November 28, 2011 – 1:46 pm
Robin Silvester, CEO of Port Metro Vancouver, gave the annual address at the Vancouver Board of Trade and wrote an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun on the subject of long range planning and the implications of four future scenarios for the Greater Vancouver Gateway region. The scenarios were part of a Port Metro Vancouver initiative [...]
November 7, 2011 – 10:19 pm
A post on the Innovation Excellence blog asks, “Is business model innovation just another name for strategy?” The author, John Steen, answers in the affirmative in the case of incremental innovation, but argues that radical business model reinvention reaches beyond the conventional strategy toolkit. I think that strategy and business model innovation diverges when we [...]
From a recent study looking at the most effective incentives for increasing answer quality from crowdsourced Mechanical Turk workers: both of the top two incentives relied on getting workers to think about what others’ answers would be: Punishment Agreement (financial) “After this HIT has been completed, we will review the answers for at least one [...]
December 5, 2010 – 11:22 pm
I facilitated a session at the Wiring the Social Economy unconference in Vancouver yesterday about connecting social innovators around the Cascadia bioregion. Specifically, the discussion focused on how best to connect folks working on similar issues in Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland. Lots of great folks showed up and offered their thoughts — thanks to everyone who [...]
December 3, 2010 – 4:51 pm
Focusing on fixing small things, and not looking at the whole system, is a chronic issue among humans. Engineers and designers just happen to be the ones who make decisions that determine the energy used in your house, your transportation, or the materials in your electronics. Our partners at the Rocky Mountain Institute have been [...]
November 30, 2010 – 12:28 am
To me, collaboration must reflect three critical elements: Number 1: Collaborative strategy development. This is the building block, the creation of a common vision, the foundation upon which we build commitment, trust and accountability. The time of thinking and acting individually has long since passed. Number 2: Joint investment. Collaborative financial commitment to the joint [...]
November 27, 2010 – 3:44 pm
With the massive supremacy of Facebook in the social networking space, it’s easy to assume that the door is closed for social network innovation. The reality, however, is that we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of how we interact with and derive value and pleasure from our networks. There is good reason to think [...]
November 27, 2010 – 4:44 am
What if there were a way to transform complaints into something positive and productive? What if we reframed the exchange to be less about adversity and more about cooperation and action? What if citizens were encouraged to offer their thoughts on how things from transit systems to city parks might be improved — as opposed [...]
November 21, 2010 – 8:58 pm
We are extremely pleased to be able to announce the new edition of Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, to be released this spring (and already available for discount pre-order at Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, Borders and Amazon). via worldchanging.com The new edition of the Worldchanging book is out — congrats to Alex [...]
August 11, 2010 – 12:01 am
As profiled on Worldchanging in November 2009, future-focused conference organization PopTech has partnered with Nike to convene a year-long “innovation journey” on new green materials and industrial processes. Their first event, the Ecomaterials Lab, occurred last week. About PopTech Labs: PopTech is bringing together a network of innovators and decision-makers, brilliant and unconventional, to explore [...]
