over themselves to get their particular part of the world hooked up to broadband network. Now whether they know exactly what to do when they get it is a little bit harder to say. But certainly – given that so much of what we take for granted in the metropolitan regions isn’t available in regional areas – they’ll get benefits from simply bringing them up to speed.

Do you see much potential for (onshore) Australian companies to get involved in the actual building of the NBN and share in the potential profits; or will it mainly be offshore internationals who come in and make the most out of it?

In phase one, which is equipment supply and roll-out, you’re obviously seeing contracts awarded to Alcatel-Lucent and others for a lot of developments on the network… the fibre cable itself. Mainly because Australian companies don’t make that stuff. To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have a company here that makes GPON equipment, so there is really no choice there.

When it comes to the deployment, I think you’ll find there’s a lot of Australian involvement in the roll-out and deployment of the network itself. And certainly it’s going to employ a huge number of people.

Think of the phases that come over the top of that, and that’s where there’s a lot more potential for Australian businesses to get involved. Australian businesses in the entrepreneurial technology space will build the applications and services that run over the top of the network. And of course there is the opportunity for Australian businesses of any variety to create service offerings that utilise the network.

It may be that initially, of 30 odd billion dollars spent, a part of that may go to foreign manufacturers; but that’s really not a significant component of the actual network itself.

It has been suggested that, re the NBN Broadband, and the Government’s National Digital Economy Strategy 2020, many of the initiatives proposed could already be undertaken successfully with current infrastructure. What is your opinion?

From that perspective, it is already possible to drive from Sydney to Melbourne, so clearly building airports is a waste of money. Restricting investment to the goals of the Digital Economy Strategy represents short term thinking. This is about investing for the long term.

In ‘A Faster Future’ you say that it may take a few years for a killer app for broadband to show up, but as things move so much faster now, could it not be right around the corner?

It could. Actually, it is probably already here, we just don’t know it yet.

Where are you hoping to find the next true innovation?

The area that I think is obviously apparent today is interface technology – devices like the Kinect, the Wii, and so on – which enable us to interact with machinery through mechanisms other than our fingers. That’s already there, but I think it’s got a long way to go.

You’ve seen derivations of that… the whole gesture based computing paradigm that’s emerging through the iPad and various other capture devices. It is basically building a whole new language.

I think if you’re looking for ‘Capital I’ Innovation, look at a company like Emotiv and the work it’s doing with the EPOC headset and using brainwaves to become a control and measurement mechanism.

That’s Tan Le, isn’t it?

Yeah. I think what she and the team are doing probably does represent ‘Capital I’ innovation. Yes, it is an Innovation within a stream, but then the invention of the automobile was the extension of transport; the invention of electricity was an extension of power. So, I think that’s definitely one. I’m not really certain that they are too many others out there at the moment.

If you take broadband internet, I think there’s so much ‘small i’ innovation to come on that platform. We don’t need to build faster-than-light telecommunication systems based on paired photon matching because we’ve got a truck-load of work to do with the technology that we have already developed.

But I think you might see some ‘Capital I’ innovation eventually come off of broadband… you saw a glimmer of that in Second Life. Combine the notions of high definition with spatial realism in terms of video and audio, and possibly even haptic sensory input, then you’ve got a new platform there.

Once we’ve moved to a system where you can do direct stimulation of the brain itself, so you can actually start inputting data directly into the brain and bypassing the senses – going past the nose, eyes and ears, maybe even the fingers – in terms of haptic responses, then we’ll find a new platform for ‘Capital I’ innovation. The Emotiv stuff is going in another direction. It’s taking what’s in the brain and putting it back out to the world. I think we’re only at the earliest stages of being able to see anything there.

But there is so much work to be done with what we’ve already got. You could stop fundamental research tomorrow and innovation would continue for a very long period of time – although I wouldn’t advocate that. We haven’t even really harnessed all the capabilities of electricity yet.

Australia has a proud tradition of adapting, some may say Innovating, healthcare to match the geographical barriers and vast remoteness of the continent. Since 1928 the Royal Flying Doctors Service has serviced those living in rural, remote and regional areas of Australia, utilising the technologies of motorised flight and radio. Is there enough emphasis on continuing this legacy via the potential of Broadband?

There is a lot, but there should be a lot more. Actually, that’s one of the areas of the government where promotion of the National Broadband Network is incredibly strong on. I think the argument for the NBN economically could be made almost entirely on the benefits to the health sector.

That said, I get the feeling that you may think innovation is an overused term.

Absolutely. I’ve written about innovation for ages. I put innovation in the title of my first book; but I’m sick of the word. Not so much the word itself, just sick of how it’s being used. We seem to have these analytic discussions about the need for innovation, we have innovation conferences… it’s just endless. I think what disappoints me about innovation is the amount time we spend talking about it as opposed to the amount of time we spend doing it.

Passive innovation, sitting around navel-gazing… it’s something that we probably focus too much on as opposed to finding practical methods for implementing Innovation. I want companies to actually get on with it. We need to start injecting the theory into business practice.

You can learn more about Brad, ‘A Faster Future’ and his other writing via his website and follow him on Twitter.

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Innovation, Technology

Tagged Australia, Broadband, Capital I innovation, eHealth, entrepreneurship, government, internet economy, invention, NBN, Technology

Growing the Culture of Disruption: A chat with Linda Bernardi, a Most Personable Provocateur

Posted on January 6, 2012 | 12 comments

Linda Bernardi, author of ‘Provoke: Why the Global Culture of Disruption is the Only Hope for Innovation’, is undoubtably one the most personable provocateurs I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with. The fact that she is as inspiring as she is interesting is a bonus. Once I read her insightful and thought provoking book, published in November of 2011, I knew I wanted her to launch the 2012 Season of the Innovation Interview Series.

Linda wears an wide variety of hats, she is: CEO of StraTerra Partners, a technology strategy consulting company focussed on new tech adoption; an an early-stage technology Angel Investor in the US, Europe and India; and a board member for several commercial and not-for-profit organizations. Her work with the Bernardi Leadership Institute sees her training in large enterprises and academia as well as engaging entrepreneurs internationally in Innovation Based Leadership™. If that weren’t enough, ConnecTerra, the company she founded in 2001, provides RFID tech to large enterprise IT. All of this underlines that Linda knows what she’s talking about when it comes to ‘Capital I’ Innovation – and yet, as engaging as all of that is, none of it is why I was so determined to interview her for this series.

The fact is, with all those feathers in her cap, Linda now also wears the hat of an author, and it is for that reason – once I had read Provoke – that I sought her out.

Linda Bernardi: Capital I Interview Series – Number 10

Throughout my reading of ‘Provoke‘, I found myself talking out loud and having a dialogue with the book, “Yeah, that’s right!”… “I know!” … “I’ve thought that for years!” But, to Linda’s credit, I also learned a great deal, and found myself rethinking certain ‘givens’, which perhaps aren’t given any longer. Credit where credit is due – I recommend Provoke to anyone interested in moving the economy, especially the economy of Innovation, forward.

Throughout this interview you will find ‘snippets’ from the book. I hope they inspire you to purchase a copy and dive into your place in the ‘Culture of Disruption’ [CofD] that Linda opens to her readers.

“You are already part of the Culture of Disruption. Just by reading this book, you’ve become a disruptive force.”

Congratulations on writing such an engaging and insightful book Linda. Provoke prompts readers to ask themselves, “What can I do to become part of, enhance, enrich and ensure a successful Culture of Disruption,” be that in their school or business, and regardless of whether that business is a startup or an entrenched, global corporation. You’ve defined the Culture of Disruption as:

“…the culture that invites and nurtures ideas and ways of thinking that continually disrupt convention wisdom and legacy models. A CofD needs to be part of any organization looking to innovate.”

Added to that, you have made clear that change is inevitably uncomfortable, at least initially, but Innovation is the responsibility of everyone involved in the ecosystem. This ecosystem encompasses entrepreneurs and employees, investors and Board of Directors, even academia and the media and, perhaps most importantly, Consumers – who are the market. As you see it, working together – collaborating – they can create an unstoppable Culture of Disruption.

You refer to Collaboration a great deal in Provoke. Why is collaboration so important in the Culture of Disruption?

Collaboration has very broad ramifications. Part of what I hope to do with Provoke is explain the different constituents in the ecosystem… and illustrate how things are changing. As things get more democratised and open, by nature they become more collaborative, and this includes decision making… even very fundamental decisions such as strategic acquisitions, product directions and market plans.

The process of making these decisions will become much more collaborative within companies. It will also become more collaborative with the consumer – the market component, because the market now has an immediate voice regarding anything that company does. Decisions that used to be non-collaborative, where a company produced something for the market and the market had to take it or leave it, are now commented upon and can be broken, or not, based on the input of the market. Social media enables bi-directional communication.

These forces, that we never had in the past, allow uni-directional decision making, development, and communication; it’s becoming very bi-directional and collaborative. For the first time we’re embracing intellectual development on all levels and planning strategic development at a collaborative, global level. We’re respecting, or learning to respect, the power within individuals – whether they’re within a company or collaborating with the company – and the market.

In opening up to collaboration in such a social way, things are moving very quickly. Do you see the CofD as evolutionary or revolutionary?

Parts of it are evolutionary, because it would be impossible to say that everybody has to stop what they’re doing and completely change tracks. If it’s a big company serving tens of millions of consumers, it’s inconceivable that they’d immediately stop what they’re doing, abandon the past, and develop anew. On the other hand, certain Cultures of Disruption can be revolutionary, because they don’t have a legacy burden or have to service a huge market.

“The 3 Is–Inspiration, Impact and Innovation in the CofD.”

To that extent, you see companies like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, new generation companies that can evolve their business model immediately. Because everything is very dynamic, smaller companies have the ability to be much more agile and evolve very rapidly. Added to that, the bigger the company becomes, the less likely they are to reward risk and innovation.

Do you think that innovation is always risky?

Actually, I don’t think it is at all. Innovation, fundamentally, is looking at something that doesn’t exist, or a new way of doing something… creating some new possibilities. Innovation should be inherent in anything we’re doing. [Unfortunately] bigger companies tend to think they’re not entrepreneurs.

When I give a lecture to a company where there may be a 100,000 employees, a common [theme] that comes up is, “I’m just an employee; I’m not an entrepreneur. This stuff does not apply to me. I can’t bring about change.”

“… a formula for figuring out the odds that a given acquisition will succeed, based on five conditions that exist when the ball gets rolling: 1. Purpose; 2. Plan; 3. Personality; 4. Players; and 5. Panic.”

Well, anyone and anything they do can be innovative. That is why companies hire them; why companies go to the best universities and hire the best people. They bring them in because they want their talent. Their talent means they have brilliant ways of solving problems. That is innovation!

But something happens in their journey, and within a year or two, these same individuals get frustrated and leave. It’s ironic because they go off and doing the most fantastic things, and when you ask them, “Why didn’t you do it while you were at work?” They come back to their line of thinking: “I’m not supposed to innovate. I’m not entrepreneurial. I’m an employee.”

Provoke is trying to break that mould… to say that innovation CAN emanate from within. One of the reasons that I wrote Provoke is to change the lethargic behaviour that we see in big corporations and conglomerates. Most of my clients have one-hundred-and-fifty to two-hundred thousand employees.

The Bernardi Leadership Institute

It is frightening when I enter these companies and see an attitude, which is much more about: “I’m here to do a job and collect a pay check,” versus: “I’m here because I’m super-bright. I’m here because I have enormous talent and enormous capacity.” I think they’re only operating at anywhere between 10 to 15 percent of their intellectual capacity in these types of companies.

There are reasons for this. Often there are a lot of barriers – which I talk about in Provoke – that prohibit people from being innovative. After I give a lecture people will approach me and start sharing their stories. They inevitably revolve around not having a supportive manager, having a leadership that’s disconnected, a system that does not reward risk taking or innovative thinking, and failed systems of capturing innovation from within.

“Smart leaders should be looking at a managing method I call “the baton”: orchestrating diverse groups, allowing expression within the boundaries of an overall plan, and making work emotionally appealing and creative…”

Think about it; if you have one-hundred thousand employees… if one percent of those people – just one thousand people – were to have one idea a year… that’s one thousand ideas per year! Yet if you look at the amount of innovation that’s actually captured within companies, it’s maybe three to four ideas per year.

To me, as an ex-CEO, it’s as if these company leaders are willing to bypass their most incredible source of innovation. Often they think, “Maybe I need to make an acquisition to do an innovation.” A lot of times the Innovation acquisitions that are made could have been accomplished within companies, but employees within the company were never consulted. Imagine their motivation level. The level of inspiration drops proportionally the less people are involved in innovation.

We have to disrupt this model, cultivate and inspire talent, and bring creative thinking out. Currently I believe this is incredibly dormant, both within the US as well as globally. Instead, it’s the big company model that prevails, on in which, for some reason, expressiveness and innovation go unrewarded and are even discouraged.

You must meet, at least initially, a great deal of scepticism in these larger corporations.

Well, scepticism is a lot easier than innovation, isn’t it? In fact, in the five stages of dealing with disruption, scepticism is one of the first stages. When cloud computing came out, it was very easy for people to be sceptical: “It’s not going to work. I’m not going to use it as my corporate enterprise system. It’s going to fail. Nobody is going to want it. There are security issues.” The list went on and on.

When Apple disrupted the music industry and brought out the iPod, it was an incredible revolution, it redefined the entire possibility landscape, it redefined distribution of music. And then it came up with the iPhone and redefined telcos.

My big clients in Europe all said: “Well, a computer company that’s a music company… they are never going to make it as a phone company. It’s not possible! We’re a phone company!”

And when Apple redefined the iPad the sceptics said: “No one is going to walk around with an iPad, and an iPhone, and a MacBook.” And what do you think are the most three prevalent devices at any meeting I go to? Those exact three devices! Then the sceptics said: “Nobody is going to abandon their iPhone just to get a new iPhone,” yet everybody does.

I’m so glad you brought up this question because there is so much scepticism and misunderstanding around innovation. Innovation – or disruption – doesn’t mean just coming up with a flaky idea, going off and doing something new without considering what the ramifications are.

Innovation (whether it’s by a small, medium or large company or an individual) looks at the possibility of developing something that doesn’t exist, or expanding on something that exists, and disrupting the model.

“Here are a few tips:

Try something that seems crazy.

Solve a problem.

Observe everything.

Ignore the naysayers.

Have a strategic plan and execute it

Expect more of yourself”

Look at companies like Kodak, which I talk about in Provoke, who owned the entire photography space, and I think about the myriad number of ways that Kodak could have taken digital photography and owned that space… It could have been the hub, the platform for all digital photos. Or, look at Blackberry, that owned the business of communication smart devices…

I think there are very few companies that are willing to take the broad risk of blatantly innovating in the face of scepticism, while understanding the heightened level of gratification they have to give to the consumer.

Speaking of the consumer, do you see a widening or lessening of the generation gap – between those of a ‘certain’ generation and those part of what you deem Generation I (the Generation of Innovation)?

I’m delighted by how intelligent the consumer is. Something magnificent is happening today, the like of which we’ve never seen before. When the first personal computers came out people that were over a certain age, who had never dealt with a computer, never learned. There was a very distinct gap.

Somehow, in the last five to ten years, with the help of social media, that gap is being bridged to the point where grandparents are revelling in the use of Skype… they know how to use their iPhones. They feel a part of it. And that’s fantastic! A nine-month-old can take an iPad and play a game. Of course there is a broad range of technical capabilities, but the generational gap is becoming less and less relevant. In my view, it’s because innovation is becoming more practical and end-user-oriented.

We’re developing things with the idea that the mass of people should be able to use them; things are becoming simpler to consume. With computers in the past, the art lay in buying the computer, loading the operating system, figuring out what program to buy, going through the heroic task of installing it and figuring out how to use it. Only a very small percentage of the population could actually do that.

It’s very different today with the ‘www.anything/anytime’ model, which allows anyone access to anything. The art is the use rather than the technical prowess to be ‘able’ to use; and that has really diminished the generational gap.

Unfortunately I think a great many technologists miss the fact that, regardless of how ‘smart’ their technology is, if people aren’t using it, it just won’t matter.

Exactly. If we ask the question, “what makes certain innovation distinct?” it is when you develop something that people use. In Provoke I discuss each of the constituents within the ecosystem of disruption, which is the enabling body of the Culture of Disruption. These include the leadership, the board, the investor and the employee.

I then talk about the market and its power, because it’s the market that is totally redefining advertising and marketing. The market has a tremendous impact. Look at what happened at Netflix within span of few days. The company came up with a new business plan, people revolted and called it back. Imagine if we could have done that ten years ago with hybrid cars.

“DISRUPTION = INNOVATION = EXCELLENCE”

When Innovation becomes practical and usable, it redefines everything. And the beauty of it is that, sooner or later, change is inevitable. The sooner you embrace the disruption the better. If you don’t believe in disruption, you’re fundamentally saying that you believe in nothing changing… companies that think like that are the companies that become extinct.

The business equivalent of the dodo bird.

Exactly.

That leads into my next question: is ego bad for innovation? As a consumer I have a great amount of ego because I feel, more and more, that I can have an effect – especially if I group together with other consumers. From my perspective as an innovator, I realise that if we (KimmiC) didn’t have ego, perhaps we wouldn’t be as audacious as we are in deciding that we can change the world.

On the other hand, perhaps part of the reason that people and companies feel they don’t need to change is the ego they have invested in their current offerings.

What are your thoughts?

It’s a very important question. If we were to define ego, I think competence, belief, passion and drive are necessary attributes… they’re critical for any of us to do anything significant. If you didn’t have those you wouldn’t be able to do what you believe you can do. You wouldn’t have the passion or the drive to do it; or the fundamental belief, as an entrepreneur, that: “I know this is risky but I really believe in the fundamental outcome. I’m going to do it and very little is going to stop me if anything”.

On the other hand there is the misplaced ego, which is ego by virtue of what you’ve been in the past, or what you think you are, or what you think you have to be. That’s wrong because that completely stifles growth. Those are the companies (or individuals) that are not innovating, because they believe that if they shatter that ego, everything will fall apart.

It’s necessary to know what you don’t know, to know that you have to learn, and to be eager to learn. Unfortunately, in the latter group of people (or companies), there’s very little learning or change going on because of their belief: “I’m company X. I’ve dominated this field. I own it. No one can be as good as me.”

At the same time there are some entrepreneurs that can be unfoundedly egotistical. They believe they know all the answers just because they’ve been successful in the past. These are the entrepreneurs that believe they’re going to take their social media company public and, suddenly, it’s going to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Those that wear their Google Goggles proudly!

Yeah. Or because they’re 20 years old, they got their Ph.D. at MIT and somebody told them they’re super-bright. They have expectations, at the age of 23, that they are going to be multi-millionaires on their yacht.

“The comfort and the recklessness born of wildly available capital are actually corrupting innovation. Obstacles and scarcity force us to be better, think creatively, and work harder.”

Silicon Valley, while it’s been enormous in bringing us tremendous innovation, is also the breeding ground for unfounded ego, both in entrepreneurs, corporations and investors. There are venture capitalists there that believe that, in some sense, they’re God! One of the things that inspires me about Asia (and some of the other continents) is that they are where Silicon Valley was about 20 years ago. There’s passion and hunger, but there’s also an incessant energy and drive. It’s extremely difficult to balance that with unfounded ego.

Talking about Asia brings me back to thinking about scepticism. I believe, and I think from reading Provoke and speaking to you that you probably have a similar view, that woe betide those who are sceptical of what is going on in Asia.

Right. One things that got me really worried and started me thinking about writing Provoke was a December 2010, CNN round table of six CEO’s from major companies in Silicon Valley – we’ll leave them unnamed. For an hour they were being spoke about the prowess of the U.S. versus the global market, and how the U.S. would never lose in the innovation game.

Clearly, they all have operations in various countries outside the U.S. and they definitely, as executives travel there, but the answers they rendered really left me baffled.

“Among giant companies, only Apple and Google seem to have mastered the deliberate act of balancing a youthful, wildly innovative, disruptive organizational ethos with the iron discipline and market focus that produces win after win… What my students and clients want to know is how to capture that same spirit.”

In my role as an investor in companies across the globe, I get a unique opportunity to look at entrepreneurism in various countries at a fundamental level. For instance, in India there were about 5,100 business plans submitted [to us] last year. We’re expecting this year to top 7,000. China, South America, Europe… Talent is everywhere. Genius is everywhere. So to think that it’s going to be in one place is a very dangerous game.

StraTerra Partners

Everything is available everywhere. So, for companies and the leadership of those companies to sit there and say things like: “We are going to be the leader. Nobody can catch up with us,” really showed enormous blindness.

It could be posited that the current state of the U.S. economy is, at least partially, reflective of that blindness.

Absolutely. Innovation is collaborative. Right now, just within my client list, there are three to four million employees. That’s a lot of people.

Just within that group of people, if I can start the process of active thinking and processing, just awakening people to the power that they have, and get them to believe in it… To believe that an entrepreneur is just somebody that thinks creatively; that they can be, and are, an entrepreneur in what they do. If the system around them is not designed to listen to them, they should create a system that is.

If enough people think like that… well, how could the leadership of a company resist 50,000 people wanting to express themselves. What are they going to do? Lay them all off… because they’re thinking creatively?

“People need to feel valuable, creative, inspired.”

Disruption is simply another way to look at something. Imagine if we’d never experimented… because that by default means disruption. We would have never had any discovery. That’s the power of the ‘what if’ culture. That’s what engineering and science is, it’s about experimentation. Disruption doesn’t mean disrupting the business, it just means opening up the business to new opportunities.

You mention in Provoke that you’d like an opportunity to rebuild the entire business school paradigm. How would you change it?

I can actually answer that question with a very concrete answer. I taught a number of classes last year at the University of Washington, in their MBA program. It went so well that they’ve now offered me a lecturer position and, starting at end of January, Provoke will be used as a textbook.

It was very interesting to go into a program that’s well-established. It’s very methodical, like every other MBA program, and I taught it completely differently. I wanted my audience to participate with me, I wanted the students to think.

I made them very uncomfortable because I told them I didn’t think they were thinking enough. At one point I turned around and said I found it completely boring being with them.

I know they’re bright but they were just sitting there waiting for me to teach them things. I said, “But you know everything! Let’s talk about how you can change things!” What ensued were incredible business plans; and I thought: “Oh my God! They’ve woken up. Look at what they can do!”

“Professors should pursue corporate relationships, explore creative funding options and worry more about impact and less about tenure.”

This is the first step. We’re going to incorporate it with formal teaching and, over the course of the year, I hope to expand it to other universities and other business programs. I really think that business programs have to be completely disrupted and revamped for the new world that we’re entering.

In Provoke you mention your respect for (The Daily Show’s) Jon Stewart. What is it about Jon that moved you to mention him in particular?

In addition to being a comedian, Jon played a very important role during a very difficult previous [Bush, Cheney] administration. His was probably the most unbiased and candid voice talking about what was going on in the administration, in congress, in politics in general.

Jon Stewart

Part of the comedy passport that he has allows him to bring things to the foreground and talk about them both in a way that audience connect with. He is able to make light of very complex things which, frankly, need to be made light of.

It’s ironic, but though he’s a comedian, he’s one of the cleanest source of political news. That frankness is also needed in discussions about business, Innovation and the Culture of Disruption.

He’s very much a provocateur, as are you. Like Jon, you don’t seem to have any reticence in voicing your opinion, nor qualms about how you may be perceived in doing this. That is not necessarily a position that a lot of women are comfortable taking.

I would say that, as we enter 2012, it’s really disturbing to me how few women do what I do.

When I look at technical conferences, and go through the list of keynote speakers, there are no women. We’re 50% of the workforce, yet we’re not there. When I sit around an investment table, I don’t have women investors with me. When I’m on a board of directors, I don’t have women with me. It’s disturbing to me that in a course of decades, instead of this becoming a non-issue, in fact it’s a real issue in that, women are still uncomfortable taking centre stage.

I’d like to have a lot more women doing what you’re doing – asking tough questions, putting themselves on the map. But generally women lack a desire for risk. Women dislike failure and want to play it safe – for a lot of historical reasons – yet women have enormous power. I’m hoping that, as the world becomes more and more collaborative, more and more women will come to centre stage.

How will you measure the success of Provoke in the Culture of Disruption?

I really believe in the power of the people and I want Provoke to have a role in it. So, if you ask me: “What would be a measure of success for me in a year?” it is how many people I might have touched with Provoke. How might I have helped them change their thinking around the inevitability of disruption and their positive role in the Culture of Disruption. To me, those would be incredible success factors.

“I’m a free thinker, not a Kool-Aid drinker”

If I can just provoke people to think differently, the mathematical combination of possibilities grows infinitely. I’m very pleased to see companies – some as large as federal agencies – saying: “You know what? We need to bring in innovative thinking.” In fact, they’re replacing my “Culture of Disruption” with “Culture of Innovation.” They’re saying: “You need to help us create our Culture of Innovation.” Right there, suddenly there’s a positive translation of my dream. The “Culture of Disruption” has now been translated into the “Culture of Innovation,” or, as you call it, the “Capital I”… which is huge!

Linda is giving a free gift of the first chapter of the Provoke eBook, along with a Culture of Disruption membership card, to any readers of this Innovation Interview who sign up for her monthly ‘Innovation Excellence’ newsletter by clicking this link!!

You can find out more about Linda, Provoke and the Culture of Disruption on her website and blog. You can also connect with Linda on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

(Kim and Linda Skype’d from their homes in Sydney and Seattle.)

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Innovation, Technology

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Chewing on Black Swan for Christmas

Posted on December 19, 2011 | 4 comments

Rather than looking back at 2011, we chose to talk to Doug Vining – chief technology adviser to the FutureWorld Global Think Tank and Editor of MindBullets: News from the Future – about the future, and his hopes for it, in this, the last Innovation Interview of 2011.

Doug Vining: Capital I Interview Series – Number 9

Futurist, entrepreneur, guru, writer and editor – these are only some of the words used to describe Doug Vining. With an eclectic career which has encompassed advertising, corporate consulting, and working for tech titans such as IBM, Doug has had his finger on the pulse of Innovation and its commercial applications – along with its potential for solving real world problems – for many years. With 30 years in ‘the game’ and three business degrees, Doug is a tech and strategy consultant, with a particular fascination for emerging technology .

You define yourself as a futurist… what does that term mean to you?

Well, I’m part of a group called ‘FutureWorld‘. What we do is teach companies and organisations how to learn from the future. They call us ‘futurists’, but we don’t predict the future, the future is impossible to predict.

Life is not perfect, reality is messy, that is what you should expect. Anything is possible in the future. What is needed is an attitude of durability and adaptability… expect the unexpected and learn from what could happen.

We look at scenarios. We don’t say, “This is what will happen.” We say, “This is the kind of thing that could happen.” Even if some of it would seem to be improbable.

Very often it’s the least likely scenarios that occur. Looking at the opportunities in those scenarios and planning a strategy today, that will help you in the future, that’s what we mean by ‘learning from the future’.

Your fellow FutureWorld gurus are very impressive.

Yes. For over twenty years “Future World” has been in operation, so we have quite an impressive group of gurus. There are four core members (I’m including myself) who have been involved with the business for about twenty years, and then there are others who come and go, or get involved in one stage or another.

Your fellow core members are Wolfgang Grulke, Anton Musgrave, and Neil Jacobsohn.

That’s exactly right. Wolfgang started this whole thing when he was still with IBM. Many years ago he said, you can’t look to the past for strategy. Strategy has got to be about the future; strategy and innovation are tied together in that future perspective.

“In this warp-speed world it is no longer enough to learn from experience, we must learn from the future.” Wolfgang Grulke

Anton Musgrave

It’s about agility, adaptability and flexibility. If you expect everything to be ordered and measured, then unfortunately, you’re going to be wrong.

That sounds like one of your MindBullets.

‘MindBullets: News from the Future‘ was one of several that Wolfgang came up with. The idea was to present a scenario in the form of a short, sharp news story that would make business executives sit up and think. Executives are often far too focussed on operational issues, and need a jolt to get them to think strategically and consider the future.

The mind bullets are little news stories from the future. We produce one every week, we’ve been doing it for years. Because we have been doing it for so long, some of those ‘futures’ have become the present, or the past. It’s quite interesting to see how many of those MindBullets, which we thought were crazy ideas at the time, actually look pretty normal in today’s world.

Such as?

A big one must be world-wide communication and the adoption of cell phones, and smart mobile devices; it’s completely changed the modern world. We said that these sort of things would become commonplace.

Another example is an article we wrote four or five years about communication becoming a basic human right. Just last year the United Nations said that internet access should be considered a human right, and countries are starting to put in broadband for their citizens. Those are the kind of trends that we considered futuristic at the time, and now they’re commonplace.

Would you say that is something like the smart/mobile phone, which enables easy communication, is the most important piece of innovation in your lifetime?

Absolutely. In my life time I think the most profound piece of innovation has been the internet and the convergence of the internet, cellphones, and smart mobile devices.

The mobile phone on its own has completely changed the way the world works, especially in places like Africa and Asia. In the past, for example, a manager, or someone with some product, would have to travel to another town to find out if there was a market for their goods, or their labour. Often that trip would be a fruitless waste of energy and they would miss other opportunities by making it. Now, with cell phones, they can find out where there is a demand for their services or products. That completely changes economic opportunities.

And, of course it’s become more pervasive, more into the realm of social communication. We’ve seen what’s happened in Egypt, and Libya and Tunisia. The catalyst has been the ability to communicate and organise socially, and to be heard. People who were powerless have been given power.

Speaking of power, FutureWorld has a very impressive list of clients: huge companies and multinationals such as British Airways, Cisco Systems, The Financial Times, Gartner, IBM, Kraft, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle.

There’s a number of reasons for that. When we engage with clients on a formal basis we are quite expensive, so start-ups can’t afford us. And, start-ups normally already have that innovation… that future-looking, crazy-idea mentality.

Therefore, yes, most of our clients are big corporates who are kind of set in their ways and very static. They need the intervention from FutureWorld to get them to consider programs of innovation such as setting up a separate a business unit to take new ideas into the future. Start-ups don’t need us and can’t afford us; big companies who can afford us definitely need us.

I suppose one of the ways that a start-up, or an individual, could gain access to you and the rest of the gurus would be to sign up to MindBullets.

Absolutely. There are a number of entrepreneurs who’ve been subscribing to MindBullets for years. There’s a lot of intellectual property, a lot of our thinking, available for free on our website. We also started a discussion forum; everyone that subscribes is free to comment and enjoy the conversation.

And the controversy?

That’s the point. The future actually awards people who stand out. I mean, look at Steve Jobs. He was the obvious example of the unreasonable man. He wasn’t part of the crowd; he was a maverick. He expected the impossible and he often got it. There’s an old saying: “To change the world all you need is an unreasonable man”.

There’s a book called “The Black Swan“, written by the international speaker Nassim Taleb. Now, a black swan is an inventor or invention that is unreal, unusual, and appears to be random. But, it – the black swan – completely changes the landscape and the status quo; so much so that things are never the same again.

The origin of the black swan was from the time in history when all swans were thought to be white (because all swans in Europe were white). This thought prevailed until someone from Europe went to Australia and ‘discovered’ the black swans there. Of course the discovery completely changed the previous volume of knowledge… the certainty that all swans were white.

There are so many obvious examples of black-swan events, like the 9/11 attacks, the Fukushima tsunami, and earthquake. Even the global adoption of mobile phones is a kind of black swan thing. People didn’t predict it, they didn’t expect to be quite so dramatic, and so profound in its impact. The key thing about the black swan is the world will never be the same again; we can never go back to the way it used to be.

With that in mind, do you think that movements such as OWS (Occupy Wall Street) are Black Swan events?

I do. I think that they are important events. I think they’re also a symptom of a shift in mind-set.

There are a number of themes around this kind of thinking. The first one is the rise of the individual. One of the lessons from the future is that the individual becomes much more powerful than institutions, and corporations. The individual has the power to connect, to communicate, to organise and to make big changes in society, and economies.

A more recent theme, which Niel (Jacobson) and I put together over the last year or so is called “Naked Leadership“.

Neil Jacobsohn

This theme has proved to be very popular with our clients in the last few months. It looks at social media bringing about things like the Occupy movements, and the uprisings in Egypt, and Tunisia. There are number of factors playing there: communication, the power of individuals, the transparency that people demand, and the fact that institutions, countries, governments, big businesses, and big brands, are no longer in control.

I wouldn’t like to predict where it’s going to, as it does change from day to day, but there is the argument that Occupy Wall Street is the manifestation of individuals demanding their rights, and their freedom. On the other hand, there’s a feeling that this could be a kind of socialism which could subjugate individual desires of to those of ‘the group’. Once the 99% are in power, where does the individual stand?

How very Ayn Rand-ian.

Exactly. It’s about individual rights being under threat.

Speaking of individuals, who inspires you as an Innovator?

One of the innovators who I truly, truly admire is a young chap called Elon Musk. Elon is a multi-millionaire entrepreneurs living in California, but he is originally from South Africa. He helped found PayPal, which he sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. He’s currently involved in three things: Tesla Motors (electric cars); SpaceX, his private company, which is the first private commercial company to launch a space craft into the atmosphere and orbit Earth; and, he’s also very interested in the concept of green energy.

Elon Musk

This year [2011] he was awarded half a million dollars for the Heinlein Prize, for ‘accomplishments in commercial space activities’ – which is no mean feat; and apparently (according to Wikipedia and Jon Favreau) he was the inspiration for Tony Stark, of the ‘Iron Man’ movies.

He’s an amazing guy. And, it just shows you that innovation can come from strange places. I think Elon epitomises what I consider to be a ‘Capital I’ Innovator. At FutureWorld we talk about Radical Innovation, which think that ties into your view on “Capital I” innovation.

Absolutely.

Radical Innovation creates new products, new businesses, new business units, and creates a steep difference in the performance of a company. That’s one of the truths you learn from the future… to create radical innovation in your businesses and in your life.

Radical Innovation is about expecting and getting ready for what’s next… the next big, radical, exponential increase. Sometimes that means you have to kill off your old business to make room for your new one.

An example of that, of course, is the iPod. Sony could have had the iPod years before Apple did, but they said: “No! It’s going to cannibalise our Walkman business”. Of course it did; except Apple did it for them!

That’s just a typical example. That’s one of the lessons from the future: eat yourself before someone else does.

Its about consistently, and continuously are editing yourself. Very Darwinian.

Certainly radical innovation is all about taking risks and finding those opportunities that are going to be the next big thing, even if it does mean killing off existing things.

When we go to companies, we try and help them to engage in programs of radical innovation. We say that they should look at using their existing businesses, which hopefully include some cash cows, to produce the revenue necessary to invest in risky ventures for the future. It’s like taking some of your mature business lines and nurturing them, while at the same time pouring money into more risky things that may be the next radical businesses of the future.

As a futurist, do you have any thoughts or lessons to share for 2012; what do you think we should be looking out for?

Well the problem is that, for me, 2012 is almost yesterday. We’re looking beyond 2020, because what’s going to happen next year is already old hat… it’s kind of discarded and even obvious. The longer view is much more important and much more interesting. Having said that, there are lots of thing that I expect, maybe not to happen, but to start becoming much more mainstream.

One of the things that I’ve been talking about for years is solar energy becoming cheaper and more efficient. To the extent that, ultimately, it will probably dominate as a primal form of energy world-wide. Now, there are many reasons why you might want to debate that, but it certainly seems to be emerging as highly probable.

I’ve got a blog where I talk about ‘The New Energy’. Whether it’s solar, biofuel, bacteria [microbial fuel cell], genetically-modified organisms or organic waste [pyrolysis], I think it’s definitely in the future. When? I don’t know. But the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned, because it will offer so many opportunities and solutions to problems that everyone assumes can only get worse.

This is the big thing about the future: futurists are very optimistic. You have to be!

Image: Peter Griffin

I think we will see black swans in climate change, in energy, in communication, and all sorts of things. I believe that the future beyond 2020 will be a bright future.

(Kim and Doug Skype’d from their homes in Sydney and Johannesburg.)

—

This is the last Innovation Interview of 2011. I’d like to take this opportunity, on behalf of Michael and myself, to thank all the Interesting, Insightful, and Inspiring ‘Capital I’ Innovators who have given their time so graciously and who’ve been so enthusiastic in becoming involved in the Innovation Interview Series this year.

We’d also like to send our thanks to the thousands of people who have joined us on this journey, as readers, supporters, commentors and influencers.

To all of you we wish a very happy holiday season and an Innovative 2012!

Cheers!

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Innovation, Technology, Uncategorized

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Occupying the Management of Innovation

Posted on November 15, 2011 | 1 comment

Occupying the Management of Innovation: A talk with Sami Makelainen Innovation Manager at Telstra and External Expert at the European Commission.

Capital I Interview Series – Number 8

Sami Makelainen occupies a position which is finely balanced between Australia and Europe. Manifesting what some might say was a true Finnish trait, Sami is a straight talker who doesn’t let a false sense of political correctness stop him from calling things as he sees them – be it broadband connectivity, vested interests in the coal industry, innovation (or the lack thereof) in telecoms, seed funding for innovation and the current economic crisis. We talked about all that and much more for the Innovation Interview Series.

How do you define innovation Sami; and do you see a difference between small ‘i’ and Capital ‘I’ Innovation?

There’s always a problem in speaking about innovation because everybody has their own definition. Having said that, there are certainly two vastly different styles of innovations, or new things out there. Things that are more important, more fundamental and more disruptive would tend to fall into Innovation. But in terms of volume, the vast majority of stuff that’s going around is going to be incremental innovation. What I would consider true Innovations are few and far between.

Can you give me some examples of what you think are Capital I Innovations?

One of the most recent Innovations is the Gemasolar CSP plant (Concentrated Solar Power plant) in Spain that’s producing electricity 24/7. It’s a baseload solar power plant, the first commercial of it’s kind. I’m not sure how much of the energy debate you’ve been following, but one of the primary objections people have to solar power is that it can’t do baseload production – because the Sun only shines eight hours a day. Well, [Gemasolar] is beginning to show that’s not quite true.

The Gemsolar Power Plant

When I moved to Australia I was surprised more wasn’t being done to take advantage of the Sun.

Inevitability [they] will, but it’s going to take a long time, particularly because we have a hell of a lot of coal in Australia. It’s cheap and there are big vested interests for it going as long as possible. [There are] people who don’t really care about emissions, or believe in Global Warming. They just want to maintain business as usual.

How do you think the carbon tax will affect that?

It’s probably going to start at too low a level to have any meaningful impact in the first few years and it’s probably going to have too many concession to various stake-holders. It’s going to be baby steps in the first, let’s say, five to ten years unless there’s some massive global shift. But, with the speed things have been progressing in the past twenty years in terms of the climate debate, I’m not expecting that to change any time soon.

Do you think your perspective on the subject is tempered by the fact that you’re European, as there seems to be quite a different perspective to these issues in Europe in comparison to that in Australia?

Probably. All of our opinions are colored by our background, whether we acknowledge that or not.

How long have you been in Australia?

Coming up to two years now. Ironically we’ve got tired of the cold Finnish winters and arrived in the coldest and wettest winter that Australia had in forty years.

Seeking sunny days

Can you tell me something about your role as Innovation Manager at (Australian Telecoms firm) Telstra?

One of the key responsibilities I have is managing the funnel of ideas. We have a relatively open innovation process, so it’s fairly quick to deal with ideas. They enter from a number of sources, whether it’s our staff within the Chief Technology Office or wider Telstra [organization], from start-ups, universities, research entities, external individuals, or our vendor partners. Ideas come from different sources into our innovation process and then it’s a matter of managing, weeding, refining and deciding what to go forward with and how to go forward with them.

My background is from the Nokia Siemens Network where I was with the Application Innovation unit. If you go even further back then my background is in systems research, program management, systems architecture, solution architecture and a whole lot of other roles in the telecommunications, banking, electronic banking and online services space.

It’s amazing to me how many people in the innovation community seem to have a background in telecommunications.

That’s even more ironic because telecommunications is an industry that’s far from innovative.

How would you compare the culture of innovation between Finland’s Nokia and Australia’s Telstra?

There are similarities in that both are relatively big organizations and big organizations come with both opportunities and challenges. There are big opportunities in terms of having the resources to do something if we decide to. But then of course it comes back to the risk-averse nature of stake holders. Trying to push something truly disruptive and truly innovative… I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but it just takes a lot of effort. Having said that, if you have a truly disruptive idea, while working within your start-up might be easy, it’s not going to be easy bringing it to market.

It’s never a clear-cut path. And, depending on what level of innovation you’re talking about, the bigger and the more Innovative they are the more you can, and should, expect people to hate them. Howard Aiken, the US computer scientist who died [almost forty] years ago, very accurately said,

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

In terms of similarities in innovation between Nokia Siemens and Telstra I think one of the common features is that most of the innovations we’re doing [at Telstra], and were doing at Nokia Siemens, are customer-centric. It’s not just about business to business and it’s not just about how to make our bottom line better, but how to make our bottom line better in a way that helps the customer.

Even at Nokia Siemens, which was more a business to business company selling to operators, the applications and services that we came up with there were mostly originating from end-user research. There is a genuine attempt at figuring out what people actually want rather than just pushing new stuff out for the sake of new stuff.

Does that entail asking what people want rather than telling them what they need?

Yes, but it’s not just about asking what they want; it’s about observation of future behavior. Asking people what they want is one of the traditional market research methods and it sucks! If you ask anybody how would they like this and that to work, you’re not going be able to get a good answer out of them.

If you had asked two years ago (before the Apple iPad was out), “How would you like your next portable electronic device to look?” – nobody would have answered – Well, I want an iPad, or a tablet, or anything like that, because the previous incarnations of those were unusable and terrible. Nobody felt at the time that they could actually be such a big hit.

With a view to ‘observations of future behaviour,’ how do you see Telstra making use of the opportunity that the NBN (broadband) is going to provide for engendering innovation?

The NBN is obviously going to change a lot, but it’s mostly going to change things on the wholesale and fixed business side. One of the thing that the NBN will bring, that is going to be hugely beneficial to all companies, is the fast connectivity to a majority of Australian households. Right now, as we all know, Australia isn’t exactly a leading broadband country.

That’s certainly true.

When I came here two years ago, I almost had a heart attack when I looked at the speeds and the prices when subscribing to a broadband connection. I was like… “What!? They are capped by gigabyte?? I’m not gonna take that!” But I don’t necessarily think that the NBN is going to get rid of the caps or the limits altogether. The economics just don’t work.

Having said that, if the NBN achieves it’s goal – and that’s if because I don’t think everybody will have understood how much it’s actually going to end up costing the consumer – there’s going to be big broadband connectivity to all Australian households (practically all of them anyway). That’s obviously going to offer huge opportunities in terms of changing how people live their lives and how they work. So, there’s more or less unlimited opportunities there.

One of the biggest opportunities, which I am personally interested in, is allowing people to work from home in a more efficient manner. Right now if you live outside the core metropolitan areas, the connection that you get at home isn’t sufficient for many corporate uses. Allowing people more flexibility over where to work from and even when to work is going to be critical as we deal with energy, congestion and population growth [issues].

If we agree that Innovation is critical, looking back, what is the most important Innovation that has launched in your life time?

That’s a bloody good question. I would have to say the mobile phone. This is a biased answer of course, since I have been in the mobile business for fifteen years, but if you think about the device that’s truly changed the way people communicate and live their lives, there are few rivals to the mobile phone.

Pretty much everybody in the world has one…. almost everybody. There are still a billion people or so at the very, very low end of the economic scale in developing countries [who don’t], but you still have hundreds of millions of subscribers in the poorest countries of the world.

There was an interesting Vodafone study done some years ago showing that mobile phones in significant quantities materially impacts a countries’ GDP. While I’m not a big proponent of measuring progress in terms of GDP in poor nations it does make a big difference. I mean, if the farmers are able to check market prices it can increase their income substantially and help improve their lives a lot.

And it helps remove the power of the middle-man to set unfair prices.

The socioeconomic benefits are best in the developing countries, but it’s changed the world in developed countries also.

If you think about it, you always have your mobile phone with you. You know, if you loose your wallet… The average time it takes to report a stolen credit card or a stolen wallet can be twelve hours or so, the average time it takes to report a stolen mobile phone is twenty eight minutes. And, you know, more than half the people who use a mobile phone sleep with the mobile within arms reach. You don’t do that with your TV, DVD player, or microwave oven. The mobile is integrated into peoples’ lives in a way unlike any other device.

Along with being Telstra’s Innovation Manager, you are also an external expert at the European Commission. What does that entail?

The European Commission has this thing called the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) which is a multi billion dollar euro initiative that hands out research funds to research organizations, universities and even companies. Companies and universities propose projects and ideas to the European Commission and then the Commission puts together a panel of subject matter experts to decide who gets the money. I’m there doing that work.

So in a sense it is a way for government to support innovation.

Yes. Most of the time the companies that are applying for this funding are big entities that in turn fund things on a national level things. So, for example, one of the biggest entities in Finland getting funding from the European Commission is the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, which then supports smaller companies in Finland.

That feeds into one of my other questions: Does location matter?

Yes, I’m not sure it matters in terms of coming up with the ideas, because most of the time ideation is easy, but it does matter in terms of executing those ideas. There are definitely hot beds of innovation and lively little innovation groups and clusters of companies scattered around the planet, but in terms of executing on innovative ideas the best place arguably is still Silicon Valley, not Europe, especially in the ICT space.

Location does matter – particularly for execution of the innovation, but also in terms of access to financing. For instance, seed financing is really difficult in Australia, comparatively speaking. There’s obviously a lot of competition for Venture Capital in the Bay Area, but there is a hell of a lot more money to go around, too.

Speaking of money to go around, what are your thoughts on the current economic crisis and what part, if any, Innovation can play in solving it?

I recently finished reading Mats Larsson’s book “The Limits of Business Development and Economic Growth” – which is a great book in its own right, that I can warmly recommend – but the most interesting point to me was that there are now three or more distinct lines of credible analysis, all of which come to a similar conclusion. Whether you look at it from the limited-resources perspective, from the purely economic debt-laden economies perspective or from analyzing some simple, fundamental limits of business development as in this book, all signs point convincingly to the economic growth of the world coming to an end, and doing so soon. Looking at all the evidence, the scenario of ‘business as usual’ that is still the official truth driven by most governments and media is the least probable development for the 21st century. For a world running and highly dependent upon the current financial system, which is only stable when growing, all this presents huge challenges on a scale that the world has never faced before.

The “Limits of Business Development” was written in 2004, before the most recent rounds of global financial crisis; yet recent years just serve to highlight the importance of its message – on the financial front, aside from the economic chaos and ruin, we are now seeing societal movements such as the Occupy Wall Street-movement as just one early signal of changing times. While the protesters do not, for the most part, have a single message or a concrete, actionable goal aside, perhaps, from calling for tax increases, the reactions of the rest of the economy have been more telling – the mainstream media doing their best to ignore the entire groundswell movement, and the governments cracking down on peaceful protesters. The Occupy-protests constitute a signal that governments will ignore to their detriment; even though highly visible now, they’re still an early-warning sign – an early warning sign that, if not acknowledged and dealt with, can morph into something much more serious.

Many of the macro trends over the past decades – urbanization, globalization, supply chain and other process optimizations, reliance on electricity and fossil fuels for our basic needs, etc – have had the unintended consequence of dramatically reducing the resilience of the society. It’s time we reversed this trend and focus heavily on increasing the resilience of our communities; resilience that would’ve already come in handy in many cases. All of these will desperately be needed as the world moves towards a new era, called by some the age of Scarcity Industrialism. There is tremendous scope for innovation here – from recycling to efficiency gains to renewable and distributed energy production, to better farming practices, to upgrading critical pieces of the infrastructure in fundamentally new ways, to actually changing the way the society works.

As in most innovations, coming up with good ideas is the easy part of the equation. There are no shortage of those. For example on the financial crisis side, we already have good evidence that rolling out complementary local currency systems, ones not based on the model of fractional reserve banking, help lower unemployment while increasing the resilience of the society. There are already hundreds of LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) schemes in operation globally, but what we need is a systematic effort of encouraging LETS schemes and participation in them globally. This is not innovation as in “new ideas” – it’s innovation, as in changing the way the world works, for the better. That, in my opinion, is a far more important aspect of innovation than any (necessarily arbitrary) concept of novelty.

(Kim and Sami Skype’d between from their homes in Sydney and Melbourne.)

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Innovation, Technology

Tagged Australia, baseload, Broadband, Capital I innovation, carbon tax, economic crisis, emissions, entrepreneurship, European Commission, financing, Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, FP7, Gemasolar CSP Solar Plant, global warming, government, Howard Aiken, ICT, innovation, invention, LETS, Mats Larsson, mobile phone, NBN, Nokia Siemens Network, Occupy Wall Street, Scarcity Industrialism, seed funding, Seventh Frame Programme, Silicon Valley, Technology, telecommunications, Telstra, The Limits of Business Development and Economic Growth, Venture Capital

Kent Healy – Maverick on a Mission

Posted on October 12, 2011 | 5 comments

A chat with author, publisher, entrepreneur, speaker, coach and real estate investor Kent Healy – a Maverick on a Mission

Capital I Innovation Interview Series – Number 7

The recent loss of an Innovation Giant in the technology world gave me pause. His name, so well known, was often mentioned in this series, in particular in answer to the question, “Who would you give a ‘Capital I’ Innovation Award to?” It also led me to ask, who next – who will step into, or at least grow into Steve Jobs’ shoes? Who is the next creative thinker, the ‘Capital I Innovator’ who thinks out of the box enough to engender real change?

With that question in mind, I chose to share my interview with a young man who leads the way in encouraging entrepreneurship and Innovation from a young age. Instead of teaching students how to pass standardized tests, Kent Healy believes in teaching them to think, to understand, to yearn to learn.

I’m going to begin with one of my ‘foundation’ questions, Kent. If you could give a ‘Capital I’ Innovation Award to anyone, who would that be?

Gosh, that’s a great question. There are so many people we rely on that remain nameless… people that don’t get the PR. [However] people who obviously come to mind immediately are Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.

[Editor’s Note: Steve Jobs was the entrepreneur Richard Branson most admired according to a recent statement by Mr. Branson.]

I say that because I use their products and every time I do, I think: “Duh!” I put my palm on my forehead and [think]: “Why didn’t someone do that earlier?”

How essential has innovation been in your career to date?

Extremely important. At fifteen, I was living in New Zealand… I went to California and saw skim boarding, which I loved and wanted to bring back to New Zealand. Once I returned I went to my surf shop and started looking for a skimboard. I couldn’t find the type that I was looking for anywhere, so I decided to make my own.

Long story short, my brother and I ended up making different models and selling them to local surf shops and internationally. It was a lot of fun. And that opportunity would never have come about if I didn’t ask: “How can I fix this problem?”

Kent Healy (right) with his brother Kyle (left)

When I was about nineteen I finished my first manuscript. I started working with an agent to get a publisher; I met with a lot of them but I just didn’t see eye to eye with what they wanted. I stuck to my guns and my brother and I started a publishing company. We did everything from the cover to the marketing, and I think it turned out to be a better product.

Why do you feel so strongly that collaboration is important?

It goes back to an underlying maxim, ‘one mind is never smarter than two or more combined’. I think that the mind is designed as a collaborative tool and I don’t think humans were made to live in isolation.

"We do better with collaboration and we feed off of different ideas."

The brain is a network filled with synapses taking one idea and trying to link it to another. I think there are many time when ideas are simply inspired… when a connection is made, which never would have been made if somebody else hadn’t thrown down a random idea, completely unrelated, that managed to bridge the two separate ideas.

When you’re thinking, it’s still somewhat linear if you’re on your own. If you’re working with other people the conversation can take many unexpected turns, and that can lead to an immense Innovation.

I think if you’re working on a specific solution isolated research can certainly help. But, if you want to improve something and do the giant Innovation, collaboration is extremely helpful.

That could be a useful example to young people who may feel disconnected, if you will, from the possible positive outcomes their Innovative ideas could develop.

Absolutely. I think that we learn so much from example. It’s easy to write about innovation, but it is a nebulous topic. It’s really hard to say: “This is how you innovate.” I think it’s much easier to say: “Here is something that this person did. Isn’t that great?” That’s what inspires me. Earlier you mentioned New Zealand, are you a natural born Kiwi?

I was born in northern California, San Jose. But, when I was ten, my family moved to New Zealand because they thought it would be a great place to raise kids. So, we packed up and left, not knowing anybody in New Zealand. We lived there for eight years. Those were my teenage years, which were very formative, so New Zealand is a big part of my life.

With that in mind, do you think that location matters… does Innovation have a nation?

Absolutely. In more ways than one. I think there is your immediate environment, be it a coffee shop, library or busy mall. I think all of those things, as energies, are going to influence the way that you think.

Culture is another big thing – how do people in that culture look at Innovation. Some people really encourage it, and some people don’t. I think it’s really important to be around a group of people that encourage it, that will say, “I like where you’re going with that,” and start looking for the benefits before they shoot down the idea. It’s always good to have a devil’s advocate, I agree; but you want more supporters than you do devil’s advocates, if you want innovation to continue to occur.

And then, finally, there are magnet cities that draw in certain like-minded people. Silicon Valley is an example probably everybody [knows]. If you want to do a start-up venture in the tech world, there really are a few places to be that are as buzzing and as influential as that.

Bearing that in mind, could you compare New Zealand to the US as far as being an ‘Innovation nation’?

That’s a really good question. In New Zealand I really admire the propensity that people have to come up with a solution. If it’s a problem… fix it! That means, go into your shed, pick up your tools and your tape, and try to figure it out by yourself before going to the store and buying a replacement. I was so young when I was there that I didn’t really notice the difference, but I do now.

I pretty much grew up in a shed. My neighbor had a massive shed full of tools and we would spend every day building something and improving it again and again and again. I developed the attitude, “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” which was very important.

I do think it’s a little different when it comes to business, though. I would say that business innovation is definitely more supported in The United States than it is in New Zealand, where there is still is a little bit of that ‘tall poppy’ syndrome. However, I think the global culture is starting to stamp that out a little.

For entrepreneurship I’ve found the States to have a very supportive community, which is now moving on-line, so it doesn’t really matter where you are.

Do you think there is such a thing as a ‘natural entrepreneur’?

I think that people vary so much in their natural abilities and their tendencies that it’s hard to generalize. [But] I’ve met some people who, to me, are absolutely born entrepreneurs; they just look at the world from a different perspective.

I’m pretty divided on the issue, but if I had to give a short answer I would say, as human beings we do have a propensity, a drive and an interest, to innovate. I think it becomes suppressed largely because of our environment. That includes culture, role models, authority and laws… all those things make a difference. As Pablo Picasso once said, “All children are born artists, the challenges is remaining one when we get older.”

That’s a lovely quote, and leads me quite tidily to ask you about your interactive eBook, ‘Maxims for Mavericks’. How did that inspirational bolt strike you? Maxims for Mavericks came about when I was really [getting] into quotations and thought: “Gosh, these are great; there is so much intelligence, and so much wisdom in so few words!” I started collecting quotes I thought were great, and then had the idea of writing a short reflection on each quotation.

What makes quotes unique is that they really express peoples’ personal belief systems. Once you understand, or adopt, a new belief system, everything about yourself and your life begins to change… your perception of yourself, your perception of the world around you.

How did the title come about?

The more research I did, the [more the word] ‘maxim’ came into my head, and then I always loved the concept of being a maverick. I married the two together and I thought: “Wow, that makes perfect sense.”

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it… unbranded cattle, then, were called ‘Maverick’s.’ The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand. – New York Times

I put a few together and published a little book, in physical form, that I would give away when I would speak. I started getting messages and e-mails from people around the world who really liked it, and I thought: “I need to make this more available. Now that we are in a digital age, let’s start applying this maverick mentality.” And that’s what I did.

I created an eBook to give away. I asked myself: “How can I reach more people efficiently and cost-effectively?” The obvious solution was to create it in digital form.

Would you then equate mavericks and innovators as being the same thing?

I definitely think there’s a huge amount of overlap.

I think a maverick is somebody who is simply original, [someone] who embraces who they are and is willing to take risks by pursuing something they think is important. They question the status quo, conventional thought, old systems and tired assumptions. That’s what mavericks do as people, and that leads to innovation.

Do you think your education assisted your savoring the maverick within you?

For me the division between education and action started at such an early age. It’s hard to say if education actually changed me. What I will say is that starting businesses at an early age changed the way that I looked at education and, therefore, it really changed my relationship with education.

If I were relying on my education to be innovative, to be a successful business person, I think I would fail miserably. I don’t think that school inspires or encourages the innovative entrepreneurial mentality.

So where would you direct young people to go to get inspiration or to find a path they can follow?

First of all, the earlier [they start] the better. Just like you develop physical habits, you can develop mental habits. Start young.

It pains me so much to hear a student say: “Well, I’m a student now, so I’m just going to enjoy. When I’m out of school then I’ll do ‘this’.” I call that the ‘defective student’ label.

If you’re a student that means that you’re trying to educate yourself, in some way, shape or form. And that’s exactly what you should be doing. Join groups! I think that business groups are fantastic to organize or be part of.

They have something called NFTE here in the States, the Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship, and it’s fantastic. Its an entrepreneurial program for people to get involved, to start thinking differently, at a young age. You can turn to books and you can also turn to places like Youtube… Yes, believe or not, there’s more than just animals doing silly things on there. There’s unbelievable videos that you can learn from: speeches, keynotes and so forth.

There is mentorship as well. Reach out to people and say: “Would you mind spending some time with me?” Once a week, twice a week, once a month. [Youth} can be a huge benefit here, you can use it to your advantage and get to people who wouldn’t normally do it, or who would normally charge a fee.

You’re proud of the relationships you’ve formed with world leaders in the field of personal development. Who are some of these world leaders and why did you seek them out in particular?

Just to name a few Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Richard Carlson. Those were the three most important. Of course I’ve met a lot of others along the way that I have exchanged e-mails and conversations with, but in terms of personal relationship, I’d identify those three. It started with each of then when I [began] writing my first book. When I started ‘Cool Stuff They Should Teach in School’ I was consumed [by] self-help and non-fiction. I would do anything: read it, listen to it, go to it, talk to somebody who embodied it.

It started to rub off on me and eventually I wanted to think bigger and bigger and bigger. So I asked myself: “Who is the leader in this field of self publishing?” Jack Canfield came to mind as co-creator of the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series, of course. I thought it would be excellent to meet this person, so that’s exactly what I did.

I put him on my vision board, sought him out and told him a little bit about my idea. That was pretty terrifying as a teenager, but I caught his attention. I asked for his support, he agreed and we stayed in touch. The same thing happened with Mark Victor Hansen, who is also the co-creator of the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series, and Richard Carlson, who was the creator of the ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff’ series.

Unfortunately [Richard] passed away, but he was unbelievable as a role model in terms of showing me a bright, supportive, constructive side of the world.

Of course I’m going to have to ask, what is the ‘Cool Stuff They Should Teach in School’?

Good question. The book (since you’re referencing that) covers everything from basic ideas about psychology, motivation, attitude and goal setting to more practical skills such as money management and communication. Those were all topics I thought were extremely important that should be taught.

And where can people get their hands on the book?

It’s available at Amazon [and] at Coolstuffmedia.com.

Ironically it’s become required reading in schools. I never thought that was possible, but a lot of teachers have really embraced it. They order it every year and have classes based on it. In your eBook, you talk about the importance of unlearning. So, I’m wondering, what is the most unimportant peace of information you’ve unlearned.

Ironically, it’s that you don’t have to have a college degree to be educated. You don’t have to have college degree to do something important and to make a positive impact.

Growing up everything was about: “Get good grades and then work your way towards an excellent job.” That’s what I was told and I had to unlearn that.

I think unlearning that has been unbelievably liberating. It took a lot of pressure off. [But] the problem with doing that is you become very critical about what you are learning. Which is both good and bad. I now question everything. If it doesn’t make sense to me and I really can’t come up with a reason to do it, I’ll usually put up some sort of a fight until I can understand why it’s worth my time.

Is it safe to say that yours will be a never ending study of life?

Absolutely. I subscribe to the maxim that says: “Investment in self yields the greatest return.” I think you’d be silly to stop your education, because that’s the only edge you have. Without it, it’s really hard to stay inspired and be creative.

The Uncommon Life Blog

You can’t associate creativity and innovation with stagnation, it just doesn’t work. You need to be in motion at all times.

The minute you stop doing something I think you really put yourself in a very risky situation, both in your physical and mental health. This is why studies have shown that a lot of people end up dying within two to five years after their retirement. You know, they fail to engage in something.

With innovation that is absolutely true. You have to not only consciously try to be creative and innovative, but you have to seek it out, you have to look for it… you have to actually want to learn.

Steve Jobs… what a loss. Kent Healy, quite a find.

Kent Healy is twenty-eight years old. One can only imagine what he will accomplish in the coming decades!

Readers are invited to follow Kent on Twitter as well as join his The Uncommon Life groups on Facebook and LinkedIn and his Maxims for Mavericks group on Facebook.

If you would like to know what Kent’s favourite Maxims are, watch this video to find out!

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Digital Media, Innovation, Marketing, Technology

Tagged Capital I innovation, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Cool Stuff Coaching Course, Cool Stuff Media, Cool Stuff They Should Teach in School, innovation, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Marketing, Maxims for Mavericks, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, New Zealand, NFTE, quotations, Reactor, Richard Branson, Richard Carlson, Silicon Valley, startup, Steve Jobs, Technology, The One Minute Student, The Success Principles for Teens, The Uncommon Life

Do Fries Go With That Business Shake(up)?

Posted on September 1, 2011 | 1 comment

Capital I Innovation Interview Series – Number 5

Vincent Hunt is a man on a mission. And what is that mission? To make change. With his tool box including the skill sets of lateral and creative thinking along with design, he is an enthusiastic, some might say evangelistic, proponent of the newly emerging role of CIO – Chief INNOVATION Officer.

Now I must be honest and say that, first off, that after ten years in the Netherlands, and two years in Sydney, sometimes the only change – let alone innovation – I’m looking for in the hospitality industry is, well, some hospitality. That said, there is definitely a a scent of change in the air, and there are those that are leading the way. One such leader is Vincent Hunt.

Vincent is Co-founder, Chairman & Chief Innovation Officer at Kind Intelligence, which leverages cloud, mobile and social technology to bring Innovation to the hospitality industry through Hospitality Intelligence.

Vincent, how essential has innovation been in your career to date; and how important do you envisage it being going forward?

Innovation has been, in essence, the foundation of my career for quite some time, I can not remember a time where innovation has not been a factor in my professional development. As individuals, I believe that we each have a responsibility to ourselves to continually challenge ourselves through rethinking, redefining and re-inventing who we are. EVEN as it pertains to our career, in-fact, I believe that this is one of the areas of our lives, more now than ever, that we should be exposing ourselves to “internal innovation” – evolving, and growing in a time where our historical perceptions of work are being challenged . So not only has innovation been important in MY career, innovation has quintessentially shaped my career.

What do you think is imperative to allow ‘Capital I’ Innovation to occur? reform

I’m totally anti-politics, so I am going to steer away from that end of the question, BUT what I am going to do is dig in where my heart resides. Education.

I believe that if we are to see and benefit from one of the greatest paradigm shifts in innovation we will ever see in OUR lifetime, and if not this lifetime, one shortly after… We MUST authorize, and unleash one of the greatest and most powerful innovative forces the world has ever seen… Generation Y, the Echo Boomers and post Echo Boomers, and I think it starts with the education system.

This generation is growing up in a post-industrial world, and experiencing an industrial education system. While there is little emphasis on the arts, creativity in equal parts, and we are seeing children as young as 7 or 8 years old being diagnosed ADHD and sedated out of their creative potential, simply for the sake of conforming to a system that was pretty much designed to produce industrial minded contributors, citizens… We have to not only evolve the education system, we have to turn it on it’s head and start exploring the creative capacity of our children.

What do you think are the main barriers to the success of innovation?

Some of the main barriers to the success of innovation, in my humble opinion are, and some of these may overlay one another…

1. Resistance to change

2. Rigorous conditioning by the collective mind

3. Fear

4. The protest of “play” within the workplace

5. Habit/Routine

8. If you could give a ‘Capital I’ Innovation Award to anyone, who would you nominate?

This one is tough because I believe in so many of the Capital I Innovators… So can I give two? Please??!!

1. Tom Peters and

2. Apple …

Tom Peters, has, in my opinion, single handedly turned the business world upside down for the better. In his provocative book Re-Imagine (2006), Tom Peters gave us a Manifesto for the way we should view work where, not only was he Visionary and concise, BUT he ushered in a whole new way to think about business. Tom Peters talked about Social Media well before the phrase “Social Media” existed. And TO THIS DAY, Tom Peters continues to define the foundation of business from a radical new paradigm, that gives Innovators a roadmap to navigate by…. Revolutionary.

Apple… Not only does Apple have the “chops” to create incredible products, the iPhone (game changer), the iMac (simply beautiful, and oh yeah… powerful), the iOs (revolutionary)… BUT they also believe in Design Thinking like no other company that I can put my finger on today (besides the champions of the thinking, Ideo, Frog, to name a couple), and it’s this “difference” that leads them to design and innovation excellence.

As it pertains to their “Capital I” contribution… one product that really rings true to me is the iPhone, and later the iPad. I can remember when the iPhone first came into the marketplace, and I clearly remember the competition saying things like “It’s just another cell phone, with an oversized screen and touchpad… Big deal…” AND big deal it was… Because it was not only the beautiful aesthetics that made the iPhone amazing, it was the thinking behind the iPhone that was the “Innovation”.

The iPhone was the first hand-held device that gave the users the power to create the experience THEY wanted, and that was, and is, magical. Apple totally rethought the cell phone, and what it meant to us as a people, and the “mobile device” (surely we can’t keep calling them cell phones now… right) will never be the same.

How do you see Capital I Innovation changing the hospitality industry?

The Hospitality Industry is going through a major shift right now, greatly in-part to the emergence of what I like to call the “Connected Consumer”. Consumers have more opportunity than they have ever had, to shape, and re-shape, their experiences.

For the first time, the voice of the consumer is richly audible and influential, and brands are starting to understand that their brand experience is in large part, at the mercy of the consumer voice [via] Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, Urban Spoon, Foodspotting… enabling technologies that are a direct line of influence on the hospitality industry. If one person has a bad experience at a hotel, that one bad experience can instantly change the perception of thousands upon thousands of people that MAY be thinking about visiting that hotel, and one tweet, retweeted can make that happen.

At Kind Intelligence, we conceptualize and develop breakthrough ideas that 1. help hospitality industry professionals streamline operational efficiencies, but more importantly, 2. we are feverishly thinking about ways that we can turn the hospitality industry on it’s head to deliver rich, and meaningful customer experiences. Our innovations rest in “delivering better ways of doing things based on new sets of data”… new, deeper, demographic information (Hospitality Intelligence 2.0).

We think about empathetic intelligence. I can learn more about you. I can learn your mood at any given point of the day, and for the first time, I can market to moods. The Connected Consumer is giving us more data than every before, the question is how do we leverage that data and how do we make solutions that improve the customers experience. Does this means that one day you’ll be able to walk into a restaurant and be offered a completely unique experience, could that be possible? Absolutely.

I can see Capital I Innovation shifting how consumers connect with hospitality brands, but more importantly, how hospitality brands connect with the consumers.

Do you think the ‘Groupon Effect’ emboldening innovation in the industry?

I think that Groupon is a great idea, from the consumer side of the house, as they’re are able to get deals and save a lot of great money. But I think it hinders the growth and potential of some restauranteurs and other companies because they discount their products and services and reduce the value of their offerings.

What is the difference between ‘Possibility Thinking vs Competition Thinking’?

This is something that I am fanatical about, and it’s become the foundational thinking that we embrace at Kind. We don’t think in terms of ‘competition’ because we feel that that only leads to incremental (at best) change. We lean towards focusing on what is ‘possible’, which often leads to a more disruptive form of innovation.

Right now we are working on a massive project with Mutual Mobile out of Austin Texas called Menulus, that we feel will totally reinvent the dining experience. Menulus, [which we’re launching in the first Quarter of 2012] was designed based on possibility thinking, and some of it’s abilities are going to “shake up” the mobile space in a very profound way.

‘Possibility Thinking’ is innovating based on what is possible in todays marketplace vs ‘Competition Thinking’, which suggest that we simply innovate, a little, to beat the competition. It’s the difference between taking an ‘innovation’ stance vs a ‘disruptive innovation’ stance.

It sounds like Menulus is going to enable Micro-pitches to the consumer.

Through micro-pitches we have ways of extending Kindness, and that’s where the name of our company comes from. Kindness is a choice, but I need tools to help me make better choices and that’s where the semantic web and Web 3.0 really empowers what Menulus is all about.

Could we potentially have a POS (Point of Sale) System that’s integrated into the menu in real time? Could we have consumer facing tools that allowed us to discover food and restaurants in completely new ways that are more catered to our preferences – all the way down to our calorie counts? Can we do that? Absolutely. And we did it.

Tell me about The Hospitality Intelligence Company.

Kind, The Hospitality Intelligence Company focuses on conceptualizing and developing breakthrough ideas that streamline operational efficiencies and improve customer experiences within the hospitality industry. Our value proposition rest in our “thinking” vs our “doing”. We work with really creative people to develop new products, services and brands that can fulfill our companies objectives and ethos… The pursuit of design and innovation excellence.

When we formed Kind Intelligence I knew I had to take the position of CIO, Chief INNOVATION Officer, as I wanted the ethos of the company to reside there, in design and innovation excellence. I oversee the Innovation Initiatives of this company, I drive that. Its interesting to be in this role at such a critical time in our economic transition, going from the Industrial Age into the Creative Age.

Here in the US the role of Chief Innovation Officer is fairly new. You have them, but you don’t have that many of them. The other component to that is that I am African American. I think I am one of only a few African American Chief Innovation Officers in the country.

Why do you think that is?

If I talk to 10 colleagues and ask them what a CIO is, they’ll all say ‘Chief Information Officer’. They just don’t know that this position exists, so they don’t know to pursue it.

That’s one of the reasons I’m excited to be in this role, because I plan on championing it and bringing it to the forefront. Saying, “This is what a Chief Innovation Officer does; and yes, you can be one!”

Its seems that in his role as Chief INNOVATION Officer, Vincent Hunt is shaking up more than the hospitality Industry. I know I’m not alone in seeing where his enthusiasm and expertise lead.

[More information on the Semantic Web and business here.]

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Innovation, Technology, Uncategorized, Vint Cerf

Tagged ARPANET, AT&T, Australia, Bell Labs, Bob Kahn, Broadband, Capital I innovation, Cloud, cochlear implant, computing, Da Vinci robotic surgery, DARPA, eHealth, Ehternet, entrepreneurship, father of the internet, Googe, Google, government, Graeme Clark, IBM, internet economy, Internet Evangelist, Interplanetary Internet, Intuitive Surgical, invention, J.C.R. Licklider, MCI, National Science Foundation Network, NBN, NSFNET, OECD, persoal helicopter, petabit, protocols, Roger Kermode, Silicon Valley, Stephen Conroy, Technology, terabit, Unix, vBNS, Vint Cerf, Why the West Rules - For Now, world wide web

Barry Flaherty – A Trend Spotter’s Perspective

Posted on August 18, 2011 | 1 comment

Barry Flaherty has worn many hats on his route to his current incarnation as a digital media expert. These include being an International Business Development Director, and a technology early adopter for over 15 years, driving global innovative solutions in marketing, digital media, and mobile technology. His client experience has covered Vodafone, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Nike, and the Qatar Foundation to name but a few.

An avid blogger and trend spotter, Barry is currently engaged on projects with a variety of clients ranging from start-ups, fast growing organisations, corporates, broadcasters and digital media agencies in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Added to this, he sits on the Advisory Boards of several high profile digital media networks.

Currently working with Mediaventura in London on M&A advisory work and fund raising for fast growing digital businesses, Barry is also crowd sourcing digital case studies for inclusion in a new version of ‘Understanding Digital Marketing’.

This follows hot on the heels of the recently launched, ‘The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns in the World‘ published by Kogan Page.

Barry, you’ve been searching for, and driving forward Innovation for many years. How do you define Innovation?

Innovation to me is like a Rubix Cube. Multi-faceted, full of different colours and almost impossible to crack UNLESS you happen to be very good; be that as an individual or an organisation. I suppose a good place to start is understanding the essence and meaning of Innovation.

A convenient definition, from an organisational perspective, is given by Luecke and Katz (2003):

“Innovation is generally understood as the successful introduction of a better thing or method. [It] is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.”

Do you think entrepreneurs are born or ‘made’?

Good question. Depends what life throws at you. There’s probably ten or twenty different ways in which entrepreneurs are created.

There’s a great quote from Twelfth Night:

“some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

Many entrepreneurs are born out of many years of relentless effort – pushing themselves, and those around them, to the limit – and of course, having many failed business ventures before they finally become successful.

Right now trying to raise money from the market is like a trip to the dentist for root canal surgery. So if you have got a rich mummy or daddy or family member who can set you up on the path, well…

Many of today’s so called Entrepreneurs have had a helping hand in life. Sometimes this comes from billionaire families or trust funds, which have allowed many to start with the necessary ‘oxygen’ and capital to make turning their ideas into reality that much easier. Stelios Haji-Ioannou from Easyjet is an example of this. Kerry Packer, the Australian media mogul, created an opening for his son James to flourish and take over the reins of their Empire.

Kerry and James Packer

We need entrepreneurs in society. They provide inspiration. They provide case studies for the plethora of Business Schools and MBA courses, and keep income rolling into the country. Innovation fosters dreams. The end product is a conveyor belt of ‘leaders of tomorrow’ entering the workplace armed with MBA’s and case studies in their heads from some of the world’s greatest innovators and entrepreneurs.

Speaking of a helping hand, you are about to become a father for the first time. What do you want to pass on to your child?

Common sense. This is where someone like Paul McCartney is a good example. He’s got hundreds of millions in the bank from years of royalties, and he still sent his kids to a normal school. Its about arming your kids for life.

Do you see a difference between ‘little i’ and ‘Capital I’ Innovation?

Innovation is an important topic in the study of most things in society, be that economics, business, entrepreneurship, design, technology, sociology or engineering.

Innovation is, unfortunately, one of those words that you hear lots but is rarely practiced. I’ve attended many Conferences at the European Union, and within industry, on the topic of Innovation; and there seems to be a whole industry of people hell-bent on commentating on Innovation and policy making to foster it. But, these are not the true innovators. I hardly think a policy ‘wonk’ in Brussels is going to become the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.

Once innovation occurs, innovations may be spread from the innovator to other individuals and groups. This life cycle of innovations can be described using the ‘s-curve’ or diffusion curve. The s-curve maps growth of revenue or productivity against time.

In the early stage of a particular innovation, growth is relatively slow as the new product establishes itself. At some point customers begin to demand [it] and the product growth increases more rapidly. I think it would be fair to say that lots of little i’s make up one big I.

It could be argued that innovation is one continuous journey rather than the final destination. Innovation is fluid, continuous and ever evolving. It’s a shame the big CAPITAL I seems to be the one that gets most column inches as there are innovative discoveries and successes happening on this planet on an almost daily basis.

Do you think innovation is an overused term?

I think it would be fair to say that it’s a term that is timeless but slightly jaded around the edges. There are a lot of so called ‘ambulance chasers’ who like to pontificate and tell the world they are innovative without really demonstrating or executing this.

We like Innovation. It’s like a warm blanket on a cold night. We are proud of it and we like to tell the world how innovative we are.

So what do we like to do?

That’s right! We create awards. Here is a recent example of one from the www.d-media.co.uk network in the UK. We have become good at giving ourselves a good pat on the back for just about everything. There seem to be more award ceremonies, for just about everything, than there are Companies!

Enter the IET Innovation Awards to raise the profile of your invention amongst those leading the way in science, engineering and technology innovation. Typical Award categories include:

Asset Management
Built Environment
Electronics
Embedded and Critical Systems
Emerging Technologies
Healthcare Technologies
Information Technology
Measurement in Action
Power / Energy
Product Design
Software in Design
Sustainability
Team
Telecommunications
Transport

How essential has innovation been in your career to date; and how important do you envisage it being going forward?

I’ve leant towards creative industries and this has led me to come into contact with many entrepreneurs and creative minds that have built successful businesses from scratch, or created true measurable value for the Organisations they work for.

In the organisational context, innovation may be linked to positive changes in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitive positioning, market share, etc. All of which can be affected positively by innovative forces. All organisations can innovate, including, for example, hospitals, universities and local governments. Some will flourish under its influence. Other will die. It’s survival of the fittest.

In my digital world, the ‘King of the Jungle’ one minute can be obsolete the next. Take MySpace or Friends Re-United for example. They were top for a matter of months, then swept aside by the likes of Facebook and Google. And even they have reached saturation now in many mature markets. They need growth in developing countries to stay on target for their target of 1 billion users and their over justified and bloated valuations.

On a wider level, car companies and manufacturing industries are making way for knowledge economies, knowledge clusters and an increasingly mobile workforce. The travel industry has been taken over by online offerings, disinter-mediation is ripping through more industries and supply chains than ever before.

Going forward, I want to stay involved with working at the sharp end of Innovation, thus working in Mergers and Acquisitions with fast growing organizations. That way, I stay close to the capital markets and also get to court the Innovators and entrepreneurs, feeding my desire for knowledge and having a pulse on the future.

As an extremely avid fan, Barry also stays close to Celtic FC.

You can read Barry’s piece on Celtic and New Media in the August edition of CQ Magazine (pgs 38 & 39) here

What do you think is imperative to allow ‘Capital I’ Innovation to occur?

That is of course the million dollar conundrum. Innovation isn’t always welcome in practice, in my experience. I’ve spent/wasted years of my life delivering solutions that promise change and progress and, let me tell you, they’re not always welcome!

Governments talk about creating innovation, Science & Technology parks and Innovation parks and, to their credit, most governments in the Western world have built these. They’ve created jobs and been responsible for breakthroughs in medicine, technology, life sciences and so on. The UK has clusters of Innovation Centres and Science Parks, and the European Union is one big Innovation hub, mostly because it sits on budgets of billions to throw at ‘so called’ Innovation projects.

Innovation with a CAPITAL I without cash will never materialise – governments realise this. Expensive public sector modernisation projects, transport infrastructure, new schools and educational institutions need private enterprise and money to allow this.

In the digital world, places like Silicon Valley play a crucial role in funding innovation, leading to new frameworks including user centric design, interoperability, co-operation, portfolio management and processes to shorten product development cycles.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time in the Middle East working with the Qatar Foundation and other projects such as the Qatar Science Technology Park, Internet City in Dubai and AppsArabia in Abu Dhabi. They can attract the world’s brightest minds and talent as they can afford the money to prise the talent out of countries like the UK, Australia, USA and other western economies. Innovation tends to follow the talent and the capital, be that financial or human.

Private and public sector partnerships are crucial as not everybody has 100 years of liquefied natural gas (LNG) or oil sitting under their shores. We need only to look at Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Sudan, and Greece as examples of countries who do not have the manpower, innovation, cash or energy resources of the BRIC economies or a region like the Middle East.

On the upside are the new business models, which predominantly aren’t reliant on huge cost bases – you can set up a business today for ‘$17 online and in only 5 minutes’ – you don’t have to have an office, a factory, or lots of staff.

Does location matters?

Of course it matters. Being born into the right country at the right time is tantamount to winning the lottery.

That said, Innovation is universal. It’s being created, dreamt about and implemented in classrooms in China, the boardrooms of Brazil, universities in India and in R&D labs and Universities the world over. Innovation travels. It has a passport; it speaks many languages and knows no bounds.

Like all journeys in life, it’s not always plain sailing for Innovation. There are barriers, obstacles and challenges, yet with the right network, funding, energy and drive, Innovation does eventually prevail.

The internet has created a level playing field where SME’s and individuals can go toe to toe with large organisations. People have a direct line to brands, governments and people in authority. It’s power to the people, and the people holding the levers of power and control had better start listening.

The recent overthrow of governments in the Middle East and Asia demonstrated this. In this ever connected world, there is no hiding place.

A man not backwards in coming forward with his opinion, there is likely no hiding place from Barry Flaherty either.

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Digital Media, Innovation, Marketing, Technology

Tagged Abhu Dhabi, AppsArabia, BRIC, Capital I innovation, Celtic FC, CQ Magazine, Digital Media, Dubai, IET Innovation Awards, innovation, internet City, Kerry Packer, Marketing, Mediaventura, Middle East, Qatar Science Technology Park, s-curve, Silicon Valley, startup, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Technology, The Best Digital Marketing Campaign in the World, Understanding Digital Marketing, www.d-media.co.uk

The e-Health Perspectives of e-Patient Dave (Part 2)

Posted on August 5, 2011 | 7 comments

Capital I Innovation Interview Series – Number 3

The e-Perspectives of e-Patient Dave

e-Patient Daveis a world renowned keynote speaker, author, government policy advisor, e-patient advocate and champion of participatory medicine. He, along with his physician, Dr. Danny Sands, has been named one of the “Twenty People Making Healthcare Better.” An acclaimed speaker, Dave has received a myriad of standing ovations for his penetrative presentations, including his TEDTalk in the Netherlands this year.

As I have made clear in an earlier post, if there is anywhere that Capital I Innovationis essential, I believe it is in the field of eHealth. This is one of the reasons I was so drawn to e-Patient Dave, an Innovative patient and leader in what I call meHealth.

meHealth expects that I, you, we, take it upon ourselves to expect (if not demand) that all healthcare stakeholders at all levels work together to ensure that affordable, effective healthcare is available to one and all. There may be no one better known for voicing this expectation that e-Patient Dave deBronkart.

Why did you become a healthcare advocate?

Funny you should ask. During his presidential campaign JFK was asked how he became a war hero, and he answered, “It was involuntary. They sank my boat.” Same here.

I was going through life ignoring healthcare, as most of us do – it was always like the fire department: if I ever need it, it’ll be there. And when my crisis hit, it was there for me – pretty much.

In hindsight there were avoidable errors, but all in all they saved my life, brilliantly, including gluing and screwing my leg back together when the cancer ate such a big hole [in it].

A year later my physician, Dr. Danny Sands, invited me to go on a retreat with the e-patients.net gang, with whom he’d been discussing what we now call e-patients. I read the e-patient white paper, and it blew my mind. My little hobby blog took a sharp right turn, as if it had bounced off a boulder. I renamed it from “the New Life of Patient Dave” to “e-Patient Dave,” and started reading books about healthcare.

And here’s the power of social media when combined with conventional print: A year later, I tried to move my hospital records into Google Health. What came across was garbage. It wasn’t Google’s fault – the hospital sent garbage.

That knocked me for a loop, and it took me weeks to figure out what to say. I finally wrote a 3500 word blog post about it.

The next thing I knew, the Boston Globe called because, unbeknownst to me, medical data was a hot topic in Washington. They wrote about my post on page 1, and we were off to the races: speaking, policy meetings in Washington, thousands of Twitter followers, and ten months later, the end of my old career and the start of this [advocacy].

Involuntary indeed; but I’m so happy it happened, because heaven knows healthcare needs to let patients help.

What responsibility do you feel in your position as a healthcare advocate?

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of the thousands of people who, just that day, got the news they never wanted to hear. Four thousand people a day in the US discover they have cancer. That alone is enough. Heaven knows how many people get other life-altering or –ending news.

Five hundred times a day, in the U.S., medical errors accidentally kill someone over age 65. For all these people, and their families, I want to improve healthcare.

I also think about the many, many healthcare employees whose lives are sometimes ruined by involvement in a horrible medical error. In some cases these deaths or ‘harms’ are caused by negligence, but too often they’re the inevitable result of healthcare methods that simply are not as matured, not as reliable, not as bullet-proofed, as the rest of life. As we are all in denial about it, there’s zero chance we’ll get serious about dealing with it. So the pain continues.

Last month in Seattle, I believe, a skilled nurse killed herself after her involvement in a tragic pediatric death that became a media circus. Shame on those media people, for hounding that woman to her death.

The responsibility I feel is to wake people up about the complexity and riskiness of healthcare, to get us out of denial – patients and providers alike – so we can work together to improve processes and, in the interim, manage and minimize risks as best we can. [It’s about] participatory medicine.

Who is the Healthcare customer – is it only the patient, or do you include healthcare providers and managers?

“I think the answer is that, in all cases, the customer is not well served – with the sole exception of the insurance companies… when I say patient, to me that’s a collective noun. Its everybody who’s on the receiving end of the professional services.”

For more Dave’s answer to this question, click play on the video!

In our lead up to this interview, we joked about wanting to change the world. If you could change the world, how would you do so, and what tools do you need to make it happen?

Well of course, world peace, a stable population, plenty of food, mutual care, a healthy nourishing upbringing for every child, and all kinds of things. (Caution -I’m trained in how to visualize a future without concern for its current feasibility.)

I wasn’t joking about changing the world. Cynics are wrong; change happens all the time. For heaven’s sake, the Web was only born 17 years ago. (The Mozilla browser arrived in April 1994.) That’s only 6300 days ago.

Cynics should think about this: if everywhere you turn, the world looks like shit, perhaps you have your head up your ass.

So I am changing the world (and so are you), and it’s not a joke. My tools are stories – mine and others’ – because stories well told are potent change agents; [I use] humor, because it’s more engaging than just tragedy; logic, for instance explaining why it’s reasonable for patients to be active participants; evidence; and social media.

How do you define Innovation in Healthcare? [Note: throughout his answer Dave refers to the KimmiC definition of ‘Capital I’ Innovation: Something that was not there before, upon which new economies and cultures can be built.]

Trick question – Having said that …

What’s “not there before” in healthcare is to start with the question, “What would the customer like to see?”

I’m increasingly certain that the principal source of dysfunction in healthcare is that it’s the only industry I know where the definition of quality doesn’t start with what the customer wants. Once we ignore that, then all our best efforts to improve other things will pursue other goals, but not home in on more satisfied customers.

Want evidence of this? Consider that hardly anyone in healthcare can even imagine what this question means, much less that it might be important. 🙂

And yes, entire new economies can be built on this. Entire new ecosystems, in fact.

The other “what’s not there before” is for all our medical data – all your medical data – to be in your hands, your property, for you to take with you wherever you want.

Aside from putting the power where it belongs – in your hands – it will enable another new ecosystem of personal health data tools.

Combine the two, and we could someday see a health ecosystem that’s built on what people want, not what professionals say they should want.

The third ‘Capital I’ is uncommon today and could be immensely powerful: a vast and widely-known network of patient communities for every condition under the sun.

Not only is there great practical value in connecting with other patients for disease management and day-to-day tips, communities enable information pathways that bypass the limitations of clinical trials and medical journals. Those methods are focused on the scientific method, which is great – it saved my life – but by their nature those methods can’t measure anything that cannot be subjected to trials, and can’t identify factors where the scientific method is weak.

Finally, consumer communities know about findings that fail or side effects that arise after the articles are published – and communities spread the word far more rapidly than traditional channels.

What do you think are the main barriers to the success of healthcare innovation?

This too is too big for me to answer. Having said that, within the narrow scope of my own knowledge, the main barrier I do know of is the lack of that belief that the patient ought to define care’s objectives. If every clinician and hospital executive truly believed that everything they do is to accomplish whatever we [the patients] want, much would change.

And [now] consider how unimaginable or senseless that seems to them.

If you could give a ‘Capital I’ Innovation in Healthcare Award to anyone, who would you nominate?

I don’t know the whole industry. Having said that, at this moment, within my very limited experience, I see these nominees. (I hesitate to say this because of whom I might leave out.)

The current leadership of the U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services. They’re implementing truly patient-centered policies for the first time in generations. That is “that which was not, before.”
The people in the Obama administration who by some miracle got US health reform passed. Almost every president since Roosevelt had tried. That is “that which was not, before.”
Don Berwick, head of Medicare and Medicaid, who is implementing policies and freeing data which will empower real informed choice for consumers.
Lucien Engelen at Radboud UMC in the Netherlands, for creating the REshape Academy, which is actively at work on reshaping the care relationship. That is “that which was not, before.”
Regina Holliday, Medical Advocacy Muralist. A phenomenal story teller in words and paint, she has been putting a face on the human suffering from our dysfunctional system. That is “that which was not, before.”

Are you a patient patient?

Hell yes, presuming the care team is working competently and I’m not being subjected to waits for no good reason.

Though the last question I ask, it is no doubt the most important.. how is your health now?

My cancer is completely gone; for better and worse, I’m exactly back to where I was before the illness, including being a bit overweight. (When the treatment ended I’d achieved my ideal weight! Unfortunately I’ve gained it all back.)

The only clinical difference is that I have one less kidney and adrenal gland, and a bunch of steel that repaired my femur after it snapped from the cancer.

Personally, I’d say Dave has a lot more steel in him than just which repaired his femur.

[Note: On July 23 Dave celebrated the fourth anniversary of his last dose of HDIL-2 (high dosage interleukin-2), the treatment that rapidly reversed the course of the cancer that was killing him. He hasn’t had a drop of treatment – and thus not a single side effect – since then!]

———————————————————————————————

For more information on e-Patient Dave, check out:

www.epatientdave.com his personal personal website,
www.e-patients.net where he often posts blogs,
www.ParticipatoryMedicine.org Society for Participatory Medicine, of which he is co-chair,
www.JoPM.org Journal of Participatory Medicine

(Kim and Dave Skype’d between from their homes in Sydney and Boston on July 26, 2011. Part One of this series can be found here.)

(NOTE: Excuse the quality of the filming/lighting/all-other-ing of this interview. Suffice it to say, Spielberg has no worries I’m going to be sitting in his chair anytime soon!)

Capital I Innovation Series Introduction

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, eHealth, ePatient Dave, Innovation, meHealth, Technology, Vint Cerf

Tagged Capital I innovation, computing, e-Patient Dave, eHealth, ePatient Dave, healthcare, insurance, Lucien Engelen, meHealth, Technology, TED, TEDTalk, world wide web

It’s meHealth I’m Talking About – The To Do List

Posted on July 31, 2011 | 2 comments

The following is a list of meHealth issues, and an overview of some of the steps necessary to solve them: meHealth

Convince stake holders of the efficacy of Personal Healthcare Pages and/or (PHP) National Electronic Health Records (EHR)
Enable all healthcare stakeholders (consumers, healthcare givers, healthcare managers) to use the Web as a platform to share information, deliver care and build communities
Enable patients to make better lifestyle choices

Collaborative Health

Convince stake holders that Collaborative Health Care (CHC) is a cheaper, safer, and better system
Enable single points of contact, self service and self help
Enable Doctors to make better diagnoses and prescribe better treatments through access to more useful and integrated data
Enable data aggregation to produce useful data of clinical significance for researchers evaluation, teaching doctors and development of health services

Non Vendor Locked Tools

Ensure systems are easy and economical for use by all stakeholders
Enable tools that help patients feel more informed, included and valued
Enable medical help via Web sites/browsers and smart phone apps
Enable easily understandable bundles of products and services that can be compared on quality and price, and used by stake holders with a wide range of capability levels
Enable access to and co-ordination of home based medical equipment / tools and assessments along with data-generating Web-enabled devices
Enable tools for doctor patient dialogue
Enable healthcare givers to electronically interact with patients regardless of where they are located
Enable disparate IT systems and processes to connect and co-ordinate with each other
Enable secure flexibility within mobile services, using such tools as PDAs and VOIP processes
Enable healthcare managers to better respond to emergencies and rapidly assess the national impact of particular treatments

Governmental Issues

Enable and enhance uptake by governmental agencies
Support government responsibility for public infrastructure and systems
Enable support for vast consumer and care provider populations in urban, suburban, rural and remote locations
Enable effective co-ordination and oversight of national E-Health activities
Enable tools and systems which support informed policy, investment and research decisions

Security and Privacy

Ensure security of all data transfers
Ensure privacy for patients
Enable confidential electronic information to be securely and seamlessly accessed and shared, by the right person at the right place and time, regardless of their location

Standards

Either create and enable record system standards and benchmarks, or make standards unnecessary by enabling different systems to talk/work with to one another without vendor lock, using a Web 3.0 / Semantic Solution

Data Management

Incentivise enhancement of IT and information management
Incentivise investment in infra- and info-structures
Ensure easy and economical training and support
Ensure implementation is cost effective

Infrastructure

Maximize existing information management and technology to improve functionality
Upgrade old computers and dial-up Internet access or ensure they can work within the new system
Ensure new systems are designed with potential user consultation
Support Funding to improve rural ICT infrastructure
Ensure broadband / ‘chatty’ high-speed connections are not necessary for most clinical consultation (Systems can be broadband based, but must not be broadband bound)

Costs

Reduce/Eliminate errors, inefficiencies and the wastage of time and effort
Lower healthcare provisioning costs
Ensures cost and service level transparency
Lowers costs on families and communities supporting the elderly
Cut time needed to review and implement systems and training
Modernise the management and transmission of data
Consolidate medical records/services and clinically relevant information
Remove duplication of healthcare efforts, expenditure and solutions
Reduce administration time and costs
Combine insurance systems reducing duplications and high overhead costs

Systems and Processes

Enable an integrated health care delivery system
Link emergency and acute hospitals with tertiary care in the community sector
Enable integrated healthcare delivery systems and the consolidation of medical records/services
Ensure B2B applications (i.e. reporting, billing and claiming processes) are integrated into general practice software systems
Enable the secure viewing and following of healthcare processes

Well, there is.

Bottom line: meHealth makes money, and it makes sense.

If you want to talk about the tech, get in touch!

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, eHealth, ePatient Dave, Innovation, meHealth, Technology

Tagged B2B, Broadband, CHC, Collaborative Health Care, data management, eHealth, EHR, Electronic Healt Record, expenditure, healthcare, hospitals, ICT, infrastructure, insurance, integrated, IT, medical, meHealth, Personal Healthcare Pages, PHP, privacy, security, Semantic, tranformational technology, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

The e-Health Perspectives of e-Patient Dave (Part 1)

Posted on July 27, 2011 | 24 comments

Capital I Interview Series – Number 3 (Part 1)

The e-Perspectives of e-Patient Dave

Recently I, along with a myriad of others around the world, was introduced to the passionate, personable and thought provoking e-Patient Dave through his TED Talk ‘Dave deBronkart: Meet e-Patient Dave.

I was so inspired by his presentation, I immediately took to Twitter to send him a message of congratulations – and an invitation to become involved in my Innovation Interview Series – not least because of my long held interest in Innovation in healthcare, and in meHealth in particular.

Unsurprisingly, with more than 180,000 views so far, and having been subtitled in nine languages, Dave’s TEDTalk has proven to be an international hit. So much so, that TED invited him back to do a TED Conversation on “Let Patients Help” scheduled for Wednesday 27 July at 1:00 p.m. (US) EDT.

My interview with Dave, conducted on 26 July, will be posted in a series of ‘chunks’ – some in text, and some in video format.

(NOTE: Excuse the quality of the filming/lighting/all-other-ing of this interview. Suffice it to say, Spielberg has no worries I’m going to be sitting in his chair anytime soon!)

This first posting, to coincide with the Ted Conversation, will look at two questions in particular: the responsibility of Healthcare users and the demands they are entitled to make.

But first, lets talk about TED:

You’ve recently done a TedTalk and had a great global response to your presentation. What has been the most surprising outcome from this success.

It’s no surprise that being a hit on TED.com has been phenomenal at spreading the meme. What is a pleasant surprise is that it’s clearly gone viral: the idea is currently spreading at over 1500 views a day, and volunteers have added subtitles in eight languages. WHAT a pleasure for any advocate, to see an idea take off like that, especially across cultures. Farsi!

And what a testament to the power and reach of TED.

And who brought you into TED?

“That’s my friend Lucien Engelen, His Twitter name is Zorg – which means ‘Care’ in Dutch – 20, and he is a visionary. A visionary who has the ability to execute. About two years ago he got […] authorized to run a TEDx, the smaller regional franchise TED events, in Maastricht. A year before it happened he announced that a patient was going to be the first speaker at this medical conference.”

Lucien Engelen is a Health 2.0 Ambassador, the Director of the Radboud REshape & Innovation Center, and on the Advisory Executive Board at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre

“Clearly this is tapping into something in consumers cross culturally – people want to be involved in their healthcare around the world.”

What responsibility do you think healthcare users need to take in their own health?

The simplest eye-opener view was put forth in December 2008 by endocrinologist Stanley Feld: “Physicians are coaches. Patients are players.” You don’t get to sit on the couch all day and then demand participatory healthcare. With rights come responsibility. Get up off your ass; be physically engaged in your life, not just your care decisions.

For those inclined toward a more delicate view, and perhaps a more formal model, Jessie Gruman’s Center for Advancing Health has developed a terrific ten-piece framework for patient engagement:

Find Safe, Decent Care
Communicate with Health Care Professionals
Organize Health Care
Pay for Health Care
Make Good Treatment Decisions
Participate in Treatment
Promote Health
Get Preventive Health Care
Plan for the End of Life
Seek Health Knowledge

For details see this post with her speech about it and links to the full framework documents.

Should patients be allowed to read their doctors’ notes, access lab result and see images they aren’t necessarily qualified to assess?

“There’s several levels of thinking about this.. here’s entitled according to the law, and there’s what I think makes sense.”

“How do we improve healthcare? And I assert that we have to start there, because we are approaching a genuine healthcare famine.”

Lucien Engelen, who hosted TEDx Maastricht… he’s going to be running the REshape academy in September, where I’m going to be doing my ePatient bootcamp.

He said that in the Netherlands, which is not a giant country, by 2025 they’re facing a shortage of 400,000 nurses.”

“Now anybody who plans to be alive in 2025, and there probably will be more humans in the Netherlands than there are today, is going to be facing a care shortage. So it just seems unavoidable that that we’ve got to hand people a lifeline to try to help themselves.”

My doctor, Dr. Danny Sands, is famous for saying, “How can patients be engaged in their care if they can’t see the information?”

“For the patients to be a second set of eyes, to check the data quality, costs the healthcare system nothing more and will reduce defects.”

What responsibility do you think healthcare users need to take in demanding change in the healthcare system?

Well, that varies a lot. All my life I’ve felt that demands aren’t necessary until one has asked courteously, offering partnership in creating the change and doing the work.

But there are times when the establishment simply will not listen.

It happened for hundreds of years with women’s suffrage. It happened with the civil rights movement: folk singer Malvina Reynolds penned a cheerful ditty “It Isn’t Nice” about what you sometimes have to do for justice:

It isn’t nice to block the doorway
It isn’t nice to go to jail
There are nicer ways to do it,
But the nice ways always fail

Although I followed folk music in the Sixties, I didn’t hear that song until this year, in the context of yet another movement: gay rights. It was mentioned in an episode of our great PBS series The American Experience the Stonewall Uprising.

One of the gents who was in that movement recounts what gays eventually had to do to be granted the right to live and let live. Will we see a day when patients march in the streets? Gays chanted “Out of the closets and into the streets!”

Will patients march, chanting “Out of the johnnies [US slang for hospital gown] and into the streets – stop the killing now”?

Personally, I’d prefer the chant “Let Patients Help.” But if healthcare ignores that, who knows.

———————————————————————————————

End of Part One

In Part Two of my interview with e-Patient Dave, we’ll look at, among other things: Capital I’ Innovation in healthcare, healthcare heroes, why Dave became a healthcare advocate (and the responsibilities that entails) and changing the world.

[ There’s a lot more to come from e-Patient Dave, so keep your ears tuned, and your eyes peeled – conversely, you could make things easy on yourself and either follow this blog or subscribe to the RSS feed! 🙂 ]

For more information on e-Patient Dave, check out:

www.epatientdave.com his personal personal website,
www.e-patients.net where he often posts blogs,
www.ParticipatoryMedicine.org Society for Participatory Medicine, of which he is co-chair,
www.JoPM.org Journal of Participatory Medicine

(Kim and Dave Skype’d between from their homes in Sydney and Boston on July 26, 2011. This is Part One of a multi-part series.)

Part Two of this interview can be found here

Capital I Innovation Series Introduction

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Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, eHealth, ePatient Dave, Innovation, meHealth, Technology, Vint Cerf

Tagged Capital I innovation, computing, eHealth, ePatient Dave, healthcare, Lucien Engelen, meHealth, Technology, TED, TEDTalk, world wide web

Category Archives: ‘Capital I’ Innovation

The NBN: Are We Bothered… and Should We Be?

Growing the Culture of Disruption: A chat with Linda Bernardi, a Most Personable Provocateur

Chewing on Black Swan for Christmas

Occupying the Management of Innovation

Kent Healy – Maverick on a Mission

Barry Flaherty – A Trend Spotter’s Perspective

The e-Health Perspectives of e-Patient Dave (Part 2)

It’s meHealth I’m Talking About – The To Do List

The e-Health Perspectives of e-Patient Dave (Part 1)

CAPITAL I INNOVATION – the KimmiC definition:

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