Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

In more recent months, I’ve read a number of books on the topic (seems to be gaining prevalence, at least in terms of people willing to write – and buy – books).

Not that I mind, because it’s an approach that’s close to our heart.

The Book	What we thought
“Little Bets – How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries” by Peter Sims	Worth reading

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It is a loaded term – it means different things to different people (here’s the Wikipedia reference, for instance).

To me, it seems that there are two competing “innovation camps” which I sum up as follows: read more »

I’ve recently posted about what some are calling the rise of the “Age of Analytics”, and also posted several times on innovation (such as this note about 5 “discovery skills”).

Not sure how I stumbled upon this article in Business Week – it’s titled “The Design of Business” and is written by Roger Martin (of Rotman School of Management) to coincide with the launch of his new book (which we have duly added to our Amazon cart and will review in due course). read more »

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Following my previous post (book review of “Tale of Two Systems” – but really a consideration of Agile & Lean Software Development) I have continued to read, and think (yeah, dangerous, I know).

The following two posts will be of interest:

1)  This post from the HBR Editor’s Blog titled “How do innovators think?” provides many good points (and some of the added comments at the bottom are great as well) but I want to cut to the chase and highlight the “5 Discovery Skills” included in the article:

Skill 1 = Associating – a cognitive skill that “allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas”.  Like being able to find your way without needing a map.

Skill 2 = Questioning – like asking the “5 why’s”

Skill 3 = Observation, and (particularly) doing it really well – well enough to pick up nuances in behaviour, etc….

Skill 4 = Experimentation – try a lot of things and keep what works, as noted by Collins and Porras.

Skill 5 = Networking – the post notes that the key is that the networking is done with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.

2)  I read in the comments that someone has already made the link with Agile Software Development.  Here’s commentary by Bob MacNeal on his blog.

In particular with respect to Bob’s post, he has omitted the 3rd skill. I am not sure why he has done this, or if it is deliberate.

However one of the comments underneath sums it up when they note “To write great software you need to observe the detail that’s not included in the written version of the requirements.”  (my emphasis added, as I totally agree)

Given the challenges, opportunities and uncertainties our business faces, we need all 5 in spades!

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Ironically, I read this book back in September up in the Whitsundays (yes, home to the lucky bugger who’s got the best job in the world – at least for 6 months).

You see - in the book, Richard regales the reader of his prized Necker Island (in the Caribbean) and of the value it has represented to him and the group.  Might be a few more years, yet, before we can splurge on our own island!

1)  Binary Review

This book was a quick easy read.

The Book	What we thought
“Screw it, Let’s do it”by Richard Branson	.Upbeat, entertaining stories, with some good lessons

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As you would probably expect (the title’s a bit of a give-away) the book is all about such “simple” concepts as:

1)  Don’t plan to the nth degree – just get started and learn as you go (for me, this resonated with what I have been learning about Agile Software Development)

2)  Have fun along the way.

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	Book: Adversity Quotient Author: Paul G. Stoltz Phd Binary Review: 1
Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Thus, benefits would return to you…

If I had $40 for every time I heard the words “I can’t do this, it’s too hard,” I would be a high school maths tutor. Which I was. For seven years. And my response to every single teenager who uttered those words at me was to tell them point blank that they were wrong. They could do it, and would one day find it easy. By the end of the first term of tutoring all bar two of my thirty or so students had shown a drastic improvement in their grades. Little did I realise but when I was instilling in these students the principles that are fundamental to having a high Adversity Quotient, which is the subject of Paul Stoltz’ book.

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For the second time this week (following from Scott Ginsberg’s session), Adam and I were entertained, and intellectually stimulated, by a seminar focused on helping business do better.

This event was titled “Leading and Enabling Innovation through ICT” and was  presented by Zernike Australia in conjunction with Australian Institute of Commercialisation (AIC), Brisbane Technology Park, and QUT.

The event was part of the “Innovation Series”.

1)  Some great content

After having the session kicked off by Rowan Gilmore (CEO of the AIC), we were then treated to some great ideas from three top speakers:

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For us, the answer is not as easy as it might first seem….

(a)  Note that my question was NOT “what does Google know about Innovation?” – for surely they would know enough for several book’s worth of material.

(b)  I am more focused on us (a small-sized software company based in Milton, Brisbane) and wondering what WE can learn – provided we are not too dumb, distracted or egotistical to really hear the messages that were presented to us.

I’m writing this post 2 weeks after the Warren Centre’s “2009 Innovation Lecture”, featuring Lars Rasmussen of Google.

There were three of us who attended – myself, and two of our developers.  Paul has already posted his comments about what he gained from the lecture.

Given my focus is more on “Working ON, not IN, the business” (or at least I try for it to be), my interest was moreso in the lessons we could learn from the two projects (Google Maps and Google Wave) rather than the technology per-se.  For this reason, I found the obligatory product demo of the Wave mid-way through the presentation a little tedious, and would rather have heard more about Lars’ personal experiences of innovation during the two projects.

However, I was not totally disappointed – as the lecture was accompanied by some well-written notes (big copyright notice, so can’t scan here) and the synopsis also provided by the Warren Centre online.

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