Great perspective on innovation and corporate culture from Jeffrey Phillips on the Innovation Excellence blog. Full article here.

A culture of innovation [..] indicates that an organization is at least willing to embrace many of the tools and techniques that innovation requires, but moreover is able to endure the potential outcomes. For every innovation success there are many attempts and several failures. Every innovation is potentially cannibalizing an existing product or service, and innovation forces constant change – not just to products and services, but to experiences and business models.

This means that a culture of innovation is agile, nimble, constantly adapting and learning, open to experimentation and many points of view. A culture of innovation tolerates and learns from failure, incorporating the best parts of the failure into new efforts. A culture of innovation understands that innovation is a continuous, consistent process rather than an occasional effort. A culture of innovation seeks out internal and external viewpoints and perspectives that are different from what the team “wants” to hear, and works closely with customers, partners and even the disinterested to understand future needs. A culture of innovation has as much invested in understanding the future as it does in delivering value in the present. A culture of innovation constantly generates ideas but also has the ability to commercialize the best ideas and ships valuable products. A culture of innovation isn’t just an idea machine, it is a commercialization machine.

Jeffrey Phillips in What is a culture of innovation anyway?

Just came across a good perspective by Lee Bryant on the evolution of social media monitoring. More in his blog post here.

“The thing that people forget is that with all this news coming out — more and more words, more and more information — there has to be a trusted source from which this comes. We’ve spent years developing that trust, and even though people may not sit and watch all these nightly news programs the they used to, they still want to have that source they can trust. They want to be able to say, ‘Oh my God, well, this came from PBS or NBC, or fill in the blank, and that means this is something I need to pay attention to on the fact part of it. [...] I mean, there’s plenty of stuff out there on opinions and analysis and what people think about things. But the basic facts are another matter. People hear something on the radio or read it in a blog, but they still want to know what the hell the basic facts of the matter are. And that’s the purpose, I believe, that the “Newshour’ serves.”
Jim Lehrer quoted in Jim Lehrer on his last turn at PBS anchor desk tonight, Baltimore Sun, June 3, 2011

Video of a great short presentation by Mike Bracken, formerly digital director at The Guardian and the UK government’s new executive director for digital starting in July. I will be following the digital engagement of the UK government. Should be fun if they hire experienced, creative thinkers like Mike.

Everest 3D – 3D RealityMaps from 3D RealityMaps on Vimeo.

Interesting 3D model of Mount Everest, made possible by DLR, Germany’s national research center for aeronautics and space, and private sector companies. More information here.

IMG_4504-17, originally uploaded by martinhofmann.

Just a test post straight from my Flickr account

Great infographic by designer Ivan Cash that shows “some of the visual devices, informational elements, and general trends found in the modern day infographic”. Found via TNW.