b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Amazing Discovery - Innovation Is Not A Strategy
MacLockPick: A Vital Tool For Our Trusted Protectors
We, The People will Get $18 Billion Healthcare Bill
Tracking The Loss of Private Data
What Are The Risks of Letting Others Write In Your Space
Why You Need To Be As Smart As Your Doctor
Steve Hannaford Tells Us Why Chrysler is Dead
Denim Site Sketching: Free-form Web Design
MacLockPick: A Vital Tool For Our Trusted Protectors
We, The People will Get $18 Billion Healthcare Bill
Tracking The Loss of Private Data
What Are The Risks of Letting Others Write In Your Space
Why You Need To Be As Smart As Your Doctor
Steve Hannaford Tells Us Why Chrysler is Dead
Denim Site Sketching: Free-form Web Design
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
Amazing Discovery - Innovation Is Not A Strategy
The cover story for the May 3 issue of BusinessWeek was "World's Most Innovative Companies" The big point was that the idea of running around as a multi-millionaire CEO chanting the word innovation as if it would magically alter your organization has now been recognized as another in the long line of stupid management fads.[...] At the behest of an "ideation" consultant, he donned a blue superhero costume—cape, tights, and all—to put a little extra oomph behind the company's innovation-boosting campaign. "I guess the thinking was that if you free people from the norm, you'll unleash a torrent of creativity," says Scott Anthony, president of Innosight, a consulting firm co-founded by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. Anthony refused to name the company because it was a client. "Innovation Man led to a lot of laughs," he quips, "but it didn't lead to a lot of innovation."According to the article many CEOs, having failed at turning their billion-dollar behemoths into innovation engines, are experiencing "innovation fatigue." I am shocked! Shocked, I say. Shocked to learn that innovation is not a commodity that can be ordered up like Papa John's Pizza. Shocked to learn that innovation doesn't exist on its own like, say, cotton.
The same might be said for many gimmicks that companies have tried over the past few years in their attempts to boost growth. Suddenly trendy, innovation took on the flavor of an elixir, as companies raced to hire "chief innovation officers" and build innovation centers complete with purple-painted walls and conference rooms with funny names. Ford Motor Co. (F) boasted in a press release about its new Innovation Acceleration Center in Dearborn, Mich.: "It's amazing what a room filled with radio-controlled cars, a 3-ft. Statue of Liberty made of Legos, and some comfy couches can do to stir the imagination." [...]
It turns out that innovation is actually a result - something that happens after you change every aspect of your stodgy, corrupt, inefficient, overbearing, outsourced, badly managed global corporation where everyone spends 80 percent of their time in meetings, 20 percent of their time doing reports, 10 percent of their time fixing stuff someone else did wrong, and 5 percent of their time doing something valuable that a customer will actually pay for. (I know, that's 115%. That's called increasing productivity. Guess which 15% gets dropped when your average, everyday human realizes they can only give 100% today.)
And this turns out to be very, very hard.
But there are a few innovative companies. And they're innovative because, well, because they just are. Because they actually do the hard things most companies can't, or won't, do. Because they focus on things far more tangible than "being innovative." Things like finding and hiring talented employees and then not stomping on them or burning them out. Things like actually listening to employees with good ideas. And things like not letting the accountants and lawyers decide about what does and does not get done.
Mostly, innovators just seem to understand that innovation is a fundamental result, that comes from getting the fundamentals of running a business right. What a shocker.
Posted by: 
Terry Frazier at 4:34 PM
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Categories: Business & Finance, Strategy
Terry Frazier at 4:34 PM
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MacLockPick: A Vital Tool For Our Trusted Protectors
Only $499 and available in bulk from Subrosasoft, The MacLockPick is a handy little device for computer-illiterate trusted civil servants to plug into sleeping MacBooks and collect data from all those computers left lying around at crime scenes - just like on TV. Via Digital Trends Magazine: [More...]
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 1:21 PM
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Categories: Privacy, Security, Technology
Terry Frazier at 1:21 PM
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Wednesday, May 16, 2007
We, The People will Get $18 Billion Healthcare Bill
In his Business column in today's Wall Street Journal [subscription required] Alan Murray reports:American taxpayers should keep a close eye on the health-care hot potato being tossed aside by DaimlerChrysler AG. Some day, it could end up in their laps.Yes, it's you and me that will get to pay for Daimler's incompetence and ineptitude. Oh, Murray also says Barack Obama is promising to pickup a portion of healthcare costs for all automakers. Another great Democratic strategy - don't actually fix the problem, just get the government to pay for it. I'm shocked! Shocked, I say.
Daimler's plan to give control of its Chrysler subsidiary to Cerberus Capital Management is motivated in no small part by its desire to offload the $18 billion in health benefits Chrysler eventually will owe to United Auto Worker retirees.
That's a big reason why the German company was willing to agree to spend $650 million to make the deal happen.
Tracking The Loss of Private Data
If you're interested in the subject of data breeches, data loss, and mishandling of private information you might want to have a look at etiolated.org.
Site features real-time graphs, statistics, and searchable full-text database of company names, event summaries, and comments. Thanks to my friend Al Macintyre.
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 8:23 AM
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Categories: Privacy, Security, Technology
Terry Frazier at 8:23 AM
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
What Are The Risks of Letting Others Write In Your Space
In the last couple of weeks I had someone come on this site and post, via anonymous comments, a series of diatribes that were a serious attack on another individual and company. The information was detailed but utterly unsubstantiated. The tone was extremely angry. The allegations ranged from deception to outright fraud. I also did a little IP address tracing and determined that the person had gone to some lengths to hide their address.Within a matter of hours I contacted people who knew something about the companies and person involved, cogitated on what to do, and decided to remove all posts from that individual. I did so without compunction and didn't think anything else about it. I don't normally remove comments, in fact that was only the second time in the four five years I've had this site. But I guess this kind of thing is going to become more common and we're being forced to deal with it. [More...]
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 10:55 PM
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Categories: Privacy, Security
Terry Frazier at 10:55 PM
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Why You Need To Be As Smart As Your Doctor
In August of last year a 43-year-old woman undergoing chemotherapy treatment for nasal cancer died after receiving a massive overdose of the chemotherapy drug flourouacil. According to an Incident Report (pdf) issued by the Institute of Safe Medicine Practices Canada the dose was miscalculated by two different nurses and incorrectly programmed into an electronically-controlled pump. The woman was then sent home, where the pump poured four (4) days worth of drug into her in four (4) hours. [More...]
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 2:38 PM
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Categories: Health, Health and Fitness, Technology
Terry Frazier at 2:38 PM
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Steve Hannaford Tells Us Why Chrysler is Dead
The US auto industry is in turmoil - rising gas prices, changing buyer
tastes, stiffer environmental laws, and massive labor costs, among
other things - have cost US automakers tens of billions in losses in
recent years. And now the pompous jackasses at Daimler-Benz have killed
Chrysler. It's bad enough that my beloved IBM ThinkPads have been sold
to Lenovo - I can't even imagine buying a Chinese-made Jeep! Chrysler
was in trouble when Daimler bought them in 1998, but the Germans were
supposed to make it better, not spend $40 billion to make it worse.
[More...]
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 9:00 AM
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Categories: Business & Finance, Globalization
Terry Frazier at 9:00 AM
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Denim Site Sketching: Free-form Web Design
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on a new site design for a client – InterviewRX.com. We actually have the structure and information architecture pretty well mapped out and are focusing on look and feel, but this type of tool could still come in handy. Even though I am not a designer I’ve taken to creating my own mockups over the years because I find starting from ground zero with a designer to be incredibly frustrating and expensive – it just takes forever for a designer, even a good one, to figure out what you want if you can’t draw at least a basic picture of it yourself. So now I create a fairly complete mockup and then have a designer polish it. That works out much better for me.
But even though I’m getting better at it, I still go through lots of iterations – especially in basic information architecture. Something like Denim could come in handy. I like the mindmap-style sketch interface – seems to me the two are quite similar. I’ll be trying it out later this week. Hat tip to Jim McGee:
Web Design Tool: Denim Site Sketching
When you are making websites, inevitably some form of sketching will be done to rough out it’s design and interactivity.
Whether you’re the web designer or someone trying to communicate your ideas to a web designer, this little piece of software, called Denim, will come in handy.
What Denim does is allow you to create a mock website, with linking pages, just from your rough sketches. Obviously, this will work particularly well with a tablet interface.
Supports Windows, Mac and Unix.
Denim by the University Of Washington
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 8:21 AM
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Categories: Mindmaps, Technology
Terry Frazier at 8:21 AM
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This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:06:57 GMT
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