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Innovation  Blog

One Laptop Per Child:  Update

By Shlomo Maital

   MIT Media Lab founder Prof. Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child vision has been out of the news for some time.  Its goal is to “equip each of the two billion children in the developing world with a computer.”  The computer, specially designed, uses solar power, has an LED screen visible in sunlight, has wireless, and as Negroponte says, “may be the main source of light in the villages where it is used, in the evenings”.

    How is he doing?

     According to the Global New York Times, April 19, 2010,  the project has failed and it has succeeded, simultaneously.

      Failed, because only  about 1.6 m. laptops have been distributed so far, according to OLPC Foundation’s Matt Keller.  The biggest numbers are in Uruguay (400,000), Peru (280,000), Rwanda (110,000) and Haita and Mongolia, 15,000 each.  This is about two orders of magnitude below the project’s sweeping goal.

     Succeeded,  because the idea has caught on.  Microsoft has found ways to help children in the developing world make better uses of existing PC’s.  MS software adds multiple cursors on a screen, each controlled by a separate mouse, for example.  The product is called Multipoint and was well received.  India has indicated it wants to build its own “$100 laptop”. 

    OLPC has lit a spark that created many innovations.  Some nations, like India, preferred to do their own OLPC design and production. This is legitimate.  Sometimes, world-changing entrepreneurs like Negroponte need to be satisfied with the fact that the ‘ball’ they toss into the air will be caught by others, who will run with it much faster and better.  This, in my view, is success!

     Keller says the new OLPC laptops will have a hand crank;  one minute of cranking will yield 10 minutes of use.

      Say — can I get one of those?

 

Innovation Blog

How to Lose the Energy Race Before It Even Starts

By Shlomo Maital

    America has lost the race to develop clean alternative energy sources — well before it really starts in earnest. 

    One of my students found two charts, published by the US Department of Energy, based on data supplied by leading US automobile companies, showing an alarming projection.

    The charts reveal that internal combustion engines powered by conventional gasoline will remain the dominant technology up to 2030 and well beyond, according to the DOE.  Trucks, perhaps, will shift to other forms of energy more massively, because in trucking costs are vital and energy costs are a major part of total costs [from 5 m. gasoline-powered light trucks sold in 2010, sales will fall to 3 m. in 2030, with other forms of power taking up the slack]– but private vehicles?   More of the same.  Gasoline.  New car sales of gas powered vehicles will rise from 5.5 m. yearly in 2010 to nearly 8 m. in 2030, accoding to the DOE.

   Now, these are not just projections. They are policies.  The DOE, as a government ministry, has means to influence these charts.  For instance, if as NYT columnist Tom Friedman advocates, a permanent stiff tax on gasoline were imposed, making the price of gasoline in the U.S. roughly what it is in Europe ($5.80 – $6.00 per gallon), rather than the current level, about half that, or $3.00, suddenly investing in alternative energy would become far more attractive.  But no political leader has the courage even to suggest such a thing.       

   So America has chosen to opt out of this crucial race right at the start.  And hence — America’s disastrous dependence on foreign oil will continue for another generation at least.   For those of us accused of unjustly bad-mouthing America, this is one more powerful reason to be downbeat about America’s future.

Innovation Blog

Playback Theatre:  A Case Study in Scale-Up

By Shlomo Maital

    Two awful disasters occur to inventors.  One is, their invention fails.  The second is, their invention succeeds!

    Succeeds?  Why is that a disaster?

   Because very often, innovators are not prepared for success, and are unable to scale up and globalize quickly. 

    An exception is Playback Theatre.  Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. Playback Theatre is sometimes considered a modality of drama therapy.

    “I was sitting in a coffee shop, drinking hot chocolate”, recalls founder Jonathan Fox.  I pictured a small audience, people who’d be ready to act out the story of their community.   I had done experimental theatre that would get close to the community in godforsaken places….Over the years, the vision expanded and took on therapeutic dimension.”

     Fox began the world’s first Playback Theatre in New York in 1975.  His wife, musician Jo Salas, helped him.  Today there are eight branches around the world, including one in Israel.  The idea scaled quickly. 

    Here is an example of Playback Theatre, as enacted recently in Tel Aviv: (source: Haaretz Magazine, April 9, 2010):    A small intimate theatre.  Mostly women in the audience.  A pianist and 6 actors are ready.  People introduce themselves to one another.  The emcee invites a volunteer from the audience to tell a personal story.  Actors are then selected for roles.  A women sits in the ‘teller’s seat’, and relates,  how 23 years ago, she was called to the phone and told her father had died.  ‘I wanted to open the coffin and laughed…I ….decided to say good-bye in a different way. So a week later I went to the cemetery and lit a memorial candle and played the tango melodies he loved.’   The actors begin.  They dance a tango on the stage.  “Laugh! Let her laugh! ” They shout.  “Dad you went too soon.  But I am so proud of you and myself. You can hear me, can’t you?!”…..  Applause.

        If your idea fails…it dies.  If it succeeds — how will keep it authentic, true to your vision, while spreading it around the world?  Study Playback and other successful innovations.  And above all — think ahead!   What if my idea catches on like wildfire?  What will I do? How will I scale up?   Better to think ahead, than scramble to catch up — by then it’s too late.    

Innovation Blog

Lionel Messi – Legs With Super Creativity

By Shlomo Maital

    

 In the recent April 6 Champions  League football match between Arsenal and Barcelona, two teams that play beautiful, fluid attacking football,   Barcelona star Lionel Messi scored an amazing four goals, as his team defeated Arsenal 4-1. (Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said afterward, “I don’t know how many players in the world can score a goal like that!”).  His team-mate Xavi called Messi’s performance “outrageous!”.   In his fourth goal, Messi raced in on the goal tender, then coolly and audaciously flicked the ball over his head into the net.

    What is Messi’s secret?  What can we learn from him?

    *  The enormous value of overcoming adversity:   Messi will be 23 years old on June 24.Born in Argentina, his parents were working class — his father worked in a factory and his mother was a cleaning lady.  Messi began playing football at age 5 and showed amazing talent at age 8.  He was very very small, but played street ball against far bigger persons than himself, and with alacrity, resilience and speed managed to get around them. His style was forged already in the streets of Argentina. 

   Messi had growth hormone deficiency.  The Argentine squad River Plate, with whose youth team he played,  could not afford the costly treatments, $900 / m. for the growth hormone.  Barcelona’s legendary sporting director  Carlos Rexach heard about Messi and brought him  and his family to Barcelona, home of the world’s best youth football school.     Messi is now a Spanish citizen and is regarded by Barcelona fans as a home bred product.   All his life, Messi has had to overcome defenders far bigger than him, up to 12 inches taller.  Practice makes perfect.

   * …and the advantage of being small:   Messi is only 1.69 m. (5 ft. 7 inches).  He is very small indeed, despite the growth hormone treatments.  But he is tough, and his small size makes him very slippery and hard to defend.  He is able to dribble around any defender, however big and experienced.  And he is tough enough to take fierce tackles without being injured.   Creative people turn their disadvantages into strengths.

     *  do what you love with joy and passion:   Messi has a perpetual smile.  He clearly loves playing football, he loves crafting creative goals, and the joy with which he plays reminds one of Ronaldinho in his prime.   Many star football players are jaded, more interested in women and good times, and play just for the money;  they care little about the team symbol.  Messi cares.  He will be with Barcelona until his career ends, hopefully many years in the future. 

   You can watch Messi’s goals on YouTube.  Be sure not to miss them, at least the fourth one.

 

Innovation Blog

“Architecture” and Entrepreneurship

By Shlomo Maital

   Carliss Baldwin

A new research paper by Harvard Business School Professor Carliss Baldwin discusses “how entrepreneurial firms can use superior architectural knowledge of a technical system to gain strategic advantage”.[1]

   Loose translation:  How innovators can create sustained competitive advantage, by finding ways to improve the design of a business —  speed, quality, invention. 

   The paper extends the author’s work on The Power of Modularity,  title of a joint work with Kim Clark.

    Prof. Baldwin’s key point is this: “identify ‘bottlenecks’ in the existing system; create a new architecture that isolates the bottlenecks in ‘modules’; focus on supplying superior bottleneck components, while outsourcing non-bottleneck components.”  

  Architecture is defined as the list of functions (of a product), components needed to perform the functions, the interfaces among the components, and a description of how the system will operate over time and under different conditions.    “All  products and processes have architectures”.     

     She offers as case studies, Apollo Computers and Sun Microsystems; and Dell Computers.

  *    Sun’s architects identified memory access as a bottleneck.   They then developed two special hardware components that made memory access speedier.  Everything else, they bought from suppliers.   For instance, they used the UNIX operating system, rather than design their own.  And they adopted Ethernet.  Sun was thus able to defeat Apollo.  

  * Dell redesigned its manufacturing cells, in the 1990’s,  located them close to its main markets, employed just-in-time, and worked to smooth bottlenecks in order-taking, assembly and shipment.  It also identified a capital bottleneck.  It gave no credit to dealers or customers, but demanded generous credit terms from its suppliers, creating working capital acquired from its suppliers.  This helped Dell finance its activities. 

    Baldwin observes that in strategy, there are several approaches:  RBTF, resource-based theory of the firm (firm resources are crucial); KBTF (knowledge based theory of the firm, based on how knowledge is created and flows internally); DCTF (dynamic capabilities theory of the firm), interplay of production and transactions costs.  To this is added the Architecture Based Theory of the Firm (analysis of the business design and ‘architecture’).  When used together, these four approaches can yield powerful insights for innovators.     

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[1] Carliss Y. Baldwin, “The strategic use of architectural knowledge by entrepreneurial firms”, Harvard Business School, Feb. 2010.   cbaldwin@hbs.edu

Innovation Blog

Successful Product Innovation:  Three Critical Success Factors, from McKinsey

By Shlomo Maital

    The January issue of McKinsey Quarterly has an interesting article, rated highly by its readers, on the three critical success factors for new product innovation, based on field research. [1] Here is a short summary.

    According to the four authors:

We found—after surveying more than 300 employees at 28 companies across North America and Europe—that the businesses with the best product-development track records do three things better than their less-successful peers:

* They create a clear sense of project goals early on,

* They nurture a strong project culture in their workplace, and

* They maintain close contact with customers throughout a project’s duration.

   The impact these three success factors had is enormous.  According to the authors:

The teams in our study that embraced these tactics were 17 times as likely as the laggards to have projects come in on time, five times as likely to be on budget, and twice as likely to  meet their company’s return-on-investment targets.

    Some 70 % of those working on high-performing projects had a clear view of the project’s scope from the outset,  compared to only a third of poor performers.  There was also a “project management culture” in the high-performing projects, rather than a self-managed approach in which individuals made decisions, under stress, which generally were sub-optimal for the project as a whole.  And most important, customer intimacy:  Some 80 % of the top performers said they validated customer preferences during the development process, compared to 43 % of the laggards.  

      The high performers were also far more likely to do research on what customers wanted, in advance.  For instance, notes McKinsey, a medical device maker  used a weighting matrix to identify and weigh the importance of various features, then tested the tradeoffs and consulted with specialists and surgeons who used the product in clinical settings.  That fine-tuning was crucial, it emerged.

     All these three success factors are plain common sense, like so many aspects of good management — but nonetheless, so many are ignored by so many ‘innovative’ companies. 

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[1] “The path to successful new products”   Mike Gordon, Chris Musso, Eric Rebentisch, and Nisheeth Gupta.  McKinsey Quarterly January 2010.

Innovation Blog

Burned Your Toast?  Serene Acceptance —  Or Creative Resistance?

By Shlomo Maital

Did you burn your toast this morning?

    Probably not — thanks to an inventor  named Charles Strite, who invented the pop-up toaster (and patented it, US POT #1,394,450, issued  October 18, 1921).  

     Like many many thousands of people worldwide who toasted bread in the morning, in toasters that opened and closed manually,  Strite had toast in the morning,  in the cafeteria of the plant where he worked.  The cooks burned it, as often happens (they were busy doing other things). 

        But Strite then acted unlike others had before him.  Most people accept bad outcomes, like burned toast, with serene complacency and peaceful acceptance, or perhaps unpeaceful acceptance, accompanied by bad language.  

    Strite offered ‘creative resistance’ — it does not have to be this way, he thought.  There is a solution to burned toast. 

    Strite simply took existing devices — springs, and a variable timer — and added them to the toaster.  Result: pop-up toaster, and an end to burned toast.   The solution was obvious.  Toast needs to be ‘timed’.  It can be ‘timed’ by human hands, or by a device that does it.  I.e., a timer.   Now what happens when the timer signals “done”?   Something has to happen to stop the toasting. What?  Something must open the toaster.  Or, move it away from the heating coils.  A  spring device?  Open the toaster doors?  Or,  pop up the toast, while turning off the heating coils.  This was Strite’s simple logic.  Like many invention problems, it was all a matter of systematic logic, defining the problem and then thinking it through carefully.

    Like many inventors, Strite misjudged his market. He thought the market would be mainly for restaurants.  But the pop-up toaster soon became a common kitchen appliance.  In no time, the manual toaster disappeared. 

     Strite was a master mechanic. He knew how to make things.  This is crucial.  Producing a prototype of the pop-up toaster was vital to its success.  But in addition to his mechanical skills, Strite had a mindset that sought to solve problems, rather than live with them. This is a key to successful innovation.

     What is your mindset?  Serene acceptance?  Or stiff stubborn resistance, in searching for solutions to problems most of us simply choose to live with.

     Next time you have your morning toast, think about Charles Strite and see if you can emulate him.