Wednesday, March 7, 2012
China's trademark system baffles foreign firms (Reuters)
About three weeks ago I had blogged about the troubles Apple was having over the use of the "iPad" name in China. Here's an interesting article in from Reuters that discusses the complexities of the Chinese Trademark system and how it's even baffling Facebook as it contemplates reentering the Chinese market. The story is even more interesting in light of a report issued by Thomas Reuters that shows that China became the world's top patent filer in 2011, surpassing the United States and Japan. This is the first time that any country has surpassed the US in the number of patent filings. I bet China will not only expect but demand that its IP be protected worldwide. The situation reminds me of something Colonel Potter once said in the US hit TV series M*A*S*H "Just remember, there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way."
Labels:
Innovation
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Leadership "Call to Action": Sustained Innovation Requires a Stable Ecosystem of Infrastructure
A question that keeps many an executive up at night is about how to ensure that their organization continues to stay relevant with innovative products and services. This is a question I address throughout my recent book, Living in the Innovation Age. My book provides practical advice on how organizations can spur innovation and embark on their innovation journey but ultimately places the responsibility for instilling an open, participatory, and collaborative culture of innovation squarely on the shoulders of top leadership.
I just read an interesting story about the rise and slow decline of the Indian global economic leadership in Businessweek (March 5 – March 11, 2012). According to Akash Kapur, the author of the article and the upcoming book “A Portrait of Life in Modern India,” the last couple of decades have seen two very different models of economic development in Asia. Known collectively as “Chindia”, China and India have emerged as the two economic powerhouses of Asia over the past two decades. Each, however, has achieved its result in a very different manner. China has gained world dominance through a state-led and subsidized system that relied heavily on manufacturing. India, on the other hand, has led through the development of the private sector relying on a thriving high-tech and service industry. Additionally, unlike China, from the very beginning, these private industries had little support from the Indian government.
So, how are India and China faring? While China is still very much a world power contender, the story for India has taken a turn for the worse. The Indian miracle that once was has now been interrupted. The contrast in stories could not be stronger - China has continued to succeed because of the state while India was surviving despite its government. Now it seems though that the government ultimately got the upper hand. As Kapur states, the country’s recent travails, have shattered the illusion that the private sector can thrive without a functioning state. Policy and regulatory confusion, and rising social and environmental problems, are all reminders that sustainable growth isn’t possible without an ecosystem of sound institutions and responsive government. In many ways it is now apparent that the advances of the last couple of decades were built on shallow foundations.
The same discussion applies to innovation. Innovation requires a stable ecosystem of infrastructure – policy, culture, people, processes, and technology – to survive and thrive in the long term. While innovative “onesies and twosies” can happen in almost any organization, a pipeline of continuous innovation requires top management to take a leadership role in investing, creating, nurturing, and sustaining an innovation ecosystem.
The United States too has been struggling with keeping up as an innovation leader in the world. I cited results from a report published in July 2011 by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in my book on the state of the innovation-based competitiveness of the US as compared with a group of 44 countries. The report rates the innovative abilities of the 44 countries using 16 key indicators from six broad categories – human capital, innovation capacity, entrepreneurship, IT infrastructure, economic policy, and economic performance. Overall, the news was not so good for the United States ranking fourth behind Singapore, Finland and Sweden and, worse yet, near the bottom of the list in terms of countries where innovation is seen as improving.
Still, there is a silver lining for the US. Based on the above discussion about the need for a robust ecosystem of infrastructure it would be premature to count the US out just yet. In a recent Harvard Business Review (March 2012) article titled “Choosing the United States,” authors Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin report the results of a survey of nearly 10,000 Harvard Business School alumni that they had conducted. The silver lining was that the survey revealed that while the US has many areas that it needs to fix or improve, it still was far ahead of any other country in terms of innovation infrastructure, intellectual property (IP) rights, quality of higher education institutions, and an environment that promotes and supports entrepreneurship.
The bottom line – The message to organizational leaders is clear. Take responsibility for innovation and proactively engage in creating an ecosystem of infrastructure that encourages and nurtures innovative ideas and the innovators who execute on them.
I just read an interesting story about the rise and slow decline of the Indian global economic leadership in Businessweek (March 5 – March 11, 2012). According to Akash Kapur, the author of the article and the upcoming book “A Portrait of Life in Modern India,” the last couple of decades have seen two very different models of economic development in Asia. Known collectively as “Chindia”, China and India have emerged as the two economic powerhouses of Asia over the past two decades. Each, however, has achieved its result in a very different manner. China has gained world dominance through a state-led and subsidized system that relied heavily on manufacturing. India, on the other hand, has led through the development of the private sector relying on a thriving high-tech and service industry. Additionally, unlike China, from the very beginning, these private industries had little support from the Indian government.
So, how are India and China faring? While China is still very much a world power contender, the story for India has taken a turn for the worse. The Indian miracle that once was has now been interrupted. The contrast in stories could not be stronger - China has continued to succeed because of the state while India was surviving despite its government. Now it seems though that the government ultimately got the upper hand. As Kapur states, the country’s recent travails, have shattered the illusion that the private sector can thrive without a functioning state. Policy and regulatory confusion, and rising social and environmental problems, are all reminders that sustainable growth isn’t possible without an ecosystem of sound institutions and responsive government. In many ways it is now apparent that the advances of the last couple of decades were built on shallow foundations.
The same discussion applies to innovation. Innovation requires a stable ecosystem of infrastructure – policy, culture, people, processes, and technology – to survive and thrive in the long term. While innovative “onesies and twosies” can happen in almost any organization, a pipeline of continuous innovation requires top management to take a leadership role in investing, creating, nurturing, and sustaining an innovation ecosystem.
The United States too has been struggling with keeping up as an innovation leader in the world. I cited results from a report published in July 2011 by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in my book on the state of the innovation-based competitiveness of the US as compared with a group of 44 countries. The report rates the innovative abilities of the 44 countries using 16 key indicators from six broad categories – human capital, innovation capacity, entrepreneurship, IT infrastructure, economic policy, and economic performance. Overall, the news was not so good for the United States ranking fourth behind Singapore, Finland and Sweden and, worse yet, near the bottom of the list in terms of countries where innovation is seen as improving.
Still, there is a silver lining for the US. Based on the above discussion about the need for a robust ecosystem of infrastructure it would be premature to count the US out just yet. In a recent Harvard Business Review (March 2012) article titled “Choosing the United States,” authors Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin report the results of a survey of nearly 10,000 Harvard Business School alumni that they had conducted. The silver lining was that the survey revealed that while the US has many areas that it needs to fix or improve, it still was far ahead of any other country in terms of innovation infrastructure, intellectual property (IP) rights, quality of higher education institutions, and an environment that promotes and supports entrepreneurship.
The bottom line – The message to organizational leaders is clear. Take responsibility for innovation and proactively engage in creating an ecosystem of infrastructure that encourages and nurtures innovative ideas and the innovators who execute on them.
Labels:
Innovation
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Case Study - Kodak Bankruptcy Illustrates Why Status Quo is the Enemy of Innovation
January 19, 2012 was a sad day in the story of photography indeed for it was on that day that Kodak, a company founded by George Eastman back in 1888, filed for bankruptcy. It was on that day that the company that almost completely defined and created a new market of amateur photography shut down its doors. Never again will a birth, a graduation, a wedding, or a vacation be captured as a "Kodak Moment."
Kodak was born in 1888 with the introduction of the Kodak #1 camera. Invented and marketed by George Eastman (1854–1932), a former bank clerk from Rochester, New York. The Kodak #1 was a simple box camera that came loaded with a 100-exposure roll of film. When the roll was finished, the entire machine was sent back to the factory in Rochester, where it was reloaded and returned to the customer while the first roll was being processed. Eastman's real genius, however, was not in the creation of the box but in his marketing strategy. By simplifying the apparatus and even processing the film for the consumer, he made photography accessible to millions of casual amateurs with no particular professional training, technical expertise, or aesthetic credentials. To underscore the ease of the Kodak system, Eastman launched an advertising campaign featuring women and children operating the camera, and coined the memorable slogan: "You press the button, we do the rest."
So, if Kodak pioneered the market for amateur photography and invented the first digital camera, why then is it the company that ultimately filed for bankruptcy while companies such as Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sony, and many others are thriving in this very lucrative digital amateur photography market?
While Kodak's demise is a complex tale consisting of many contributing factors, the root cause can be traced to a strong reluctance to alter the status quo. From the very beginning, bewildered Kodak executives could not (or did not want to) understand why anyone would ever want to look at images on a TV screen. Considering that Eastman's Kodak #1 camera turned photography into a hobby for the masses way back in the 1890s, it is sad that although Kodak actually invented the "next big thing", it did not market it "seriously" enough, letting Japanese rivals dictate, drive, and ultimately own the lucrative digital-camera market. Rather than embracing the future, Kodak executives wasted their precious time and energy in trying to preserve their profitable business model of cheap cameras and expensive film. By the time they realized their mistake, it was just too late.
Interestingly enough, another iconic company that played a similar role in bringing personal computing to the masses is also going through a similar market situation. Microsoft has been a dominant player in the personal computer operating system market ever since co-founder Bill Gates won the contract to build the first operating system for IBM Corp.'s personal computer in the early 1980s. As I write this blog, Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on Windows 8 - perhaps the most important piece of software that it has written since that historic moment in the 1980s. Microsoft designed Windows 8 to help it perform a difficult balancing act. Just as Kodak tried to with its expensive camera films, Microsoft hopes to keep milking revenue from a PC market that appears to be past its prime, while trying to gain a stronger foothold in the more fertile field of mobile devices. It's a booming market that, so far, has been defined and dominated by Apple Inc.'s trend-setting iPhone and iPad, and Google Inc.'s ubiquitous Android software. Will Microsoft be able to do what Kodak wasn't by having its cake and eating it too?
The bottom line - Status Quo is the Enemy of Innovation. Kodak's demise was a direct result of its lack of willingness to "go where no man had gone before."* It was a company that got too wrapped up in "preserving its present" (revenues/profits from its sales of expensive film) rather than "creating and accepting a future" in which there would be no film. Kodak tried to survive by ignoring and stalling the future. Paradoxically, the future came anyway and just ignored Kodak!
* Principle #3 in my book "Living in the Innovation Age." I discuss many similar examples throughout the book about companies who faltered by not challenging the status quo and conversely companies that have continued their leadership by challenging existing constraints or imposing new constraints that spur innovation.
Kodak was born in 1888 with the introduction of the Kodak #1 camera. Invented and marketed by George Eastman (1854–1932), a former bank clerk from Rochester, New York. The Kodak #1 was a simple box camera that came loaded with a 100-exposure roll of film. When the roll was finished, the entire machine was sent back to the factory in Rochester, where it was reloaded and returned to the customer while the first roll was being processed. Eastman's real genius, however, was not in the creation of the box but in his marketing strategy. By simplifying the apparatus and even processing the film for the consumer, he made photography accessible to millions of casual amateurs with no particular professional training, technical expertise, or aesthetic credentials. To underscore the ease of the Kodak system, Eastman launched an advertising campaign featuring women and children operating the camera, and coined the memorable slogan: "You press the button, we do the rest."
 |
| George Eastman's Kodak #1 Camera in 1888 |
Kodak continued its leadership of the photography industry for over a century. In 1975, Kodak unveiled the first digital camera to the world. Weighing in at around eight pounds and about the size of a toaster, the hefty device was the brainchild of Kodak engineer Steve Sasson and his team from the Kodak Apparatus Division Research Laboratory. Over the years, since 1975, Kodak amassed more than 1,000 digital-imaging patents upon which almost all modern digital cameras rely.
 |
Kodak introduces the world's first digital camera in 1975 |
While Kodak's demise is a complex tale consisting of many contributing factors, the root cause can be traced to a strong reluctance to alter the status quo. From the very beginning, bewildered Kodak executives could not (or did not want to) understand why anyone would ever want to look at images on a TV screen. Considering that Eastman's Kodak #1 camera turned photography into a hobby for the masses way back in the 1890s, it is sad that although Kodak actually invented the "next big thing", it did not market it "seriously" enough, letting Japanese rivals dictate, drive, and ultimately own the lucrative digital-camera market. Rather than embracing the future, Kodak executives wasted their precious time and energy in trying to preserve their profitable business model of cheap cameras and expensive film. By the time they realized their mistake, it was just too late.
Interestingly enough, another iconic company that played a similar role in bringing personal computing to the masses is also going through a similar market situation. Microsoft has been a dominant player in the personal computer operating system market ever since co-founder Bill Gates won the contract to build the first operating system for IBM Corp.'s personal computer in the early 1980s. As I write this blog, Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on Windows 8 - perhaps the most important piece of software that it has written since that historic moment in the 1980s. Microsoft designed Windows 8 to help it perform a difficult balancing act. Just as Kodak tried to with its expensive camera films, Microsoft hopes to keep milking revenue from a PC market that appears to be past its prime, while trying to gain a stronger foothold in the more fertile field of mobile devices. It's a booming market that, so far, has been defined and dominated by Apple Inc.'s trend-setting iPhone and iPad, and Google Inc.'s ubiquitous Android software. Will Microsoft be able to do what Kodak wasn't by having its cake and eating it too?
The bottom line - Status Quo is the Enemy of Innovation. Kodak's demise was a direct result of its lack of willingness to "go where no man had gone before."* It was a company that got too wrapped up in "preserving its present" (revenues/profits from its sales of expensive film) rather than "creating and accepting a future" in which there would be no film. Kodak tried to survive by ignoring and stalling the future. Paradoxically, the future came anyway and just ignored Kodak!
* Principle #3 in my book "Living in the Innovation Age." I discuss many similar examples throughout the book about companies who faltered by not challenging the status quo and conversely companies that have continued their leadership by challenging existing constraints or imposing new constraints that spur innovation.
Labels:
Innovation
Monday, February 27, 2012
The Insidious Dark Side of Cyber "Human" Attacks
As an avid reader of Bloomberg Businessweek, I look forward to their "Innovator" section every week. Businessweek does a pretty good job identifying innovators who are working hard towards new and novel approaches to make our lives better. So as always, I was expecting to read a positive, upbeat write up in my February 27 - March 4, 2012 issue of Businessweek.
Well, it turns out that this week I was in for a disturbing shock!
This week's innovator spotlight was on Jay Radcliffe. Last year, the 34-year-old computer network security expert discovered that a best-selling insulin pump used by fellow diabetics was (and still is) vulnerable to hacking. Tinkering with his own pump, Radcliffe noticed that its wireless connection opened a security hole that would allow an attacker to manipulate the amount of insulin pumped, potentially inducing a fatal reaction.
As I mentioned above, I was shocked. It was like I was reading a sci-fi novel in which an attacker with a powerful antenna a mile away from his victim launches a wireless attack that gives him remote control over his victim's insulin pump and kills the victim. In all honesty, I always knew in the back of my mind that this sort of thing might be possible. After all, isn't all science fiction just reality before it's time? But I did not expect to read about this so soon.
After reading the Businessweek article, I spent some time doing more research. It turns out that there is a real threat emerging as more and more life preserving, implantable electronic devices become a part of our daily lives. Consider, for example, the pacemaker, which uses electric pulses to regulate a person's heartbeat. Newer generations of pacemakers also have wireless connections enabling them to transmit information for doctors to analyze. And they can receive signals in turn, enabling doctors to non-invasively alter a treatment regimen. While this sounds great, it has created a vulnerability, which in theory could allow a malicious agent to remotely hack a pacemaker and cause it to deliver a lethal shock. The same goes for other classes of implantable medical devices, from defibrillators to brain stimulators to drug pumps such as the insulin pump discussed earlier above. The alarming fact is that deranged implant hackers could exploit security holes in those, too, causing injury or death.
If you still don't believe that this is much more than just "geek theory" then consider this - The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has also taken an interest in protecting wireless enabled medical devices. In fact, the committee sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking it to "conduct a review of the Federal Communications Commission's actions in regard to wireless medical devices."
So here's the bottom line - The good news is that to date there have been no publicly known murders by hacking insulin pumps or pacemakers. But is it only a matter of time before we read about the first cyber homicide or assassination? I sincerely hope and pray that we never see this insidious dark side of cyber in action.
Labels:
Cyber Security
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The 2011 Top 50 Business Thinkers...
Do you have a favorite management guru? Someone that guides and shapes your thinking in an area such as leadership, business or corporate strategy, or my favorite - innovation. Interestingly, when CEOs like Jeff Bezos name their favorite books, they'll often cite authors like Jim Collins, who wrote the business school classic, Good To Great, Malcolm Gladwell, and Michael Porter, known as the father of modern corporate strategy. If, like me, you have ever wondered who the most influential and respected business thinkers are then your wait is over...
I just came across a definitive global ranking of management thinkers that is published every two years based on voting at the Thinkers50 website and input from a team of advisers led by Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove. The Thinkers50 has ten established criteria by which thinkers are evaluated: originality of ideas; practicality of ideas; presentation style; written communication; loyalty of followers; business sense; international outlook; rigor of research; impact of ideas and the elusive guru factor. Not surprisingly, 2011's winner is Clayton Christensen of "disruptive innovation" fame. The 2009 winner was the late C. K. Prahalad, who co-authored a favorite book of mine "The New Age of Innovation" with M. S. Krishnan.
I have reproduced the listing* below with yellow highlights on the business thinkers that I actively follow.
Ranking Name (Previous Yr. Ranking)
Labels:
Innovation
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)