using my head » Innovation

The tenets of innovation

mikocoffey — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:05:18 +0000

Because NESTA is all about innovation, I do a lot of reading about the topic. I recently read Suw Charman’s post about the sources of innovation, and republished/summarised the key takeaways on my work blog:

Innovation does not have a size…it can be a small change that helps solve a big problem.

Innovation is not in a vacuum, and anyone might have a solution, including young people and customers.

Innovation will succeed in business when the business accepts innovation as part of their corporate culture.

It’s important to stay connected to technology and what’s going on in the outside world and new media if we want to really be innovative.

And finally,
“Innovation is not a buzzword to be repeated in meetings, it’s an action, a culture, a day-to-day activity.”

I had my own additions and amendments to these, which you can find over here on the Making Innovation Flourish blog >>

The end of net radio as we know it

mikocoffey — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:24:40 +0000

Yesterday was a landmark low in the recently burgeoning world of internet radio. The US Copyright Royalty Board made a royal cock-up by deciding to hike the royalty fees that internet radio stations must pay, to ridiculous levels (up to 12 times the amount they currently pay). I had a lot to say about this on my work blog at NESTA:

To me, the tragic irony in this story is the fact that the proposed royalty fee model could never have existed without the online medium itself. The fees are per song, per listener – something which could never be accurately measured in the old broadcast model, but suddenly is possible for online stations due to the trackable nature of streaming media. Net radio campaigners say this is an unfair model, as it penalises online radio unjustly compared to satellite or standard broadcast radio fees…

… Looking at the bigger picture, this is a case in point of how something like regulation could seriously impact the growth of an innovative business model. What nascent markets like these need is not overbearing regulation, but forward-thinking…

Read the full post & comment here on the Making Innovation Flourish blog >>

Where are all the UK web startups?

mikocoffey — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:12:57 +0000

One of my colleagues at NESTA informed me that the total amount of UK venture capital dedicated to tech startups is just 1.6% of the total amount of money invested by UK VC every year. That’s shockingly low.

My blog post about it over on the NESTA blogs generated quite a flurry of response… have a look here for the full story.

Social web for social issues

mikocoffey — Thu, 31 May 2007 11:49:36 +0000

I can’t believe it, but I am going to link to Microsoft…

A post I wrote on the NESTA blogs about the winner of Microsoft’s Design IT competition, which is a screensaver created by user-generated content designed to help Alzheimer’s sufferers store their personal memories:

The screensaver is a simple application with the “why didn’t I think of that” factor: a carer and person with dementia can upload text, video and photos to the screensaver to help them remember important people, moments and facts about their lives. It’s great when an existing technology like this can be adopted and put to good use…

Read the full post & comment here on the Making Innovation Flourish blog >>

Web 2.0: solving the little problems

mikocoffey — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:15:59 +0000

A post I wrote following up on the Wobble 2.0 event, hosted over at the NESTA blogs. It’s about the fact that I don’t think Web 2.0 is necessarily about solving the big problems of the world, but instead solving the little problems that make you think “There must be a better/easier way of doing this”.

Andrew [Orlowski from The Register] stated that the big returns on investment would come from ’solving the big problems of the world’, and that Web 2.0 was never going to do that. I take his point, but who ever said that Web 2.0 was meant to be about solving major problems? In my mind, most of the ‘web as platform’ side of Web 2.0 is about solving small problems…

… So much of what we think of as innovation is about simply tackling an old problem in a new way; the Dyson, long touted as a leading example of innovation, is a pretty straightforward exemplification of ‘building a better mousetrap’. That’s what I think Web 2.0 does.

Read the full post & comment here on the Making Innovation Flourish blog >>