Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on June 27
My forecast that the cost-cutting strategy of the private equity Cerberus guys who bought Chrysler from Daimler Benz would fail is, unfortunately, turning out to be true. By hiring ex-Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli, who's speciality is efficiency, they embarked on a traditional business strategy of squeezing more out of existing operations at a time when soaring oil prices were undermining the sales of their gas-guzzling product. What was needed was an innovation strategy of growth that quickly generated electric, hybrid, flex-fuel and other models that better fit into a fast-changing market place.
Supplying these cars from China or anywhere around the world quickly and then investing in new models to capture market share might have saved Chrysler. But squeezing pennies out of a shrinking operations base cannot.
My guess is that GM will pick up Jeep and a couple of Chrysler lines--and that will be the end of that. Business model innovation is often the most powerful kind of innovation. It requires imagination and guts. Implementing old, tried and true, strategies in a time of dramatic change rarely work.
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on June 27
Matt Vella over at the Innovation & Design site interviewed RISD's John Meada, Don Norman, NYTimes.com's Khoi Vinh and other smart folks on web usability and came up with The 10 Commandments of Web Design. See if you agree with the list and what you would add--or subtract. With the spread of the iPhone and the mobile web, web design is super hot once again.
Here is Matt's list:
1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash. Don't overwhelm the viewer.
2. Thou shalt not hide content. With advertising.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections. Apple.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels. Meebo?
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography. Check out Daring Fireball.
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences. Perhaps the most important.
8. Thou shalt be social. Hmmm. Maybe this is the most important.
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.
10. Thou shalt make content king. Content trumps pretty.
What else are we missing? How would you prioritize the list?
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on June 25
Check out this great website that takes you inside the real life of modern American Indians. One of my favorite sections is In The Hoop, an inside look at Washington from an Indian's perspective. Totally amazing.
You can even Twitter and get an inside look at an insiders look at what is important to millions of Americans who are usually invisible to most of society.
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on June 24
Way to go John McCain. There is nothing more imporant to the US and the world than an incentive-driven competitive innovation process to produce a better battery. A smaller, ligher, more efficient car battery is key to getting the global economy off its addiction to fossil fuels. And just as the $10 million X-Prize proved to be a powerful incentive for the creation of a non-governmental space ship (and Lindbergh won the Orteig Prize for the first transatlantic airplane flight), so too could McCain's idea push the edge on battery technology.
There are many ways to incentivize innovation. VC money. Government money. Corporate R&D. Labs (government and private). Serious prize money and well designed contests reward both crowd-sourcing and individual genius kinds of creation.
My only problem with the McCain Contest is that $300 million is probably too much money. It implies government bigness and huge scale. The X Prize Foundation gives out ten million bucks and that seems incentive enough.
But that's a quibble. Both McCain and Obama have not talked very much about innovation to date. With this $300 million contest for a better car battery, McCain leaps ahead in the debate, even without uttering the word "innovation."
So Barack, what does innovation mean to you?
