The most important factor driving innovation is a company’s internal culture

New ways of measuring innovation points to internal company culture as one of the lead factors in defining a company as innovative.

I know there has been discussions weather beanbags and such could spur the innovative culture in a company - which it still can't !! But rather it's the overall mindset of the people working in that company which defines the culture.

This is also interesting when it comes to talking about idea-generation and management systems such as Dell's Ideastorm and Idéoffensiv - a danish county's idea generation tool made by Socialsquare.

Because one thing is setting up the physical collection of ideas from various sources, another is actually qualifying those ideas into use full information and in turn projects/solutions.

This is where the culture of the company comes to play - if the ideation is not supported in the company, a lot of ideas won't make the difference. They have to be matured...


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Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface

I remeber seeing or hearing about something like this a couple of years back... it's was a vision about mobiles becomming so powerfull that their small dimensions of screens would become the biggest obstacle. Therefore some guy og group forsaw that in the future mobiledevices would be able to lend screen-space on large table-top or whiteboard like screens.

And now Microsoft went and spoild it all by saying something like... i love you ;)
Naa, just kidding - that is pretty cool - that's my new cofeetable right there!!

Inner city beeing space for D-I-Y people

I recently moved to the "big" city of Copenhagen. Comming from the comfort of a house with adjacent garden, toolsheet and plenty of room for my powertools, i suddently found myself having trouble dooing the simplest things. No room for my workbench, and no place where i can make a bit of a mess without the girlfriend gooing through the roof.

Then i remembered this:

http://www.springwise.com/lifestyle_leisure/sewing_cafe_in_berlin/

The idea i simple, in this sweing cafe you get multiple things: Social network, help, machinery (if you don't have your own), space and storage.

Projecting this idea onto my missing garage/work-space i'm thinking of a Work-café where you can come in to make the new shelf, fixing your bike, reparing the chairs and so on.

The place should provide:

- Storage space for your projects and own powertools

- Crowd ordering of materials to get good prices

- Ordering from house-suppliers to get special deals

- Tools to lend if you don't have the rigth tool for the job yourself

- Community workstations for everybody to use (maybe book online)

The cafe will provide a social network you seldomly get in your own garage, and the comfort and safty of collective skils to ensure you in undertaking large/new projects.

DK| Den digitale arbejdsplads

Jeg beskyldes ofte for ikke af kunne huske, og måske til tider virke en anelse perpleks. Det kan for så vidt også være sandt nok. Og det skal jeg ikke bortforklare og undskylde – Jeg er nu en gang som jeg er.

I forbindelse med læsning af Microsofts hvidbog om den digitale arbejdsplads gik det op for mig, hvorfor en del af min manglende huske evne kommer til udtryk som den gør – små (ligegyldige) detaljer. Ligegyldige er mit indtryk af dem, og altså mit filter der således sortere disse for mig uvæsentlige informationer fra. (Tryk på overskriften for at komme til den engelske version af hvidbogen - som egentlig er en Bill Gates tale - Jeg har også en pdf...)

Når jeg skal forklare en af de evner jeg selv syntes at besidde – at skabe overblik over ellers komplekse ting. Så er en indre visualisering oftest svaret. Da det jo foregår inde i hovedet og jeg ikke selv har de grafiske evner til at lave en tegning der kan vise det, må jeg henlede opmærksomheden på det udmærkede program MindManager. Programmet danner mindmaps, og de representerer et logisk billede at mit indre overblik.

Dermed er det ikke sagt at min hjerne er som MindManager og omvendt. Hjernen fungerer langt mere komplekst end noget program nogen siden kan modellere, og programmet kan også ting med det elektroniske mindmap som jeg ikke kan med mit indre…

Jeg tror at evnen til at kunne skabe overblik til dels fås ved at ofre lidt af detaljerings niveauet.
Det kan lyde som en dårlig handel, men hvis man tænker modulært og vælger at fokusere på det rette niveau på det rette tidspunkt, så får man alligevel detaljerne med. Eller som en gammel lærer sagde til mig ”En elefant spises en bid ad gangen”.

Merging Work and Family life

Share selected photos from the weekend trip to the forrest, child birthday or yesterdays party with your co-workers on a public digital photo-wall showing your photos alongside your co-workers.

This is done to spark co-worker relationships and a great way to get to know your co-workers in depth. Rather than just hearing about the kayak trip - see it. Use the photos as an offset to a much more personalized conversation with the person next to you.


So now i've put a feed from my own personal online photo-wall - look at the bottom of the page, or click here
Also i put a del.icio.us tag-cloud up, wich features tags from my favorite links - and a link to the collection. - to the right...

All done in the name of merging ;)

Open-space brainstorming

Imagine if a brainstorm was not carried out in a closed office-spaced, only for the invited...
Imagine an open-space - hallway space, where brainstorm topic and boundaries are posted on the walls, enabling the team brainstorming to get even more input from people passing through... what if that one person that came by your brainstorm was the one with the key input to launch you to the next level ?=!

One topic at a time of cause
The brainstorm owners present of cause
And an active core of people brainstorming, making it into an active environment...

Visible work load

I'm a yes man... and that is not allways good, because i tend to have a lot of tasks on my table at all times.
But it's not always visible how many or if they are looked at in a timely manner...
Thinking about the red and green balls you see in a lot of "innovative" offices, where you put a green one in a bowl if you have a good day or a red if you have a bad...

Having a clear tube where you stack a ball for each current task , making it very easy to see how many you have.
The stacking of the balls makes a first-in-first-out approach to task solving easy to controll. Different colors can represent different types of tasks. A task can be worked on over a number of days, putting the ball back in the stack when done for the day. A DAY ball, making it visible how many tasks you have for that day...