Making Innovation Flourish

Mixed signals from the future

Miko Coffey — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:53:06 +0100

Just back from the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) conference, and it seems that most of the posts so far cover the developer/tech side of the coin, so I hope my business perspective will add to the conversation...

I was definitely amongst the minority at the conference, being both female and not a developer. I went along in hopes of catching a glimpse of the future as well as a peek at the Seedcamp stand & winner, as I was thrilled to hear from my Investments colleague that NESTA is backing Seedcamp (more on this later). While I never quite managed to catch up with the latter, I'm pretty satisfied that I did get a preview of where online innovation is headed.

For some reason, in the past I've always considered the 2 facets of 'Web 2.0' meme to be discrete: one definition being all about 'the social web' (social networking), the other being about 'the web as platform' (web-based applications). But I came away from the conference realising that the point where these two definitions converge is the most interesting and useful. Quite a lot of the speakers I caught touched on making web apps social.

Another key theme was interoperability - that is, the need for all these cool tools to be able to work with each other, and to be able to move information seamlessly across from one place to another, without the user having to do anything, and all under a single sign-on. (I'd been meaning to blog about this very same thing for a while, until Michael Geist's article pretty much summed it all up for me with this statement: "The irony of the current generation of online social networks is that although their premise is leveraging the internet to connect people, their own lack of interconnectedness is stifling their potential.") At FOWA Jyri Zengstrom made a relevant analogy comparing all these 'silo'ed social networks and apps to the way the US phone system started up, with different phone networks that didn't allow you to call people who were on a different supplier's network. The same thing happened with IM, and so it is now with social networks & online apps. But change will come.

Speaking of irony, I had a good chuckle about the fact that at a conference about web apps, I couldn't get online. The wifi connectivity was awful, in direct contrast to the Office 2.0 conference where the speed was so fast I am sure things were loading before I clicked! UK conference centres could learn a thing or two from across the pond, but I digress...

Rashmi Sinha and Suw Charman offered very different advice to app developers & web start-ups. Rashmi's talk was aimed squarely at B2C applications, with the advice to launch publicly early, then refine the product based on feedback from real-life users, not a cobbled-together closed group of people you think will represent users. Funny that I had never considered SlideShare, an app that lets you share Powerpoint presentations, as B2C but I guess it is! Suw's talk focused on B2B, where the public launch/refine model doesn't work, because (non-tech) organisations don't have the luxury of being able to mess around with Beta releases. They want products that work properly, NOW. If you can't deliver first time, they certainly aren't going to hold off buying a tool while you fix bugs or hire support staff. I actually think Suw's talk would have gone down much better at Office 2.0, as I got the feeling that a lot of the folks at FOWA were more interested in hearing about how to get rich quick with The Next Big Thing than how to deliver products that businesses would adopt and use across the enterprise. Which is odd, because I think the latter has great potential for impact and long-term earnings.

On the topic of enterprise apps: I had a look at the Huddle demo - with a critical eye, as I'm a big fan of Central Desktop. While CD isn't pretty, it is chock full of useful features. Huddle on the other hand, is all shiny and 2.0-y but left me feeling a little disappointed with what it actually does. It does offer a sign-off workflow for docs that need approval, and a more user-friendly way of seeing who's in your workspace, but overall I think Huddle's not quite ready for prime time yet. Imo things like Outlook/iCal integration and emailing into the system are essential requirements if you are going for the enterprise dollars.

But the best talks for me couldn't have been more different: youthful optimism from etsy.com's Robert Kalin, and experienced wisdom from Thomas vander Wal. Gum-chewing Kalin flittered all over the place, touching on topics as diverse as the history of money, the way we attach meaning to handmade objects, and how Rockefeller made millions selling oil to the Nazis. Kalin is a revolutionary in geek's clothing, and he wants Etsy to be the forum where crafters, artisans and makers of all types can rise up against the mass-produced soul-less factory goods so common in the WalMart economy. I've been a fan of Etsy since 2005 so I'm one of the choir, but I left his talk feeling there is still hope for changing the nature of markets. Even if you're not an 'act local think global' person, the Etsy story is truly compelling: Kalin was a high-school dropout carpenter who started Etsy from his living room, which in 2 years has grown into a global marketplace selling 7000 items per day and has over 1.4million items on the site from 100,000 sellers.

Thomas Vander Wal's talk was a bit less stream-of-consciousness, but no less inspiring (full notes on the talk here and here). The overarching message I took was that these tools (and the people who make them) need to respond to the very nature of human beings. We as humans have only a certain amount of attention, and we are being bombarded by 'social spam' due to the way social sites don't allow you to filter out all the noise generated by Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, RSS etc. Sometimes you only want to know one kind of info from a friend/contact - and it should also be noted that not all 'friends' are created equal. Tools need to understand that you only want to hear Sally's views on aeronautics, and that someone you once met at a party is not the same kind of friend as one you grew up with. Social bookmarking needs to evolve so when you're looking at someone else's bookmarks, it only shows the ones that you haven't already seen. Sounds a lot like the semantic web to me.

Office 2.0 - How NESTA is using social tools & web apps

Miko Coffey — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:43:51 +0100

In an earlier comment, I mentioned that I'd post about what social tools we are using at NESTA, and the timing seems just right, as I've been invited to speak about this same subject at the Office 2.0 conference next week. In fact, it hadn't clicked just how many ways we've embraced the whole '2.0' way of working until I scanned the list of conference sponsors to find that we're using quite a few of their products/tools - as well as loads of others. Here's a breakdown of what we're doing:

Internal Collaboration & Knowledge-sharing
Our Intranet is a structured (hybrid) wiki powered by ThoughtFarmer. We opted for a hybrid approach instead of pure wiki, mainly because we wanted to gradually introduce social tools to the business, and structured wikis offer wiki functionality without the 'geek factor' - or chaos - that can be associated with traditional wikis. I think ThoughtFarmer's interface is one of the 'friendliest' out there, something our staff seem to appreciate.

We've also been using CommunityServer to drive our internal blogs & discussion boards. I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of CommunityServer, as it's been fiddly to work with and tricky to find UK developers to support it, but it ticked our ICT department's box of being Microsoft-friendly, so there we go. (We also use CS as the platform for managing our Creative Pioneer business support programmes.)

Online Workspaces & Extranets
We use Central Desktop for a number of things: my own team uses it as a collaborative workspace for all work, from steady-state 'rolling' work, to discrete projects. I personally love it, as it means all my docs are available from any computer in the world. We also use CD across the business as a way of managing work/relationships with external partners, from marcomms designers to Committee members to participants on our Crucible programme. My team is able to create extranets in a matter of minutes now that we're using Central Desktop. I'm a former Basecamp user, and I *heart* Central Desktop.

Fancy Feeds
We're using del.icio.us to do some pretty cool things aside from the usual social bookmarking. For example, our Innovation Digest email newsletter is created from a del.icio.us feed, as is the online version. It really simplifies the workflow, automating much of the drudgery associated with building newsletters.

And all the RSS feeds on our website are powered by del.icio.us and Feedburner, which is a pretty quick and simple 'hack' for RSS-enabling a website. I'm surprised more folks don't do it, to be honest. It's not the most elegant solution, but it works!

Speaking of feeds, I should also mention that we're using Yahoo Pipes to meld 2 feeds from our Typepad blogs to fill the 'blogs' slot on our website homepage. Again, it's a bit of a workaround, but it gets the job done.

Beyond RSS
We've introduced Netvibes to various staff members, and they all seem to say the same thing: Netvibes has changed my life (I agree!). While we first introduced it as a handy RSS reader that doesn't require ICT support, we soon found it became much more than that: a way of organising your digital 'clutter', planning for trips, and all sorts of other uses.

Remote Workers
We've used WebEx to enable our UK Partnerships team to collaborate across distances, often as an alternative to flying - which is great not only for the environment, but also in terms of cost. We've also used it to train our remote staff on using some of the tools above. I must admit we've had limited success in using it for online events, but I'm keen to give it another go under different circumstances.

Other Bits & Bobs
Last but not least, it's also worth mentioning that we use Wufoo and SurveyMonkey for our online surveys - both internal ones, and external. We use Wufoo for the simple ones, and SurveyMoneky for the more complex ones.

So what's next? We're currently trialling Diigo within my team, with the ultimate aim of introducing our Policy & Research team to this method of collaborative web annotation. I'm sure they will find it incredibly useful for the research & review process. And we're always on the lookout for new web apps and tools.

The really cool thing is that most of the above tools are free or low-cost, so I guess we're proof that you don't have to spend thousands of pounds to introduce web-based tools to the business context. So much has changed over the last couple of years. The old days of the 'Cost - Quality - Speed' triangle has gone; these days you CAN have all three: done cheaply, done well, and done quickly.

The Innovation Manifesto

Miko Coffey — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:37:23 +0100

Suw Charman's recent exploration of the sources of innovation touches on a lot of the same themes as my earlier post and issues a warning about the current way in which people & businesses think about innovation. In reading through Suw's post, the key messages start to feel like tenets of an Innovation Manifesto (if such a thing existed*). Julia Styles summed these up nicely in her comment:

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."

While I agree for the most part, I'd adapt this one slightly: "Innovation will succeed in business when the business creates a corporate culture where innovation can thrive."

It's a small change, but important I think. Creating a climate that's conducive to innovation has to come first (only then will you be able to accept innovation as part of the culture). In my mind, the single biggest hindrance to innovation within a business is a culture that is closed, or overly hierarchical, or one where the pressure to perform means people can't see the forest for the trees.

I'd also add a few of my own tenets to the manifesto, namely:

Innovation cannot be forced, and often not even planned.
Innovation isn't always about creating something totally new. Adapting, combining and applying existing ideas in new ways can be just as innovative.

Do you have any other principles to add to the manifesto? What's your take?

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* Turns out a few others have already made a stab at their own Innovation Manifestos, including John Kao, who made his into a book (I'd be interested in your review of this if you've read it). Of those freely available online, my personal faves are this one (for its pure idealism) and Matthew May's Elegant Solutions (for its practical advice and applicability). It's also worth a look at Mind of the Innovator, another PDF from Matthew May on the eternally-inspiring site ChangeThis.

The 'one line' definition of innovation

Miko Coffey — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:17:44 +0100

I just found this post which invites people to submit their single-line definition of innovation. It's worth having a browse through the comments, as there are some real beauties in there. The deadline is Monday, so get in there now if you want to see your definition in the results list.

The future is smart machines (and soup)

Miko Coffey — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:52:20 +0100

Last week I read an interview with Tim Berners-Lee about the future of the internet, the so-called 'semantic web'. Not as catchy a name as 'Web 2.0' but potentially even more powerful. Reading the interview reminded me that while the concept of the semantic web has been around a while, and has been proclaimed the Next Big Thing by net gurus the world over, explaining the concept and why it could revolutionise our lives is difficult. Eyes glaze over as soon as things like "data-meshing" are mentioned, and even Sir Berners-Lee's explanation didn't quite hit the mark for me. So here's my own attempt at a Plain English explanation of this woolly and unfortunately named concept, hopefully in a way that even my mum would understand. Make of it what you will.

Let's start at the beginning, with Web 1.0: producers created content that was published on websites for consumers to find and consume.

In Web 2.0, the lines betweeen consumer and producer are blurred. Consumer-producers can now upload their own content, and consume the content of other consumer-producers, through blogs & sites like YouTube or MySpace. By exchanging this home-made stew of information with each other, online social networks are created.

Web 2.0 is also about doing more stuff through your web browser, things that you used to do on paper or on software that you had to install on your computer. BackPack replaces your personal datebook or Outlook calendar, Flickr replaces your photo albums, for example. You can label your photos and events with descriptive words or 'tags' that make it easy for you to find them. And of course, you can share this content with your friends.

Now on to the tricky part...

The semantic web (Web 3.0?) is about making computers behave (or 'think') more like humans. The easiest way to understand what this means is to use a cooking analogy. Think of each website where you put your content as a big cookpot. You might throw a carrot into one pot and tag it 'carrot', and into another you might put some spaghetti and tag it 'pasta'. Computers are fine with this kind of input.

But what computers can't do yet is understand that the thing you called 'carrot' is a root vegetable, is full of Vitamin A - and that you are making minestrone soup. It also doesn't know that you have another pot simmering, and that there's pasta in there. Or that you need to make a sauce for it. This kind of thinking requires context, and an ability to see the big picture - that is, to know what's in each pot, and to understand that you're making dinner. That's all that data-meshing is; it's about applying meaning to information from different sources. This is what the semantic web is all about; I call it the "web of meaning" or the "contextual web". It means being able to ask your computer everything from "When did I last have Sally over?" to "Can I afford a new laptop this month?".

In a nutshell:

Web 1.0 is like buying a can of Campbell's Soup
Web 2.0 is like making homemade soup and inviting your soup-loving friends over
The semantic web is like having a dinner party, knowing that Tom is allergic to gluten, Sally is away til next Thursday and Bob is vegetarian.

(I know it's a vast over-simplification of things, but I hope my mum is reading and can now understand why I salivate whenever someone mentions data-meshing.)

We are already starting to see the first hints of the semantic web in the mainstream: the photo tagging feature on Facebook is a great example. You upload a photo, tag the photo with your friend's name, and Facebook automatically notifies that person that there's a new picture of them in your photo album. It's a lightweight vision of the future, where the context adds value.

And each time we tag or make a link, we are teaching the machine. And we do this collectively 100 billion times a day.

30 years ago, sci-fi films depicted robots with artificial intelligence so advanced that they responded the way humans do. Today, we're starting to understand that the smart machines won't look like robots, and that the artificial intelligence won't be hard-wired into a self-contained unit. The Internet is the smart machine, and it's learning fast.

For more mind-blowing reading on the Internet as our collective intelligence and memory, have a read through Kevin Kelly's predictions of the future of the web - made just 2 years ago, and already starting to come to fruition.

Missing the point: net radio's last stand

Miko Coffey — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:04:59 +0100

In the same week that NMA announced that online (download) sales now acount for 90% of British single sales (yes, ninety!), the UK Copyright Tribunal did exactly what I was hoping they wouldn't: they followed the US CRB in effecting royalty charges that could kill internet radio in the UK entirely. What's more, the UK fees will be up to 9 times the amount their US counterparts will pay. Pandora, one of the most respected US services that had only recently started broadcasting in the UK, is preparing to shut down their UK operation as early as this week.

What stations like Pandora do is provide an excellent way of selling more records. Here's how: you type in the name of a song or musician you like, and Pandora plays you music that is similar. You may never have heard of the artist or song that Pandora plays to you, but if you like it, you can buy it from iTunes or Amazon at a single click. I have no doubt that this has led to an increase in sales, especially for lesser-known artists.

The whole purpose of royalty fees is to protect composers and performers (and of course record companies) by compensating them each time their song is played in public, thus generating income for them. But actions like the new net radio fees will only end up hurting music sales, which generate more income than royalties. The UK Copyright Tribunal and the US CRB have effectively killed off one of music's cheapest and most effective marketing tools.

Until regulatory bodies like this recognise that the world has changed around them and learn to adapt their ways of working to account for the digital age, it's a lose-lose situation. Regulation needs to evolve to support innovative business models like internet radio, or nobody wins.

Secondfest: the shape of things to come?

Miko Coffey — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:14:12 +0100

This weekend I attended Secondfest, The Guardian- and Intel-sponsored 3-day virtual music festival that took place in SecondLife, the online virtual world. Intel donated the use of their SecondLife islands, and The Guardian sponsored what promised to be a stellar lineup of artists.

On the whole, it looked just like a real-life music festival: several stages, a campsite complete with tents, drinks stalls and whatnot. But this is exactly what let things down in my mind. Why would you build an exact replica of a real-life festival in an environment where you could have virtually anything? Why not put one of the stages on a cloud? Or inside a giant dinosaur? Or under water? Making the impossible possible is one of the joys of SecondLife. I think they missed a real trick here.

My husband's avatar ran into one of the festival organisers, who said the reason behind the simulation of reality was to make the festival feel like a familiar environment for newbies. While I can understand this, I think they've underestimated people's ability to figure things out pretty quickly. And to be fair, the longtime SecondLifers helped boost the atmosphere with their own visual effects and outfits (check the photos).

But hats off to the sponsors (esp Guardian) for attracting so many newbies; the festival was full of them. So will the people who joined up just to attend the festival stick around? Perhaps, if they can see past the terrible technical faults experienced at Secondfest. Audio and video streams were intermittently dropping, and many newbies who didn't know how to do the SL-equivalent of banging the top of the telly when it loses the signal, were disappointed.

And the rest of us were even more disappointed to find that many of the acts weren't actually 'performing' at all. The organisers simply played a recording and broadcast it into the festival. Seeing and hearing a live performance is the core reason for going to any gig, so this was a real let down. Had I paid anything, I would have felt royally ripped off. Fortunately, some of the artists who did perform live made up for the others; a few of them had even kitted out their avatars and were chatting to the crowd in between songs.

So was it a success? I guess it depends on how you measure it. At times, the stages were too crowded to get in, I got lost, and at one point a giant chicken was blocking my view - so pretty much like a real festival on all counts. But other times the system just felt overloaded, and the cracks were showing. The capacity of the stages was only 50 people at the low end and 200 people at the top end, so hardly a virtual Glasto. But even at these low numbers, the technical infrastructure was maxed out, causing the aforementioned streaming problems and other more comical issues, like avatars appearing with body parts missing.

Overall, I admire the ambition of Secondfest, but I think it will be some time before promoters can confidently offer virtual festivals that rival their offline counterparts. But I do think this weekend demonstrated there is a market here, if time and technological advances can sort out the infrastructure issues. After all, a festival without mud, chemical toilets and noise-pollution does have its appeal.

Internet radio: how regulation could impact online innovation

Miko Coffey — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:53:23 +0100

Today internet radio stations in the US are observing a day of silence to protest the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB)'s decision to hike royalty fees for internet radio stations - a hike of 3-12 times the fees currently being paid by stations. Small stations have complained that the fees would be more than their annual revenue, and many pundits argue that this could effectively 'kill' streaming internet radio in America. Even non-profit radio, such as NPR (National Public Radio) would be severely hit by the hike.

Roughly 1 in 5 Americans listened to internet radio regularly in 2006, so the potential impact shouldn't be underestimated. For reference, on this side of the pond, the picture is much the same: BBC's internet radio doubled its listenership in 5 months, and a year ago reported over 32million hours of net radio consumption (I'm sure it's doubled again by now).

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.

Internet radio is the epitome of The Long Tail at work: thousands of small, non-commercial niche stations sprang up as an alternative to mainstream commercial stations littered with ads, churning out the same playlist over and over. A thriving new business model emerged based on broadband penetration, streaming media technology and consumer demand; a perfect example of innovation at work.

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. Of course I'm not saying they shouldn't pay (fair) fees, but this was a missed opportunity for the CRB to demonstrate leadership in the way intellectual property should be managed in the digital age. Instead, they opted for an approach that exploits the nature of the new medium to line the pockets of the record companies: none of the proposed fees would go to the recording artists.

Net taxation could kill collaborative innovation

Miko Coffey — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 09:36:00 +0100

Soon the US government will decide whether the ban on taxation of internet access should continue or not. If the ban is lifted, Americans could be taxed per access or amount of bandwidth used instead of the current blanket per month fee for broadband. Not only is this a backward step for consumers (remember dial-up?), this clearly has societal implications, allowing only the moneyed classes to readily access high-bandwidth content such as video, or to stay online for long periods in Second Life or MMORPGs. But there's so much more at stake than missing out on YouTube or online games. The entire economy of the internet would change. Would you do your banking, grocery shopping or check-in for flights online if you had to pay extra to do so?

The rise of cheap broadband also opened the door to exponential growth in online social networks and collaborative tools such as Basecamp and Central Desktop, not to mention online meeting tools and VOIP. There are millions of people online every day, collaborating on projects and ideas, sharing knowledge in ways that weren't possible before, and just plain getting things done. People from oppostie sides of the world can collaborate in real time without ever leaving their chairs. Taxation such as that being debated could kill these kinds of online collaboration. Without cheap & easy access would projects such as the IBM InnovationJam thrive - or even exist?

If the US were to lift the ban, other countries could be inspired to follow suit - I only hope that those of us who live our lives online can make sure this doesn't happen. It also highlights the fact that many of the factors in creating a climate where innovation can thrive reach way beyond 'innovation policy' or personal entrepreneurship.

Social web for social issues

Miko Coffey — Wed, 30 May 2007 13:18:33 +0100

This morning's news about a screensaver and online social network for Alzheimer's sufferers and their carers is exactly the kind of social innovation the Innovation Challenges team are exploring. 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. If the social network element works well, I can see that being taken up by folks without Alzheimer's as well. Millions of elderly people live alone, and this could be their connection to other people out there. Sure, it's not the same as actual physical contact, and some considerations would need to be made for those not familiar with computers, but it could just be the lifeline that keeps lonely elderly people going.