[Dialogue] re changing beliefs - about companies Let's look for innovators...

[R Williams]

Steve,
 
Two reasons Coca Cola is worth talking about.  One, the uniqueness of the relationship between them and the World Wildlife Fund--stepping way over the boundary for both organizations.  Second, the innovation didn't come first from the top or the center but from the edge.  My observation is most of the significant innovation and change within organizations is not initiated by the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world, but from the unknowns at the periphery of the organization.
 
Randy

From: steve har <stevehar11201 at gmail.com>
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 12:41 PM
Subject: [Dialogue] re changing beliefs - about companies Let's look for innovators...


it doesn't seem so interesting anymore to talk about companies without taking about what is worth innovating, for example pro and dis-establishment positions re Coke doesn't water my garden much these days.  

It's a lot of heat and not much light unless you happen to be a stockholder, IMHO. 

What does water my garden? Innovations, People making innovations making it different and doing doing it now. We used to say in LENS: Action removes the doubt that theory cannot solve.

Some examples

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is among the greatest innovators of our time. And yet his genius for understanding business is rarely explained in any public way. Rarer still is to hear the advice he would give to the CEO of another hugely successful company: Nike. But that's exactly what you'll learn from this video, in which Nike president and CEO Mark Parker tells about the advice that Jobs gave him shortly after the release of the Nike+ product line. It's a simple bit of wisdom that any entrepreneur can relate to: "Get rid of the crappy stuff."
Easy to say, hard to do.
"I expected a little laugh," Parker says of the exchange. "But there was a pause and no laugh at the end."

Git rid of the crappy stuff please CEOs. Sooner or later they will figure it out. I think Apple just beat Exxon in market cap. Bill Gates if off making good stuff happen. 

---
and..

Social Entrepreneurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk5LI_WcosQ

Prahalad's idea of BoP [Bottom of the Pyramid] Innovation
http://www.wri.org/stories/2009/03/video-prahalad-development-through-enterprise

Female Entrepreneurs
http://www.fastcompany.com/1769303/selling-lamps-door-to-door-in-africa-powers-solar-sisters-female-entrepreneurs

d.light company
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0403_social_entrepreneurs/8.htm

How about finding the best dozen damn social social entrepreneurs, foundations like Ashoka, companies like d.light. Real thinkers like Prahalad and EF Schumacher and putting some water there. 

I want to see and get behind the next generation of innovators and dreamers and trouble makers. There is enough attack and defend politics going on in the US of A already.  When I talked to the Peace Corps guy here in Costa Rica, they like small companies, innovation, finding and meeting needs. Coca Cola is dong fine here. They don't need nothin either my help or my cynicism. 

The guy who invented the solar lantern at d.light company was a peace corps volunteer in Africa and got tired of kerosene lamp fires. He went to a design class for the bottom of the pyramid by chance at Stanford University. The challenge was to design a real product for the poorest of the poor. Now there is a small factory in India with a run rate of about 10M building and selling solar lamps to villages. BTW 10M is about the size of a decent Big Mac stand, or was, I believe. 

Nostalgia, either pro or con isn't what it used to be. I think that is or should have been a quote for M. Rivera if you get my drift.

I like Gilles's dreams about a global Architects Guild making dreams happen just because.. they can dream.

I hope ICA-USA 2012-2025 is about finding and working with innovators anywhere we can find them. I don't want to argue about Coke anymore, do you, really?



-- 
Steve Harrington

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