Innovation conference notes: In which this line is noticed: “Idea management is important, because too many new ideas block the pipeline.” I need my pipeline unblocked. Any ideas as to how to manage ideas? I think Erik is a bit ahead of me on this one, although I think I could probably just modify my existing area… or just find a way to be able to work on my ideas more often so that I finish them and have fewer of them.
Why does a personal analog-to-digital film developing device not exist? I cannot believe that based on current technology, a device/appliance couldn’t be made that allows a person to drop an APS roll into a device, which then pulls the film strip through an assembly line that develops the film then scans the developed negative and writes the picture to a flash memory card. The only thing I can think of is that it would virtually destroy an entire (and extremely profitable) industry. Thoughts?
How To: By You: An experiment in intuition. Every now and then, a new topic will be posted. It could be anything from “how to eat peas” to “how to build an airplane”. No answer is wrong and it’s up to you, the player, to explain how to do it. This sociological project is about the study of knowledge among human society and how it can differ and change.
Are you looking in all the wrong places? This close look at design firm IDEO can tell you how to uncover your hidden breakthrough assets and come up with great new ideas.
Very interesting idea on idea a day: Introduce a system by which music fans are rewarded with discounts or complimentary albums for playing their favourite songs on pub and club jukeboxes. Customers would enter a unique pin before making their track selections with each play for a particular artist adding a point to their personal account. In effect, fans would be able to buy a forthcoming album by the favourite act by repeatedly playing the artist’s music in public.
Pitching ideas: More important than having a great idea is figuring out how to sell it to the boss — especially in a culture that’s not too keen to accept your idea.
How to do it? A couple of academics from Stanford and the University of California at Davis looked at how ideas are successfully sold in, of all places, Hollywood. Selling a script or a movie may not be all that close to selling your idea for a new product or marketing campaign. But the lessons ring true, no matter what kind of idea you’re peddling.
New business plan for life: Sign up for every community web site and game that comes out, as soon as possible, betting on the idea that some of them will become huge and I can sell my low user numbers. (I’m 2141 on Friendster, and 454 on MetaFilter. If you want to give me a starting push on my new career, feel free to send me a bid!)
Rule of thumb: Excellent insight from Mark: “I find that a good measure of how innovative a thing is, is how vehemently people declare it trivial and obvious in hindsight.”
Anyone know where someone could find a free/public XML feed of stock quotes (or even just the major indexes?) E-mail me is you know of one. I’m working on a top (TOP!) secret project, and screen-scraping just isn’t doin’ it for me.
On a similar tangent, if you happen to own a chain of used record stores, and would like to give me the data on your inventory (weekly or quarterly, you pick) for a top secret project, that would be great. Thanks in advance.
The idea algorithm: Erik is thinking about ideas, and has created a sort of scientific equation to explain what a “good” idea is (or, the threshold that will cause someone to act on an idea.)
<Cue Batman music and spinning logo>
MEANWHILE, Peter is talking about under what circumstances we become creative/inventive: “In stressful situations, we stick to what we know; we get overly rational, and do each thing at a time. Creativity means exploring unknown alternatives, so when stressed, we obviously aren’t very creative. At the other extreme, it doesn’t seem likely that we would get creative when all is fine, when there are no problems to be solved — after all, creativity is most often about solving problems. (Perhaps we are creative in calm moments to solve problems of past failures?)”