IIME Results

The fruits of the French collaboration on the IIME project:

http://www.europeansharedtreasure.eu/detail.php?id_project_base=2009-1-IE1-LEO04-00705

The 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating

As they say "If you need to innovate, but find yourself procrastinating, your excuse is on this list. While you may have all the "proof" you need to prove yourself right, being right doesn't necessarily increase your odds of innovating. So, take a look, note the ones that bug you, and find a way to go over, under, around, or through them."

http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2011/09/the_top_100_lam.shtml

Top sources of innovative ideas

Who are YOU working with to getter more and better innovative ideas?

Keep the ball bouncing ...

These days, stock prices today may be drastically different from those tomorrow. But what doesn't change is change itself. So says the Harvard Business Review. Change, the post says, is here to stay, and companies should be conditioned to keep innovating with such frequent change. So, when it comes to innovation, the post offers three things to keep in mind. 

See the full story here.

The Concept of Innovation

Want to go deeper in your understanding of innovation? 
If you are unsure that you :

• understand why and how innovation is important
• recognise the benefits which innovation can confer on an innovating organisation

Then this unit is for you! Just go to the link below: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397393&direct=1

Our IIME "landing page"

This is THE single point-of-contact webpage for the IIME project. Visit our "landing page" at:
http://about.me/theinnovationspace

"Something's rotten in Denmark"?

From a recent article these figures on innovation were released by the Danish Chamber of Commerce and Statistics Denmark, and refer to Danish companies only:

1. Only 44 % of Danish companies engaged in innovation activities on products, services and processes

2. Only 21,3 % of the Danish companies have launched a new product or service in the last 3 years

I don't know what global figures are but some researchers state that most executives claim the main barrier to innovation is pressure to achieve short-term goals.

What do you think?

• What do you think the figures are in Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Romania, etc?
• Are you DOING innovation now?
• Why not (more)? What other barriers?

I invite all readers of this post (and especially the IIME workshop participants) to take a moment to post a comment.

Finally, perhaps things are not quite "rotten" ... but higher levels of participation can only help!

LinkedIn Maps

LinkedIn has introduced a new tool for users to visualise their connections and professional network, it's called LinkedIn Maps.

Break out of your ... cage!

Where good ideas come from

IIME Workshop participants "word clouds"

Go to the link below to see the word clouds (with text generally taken from the "About Us" area of their company website):
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/users/Jos%25C3%25A9+PIETRI/visualizations


The workshop participants are:

1. BTW Consulting 
2. Irish Shopper - http://www.irishshopper.com/  
3. Need of Meats Ltd - http://www.needofmeats.co.uk/  
4. Choyca - http://www.choyca.com/ 
5. Fortis Wind Energy - http://www.fortiswindenergy.com/about-fortis/turbine-history 
6. GreenPark Energy Systems - http://www.gpes.ie/ 
7. Commercial Laundry Solutions Ltd - http://commerciallaundrysolutions.com/index.asp 
8. The Marquee Company - http://www.marqueecompany.net/ 
9. Viltra Wastewater Technology - http://www.awwp.net/ 
10. The Golfer's Den - http://www.thegolfersden.com/

MLV Conseil "Word Cloud"

The text, taken from MLV Conseil's  website landing page is shown here as a "word cloud" that highlights key terms ... en francais ! They are a potential attendee of the IIME pilot workshop on 17 January 2011 in Berlin.


Other participants could have their clouds and all could be displayed upon entry (to discuss).

Tips from TED sessions

The speakers should have interesting and unexpected connections as the audience moves from one to the other. Another part of this is to intersperse traditional spoken talks with brief pieces of music, dance, or other performing arts that stimulated the creative, intuitive side of an audience member. The overall pace and flow matters! 


In the comments perhaps each "module" speaker can indicate which words and concepts they will use as a connection to the previous speaker and next speaker.

Studio Bastille "Word Cloud"

The text, taken from Studio Bastille's website page "Qui sommes nous ?", is shown here as a "word cloud" that highlights key terms ... en francais !

Word Cloud of IIME Objectives

"What's YOUR story?" ... storytelling via videos

On the shatterbox website their tagline is "Stories of innovative young people who love what they do. Watch. Interact." See an example here.

So I'm wondering if we might not just "piggy-back" on their approach and consider having the IIME Workshop Participants [henceforth I'll call then WSPs ;-) ] create short vidoes to "tell their own µ story".

My initial thinking here is:

• It's an innovative (and powerful) way to do "story-telling" 
• If the WSPs just watch a video on shatterbox they'll get the idea ... and get motivated
• Pre-workshop we can help them with an  EASY, FREE way for them to make a quality video (I can sign-up to research this)
• Videos could perhaps be used in dissemination and as "proof" of the IIME project impact (thereby bettering our odds for future projects)

Y'all let me know what you think!

Cheers,

José

Some supporting links:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/21/rftf.html

http://www.greggmorris.com/

Change of mind ... or heart

I just got to wondering about where to put "stray" thoughts about this IIME workshop we are charged with creating. Especially as September, when we will each "Show & Tell" [1], is rapidly approaching.

So, I propose to start adding regular (if not daily) posts to indicate resources and avenues we might pursue. The first one will be about "piggy-backing" on the approach used by shatterbox.

Cheers, 

José

PS: If followers like Barbara (or others) want to and cannot add posts please let me know so we can figure out autorizations, etc. 

[1] At Mobility #3 we said "In the next meeting in Germany we will try things out on each other" ... a scary statement at first blush, but one that should focus us on building top-notch "modules". 

Active listening

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_listening

Welcome!

The intention of this blog is to have a central place to share and comment upon information related to the activities (such as meetings) of the IIME (Introducing Innovation in Micro Enterprise) project.

For now we will start adding the planned activities ("blocks") for the thrid IIME mobility to take place in Paris on May 31 and June 1, 2010.

We can focus upon:

• Have we asked all the questions that have occurred to us related to each topic?
• Have we answered the key questions from the above?
• Have we integrated this knowledge (insights) into the IIME project?