Information Playground

Digital Curation Current and Future: Lecture Series

Next Wednesday June 3rd, 2:00 PM Eastern, you're invited to participate in a talk I'm giving as part of EMC's online Innovation Lecture Series. My talk focuses on the growing field of Digital Curation and the applicability of two standards: OAIS (Open Archival Information Systems) and XAM (eXtensible Access Method).

In a nutshell, here's the agenda:

• An up-to-the-minute status of the digital archiving effort going on at the JFK Library.
• A high-level overview of OAIS and XAM.
• A preview of MIT's DataSpace proposal, which was just submitted this month to the NSF.

Dr. Burt Kaliski is the host of the lecture series for EMC, and he asked me to present this topic based on this research paper presented at the Digital Curation Conference last December.

Why do I find this topic so interesting? Mainly due to the items being preserved. The JFK Library has sent me some of the more interesting documents that they have scanned into their archive. Check out this JFK speech from 1962, complete with his handwritten notes to himself:

 

My talk will cover this speech as well as another speech given to the American people at the beginning of the Cuban missile crisis. 

I hope you can dial in, please register here.

Steve

http://stevetodd.typepad.com

Twitter: @SteveTodd

 

For information about helping Nick, please read Mark's blog:

http://markfredrickson.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/may-20-810-p-m-new-development/

15 Minutes of Innovation: Break the Tablets

I'm writing this article as a participant in the Board of Innovation's 24 hours of Innovation marathon. Bloggers from around the world are contributing their views on 2009 innovation in their area of expertise.

My 15 minutes is today, May 15, 12:45 UCT (or 8:45 AM EST).

For my post I thought I'd share some insight into what my company (EMC) is doing via an innovation initiative that is starting to get a lot of press this year: innovation by contest.

And I can't get any more current than by writing about innovation conversations that I'm having within my own group this week. I'm on a multi-site and global development team that's currently in the grind.

What's The Grind?

The grind is that period of time in the software development cycle where long days are spent discovering, diagnosing, fixing, and re-testing bugs. Everybody is heads down, grinding away at the list of outstanding bugs. Typically during this phase the completion of testing and the shipment of a finished product is months away. You can barely see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But product teams can't stop innovating during this time. The vision for the next generation product needs to be generated. Innovation needs to occur. This often happens in one of two ways:

1. Ivory tower idea generation. With this approach, a dedicated research team is developing a set of next generation ideas and approaches. Quite frankly, we don't have many of these teams at EMC. There aren't any facilities or big teams that are strictly dedicated to research.
2. Shake Free a Few Architects. With this approach, several of the senior developers are occasionally pulled from the development trenches to collaborate, innovate, and articulate the "next thing" that should be done. I've seen this approach occur frequently in the past. Software architects hold a set of meetings, inscribe the vision on a set of tablets, then come down from the mountain and preach the new gospel.

The tablet-based approach can (and has) produced team focus and plenty of innovative new product offerings. It also seems like an excellent way for the majority of the team to "keep their eye on the ball" and finish shipping the current product. But it also can lead to the following set of problems:

• Trench players lack the ability to contribute key input. Often times the builders from the trenches are out at customer sites for an alpha- or a beta- engagement. Or they may suggest important process innovations that improve the quality and process of building the next generation offerings. Either way it's a shame if their input is not taken into consideration (especially the customer input).
• Geographic isolation can occur when key architects are located in a specific time zone or a specific geographic location. Free-flowing ideas about innovation are bandied about locally, but not globally. This can be demoralizing and result in a vision which is less than complete.
• Pockets of resentment can occur throughout the organization. Why do the architects get to do the fun stuff?

Contests in a Culture of Innovation

For several years now EMC has run yearly innovation contests as a way of globally engaging trench players. I've written about it before. To be quite honest it's been a breath of fresh air and a very low-touch, high-value way to practice intentional innovation within the company.

Furthermore, innovation by contest is now merging with the adoption of social media tools (e.g. blogs, wikis, Yammer, comments) that make it even easier to engage suggestions from employees in a way that is simple and has a negligible impact. Employees in the middle of the grind can lift their heads up while their software is compiling and browse the list of ideas proposed by their global teammates. They can take two minutes to leave a comment.

I've seen employees work extra hours on a white paper that fully articulates a new idea. All because somebody took the time to ask their opinion.

Key Takeaway: Global Engagement

It's true that contests can bring out innovative results. In my opinion the more important aspect is the global unity that a social media contest provides. EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton Massachusetts, yet the largest number of contest entries came from outside of the United States.  India had a HUGE number of contest suggestions. Ireland had one of the largest number of submissions (per employee). Dozens of countries participated. Why? Because they were offered the chance to drive the next generation of product.

For any employee working in a remote location from headquarters you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Employees in China have taken this one step further. They designed their own version of social media software that is specifically geared for innovation contests, and they just completed a contest for some of their own business units (ideas generated in China were graded by any EMC employee worldwide!).  My group is currently evaluating this software and I'm considering having my Chinese co-workers help my Russian co-workers set up an innovation portal of our own.

For my current project I am not working directly with anybody in China. So why am I collaborating with them?  Because in 2007 I submitted an idea with a co-worker, we came in third place, and a team in China built the idea. We got to know each other, and in 2008 we all submitted a new idea together. The idea was impressive enough that EMC flew two of them over from Shanghai to the US so that we could present our idea together.

I collaborate with China regularly, even though it's not my day job.

The Bottom Line

The "24 hours of innovation" concept sponsored by the Board of Innovation is a great idea. I've been reading the different global perspectives on innovation and I've learned a lot.

I've felt for several years that ivory tower innovation wouldn't work too well here at EMC. I'm starting to believe that the tablets of innovation approach should be abandoned, too. Break the tablets!

There's one key takeaway for your organization:

Innovation by contest should be a global best practice.

Steve

http://stevetodd.typepad.com

Twitter: @SteveTodd

Wrap-Up of World Innovation Forum

Any time you get excited by attending a cool conference there is the inevitable "re-entry" into work life that can be a bit of a bummer. This happened to me yesterday upon my return from the World Innovation Forum. Innovation is a topic that tends to get people fired up; brainstorming, whiteboarding, and blue-skying are on the top of everybody's list when it comes to fun activities at work.

Plus, I had the privilege of hanging out with a great crew of bloggers that were covering the event. Roaming around Times Square with some new friends is always a good time.

I wanted to compare the advice I heard on "corporate innovation" against my own corporation (EMC). Based on what I heard there are two areas that I think EMC does well in, and one area where it needs to improve:

Performance Management System & Rewards

For three years now EMC has been intentionally rolling out a new innovation program. This program systematically hunts down and rewards innovators. I personally have benefited from the new approach. The rewards have included cash prizes for ideas, a strengthened career path for individual contributors (the EMC Distinguished Engineer and Fellow program), a yearly innovation showcase providing a level playing field for all 35,000+ employees, world travel for employees with the best ideas, funding for the ideas that present outstanding business opportunities, and collaboration with customers around these ideas.

Perhaps the best reward is the 15 minutes of fame that a given idea can get. This type of visibility (otherwise known as a pat on the back) can go a long way. So EMC has done well in this regard.

Willingness to Collaborate

There are two types of people that need to collaborate within a corporation: new voices and core players. One of the things I took from the conference is that collaboration between these two groups is critical to innovation.

EMC has no lack of expertise in their core business: the building of information storage systems.

They also have no lack of expertise in "new voices"; EMC has acquired forty companies in the past decade. Each company brings with it a fresh view which is often times outside the scope of the core.

The problem used to be that these stovepipes didn't talk to each other. Now they do. I see three reasons for this:

• the yearly innovation contest was designed specifically to unite stovepipes and stimulate dialogue
• the social media platform within EMC (known as EMC|ONE) was marketed and pushed to employees as a way to pursue topics of passion across different business units
• the DE & Fellow community has the responsibility of collaboration. As the technical leaders of EMC join the ranks of DE & Fellow there is an opportunity to communicate expertise. I've seen more phone calls, emails and collaboration amongst this group lately

The social media platform has probably been the key piece of the increased collaboration. A generation of bloggers have grown their expertise in collaboration on EMC|ONE, and graduated to either become an external blogger (the list is here) or to create customer-facing external communities for collaboration. So EMC gets good grades in this regard.

Tolerance for Failure

One of the assertions made at the conference is that corporations need to take the risk to set up new business units to pursue new ideas. EMC, by the way, does do this. Centera is an example of an acquisition that was funded and run out of a completely separate organization from the core storage products. Atmos was similar.  These organizations had a mix of "new voices" and "core people".

However, in general I don't think EMC as a corporation does this as much as it should. When a new project rolls around, and a choice needs to be made between "letting the core do it" and "starting a fresh group", the argument is often made that "starting a fresh group" will fail. These arguments often include the comment: "look at all the processes we have in place to do those tasks".

As I learned at the conference, streamlined, efficient processes grow up around a core product that had a given target market for a given customer profile. They are not likely to work for the next big thing.

Nobody likes to fail, and EMC is a company that likes to spend every dollar wisely and execute a plan like nobody's business. Few people want to be associated with a product effort that might fail, so there can be a gut-reaction to build something new using existing processes.

What I learned at the conference is that doing so can be a mistake.

Information Economy

World Innovation Forum speaker Paul Saffo stated at the conference that in September of 2008 the "consumer economy" as we know it ended. He is calling the next phase of the economy the "creator economy". Using Google as an example, he claims that Google is thriving because we as users "create" search strings and give them to Google, which in turn provides a service (search results). Google has monetized this exchange by relying on all of us as "creators".

No matter how you slice it, the central currency in Paul Saffo's model is information. EMC, as an information company, is in a great position to be innovative in this new economy. It will be interesting to have an inside view of how innovation will occur within the corporation.

Steve

http://stevetodd.typepad.com

Twitter: @SteveTodd

Innovation Milkshakes

Clayton Christensen spoke today at the World Innovation Forum. He used a milkshake analogy to stimulate discussion about new ways to innovate.

Milkshake purchases were up at a local fast food eatery. For breakfast.  Not only were large amounts of milkshakes being purchased, but the milkshakes were extra large. A marketer wanted to understand why people were buying huge milkshakes in the morning, so he went up to each one and asked the following:

Why did you hire that milkshake?  What job does it do for you? What service does it provide?

Once the milkshake-drinkers got over the odd way of phrasing the question, they provided a pretty common answer.

All of them had long commutes. The milkshake was viscous; it took a long time to suck such a huge milkshake through the straw. Plus, it tasted good. Huge, thick milkshakes provided the service of a welcome distraction during a long, boring commute. People were willing to pay for this service as opposed to buying a competitive service, such as a bagel (hard to spread cream cheese during the drive), a banana (takes 60 seconds to eat), or a snickers bar.

Clayton carried this analogy into "how to identify and fund innovative new products". His advice boils down to this:

Don't study the customer and where they are spending their money. Target the job they are trying to do when they are spending their money. When he analyzes a business plan these days, he doesn't look for "target markets", "customer segments", or "revenue projections".

He looks for a statement about what problem the customer is trying to solve.

This philosophy dovetails nicely with some of the thinking from CK Prahalad yesterday: the value is in the "experience" provided by a product, not solely the product itself.

More great food for thought from Clayton Christensen, who continually joked about the fact that innovators should no longer follow the guidance that his organization has traditionally been giving!

Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @SteveTodd

Don't Pander to Mediocrity

The last speaker at the World Innovation Forum today was Vijay Govindarajan. His talk was extremely well received. If your organization is considering bringing in someone to talk to the troops about innovation, bring in this guy. He was dynamic.

The angle that I have been searching for during this first day of the conference was the intrapreneurial angle. What could these speakers say that was of value to the people building products in the trenches? Vijay delivered what I thought was a fairly good framework for corporate innovation, and his framework also applies to individual contributors. His message: in order for a corporation to stay competitive through innovation, the products in a corporate portfolio should fall into one of three boxes:

1. Box 1: Maintain the core. Continual process and feature improvement on the "family jewels".
2. Box 2: Selectively forget the past. Forget everything you know about the product you built, why you built it, and who you built it for.
3. Box 3: Create the future.

Box 1 is obviously critical to maintaining corporate revenue, but it does not qualify as "corporate strategy". I believe that most people involved in R&D are familiar with the reality of life in Box 1.

Vijay's message is that corporations should do all three. He also mentioned that the MAJORITY of products in a corporation's portfolio (75-80%) should fall into Box 1. Fine. But he didn't say anything about individual contributors.

Until the Q&A session, where he said "The three boxes are also a template for innovative behavior by individuals".

Operating under the assumption that corporations aren't innovative but their employees are, this means that innovative companies contain employees that spend most of their time in Box 1 and a smaller percentage of their time in Box 2 and Box 3. Regularly these employees toss aside their Box 1 assumptions, start from scratch, learn about new directions, visualize new markets, etc.

Vijay used a phrase to describe corporations that don't have product plans in Box 2 and Box 3. The phrase was "pandering to mediocrity". He also mentioned that corporations stuck in Box 1 have a hard time motivating employees because the Box 1 goals are "achievable". Six Sigma and process improvements have high chances of success. Employees would rather strive for products that "have a 5% chance of succeeding".

I liked his message and can apply it to the concept of an intrapreneur who generates an idea and sticks with it until product delivery. An intrapreneur should spend 75-80% of their time delivering, and the rest should be spent forgetting about it and planning something crazy and seemingly impossible.

This is my mode of operation (which is why I like his message so much), and if you also possess an intrapreneurial nature I'd like to hear whether you agree or disagree.

I am also of the opinion that if your manager disagrees with this approach (i.e. spending any time outside of Box 1), well, they're not watching your every move now, are they?

Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @SteveTodd

 

Innovators of the Future

One of the more excellent sessions at the World Innovation Forum today was a round table discussion with five teenagers who won the Camp BizSmart innovation contest. The roundtable was hosted by Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco.

The bottom line was that these kids came up with a sugar-free drink as an alternative to soda (in order to help with Juvenile Diabetes). They had business plans, spreadsheets, and one of them was even the CTO.

There were many questions from the crowd and quite a few humorous answers (e.g. Twitter is something for old people).

But the summary at the end was the most interesting. Here's what they said about their success:

• The Grand Prize of appearing in NYC was motivating to the team.
• They practiced their presentation and saw that many of their competitors weren't
• Everyone on the team wore a suit and shook hands with the VCs properly
• They memorized their index cards, walking around in circles practicing while their competition stared at them
• They all said that they were proud of each other
• They were working while other teams were relaxing!

Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @stevetodd

And The Word is ...Sensors

I'm blogging from the World Innovation Forum and just listened to two very interesting speakers: Paul Saffo of Stanford, and innovation author CK Prahalad.

Note to self: bring a headlamp next time. I'm on the hook to blog and tweet the whole event and when they lowered the lights I couldn't see my keyboard. I believe my issues are age-related!

I was looking for a common theme to take back with me from this first morning, and both speakers emphasized that future innovation will likely (actually already does) involve the use of sensors.

Paul Saffo talked about three "technology indicators" that precede extensive innovation:

• 70s-80s: cheap PCs set the stage for entrepreneurial activity by providing processing power
• 80s-90s: cheap lasers and cheap bandwidth enabled a decade of access (connecting all of us to the web)
• Now: cheap sensors (cameras, accelerometers) will result in innovation in the form of robotics

Sensors embedded in sneakers that send messages to your iPod to change the "music mood" of your jog is an example of this.

CK Prahalad, in his talk, built upon Paul's message. CK believes all product innovation must eventually include the ability for customers to co-create an experience with a given vendor's product. What were some of the key examples that CK gave?

• sensors in a pacemaker that allow multiple businesses (hospitals, hotels, phone companies) to dynamically "take care" of the patient by monitoring the sensors in the device
• sensors in a tire that "bill for usage", and "recommend better driving habits" to drivers that might result in "lower insurance rates" based on this sensor data.
• sensors in a woman's foot that allows them to pick the appropriate shoe for the activities they are involved in.

Bottom line: sensors should be built into all products for the purpose of allowing multiple vendors to provide an enhanced user experience that the customer creates.

Being a software engineer in the information storage industry, it's an excellent thought exercise to imagine what uses sensors may have in the products that we build, and how companies like EMC can join with other service providers to allow customers to "create their own experience" based on this input.

Any thoughts?

Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @stevetodd

24 Hours

In the process of getting ready for the World Innovation Forum next week, I've already started to meet several of the major players in the world innovation community, and found out about a cool event happening in mid-May: the 24 hours of innovation.

On May 15-16 from 10AM - 10AM (CET) there will be world-wide round-the-clock posts on innovation from a variety of individuals, whether they be innovators, analysts, authors, managers, etc. I've decided to participate and will likely blog about some of the process and mechanisms used at my place of work (EMC) that encourage pushing ideas into product.

Here's a quote describing the event:

The 24 hours are divided in time slots, each one featuring an exciting innovation ranging from an innovation award to creativity sessions, an innovative auction, start-ups, and interviews with global thought leaders. Everyone can follow and join the 24 Hours of Innovation on www.boardofinnovation.com, from where the event will be covered cross-media on blogs, traditional media, twitter, slideshare, ustream, coveritlive, flickr, scribd, vimeo,…

Anyone can participate, just sign up at the 24 Hours of Innovation Page on LinkedIn to confirm interest, or sign up via the main website.

Steve