We are having our share of winter snow storms this year in Seattle, WA, and it has been quite amazing. It is quite uncommon for this area to get so much snow. Life has certainly been brought to a standstill. I have captured some highlights of our snow storms here.

There is nothing purer than a white carpet of undisturbed snow that highlights the stillness and beauty of the holiday season. Wishing you peace, health and happiness throughout the year.

For more advice on focusing your innovations during hard times, check out Innovation Weblog’s special report Innovation Strategies for the Global Recession. Chuck Frey and Renee Hopkins Callahan have compiled an extensive list of strategies on how to maintain innovation during challenging times from a diverse collection of innovation experts and practitioners. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: innovation strategy, Innovation Weblog, economic downturn

Focusing your innovations during down times is key to survival. You need to keep on innovating to differentiate and grow, but also innovate on products and services your customers would be more willing to buy to stay profitable.

As I mentioned before, the profitability equation is quite simple: when a firm’s revenue from selling its product or service is greater than the cost of offering it, then it is concluded that the firm is profitable on that given offering. This same equation holds true for your customers’ business as well: the benefits of the product or service outweigh the cost of acquiring it.

Profits = Revenues – Cost 
During downturns, clearly demonstrating how your new product or service contributes to the profitability of your customers’ business is the key. Analyzing your own and your customers’ value chains can be the inspiration for your focused innovation strategy. Here are 6 key areas that will help focus your innovation strategy.
(more…)

I have been playing with the Roku Netflix streaming device, Apple TV as well as the XBMC and Boxee open source media centers running on Apple TV. This is the inspiration of this post: the what, why, when and how questions relating to defining your open architecture strategy.

Quick background: Using ATV USB Creator, it is possible to install XBMC and Boxee on Apple TV. However, as soon as a firmware upgrade occurs for Apple TV, I’m back to square one: wait for the open source community to catch up with the fixes to ATV USB Creator, followed by reinstall and reactivate. As much as it is a hack, these hacks/solutions do increase the value of Apple TV, enabling me to access other available Internet channels, outside of iTunes.
(more…)

Strategy+business has a great article regarding innovative metrics by Michael Schrage. As the author describes, innovative metrics are measures that gauge the unique value inherent in an innovation as a means of marketing it. In other words, instead of just relying on the traditional language of features and functionality to connect with customers, innovative metrics are used to relay the value of the new innovative idea, such as in the case of using horsepower to market James Watt’s steam engine.

Enjoy the article.

Technorati Tags: strategy+business, innovative metrics, metrics, marketing