Summer 2009: Inspiring Innovation San Francisco Style
Spending the summer in the San Francisco Bay Area, California provided a welcome burst of sunshine, energy, and inspiration. The entrepreneurial spirit and creative energy is very much alive in Northern California with much activity from small and large companies with domestic and international aspirations. Moving from concept to execution, these players are making new paths within product design, social media, and green technologies.
In order to take the pulse of the future, I spent some time with thought leaders in the areas of innovation, design, and social media. There are several initiatives in developing community and knowledge-sharing around innovation in order to help diffusion among professionals and organizations. Josh Abend at Innovation City has taken a leading role in developing systems and tools for knowledge, governance, and measurement. Innovation City’s approach includes the architectural and knowledge management elements of innovation. Taking up the cause for ‘helping organizations convert vision into value’, the Silicon Valley Institute for Innovation offers many opportunities for professionals and organizations to obtain knowledge, share ideas, and promote dialogue around innovation. Executive director Sue Lebeck notes the importance of ‘creating engaging conversations’ through thought leadership and education.
The network thus inspires new product and service ideas that can be designed into new market opportunities. This has placed increasing emphasis on the value of the design process. Leading design firms IDEO and Frog Design have successfully developed new ways of creating and thinking for companies across industries. In visiting these firms, it is exciting to see how they’ve managed to develop new products and services through their unique philosophies. IDEO has developed a brainstorming process that is eagerly studied and followed by professionals and companies. Both IDEO and Frog Design have developed their own methodologies for the creative process which centers around a shared vision, team collaboration, and knowledge-sharing.
As professionals create new ideas, it becomes important to optimize communication and exchange across functions and cultures. Social media has received great interest from companies in promoting more knowledge exchange. New technologies and information proliferate inside and outside the organization. However, there seems to be a focus on quantity rather than quality. Companies are still exploring ways of effectively managing social media technologies to communicate with employees and customers. Axel Schultze, CEO of Xeequa, notes that ‘companies need to focus on social media as a strategy in order to attract and engage participants’. There’s a growing awareness of the role of social media in shaping market opportunities and results.
The tour of the San Francisco Bay Area included numerous interviews with senior managers responsible for leading and managing new products from concept to market. Many conversations took place around the challenge of creating and implementing new ideas among global teams. How can companies develop effective processes for managing knowledge exchange and transfer across cultures? Stay tuned, more insights from these interviews and ongoing research will be shared in 2010.
