Innovating To Win

See You In Second Life

I am going to be participating in an event hosted by the PDMA in Second Life.  The event is a panel discussion titled ”The Intersection of Green and Innovation in a New World.”  I hope to see you (or your avatar) there.  The event is scheduled for December 4th at 2:00 pm EDT at the PDMA Island in Second Life.

You can register for the event here.

Economics and Innovation – What You Said

Well, it has been quite a hectic few weeks.  My company, Invention Machine, just held its annual global user conference.  It’s always exciting to get that many world class innovation practitioners together in one place.  Now that the conference is done, I can finally catch up here.  Today, I’d like to review the results of the most recent innovation poll that you participated in.  The pool question was “Given global economic concerns, what is your organization doing about innovation?”  Here are the results.

As we see, some companies are pulling back on innovation investing, while others are not sure what course of action to take.  Certainly, it is not surprising.  Whenever times are dominated by uncertainty, it is natural to feel the urge to retreat and wait for things to sort themselves out.  But following that instinct may be a very bad move. 

“The only way you emerge stronger from a recessionary period is by having new products, new technologies, and new capabilities. It's an absolute must to continue to invest in good times and in bad.” - Craig Barrett, Chairman of the Board, Intel

This statement by Mr. Barrett, is echoed by the responses seen our survey.  Almost half (47.4%) of you indicate that your companies are increasing investment in innovation.  This is good news for those companies, and for innovation.  Add to this figure the 21.1% who state their companies are maintaining their current levels of innovation investment, and we can see strong indications that innovation is alive and well in this difficult climate.

Once again, your participation in the innovation poll has provided an interesting picture of the state of innovation.  Please remember to vote in the latest poll on biomimicry.