Sunday, September 07, 2008
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Friday, September 05, 2008
Innovation Through Internal Promotion, Thiago
This is an entry summing up the points in a blog entry on the Innovating to Win site titled "Internal Promotion of Innovation". Short discussion of "pillars of internal promotion", which are:
- Selling Up
- Selling Outward
- Make it Personal
Why so little innovation?, Dave Winer
Dave points to a video on the Zdnet site: Silicon Valley's Judy Estrin warns we are running out of innovation, which is a conversation about some of the content in her new book: Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy
. A good quote that Dave picked out:
"She warns that we are living off of the innovation investments made in decades past and that is going to be a problem in the future."
Other links that discuss Judy's new book: The Easy Road To Incremental Innovation and Is innovation falling behind in the US?
How to Increase Your Odds of Getting a Big AHA!, Mitch Ditkoff
Mitch offers a look at some great creative legends of the past to offer tips on how you might be able to reach your breakthrough. A good quote:
It is sustained and focused effort towards a specific goal -- not luck, wishing, or caffeine -- that ultimately prepares the ground for creative insight.
This kind of effort does not always generate immediate results and sometimes leads people to conclude that it's just not in the cards for them.
Creating Innovation "pull", Jeffrey Phillips
This is a short entry in which Jeffrey discusses the push vs. pull approaches to innovation (as a means for growth). Interesting, it does seem that push might be more popular than pull these days. Interesting quote from entry:
So, in many companies, the strategy for encouraging innovation is what I'd call innovation "push" - the senior leadership will push innovation into the business. What I'd like to recommend, and what I think you'll find is common in most successful innovation firms, is what we call innovation "pull".
Pixar on Creativity (Find Good People, Ideas Will Come), Ben Casnocha
Ben links to a new article up on HBR by Ed Catmull: How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Its a long one (7 pages) so I haven't read it all yet, but here is a good quote that Ben picked out of it:
A few years ago, I had lunch with the head of a major motion picture studio, who declared that his central problem was not finding good people—it was finding good ideas. Since then, when giving talks, I’ve asked audiences whether they agree with him. Almost always there’s a 50/50 split, which has astounded me because I couldn’t disagree more with the studio executive. His belief is rooted in a misguided view of creativity that exaggerates the importance of the initial idea in creating an original product. And it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how to manage the large risks inherent in producing breakthroughs.
Another link to the HBR article: How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Other stuff
Davy Brion - Make It Work, Make It Clean?
Greg Duncan - Putting the final, professional touches on your UserControl - “How to use UITypeEditors, Smart Tags, ControlDesigner Verbs, and Expandable Properties to make Design Time editing easier.”
Keith Fletcher - C# command line parsing
Victuar - How to Get Notifications from .NET Web Service
Frohmen - Full implementation of IShellBrowser
Alvin Ashcraft - My Dev Kit
Nathan - Flowing Identity from a Client to a Service when using RESTful WCF Part 1 - The Problem
Michael Giagnocavo - Become a better F# programmer via Real World Haskell
Jb Evain - Cecil performance issues
Web stuff
Mike Gunderloy - Google Chrome is Coming and 3 Ways to Edit Documents Collaboratively
Dion Almaer - addSizes.js: automatic link file-size generation and toStaticHTML: Sanitize your HTML in IE 8
Scott Guthrie - ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 and Form Posting Scenarios
Database stuff
Pinal Dave - SQL SERVER - 2008 - Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server 2008
Workflow stuff
Kirk Allen Evans - Enabling Long Running Conversations in Workflow Services
Career stuff
JD Meier - SourcesOfInsight.com is Now Live
Zen Habits - 6 Questions to Ask Yourself to Get the Most Out of Life
Freelance Switch - Supplementing Your Freelance Career With Blogging and Expert Content
Darren Rowse - How to Get Noticed [the Art of Positioning]
Jeff Cornwall - Entrepreneurship Builds Character
Business stuff
Michael Arrington - How To Demo Your Startup (Part Two)
Community stuff
Dave Sussman - Read, Steady, Speak
Other link blogs
Rhonda Tipton - Weekly Link Post 57
Arjan Zuidhof - LINKBLOG for September 1, 2008
Steve Pietrek - Links (9/1/2008)
Christopher Steen - Link Listing - September 1, 2008
Chris Alcock - The Morning Brew #170
Mike Gunderloy - Double Shot #282
Alvin Ashcraft - Dew Drop - September 2, 2008
Darren Stokes - Visual Studio Links #70
Monday, September 01, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
How to Form an Innovation Strategy, Scott Anthony
Scott briefly discusses a figure called "Goals and Boundaries" which is a visual aid to help communicate areas that innovators (who are creating products). The areas captured in this diagram are things like:
- Target customer
- Distribution channel
- Steady-state revenue
- Type of offering
- Brand
- Revenue Source
- Suppliers/Partners
- Tactics
- Go-to-market approach
Scott also mentions a link to his new book: Innovator's Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work, by Scott D Anthony, Mark Johnson
Pay As You Drive impact equivalent to taking 10 million cars off the road in California, Pay As You Drive
Entry about a press release from the California Department of Insurance. Interesting read, my first reaction was - 'why would I drive less with a PAYD policy?' ... especially to the amount that the entry mentions. I would get the policy just because I only drive once a week, but to drive less just because of it ... not sure about that - what do you think? Interesting quote:
...if 30% of Californian drivers participate in Pay As You Drive insurance, California could avoid:
- 55 million tons of CO2 between 2009 and 2020.
- That is the equivalent of taking 10 million cars off the road!
- It would save 208 billion liters of petrol.
- It would save Californians US$40 billion in car-related expenses.
The Key to Innovation Within Your Association Just Might be a Mentor, Stuart Meyer
A short entry on a way to keep the creativity and innovation working in an environment that may not be the most creative environment. Interesting quote from the entry:
... So how do we keep from stifling the innovation pipeline? How do we inspire new generations of association staff to take risks? How do we maintain the motivation to weather the obstacles of change to make a lasting difference within our association?
The answer is a tiny spark of encouragement.
Creating the Preconditions for Innovation: Maximizing Diversity, InnovationBIT
Long piece excerpted from chapter 2 in Innovation to the Core: A Blueprint for Transforming the Way Your Company Innovates, by Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson. Discusses the importance of who makes up an innovative team and what the effect of diversity is on that make up. An interesting quote:
We specifically look for the following diversity characteristics:
- People who are divergent thinkers, and people who are convergent thinkers
- People who are younger, and people who are older
- People with a lot of experience, and people with a lot of imagination
- People who understand technology, and people who understand people
- People who are more analytical, and people who are more creative
- People who are close to the head office, and people who work farther away
- People from inside the firm, and people from outside the firm
The Challenges of Innovation, Front End of Innovation
This is a short summary of an article on BusinessWeek's web site: The Challenges of Innovation, by Irving Wladawsky-Berger. Three ideas are discussed:
- Indifference
- Hostility
- Isolation
I haven't read the BusinessWeek article yet, but this summary makes me want to ... some really good points in there. A good quote from the blog entry:
Collaboration does not come natural in an organization, and so companies must make an extreme effort to make it part of their culture. What are some things that your company does to create a healthy environment where employees are not scared of bringing forth new ideas?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
I'm a really busy this week and can't get to the second round of visiting my blog finds from this morning, so there won't be any final draft today. Actually, there may not be any final drafts this week.
A day late...
Other stuff
Web stuff
Database stuff
Debugging stuff
Agile stuff
- Virtual Scrum Board, David Brabant - pinter to a utility named "Virutal SCRUM Board (VSB)". Can download a free trial.
- Introducing Kanban at Xclaim, Dave Laribee - entry on personal experience using agile and some views on things that didn't work for them.
Cloud Computing stuff
SOA stuff
Career stuff
Innovation stuff
Other link blogs
Monday, August 25, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Other stuff
- Is There Still a Community for Telligent?, Keyvan Nayyeri - I just found Keyvan's blog this past week, so this link is a little old. It is a pretty long discussion of 'Community' specifically around Community Server but more generally around .Net as a whole. It does seem like the community that I follow in the blogs is on a 'down cycle' ... the bummer is right now I'm too busy to do much about it.
- Microsoft Licensing Changes: Greedy and Monopolistic?, Brad - an interesting response to Microsoft's licensing changes.
- Roland Weigelt’s GhostDoc for Visual Studio, Alvin Ashcraft - a good explanation of GhostDoc and a reminder to get this addin if you don't already have it.
- Amazon Confirms Student Version Of Kindle, Michael Arrington - sounds like Amazon is targeting the electronic text book business next.
- Open Source Podcast to Stack Wood By, Dave Burke - Dave points to a podcast that sounds interesting - Paul Graham's keynote presentation at OSCON 2005.
- SmallestDotNet: On the Size of the .NET Framework, Scott Hanselman - Scott goes over the details of the real sizes of .Net and some tips on how to get only what you need.
- Anatomy of a LOB (Or, Mind Mapping a Modern .NET App), Nathan - Nathan shares a mindmap he put together for an LOB application he is looking to (re)write in a SaaS sort of way.
- RESTful JSON: Bringing REST and RPC Closer Together, Dare Obasanjo - Dare continues to build on his previous posts about REST.
- X509 Certificates for Developers, Michael Stiefel - nice entry on PKI and the big picture of using x509 certificates. Part 1 of a 2 part posting on the subject.
Web stuff
- ASP.NET MVC Tip #37 – Create an Auto-Complete Text Field and The Evolution of MVC, Stephen Walther - a couple of good links about extending MVC (adding the ajax Auto-Complete behavior to MVC) and a good history of MVC. No wonder Stephen's books are always 1000's pages long - his daily posts are around 6 pages. I like his writing style of using textual explanations, step-by-step walkthroughs (with code) and visuals to get his point across.
Database stuff
Career stuff
Business stuff
Other link blogs
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Other stuff
- My favorite kind of Friday, one where we get a new Sysinternals Utility - Desktops v1.0 and FreeImage 3.11 released - C# wrapper added, Greg Duncan - Greg finds a couple of new releases from sysinternals. I hadn't heard of Desktops before - its a virtual desktop utility ... have to try that one out. I don't know anything about FreeImage, have to add it to the list of things to look at in down time.
- Dashboards Are For Driving, Steven A Lowe - interesting dashboard application with gauges ... looks similar to something a guy at work is working on.
- Interfacing with Insanity, Kathleen Dollard - Kathleen discusses some realizations of working with data bindable business objects collections. Talks about the CSLA, but could be about any other BO layer framework.
- Hotspots On Chrysler, CoolBusinessIdeas - $29 a month (plus~$500 for router) to get a EV-DO and WiMax hotspot in your Chrysler ...
- Did you know… How to show or hide the “No Debugging Information” warning? - #297, Sara Ford - another debugging setting tip from Sara.
- How to get USB booting working, Michael Kleef - looks to be a step by step of how to get a usb flash drive to be bootable. Seems like a good project to take my mind off of work someday :)
- A Subtle DIfference in Catch Blocks, Jason Bock - Jason dives deep into exceptions in IL/.Net ... make me wonder what he is working on ...
- Quick Quiz on Tasks, The Moth ... neat sample to try and guess the flow of logic ... my guess wasn't even close. I really need to spend some time with the Parallel Extensions ...
- Thread synchronization: Wait and Pulse demystified, Nick Butler - wow good explanation of some thread synchronization classes in .Net ... I could have used this about 6 years ago when I was learning .Net and multi threading.
- Console 2.00.140, Tomas Restrepo - written in C++ 9.0 (open source) and is a windows console enhancement ... should check it out.
Web stuff
Reflector stuff
- Thanks Lutz Roeder!, Aaron Skonnard - I like Aaron's reaction to the news. Some of us take things for granted and forget that Lutz did all the hard work for us for years (plus support) ... so I agree we should give him a big thanks for what he has accomplished ... of course now we are addicts and need know that we can still get our Reflector fix :)
Database stuff
Debugging stuff
Architecture stuff
Cloud Computing stuff
Career stuff
Business stuff
Blogging stuff
Innovation stuff
Community stuff
Other link blogs
- LINKBLOG for August 22, 2008, Arjan Zuidhof
- Link Listing - August 21, 2008 and Link Listing - August 22, 2008, Christopher Steen
- Linkswitch: Coders FTW, FreelanceSwitch
- Double Shot #275, Mike Gunderloy
- Dew Drop - August 23, 2008, Alvin Ashcraft
- New and Notable 268, Sam Gentile
Do you see unread items in your rss reader as todo items? Do you think you have to at least look at it if it is unread? I would have to say I 'sort of' do see it as something I should at least look at ... and after reading through my subscriptions I prefer the unread items to be 0 ... but maybe I'm just weird like that ;)
For those of you interested in what I subscribe to, I just put the latest version of my opml at: http://jasonhaley.com/files/subscriptions.opml