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Disruptive Innovation explanation video
Great video explaining disruptive innovation by Clayton Christensen.
Predicta is one of Brazil’s 25 most innovative companies
Predicta (company I co-founded and currently work as Innovation Manager) was just recognized by Época Negócios (a leading business national magazine) as one of the top 25 most innovative companies in Brazil. The companies were selected with the help of FGV-Eaesp, The Nacional Foundation of Quality (Fundação Nacional da Qualidade – FNQ) and Great Place To Work (GPTW).
The process that decided the winning companies involved employee surveys, on-site interviews, and actual company innovation process validation. Being recognized as one of the top innovative companies endorses our management vision and employee engagement with true innovation.
The article in the magazine talks about each of the unique aspects of the companies, and discusses some of Predicta’s properties that led to the company’s selection. The article highlights our innovation blog/discussion forum and our employee sensitivity post-it whiteboards underlining our transparency value.
But I want to talk about what I believe is important to drive innovation at Predicta.
Let’s start with our innovation mission statement. We actually have a metaphor which describes what we believe is the ultimate innovation machine: Drosophila melanogaster, a.k.a. the fruit fly. Because of the ability to RAPIDLY understand the most successfull Darwinian adaptability responses throughout generations – biology, genetics, and physiology all use the fruit fly to test hypothesis. We characteristic we want to mimic is the ability to Darwinian adaptation competence.
Here are some of the values that guide our mission:
“Vision without Execution is hallucination” - Albert Einstein
Innovation is about delivery. Anyone can have ideas – but transforming these ideas into sellable products is what innovation is all about. Our innovation department isn’t about the amount of ideas we have – but the amount of sellable products we offer.
“I don’t know which company I’ll be working for next year – but I know it will be called Predicta” - Predicta employee tweet
Real innovation is about true change. Predicta was born with a completely different business model than the one practiced today. Actually, a business model that failed. But we were able to take recognize our assets, and redirect the company in a completely new direction. We have at least half a dozen of projects in our pipeline that could drive more than half of our revenue next year.
“Don’t worry, be crappy” - Guy Kawasaki
Agility reigns supreme at Predicta. Responding fast is probably our biggest asset. We understand that creating innovative products and services is an ongoing learning process and to be able to modify and adapt is crucial to be successful. Many times some of the killer features will have to wait a future release, and sometimes these features never make it (which is a good thing!).
“Nothing fuels like passion” - Twitter response on Predicta project
Counting page views and banner clicks is probably comparable to watch the paint dry on the excitement factor. But knowing that the information we are collecting is being used in real-time to optimize conversion is the new way marketing works makes our clock tick. Yes, this is a job – but this is also where we spend most of our time, and where we want to leave our legacy. We leave each day really thinking: was today worth it?
Ultimately innovation is about seeing something that needs to be changed, and actually change it.
Crowdsourcing Innovation Definition on Twitter
Just today I came across a very interesting blog post about someone who used Twitter to crowdsource the best definition for innovation. By using the #IDEF140 hash-tag, users could submit their suggestions.
Here are the first five:
@futurescape
Innovation is a simple idea, executed well and adopted widely.@mikebrown
Innovation – The magic of imagining, implementing, & improving upon what’s been done before to benefit others.@Macker
Innovation is clarification, ideation, solutions development and implementation (read, action). It is only as hard as DOING it.@wwcasey
Innovation is the combination of creativity (the idea), design (making it real), and implementation (making it available).@innovate
Innovation transforms useful seeds of invention into solutions valued above every existing alternative.
The link to the blog post is:
http://intrepid-llc.com/2009/01/22/official-stonepayton-idef140-ballot/
Although this post is almost six months old, the results are pretty interesting. Worth the visit.
Your Business’s Twitter Web-Presence
Twitter is a great tool for the end user. Clients such as TweetDeck allow you to segment your tweets into manageable categories (such as specific user groups and hash tags). However, when I first started putting my company on Twitter I noticed a disconnect: how else can you promote your Twitter presence besides stating your twitter username (or CEO's Twitter username)?
In other words - if you have positive and active discussions about your brand/product - how can you use this to promote your company?
That's when I came across Zappos's Twitter homepage: http://twitter.zappos.com/. Tony Hsieh, Zappos's CEO, and one of the earlist Twitter innovators created a web presence for the Zappos brand on the Twittersphere:
Genius! Not only does he let everyone easily know what people are saying about Zappos on Twitter (it makes it easier when you have a brand like Zappos where clients are very passionate about your brand) - but you let people know how to search for Zappos on Twitter. You also get another great advantage - there are no better spokespeople for your brand than your own employees. Tony stimulates his employees to participate in social media and even creates an employee Twitter ranking:
Then I stepped on the shoulders of giants and thought:
Hey, what if we created something that allowed all companies to communicate their Twitter presence over the web???
I have been playing around a lot on how a company (event, group or even family) can create a web channel for their Twitter Presence - and finally came up with IsOnTwitter. IsOnTwitter is a free webapp that allows you to quickly create a customized web page and/or widget of your company's Twitter presence. Here is an example of the IsOnTwitter webpresence I made for Zappos: http://mycompany.isontwitter.com/zappos, or see the widget that can be installed on any website below. Notice the floating menu on the right - that allows you to navigate in the Twitter categories.
I also wanted to add some usability shortcuts that allow a more optimized interation with Twitter - so I purposely created thumbnails for Twitpics and show YouTube videos directly on the screen.
Another interesting use is to present Twitter industry aggregators. Check out a IsOnTwitter aggregator for the Webanalytics industry here: http://myindustry.isontwitter.com/webanalytics, or see the widget below. This aggregator makes it easy for people who are not completely familiar with the industry players and terminology to get a 360 degree view of what's is being said about webanalytics on Twitter.
The project is still in an embryonic stage - and I would love to have feedback and new ideas.
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