FUNKENSPRUNG Heartbeat

In our recent research we were focusing on companies that have successfully implemented management innovation- one of these companies is google.

We were spending one day at the googleplex in Mountain View and had the chance to deep dive into the culture, leadership approach and human capital management…

Google’s founders have often stated that the company is not serious about anything but search. They built a company around the idea that work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. To that end, Google’s culture is unlike any in corporate America (and the rest of the world), and it’s not because of the ubiquitous lava lamps and large rubber balls, or the fact that the company’s chef used to cook for the Grateful Dead. In the same way Google puts users first when it comes to our online service, Google Inc. puts employees first when it comes to daily life in our Googleplex headquarters. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to the company’s overall success. Ideas are traded, tested and put into practice with an alacrity that can be dizzying. Meetings that would take hours elsewhere are frequently little more than a conversation in line for lunch and few walls separate those who write the code from those who write the checks. This highly communicative environment fosters a productivity and camaraderie fueled by the realization that millions of people rely on Google results. Give the proper tools to a group of people who like to make a difference, and they will.

Ten things Google has found to be true

We are impressed and we see what an organization can reach if it fully supports the management innovation approach!

Helmut introduced us to Ram Shriram, so we had the rare opportunity to meet Ram:

Ram Shriram started Sherpalo in January, 2000, with the goal of applying his wealth of operating and company building experience to promising early stage ventures. Ram is a founding board member of Google Inc., 247customer.com and Frontline Wireless. Ram also serves on the boards of Plaxo, Zazzle.com, PodShow and Prana Studios. Prior to founding Sherpalo, Ram served as an officer of Amazon.com working for Jeff Bezos, founder & CEO. Ram came to Amazon.com in August, 1998, when Amazon acquired Junglee, an online comparison shopping firm of which Ram was president. Before Junglee and Amazon, Ram was an early member of the Netscape executive team.

We had the chance to get deep insights about his views about business, about the way the silicon valley built its own DNA and what he regards as key success factors for entrepreneurs. He believes that successful companies are based on their ability to board the best people and keep them - besides the right products and smart organization. Only A-people will board other A-people - once you break this rule you are going to be stuck with B- or C-people - or even worse: D-people!

back again from our trip to the west coast full with impressions and new informations. We spent 3 weeks mainly in California, but also Utah, Arizona and Nevada.

Of course we focused on the silicon valley for the search for companies advanced in management innovation.

I will put together some of our highlights in the blog in the next few days..

by Florian Stieger

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“The entire concept of Strategic Planning has to undergo a FUNDAMENTAL change, from focusing on what is visible to focusing on what is invisible, instead of focusing on visible opportunities, a firm has to focus on OPPORTUNITIES THAT HAS NOT ARISEN YET, BUT WILL ARISE TOMORROW, Given the pace of change today, TOMORROW WILL ARRIVE SOONER THAN WE ANTICIPATE, hence : LET US BUILD OUR TOMORROW TODAY BECAUSE TOMORROW ARRIVES SOONER THAN WE THINK.”

Posted by S Dasgupta, a researcher in strategy from India, Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, Pilani. (BITS-Pilani), on June 2, 2008, at HBSP Discussion Leader.

By Bernhard Hoetzl

Prof. Helmut F. Karner, a Management Consultant and Portfolio Worker as well as mentor and network partner of FUNKENSPRUNG had a remarkable discussion with Reginald Benisch, a chief editor, about Austria’s role in global competition. Published in “Goldener Trend“, an Austrian business magazine, in June 2008.

Article as .pdf.

Picture: Trend.at

The sports industry has always been a fantastic field research environment to investigate user innovation theory.

The term “Lead User” was developed by Eric von Hippel, Professor and Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management, in 1986 and 2003.

“The Sources of Innovation” (Eric von Hippel)

“Democratizing Innovation” (Eric Von Hippel)

Most user developed products and modifications are developed by users with lead user characteristics:

• They are at the leading edge and their needs will later be experienced by all other users in that market,

• They anticipate relatively high benefits from obtaining a solution to their needs and therefore innovate;

So far the theory…

Two weeks ago I participated in my first sprint-triathlon (750m swimming, 20km biking, 5km running). An exiting sport - not just combining three different disciplines, but also involving a lot of strategic planning, tactic and lead user innovation. I always find it incredible how innovative participants get in order to save seconds for winning: modified and combined swim, bike and run wear that provides fast changing times, high carbon food supplies knead to small bites and stuck to the bike frame, modified drinking bottles with straws and quick to change bottle holders, comfortable foot straps that hold the time measurement chip and many more. All with the same purpose: to gain a benefit from the solution that no commercial producer has yet thought of.

Since this was my first competition and I didn’t plan a lot ahead, my own user innovation approaches were quite simple – the result: I lost important time, especially during the tricky changing periods and finished 71st out of 83. Nevertheless, I am quite happy with the result and will now fully concentrate and get highly innovative for the next competition.

Other great examples of lead user innovation in sports are the first footstraps invented for jumps by high performance windsurfers in Hawaii in the 70ies or the first kite surfers at about the same time - check out the fantastic site of Zero Prestige!

Main characteristic: leading edge and way ahead of the mass market.

How open is your company regarding user feedback for existing and future products? Do you know today’s lead users of your products tomorrow? Feel free to contact us if you would like to learn more about Lead User Methods, User Innovation and Toolkits.

By Bernhard Hoetzl

On April 28, 2008, GfP and FUNKENSPRUNG hosted a workbench discussion forum regarding Management Innovation:

Organisation 2.0 – Sustainable creation of value by an innovative organisation

You can’t build a company that is fit for the future unless you build a company that is fit for human beings!“

Gary Hamel - “the world’s leading expert on business strategy” (Fortune magazine ) and “the world’s reigning strategy guru” (The Economist) - in his latest bestseller “The Future of Management”, HBSP, 2007.

Companies that don’t innovate die! This radical statement is supported by strong efforts to innovate by most companies. In areas such as product and process innovation or strategic planning, innovation management has developed and tremendously improved over the last couple years – keyword “Open Innovation”. But what has happened to innovations in management practice itself? What role place management innovation within the innovation stack? How innovative must the company of the future be organized and lead? What is the role of employers and employees in such an innovation environment?

Those were just a few questions we discussed in an open form at our workbench.

“Die Presse” summed it up very nicely on May 10, 2008 – not much to add:

Pictures from the evening.

Gesellschaft für Personalentwicklung - GfP

FUNKENSPRUNG

Innovation Lab Spaces01

by Bernhard Hoetzl

To be honest: looking at the food retailing industry in general at a first glance, one would hardly imagine much of innovation. Usually it is high-tech companies such as Apple or Google that lead the attribute “Most Innovative”.

Nonetheless, Whole Foods Market, an American retailer, impressively proves that innovation, especially strategic and management innovation can be successfully implemented in any company of any industry:

“Founded in 1980 as one small store in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market® is now the world’s leading retailer of natural and organic foods, with more than 270 stores in North America and the United Kingdom. To date Whole Foods Market remains uniquely mission driven: We’re highly selective about what we sell, dedicated to stringent Quality Standards, and committed to sustainable agriculture.

We believe in a virtuous circle entwining the food chain, human beings and Mother Earth: each is reliant upon the others through a beautiful and delicate symbiosis.” (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com)

What we find innovative about Whole Foods Market? The management’s lateral and out of the box style of organising and running the business.

Curious about their unique way to manage the stores – i.e. teams are fully responsible and autonomous to decide about their area, for example the seafood department in the store – I decided to check out one of their view markets in Europe, the one on High Street Kensington in London.

What I found was amazing – a gigantic super market for organic food and specialities, most aesthetically presented in a tremendous variety and appealing environment. I had the choice to pick out of ten (!) different types of tomatoes, some of them I have never seen before in my life, or more than 100 different types of cheese from seven continents.

Whole Foods Market is well known for it’s unique management innovation approach and has been highly successful by doing so – a visit to one of their stores will make this clear to you immediately and should get you to thinking about the potentials of management innovation in your company.

by Bernhard Hoetzl

On May 2nd, 2008, I was invited to London Business School’s launch of Labzone:

„The world’s first Management Lab is a unique initiative with an equally unique and powerful perspective. Co-founded by professor Gary Hamel, “the world’s leading expert on business strategy” (Fortune) and Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School, the Lab is a pioneering attempt to create a setting in which progressive companies and world-renowned management scholars work together to co-create “tomorrow’s best practices” today. The goal: to dramatically accelerate the evolution of management processes and practices that will define competitive success in the 21st century.“ (www.managementlab.org)

Discussing the same topic on „how to manage the organisation 2.0 of the future?“ a couple days earlier at our Management Innovation Lab in Vienna, it was very exciting to learn directly from Alan Matcham, Director of MLabs, Professor Julian Birkinshaw, Co-founder and Research Director, and first corporate experiences with the MLabs method from Happy, UBS and Jaguar.

Professor Gary Hamel, who is Co-founder and Executive Director of the MLabs, provides a clear call for action for management innovation in his latest book „The Future of Management“, published in 2007.

We believe as well that radical change in management will be a necessity for a lot of companies in order to keep up with the fast paste of Google and co. and for survival of the next 5 years.

by Bernhard Hoetzl

“The Future of Management” (Gary Hamel, Bill Breen)

A couple years ago I participated in a swarm intelligence session at a conference in Interlaken, Switzerland, and this event changed my direction of thinking – a lot. It was absolutely fascinating to observe how a large group of people starts developing it’s own collective thinking and achieves results that are above those of individuals in most cases, just as James Surowiecki indicates in „The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations“, first published in 2004. Earlier this year then I visited a speech in Vienna by Peter A. Gloor, Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Helsinki University of Technology and the University of Cologne. Peter Gloor developed the topic in „Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage Through Collaborative Innovation Networks“, published in 2005 and together with Scott Cooper in „Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing“ in 2007:

Apple with the iPod and iTunes, Google with its search engine, AdSense and a whole portfolio of innovative new products, Toyota with the Prius hybrid car, Nespresso with it’s trendy coffee machines and companies such as Whole Foods Market with breakthrough management models always seem to have an answer to the question „What will be the next cool thing and market trend?“ The search for the source of trends was coined as „coolhunting“ years ago.

Gloor and Cooper deeply analyse what „coolhunting“ is really about in a world of connected thinking, social networks and global online communication. Their discoverings are tremendously exciting and explain how groups of people work together to innovate. Many of the best ideas don’t come from single individuals or corporate research labs, but from the collective efforts of groups of people (Collaborative Innovation Networks – COINs). Those networks operate best under certain pre-conditions such as non-profit common goals (many open source projects work under the same principles). Gloor and Cooper developed a tool that allows to analyse communication in such COINs and identify trendsetters.

More and more business leaders around the globe start realizing the benefits and enormous potential of collective minds when it comes to innovation. The collective wisdom of crowds is all present in our today’s world. I therefore was not surprised when I asked the students in one of my innovation management lectures, if they can imagine studying in a world without Wikipedia and the answer was - „NO“!

by Bernhard Hoetzl

“Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing” (Peter Gloor, Scott Cooper)