Great Article in Fast Company about Google & Innovation

Below are some of my favorite quotes from the article, I particularly like the focus upon prototyping and iteration:

There are two different types of programmers. Some like to code for months or even years, and hope they will have built the perfect product. That's castle building . . . Others prefer to have something working at the end of the day, something to refine and improve the next day. That's what we do.

Matt Glotzbach
Product Management Director For Google Enterprise

"What do you normally do when you start a new job? You waste time filling out
paperwork. My first morning at Google, I put my name and address on one form
online, and it went everywhere it needed to go electronically. That's how this
place works."

Marissa Mayer
VP Of Search Products And User Experience

"After September 11, one of our researchers, Krishna Bharat, would go to 10 or 15 news sites each day looking for information about the case. And he thought, Why don't I write a program to do this? So Krishna, who's an expert in artificial intelligence, used a Web crawler to cluster articles. He later emailed it around the company. My office mate and I got it, and we were like, 'This isn't just a cool little tool for Krishna. We could add more sources and build this into a great product.'

That's how Google News came about. Krishna did not intend to build a product, but he accidentally gave us the idea for one.

There is a whole lot more interesting info in the article. It is worth the read, check it out:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/123/google.html?page=0%2C3

Innovate Like Edison - 5 Step Process to Innovation

Excerpt from Fortune Small Business:

Throughout his career Edison used a five-step process to launch his inventions. To give you a taste of his approach, we use the example of Edison's first product, the stock ticker. His system is culled from historical documents and written as Edison might have noted them.

1. Identify trends in the marketplace, observing where and how needs are shifting. In 1868, I read in the newspapers that the rebuilding of the American South after the Civil War has sent commodities prices rising, since demand for lumber, brick, stone, and other building materials has increased and supplies are strained. The reporting of these prices - as well as the price of gold and precious metals - is eagerly sought by American businesses at an increasing rate.

2. Determine if there are any gaps created by these changing needs. I've noted that few efficient machines and few services exist to rapidly - and reliably - report commodities prices, precious-metals prices, and stock prices to businesses around the country.

3. Identify the core insight (the "aha!") or need at the heart of each gap. I think I can apply the principles of -telegraphy to make a machine that reports prices.

4. Link your insights to your capabilities as a company and your strengths and weaknesses in relation to your competitors. I can combine my talents for telegraph equipment assembly and design to develop price--reporting machines that operate rapidly and efficiently.

5. The hypothesis is an "if-then" proposal for a practical experiment about the goal you'd like to fulfill based on the linkage you've created. If I can build an efficient, reliable telegraph-like machine that can help businesses report commodities and metals prices all over the country, then I will make a significant profit.

The result? Edison's stock-reporting machine launched his career as a successful inventor and innovator.

Quoted in the Wall Street Journal

Don't Trust Your PC
Loose Wire's Inbox: Metatag Blues, Stumbling Over Stumble
By JEREMY WAGSTAFF February 2, 2007

My article about StumbleUpon, a toolbar for the browser that builds a network of shared bookmarks ("Not Googling but Stumbling," Nov. 17, 2006) elicited varied responses. People like Aidan Chiu of Taiwan found it "very cool and helpful," but others took longer to be convinced.

Ron Finch of Seattle wrote: "OK, so the last thing I need on my browser is another toolbar; however, I was intrigued enough by your description of Stumble to give it a try. It started poorly enough when the first six or so usernames I tried were taken, but I finally found one I could live with, and started Stumble-ing. It's redeemed itself, in spades." Jonathan B. Smith of Michigan, however, wasn't impressed:

"I found the linearity of its results to be terribly cumbersome. I see the value in the thumbs up, thumbs down, but the presentation of the results make the tool almost unusable for a power internet user. I do not want single results, I want a list that is ranked that I chose from."

I agree it may not be perfect for a power user or someone in a hurry. I think the value, though, is more in the notion of wandering around, guided by the recommendations of others and the machine-learning of the software as it understands your interests and preferences.

Innovation tools, resources and strategies

InnovationTools catalogs the best resources for business innovation, creativity and brainstorming

InnovationTools provides entrepreneurs and innovators with a focused, growing collection of the best resources on business innovation, creativity and brainstorming. Our goal is to help you to learn more about the tools, strategies and techniques you can use to be more creative in your business -- and to help your company to increase its capacity for innovation and change.


http://www.innovationtools.com/index.asp

Theory of Inventive Problem Solving

"TIPS" is the acronym for "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving," and "TRIZ" is the acronym for the same phrase in Russian. TRIZ was developed by Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues in the former USSR starting in 1946, and is now being developed and practiced throughout the world.

TRIZ research began with the hypothesis that there are universal principles of invention that are the basis for creative innovations that advance technology, and that if these principles could be identified and codified, they could be taught to people to make the process of invention more predictable. The research has proceeded in several stages over the last 50 years. Over 2 million patents have been examined, classified by level of inventiveness, and analyzed to look for principles of innovation. The three primary findings of this research are as follows:

• Problems and solutions were repeated across industries and sciences
• Patterns of technical evolution were repeated across industries and sciences
• Innovations used scientific effects outside the field where they were developed

In the application of TRIZ all three of these findings are applied to create and to improve products, services, and systems.