Collective Intelligence – Page 2

Webinar: IXL Innovation Excellence and Hult Olympics 2013

HULT Innovation Olympics Speaker Bios

Our previous sponsors will share lessons learned as well as real world experiences from their participation in the Innovation Olympics.
Please join us on Wednesday, October 16th at 4 p.m. EDT for a dialogue with a rare gathering of executives from Verizon, Iron Mountain, Boehringer Ingelheim and Natura. They will share their experiences in deploying student competitions, like the Hult Innovation Olympics, to jump-start innovation initiatives inside their organizations.

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Ronald Jonash, Professor, Hult International Business School and
Senior Partner, IXL Center for Innovation, Excellence and Leadership

Ron is currently a senior partner at the IXL Center. He is on the faculty of the Hult International Business School, a partner at a venture capital firm, and on the Advisory board of Arthur D. Little. He was a senior partner of the Monitor Group where he founded and led their Innovation practice and was founder of IMI (Innovation Management Inc.). For 20 years he was the managing director of the Technology and Innovation Management Practice for Arthur D. Little worldwide. He was also Chief Innovation Officer and served on their Technology Investment Board and Management Education Institute Board.
Ron’s specialties are the strategic management of innovation, technology and R&D to create and capture maximum value. With degrees in Economics and Engineering Systems from Princeton University where he also received his Master’s Degree in Architecture and Design, he has led numerous executive leadership and development programs at major companies and has been a visiting lecturer at Rice, Wharton and Columbia universities and the Hult International Business School.

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José Escobar,
Managing Principal, Global Strategy and Innovation Group at Verizon Business
While his original background is Mechanical Engineering, Jose’s experience in consulting, business development, project management, research, and financial analysis has served him well in his role as Managing Principal at Verizon Business. Jose has fluently combined the aforementioned talents to design the road-map and strategies required to identify and organically build out the next generation of innovative products and services. At the same time, he also builds out the business by investing, negotiating, and executing on multimillion dollar contracts and strategic external partnerships.
Among Jose´s biggest achievements is to be the Co-founder of the Hult Global Case Challenge (recently re-branded Hult Prize), a student competition with the aim of solving global problems through business. Today the Hult Global Case Challenge is one of the most prestigious case competitions in the world.

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Geoff Nesnow,
Former Director, Ideation and Market Strategy at Iron Mountain
Geoff Nesnow is a passionate evangelist, coach, inventor and transformation catalyst. His “outside-the-box” thinking, no-nonsense style and ability to ask the right questions have served as the catalyst for breakthrough innovation and disruptive technology initiatives, driving revenue and building platforms for future growth. Geoff Nesnow is best known as a “builder” − of products, processes, people, new ventures, and customer/client relationships.
At Iron Mountain, Geoff built an innovation platform and processes that lead to the identification of more than100 potential growth opportunities, built business plans and obtained funding for over 20 new ventures, of which 8 are currently in development or in the market, representing over $1B in defined opportunity, $40M in investment and more than $30M in fast-growing revenue.

Stephan Klaschka,
Director of Global Innovation Management at Boehringer Ingelheim
Stephan Klaschka is an awarded innovation intrapreneur, entrepreneur and executive consultant with over 20 years of international work and management experience in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Throughout his international career, he founded several businesses as an entrepreneur and worked as a consultant to academia, government and international pharmaceutical firms.
Stephan currently serves as a Director of Innovation Management at Boehringer Ingelheim, a privately held FORTUNE Global 500 company, where he built external academic and cross-disciplinary networks including a successful innovation lab and incubator. Under his leadership, the innovation project portfolio continuously returns a high multi-million ROI. He successfully scouts emerging technologies and develops disruptive value-adding services as well as new business models for Boehringer Ingelheim worldwide.

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Romulo Zamberlan,
US Innovation Center Manager at Natura
Romulo has dedicated several years of his career in the packaged-goods industries, having worked for top companies such as Avon, Unilever and for the last 7 years, working for Natura (the market leader in Brazil to the beauty sector and considered the 10th most innovative company in the world by Forbes – 2013).

While at Natura, he established an Innovation operation in the Boston Area and he is currently the Innovation Hub manager at this office. In this role, he leverages both his technical and managerial expertise, allowing him to amass and contribute new ideas and new perspectives to both Natura and his innovation management career.

What makes us happy

Some years back I read a book by two researchers in search of what makes people happy. Beyond general curiosity, my motives were somewhat selfish: I wanted to find out what the secret to happiness so to apply it to myself and be happy.

Finding the “happy people”

I still remember the researchers approach. It was different from what I expected and has stuck with me since then: they did not come from a nerdy angle that started with lengthy definition for “happiness” along with complex parameters and complicated metrics as you may expect. These two researchers went out to find “happy” people by hearsay and then interview them to identify commonalities or factors leading to their happiness – and the very secret to happiness I was after.

Looking back, the researchers used the power of crowd sourcing (long before it became a household buzzword) to find those happy people. In this practical yet somewhat fuzzy approach, they asked broadly who knew people that were “happy”. Then zeroed in on those reportedly happy individuals that several others pointed to. It may not be the most “scientific” approach I ever heard but intuitively it made sense enough for me to accept it and read on.

What happy people have in common

The researchers found and interviewed, asking if these people felt truly happy and to found out what exactly made them so happy.

The responses surprised me. Most of them, as I recall, did not consider themselves “happier” than others in a particular way despite the many people around them believing otherwise. Of these presumable happy people, most appeared modest and content with their lives. Their happiness came from within and somehow ‘radiated’ out to others.

Overall, they were happy with what they had and not driven by the longing for things they did not have. It seemed they were more resilient or less tempted in what is advertised and suggest making us more beautiful, happy, smart, sophisticated, loved, needed, sexy, admired, or whatever once we buy this or that.

No problems in life?

It got even more interesting for me when the researchers got to the real ‘meat’ probing the million-dollar question: where does this inner happiness come from? Was there an event, experience, or cause? Were these people luckier in life than others, did they win the lottery? Did they not face the same obstacles that most of us encounter; did they not experience pain or feel despair as much?

The answer was a surprise, again, from what I had expected and consistent across responders. What these reportedly happy people had in common were traumatic life experiences, some of the saddest I have ever heard. They had suffered the most painful challenges a human can ever go through; heart-wrenching life stories full of grief with loss and pain on every level imaginable. They had faced certain death, lost loved ones or their health, survived war, crime, assault or terrible disasters. They had lost everyone and everything important to them, everything that they had considered the center of their life at that time.

Gratitude

What they also had in common was a deep gratitude for having overcome these major losses and crises. They were grateful for what they had today starting with their own life. Their happiness truly came from within. They did not crave getting the newest gadget first or show off status symbols of sorts. They were happy being with their friends and family, and going about a simple life they enjoyed every minute. They found beauty again in a flower and took the time to sniff it when others rushed by.

As a learning from these ‘happy’ people for myself, their happiness resulted from enduring a deep and meaningful suffering, overcoming a life-changing trauma and then to truly appreciate that you survived or made it through in the end to live another day.

It even reminds of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, where to protagonist need to descend to Hell (suffering) and work its way up through Purgatory (transformation) to reach Paradise (happiness).

To this day, it serves me as a reminder to value and cherish what I have and can do, and not to become obsessed with what I do not have.

Looking into the abyss

Now we could leave it here to sit back, smile, and cozily reflecting on our lives feeling good for a little while. But why not take it further and ask the ultimate question: looking back when I die, what would I have done different, what would have made me happier?

Obviously, we do not want to wait to find an answer before it is too late. So, let’s crowd-source again and learn from other people at the end of their lives looking back. Thankfully, an Australian nurse recorded the regrets of the dying she worked with over a 12-year period. (The Guardian, Top five regrets of the dying, February 1, 2013)

Here are their top five regrets:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. – This was the most common regret of all.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Read the list again. Take a minute and think about it. – Do any of these regrets resonate with you? What would be your greatest regret?

Now that you know what these soon-to-die people wished they had done differently in their lives, what will you do in the time you still have?

Synthesis

But how does this all come together? What is the change within us that in the end made the ‘happy people’ happy? I was still looking for answers, for a pattern and an explanation to this phenomenon.

Let’s take just one step back to look at the bigger picture and combine the path of hardship to happiness by the ‘happy people’ with the regrets of the dying. Is there a general formula that we can apply to ourselves to be happy?

Attempting an explanation

I don’t claim to have scientific evidence, nor did I mull through endless scientific literature, or study medicine or psychology; to me the answer I found appears quite apparent and not new either. It is known as “post-traumatic growth” in the medical world and defined as “a positive change experienced as a result of the struggle with a major life crisis or a traumatic event.”

Transformation

A change takes place in individuals during post-traumatic growth that transforms mind, attitude, and behavior:

Priorities change – they are not afraid to do what makes them happy
Feeling close to others – they seek and value closeness with people that are important in their lives
Knowing oneself better – they are awareness of their own needs and limitations
Living with meaning and purpose – they enjoy each day to the fullest, carpe diem!
Better focus on goals and dreams – actively seeking to making changes

This transformation changed the ‘happy people’ consciously or unconsciously, and it is this behavior and mindset that others see or sense, which leads them to the conclusion they are happy.

How to be happy

Now, wouldn’t it be great if you could replicate this this transformation and become happy without having to go through the hardship and suffering these happy-after-tragedy people all had to go through? – The good news is you can!

From what I learned from Jane McDonigal, a famous game designer, the favorable result of post-traumatic growth can build four specific individual changes:

Physical resilience – to not give in to sedentary behavior, meaning to get up and active, physically move!
Mental resilience – build up your willpower to persist in reaching for your goals
Emotional resilience – provoke your positive emotions to offset negativity (ideally in a ratio of 3:1, no kidding!)
Social resilience – draw strength from other people; as a practical approach, genuinely thank one person a day or touch another person for at least 6 seconds.

Everyone can benefit for this simply by choosing to do so. It gets even better: over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies confirm that applying these changes can prolong your life by up to 10 years! Amazingly, not only are the ‘happy people’ obviously happy, they also live longer!

So if you are in search for your happiness, as I was, chose to make these personal choices and start your transformation to happiness today!

Imitators beat Innovators!

You thought Facebook was the original? Or YouTube? Or LinkedIn? – Get ready for your wake-up call! Break-through innovations are over-rated! Imitators are successful by combining someone else’s innovation with the imitator’s advantage and by doing so they can become innovators themselves!

Who was first?

Believe it or not,

The first social college network was not Facebook but Network 5460 in China.
Ecademy in Great Britain was a first social business network before LinkedIn, and
YouTube followed Israel’s Metacafe.

The list is endless and spans across industries – with Network 5460, Ecademy, Metacafe & Co. losing out on the commercial success.

Wrongly praising the first mover?

Why is it that the pioneer are long forgotten while followers are often more successful?

Media hype about innovation. Even academia prefers to study innovators rather than the early adapters, which rule the marketplace while many originals perished. After all, We Innovate to Implement, to see our ideas become reality and change the world.

Imitation follows closely behind innovators — Imitator following in the footsteps

Where innovators fail

Over 70% of top managers interviewed named innovation as one of the top three strategic priorities according to Boston Consulting Group. Yet most projects fail especially in companies that focus on radical innovations.

In the high risk and upfront investment driven pharmaceutical industry, for example, only 10% of newly developed compounds survive the testing phase – and even if the market launch succeeds, only few pioneers reap the profits: Yale professor William D. Nordhaus found that they were only able to secure 2.2% of the new innovation’s value. The primary obstacles are skeptical customers and hesitant partners.

Oded Shenkar, business professor at Ohio State University, confirms that copycats often get better returns. While theft of intellectual property (IP) is illegal and out of the question, there lies much potential in the (legal) duplication of products, processes, or also business models.

How imitators succeed

Being an imitator lends itself to benefits inaccessible to the innovator: As a close follower, you can learn from the mistakes the innovator made earlier. Instead of doing all the initial Research and Development, imitators have the advantage to glimpsing around the corner ahead: It becomes easier for imitators to attract potential partners and customers as they already have a whiff of the success potential of an innovation. It can also enable imitators to simplify the original imitation in a radical way and reduce complexity making usage easier for users.

Often customers are not fast enough to recognize something new and its ‘timely newness’ at its early stage. They tend to notice novelty only later, when it already becomes visible in the marketplace or shows up (as an imitation) in another area or industry.

Here lies the power of open innovation and applying novelty successfully to a different industry; think anti-lock brakes for cars that originated in the aerospace industry, for example.

Overcoming the imitators stigma

The word ‘imitation’ has a negative connotation reputation. However, you can look at it as the extension of innovation into other businesses and industries to benefit the customer by applying the novelty, more choices, or lowers prices.

It took companies that rely on novelty products, such as innovative pharmaceuticals, a while to understand the trend but then they opened up to go both ways: discover and develop new medicinal drug products under patent protection but also reap the profits from off-patent drugs in a separate generics business, so not to leave this significant business to imitators alone.

Scaling up

On an even larger scale, countries like China or South Korea are highly competitive and creative powerhouses in the world economy – and they became particularly good at turning imitation into innovation over the past few decades. The underlying pattern shows acquisition of technology abroad, and then to assimilate and improve it building up R&D of their own in a framework of government policy and a supportive socio-cultural environment.

As a strategy, imitation led to innovation. China, for example, is not only known for fast and creative mobile phone adaptations for their fast-paced and spontaneous domestic market. It shows the largest growth of patents filed in 2011, up 33% from 2010, far more than other countries according to the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Also South Korea has some of the most advanced companies and institutions on the planet today. The plan worked out.

Imitation becomes innovation in China (mobile phones) image by opensource.com — Imitation becomes innovation in China (image by opensource.com)

Two sides of a coin

Innovation is a team sport. Breakthrough innovations typically catalyze at the interfaces of disciplines. ‑ Once the dots are connected in seemingly new ways, who can say what has been there before intentionally or even unconsciously? Does it matter?

Imitation can be flattery; it can be an interpretation and adaptation by an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, or an executive champion within a company or organization. (More on: How to become the strategic innovation leader?)

We will see how long the legal defense of intellectual property will hold in the global economy where open source, social collaboration, and digital transparency already changed the face of we look at ans conduct business. – In the end, business and progress thrive from both, innovation and innovation.

They are two value-adding sides of the same coin.

Category: Collective Intelligence

Webinar: IXL Innovation Excellence and Hult Olympics 2013

HULT Innovation Olympics Speaker Bios

What makes us happy

Top 10 posts for Intrapreneurs