Monthly Archives: May 2009

Green made easy

May 20, 2009 by Jaap Linssen | 1 Comment

EcobeeThe Canadian company Ecobee launched a thermostat that can be controlled trough the internet.

“The ecobee Smart Thermostat is a 7-day programmable thermostat designed to help you conserve energy, save money and reduce your environmental impact. The ecobee Smart Thermostat provides ease and flexibility in the management of your home environment and comfort.”

In itself the Ecobee isn’t a great example of ‘out off the box’ thinking, but is a nice SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking) example. Specifically this is an example of the ‘dividing’ exercise where the functions of a product are split to see if they add value in that way. In this case the controls are taken of the thermostat and offered in a different way (the web). Another example of ‘dividing’ would be the remote control of televisions.

SIT is very powerful as it forces you to think in ways you are not used to leading to very creative ideas. The SIT workshops we run with our clients always lead to ideas that are pursued further. Give it a try!

Tagged , , ,

New Social Platform ‘Cubetree’

May 13, 2009 by Jaap Linssen | 2 Comments

This week Cubetree launched. Cubetree is the next generation Social Platform for the enterprise. With our team of enterprise social media implementation experts we put it through a quick test. Cubetree is a very powerful platform that has most functionality you would want in an enterprise setting. If you want to get a feel for where this industry is heading, take a look. It really does all the social stuff!

Cubetree

Just to name a few things: sharing documents, sharing links, wiki’s, sharing photo’s, setting goals for yourself and others, etc, etc. Integration with Google Calender,  Salesforce, Webex, Twitter, Tripit, Google Docs, Google Reader, etc etc. Yes, very impressive.

However, after an hour we stopped using Cubetree because it just generates too many updates. We tested with 3 people and were just completely overwhelmed by the updates. We imagined what would happen if 15 more colleagues would partake and shivered. For now we are going back to using Yammer for our internal communication, and wiki’s and Google Docs for collaboration. If Cubetree solves this issue, we’ll give it another go and potentially implement it at clients.

Tagged ,

Crowdsourcing example

May 8, 2009 by Jurjan Huisman | No Comments

The wisdom of crowdsIn the book “The wisdom of crowds” by James Surowiecki a very clear example is given which proofs the wisdom of a crowd. I want to share this example as it is very simple. A British scientist, named Francis Galton, had little faith in the intelligence of the average person. He wanted to prove that the average voter within a group was capable of very little.

Read More

Tagged , ,

Hair clippings to clean up oil spills

May 7, 2009 by Jaap Linssen | No Comments

On Springwise I ran in to a posting about a hairdresser clearly connecting dots outside his box. I would like to share it with you.

“While watching the coverage of the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, hair stylist Phil McCrory was struck by how rapidly otters’ fur absorbed oil. He soon began testing how much oil he could absorb with the cast-off clippings from his salon, and voilà, the Oil Spill Hair Mat was created. McCrory teamed up with the environmentally-driven fiscal sponsor Matter of Trust, and set up shop in a San Francis warehouse. Following the hair mat’s inception in 2000, thousands of hair salons now donate their excess hair to Matter of Trust to be recycled into absorbent mats. And with salons collecting on average one pound a day, that’s a lot of hair mats.

Hairdressers signing up as donors are asked to cover shipping costs, compensated by the happy knowledge that they’re helping clean up oil spills. The program also accepts other natural fibres such as dog fur from groomers, horse hair, waste wool, and even nylon stockings that can be filled with hair and used to contain spills.”

Tagged ,

Open Innovation at Nestle

May 5, 2009 by Jaap Linssen | No Comments

I came across a summary of a speech Helmut Traitler, Vice President for Innovation Partnerships at Nestle gave at an Open Innovation Forum in Cambridge.  It is a beautiful example of a company purposely innovating and I have nothing to add to Saul Kaplan’s account of the presentation.

“Embracing open innovation and new business models  Nestle clearly recognizes that to achieve its growth objective it must extend its internal capabilities to establish a large number of strategic partnering relationships.  It has embraced open innovation and works aggressively with strategic partners to co-create significant new market and product opportunities.  Worldwide, Nestle employs approximate 5000 people in 24 R&D centers and over 250 application groups.  It extends its reach by tapping into the technologies and expertise of more than a million researchers around the world.

Importance of strategic focus within target benefit areas  Nestle has a very clear framework to screen new opportunities.  It has identified target benefit areas that relate to nutrition, compliance and quality, and taste.  In order for any idea to be pursued it must be strategically aligned with one of the identified target benefit areas.

Read More

Tagged , ,