Timeline
From Innovationclass
Contents |
Week 1
Jan. 15-
Jan. 17-
Week 2
Jan. 22-
Jan. 24-
Week 3
Jan. 29-
Jan. 31-
Week 4
Feb. 5 (1)
Creativity is the basis for innovation; creativity of the mind, the environment and people. Our class will explore the extent to which organizational and individual innovation intermix. We found that behind innovation is fear; fear of idea failure and success. In discussion of our papers we concluded that while creating our organization we focused and shaped our companies in accordance to the factors we find essential. Most people shaped their organizations to adhere to a "common culture". This culture included the environment, community, relationships, and inclusion of both work and play in the office. These collectively are the key to maintaining innovation.
Feb. 5 (2)
We began with a discussion of the difficulties of creating innovative organization. Students struggled with many issues: whether or not to read others' posts first, how to limit themselves, what choices to make, fear of group reactions, the difficulty of expressing themselves in printed words only, etc. Ultimately, deciding how to make and keep the organization innovative was the hardest part.
The class, also, discussed the factors that were most valuable/important to their organization. We covered those that focused on a few key points: a stimulating environment, a core value theme and the idea of a company culture. - Emily
Feb. 5 (3)
Today's class focused on the writing process that everyone went through when creating their 25 person organization. We reflected on how to create an innovative culture based on the people, processes, technology, and environment. Determining which factors to focus on was one of the many challenges people had with the assignment. Other difficulties our class conveyed while creating an innovative organization were feasibility and fear. However, despite these challenges, most people were confident about shaping their organization around a common culture: a culture of execution. This common culture included maintaining play in the office environment, working collaboratively as a cohesive unit, and building strong relationships with people in the organization. The class concluded with the question: how do you know what yield innovation and what does not? And so, the journey continues. Do not forget to read the posted articles and see you Thursday.
-Marilyn
Feb. 5 (4)
Tuesday's class was primarily a discussion of each of our innovative company write-ups. Slayden reminded us in the beginning of class to think about "factors" in our write-ups and the importance of different ones. The factor that was discussed the most in our innovative company write-ups was environment. This seems to be the most important issue to concentrate on when thinking about how to make a company innovative. Everything is sort of based on environment. We talked about how employees cannot be truly efficient with their work if they are not in an environment that they are comfortable in. We also discussed the importance of being able to have some fun time in the work environment and being able to have open spaces where employees can talk freely rather than being stuck in restrictive cubes. Although it might seem at first like employees are not getting things done, if they are allowed tohave some"free time" like this, then they can be more productive later on. Slayden also brought up the fact that some of us in the class may have been nanny's previously. Perhaps we saw how important the environment is when dealing with children that we thought this idea would be just the same when dealing with employees in the workplace. Just something interesting to think about. We also talked a bit about the structure of our innovative companies. We pondered the question of whether it is more innovative to have all of the employees report to one "boss"like figure or if it is better to have less of a structure in this way. Slayden commented on the fact that sometimes people respond really well to fear and that this might make them work harder and be more efficient because perhaps they might be afraid of getting fired or something similar.In general, we also talked about our feelings on doing work that is posted to the whole class. Some of us expressed that this makes us want to look at what other people are saying first before we write our own piece of work. It is really interesting how we all care in some way how other people perceive us and our work. - Maggie
Feb. 7 (1)
Innovation is a process of trial and error. We discussed the difference between principles and rules. Rules often times have a negative connotation associated with them. They are considered "must do's", that are somewhat restrictive and rigid, however have some flexibility. Principles are overarching guidelines that one chooses to follow. Principles have bending room and allow change. In our class we will develop principles...not rules!! The article on "The Most Innovative Companies" discussed the transition from traditional types of innovation to new age factors. Innovation is a hard goal to accomplish for experts; the beginners are the true cultivators of innovation.
Feb. 7 (2)
Failure is good. We experienced this when rearranging the classroom. Despite our failure, we learned a valuable lesson: innovation does not happen over night. Rather, it involves a process of trial and error. Our discussion about arranging the room focused on our process which included our resources, limitations, and strategies. Additionally, Slyaden shared the innovative process of creating the Blurr lab which serves as further reinforcement of the value of trial and error. The class began to developed a manifesto for innovation which includes: principles not rules. Principles serve as a guide, while rules are more rigid and are restricting. Lastly, the class defined both factors and types of innovation that the class will begin to delve into with the second assignment as a guide.
Week 5
Feb. 12 (1)
How did we use space and why (When rearranging the room): We thought that almost everyone could see one another. Need to use our surroundings like white boards and screens. Also, we must think about what uses we are using the room for. How will we know when we have succeeded in making the room effective when arranging the seating? (Comfort, function, a place where your body and mind can work together)
Innovative Organizations – How does it become and remain innovative without causing chaos? We will soon find innovative people and document them, and we will then find how to get our own minds innovative.
Harvard Business Review –" Breakthrough Ideas for 2008" Assignment: Go to www.thelist.hbr.org and look at the breakthrough ideas. - Check out The Rise of the Creative Class talks about why we live the way that we do and where are we headed. Talks about how creativity is the fundamental source of economic growth. -Where does creativity occur in terms of geography? Midwest?? Probably not. -According to the book, the most creative place is San Francisco. They look at high tech, diversity, and innovation when deciding. The number two city is Austin. New York only made #9. Boulder is very innovative because of high tech it is. Denver makes the list at #13. -Check out Five Minds for the Future -John Seeley Brown; person to pay attention to -New things are often denounced/ridiculed. We like new ideas once they're old. -What did you discover with looking into the top 100 Innovative Companies? Did you look into a company and then change your mind? -Mission driven companies = good
Feb. 12 (2)
We are moving in the right direction in regards to rearranging the room. We established that our arrangement allows face to face interaction; however, spatially, there are issues. In order to assess our improvement, it is necessary to establish a metric. The class must be aware of their purpose and the uses of the room in order to create a space in which the mind and body can work together. The Rise of the Creative Class and Five Minds for the Future were introduced, and the importance of how creativity works, where is is, and how it changes our world was discussed. The class concluded by talking about the brands they are researching.
Feb. 14 (1)
Our third room arrangement proved to be the best and most functional because we took advantage of the context we are working in by incorporating the dry erase boards. Additionally, the class came up with names for their tables. Our discussion about the brands we chose continued and w established that innovation changes ow people live and the game we live in. Innovation creates a ripple effect and causes developments of new kinds in its context. Sears exemplified our new addition to the class manifesto: follow the idea not the leader. Its about a commit to innovation: in order to be innovative you must walk the walk and talk the talk, as well as deal with the pressures of the market.
Feb. 14 (2)
We arranged the room today in a way where each team could use a part of the whiteboard. Also, its easier to work with things when easier to see them. Each group picked a team name. However, we couldn't agree if this was the most useful setup because we never got a chance to use the boards. We're going to try again on Thursday's class, and then make a decision.
There were some problems realized with the Yahoo group. There seem to be too many posts at one time, and a few people are having problems logging in. Therefore, we have decided to move onto starting the wiki. Jesse Munson became the 'wiki' master. On Tuesday, we're going to do a quick wiki tour to get everyone acclimated to the process.
We continued our discussion on the companies we chose from the top 100 list of innovative companies. We talked a little about TiVo and how we individually use it and realized it's a 'control thing' TiVo is about control of your time and basically a recombination of VHS/ hard drive. Vudu was introduced it's a hard drive. Similar to Netflix but don't have to wait for delivery. Vudu is about impulsesâ€"for example if you want to watch a movie right this second, you don't have to wait for the mail like Netflix, unlike OnDemand, you can save the movies, and unlike rentals, you can keep the movies forever if you buy them. This is an example of a distribution innovation.
We came up with one workable definition of innovation: 'a development that totally changes the game.'
We added another idea to the Manifesto: 'Follow the idea not the leader.'
Talked a little bit about the start and cultural impact of the Sears Catalog.
We talked about how a business model innovation has a lot to do with the company's culture.
One of the biggest problems of innovation is to finish or complete the project, much like trying to keep rearranging our classroom to fit our needs.
Assignment
Research IDEO over the weekend, ideo.com, and next week, we are going to build our own model of IDEO.
Week 6
Feb. 19 (1)
Well class, for all of you who did not come on Tuesday, you missed a lot. We set up our new class Wiki page. We created screen names, and sort of learned how to work and navigate through our new portal. We were taught that a culture of innovation is one in which encourages: changes, mistakes, trial and error, ideas, and risks. We need to begin studying, Ideo. This company is extremely innovative in their products, design, and organization. The company is on the innovative high road, and it is our job to study them, learn from them, and eventually be innovative.
Feb. 21 (1)
Today we continued to develop our culture of innovation. The discussion focused on methods that IDEO uses and how we can implement the same principles. 1) The encouragement of wild ideas: Wild ideas can lead to inspiration and fresh thinking. It is very beneficial to capture and writer everything down. 2) Defer judgment: Judgment is an innovation killer. If you fail early you succeed sooner. 3) Build on ideas of others: Great work is accomplished by hot teams. 4) Be visual: Utilize the white boards, photos, post-its etc. 5) Quantity: The best way to get good ideas is to get a lot of ideas. To conclude class we discussed the idea of mind (social) vs. brain (physiological).
Feb. 21 (2)
In class we have been discussing how to create a culture of innovation and the brillant way that ideo has done so. We studied the Ideo's website and explored their techniques and processes to maintain innovation. We as a class were assigned the project of putting together a manifesto of our own. We began to discuss the one that Ideo has put in place for their own company. Some of these ideas included: 1. Encourage Wild Ideas, 2. Don't judge pesimistically, Defer judgment 3. Wild thoughts are encouraged, don't be afraid of failure, 4. Build on the ideas of others, be adaptive, 5. Be Respectful, 6. Be Visual, 7. Go for quantity, 8. Capture your word, write everything down. "What sounds bad now, may sound good tomorrow." Lastly, 9. Stay focused. We were able to draw upon many of these to use in our own manifesto.
We ended the class with a discussion on the the Five Minds for the Future, and the difference between our minds and our brain. The five minds are: Disiplined Mind, Synthecizing Mind, Creating Mind, Respectful Mind, and the Ethical Mind. No one mind has to fit for each individual, they can have a one, or a combination. Finally, we decided that the mind is social; it wouldn't exist without social experiences and surroundings, because it is adaptive and expansive. And the brain is physiological.
Assignment
Agree on 10 items of who we are in the manifesto.
Week 7
Feb. 26 (1)
First, Slayden asked for volunteers to help set up the Bogusky show on Tuesday, March 4th. Everyone that is helping needs to be in the "Black Box Theatre" In the Atlas building no later than 5:30 on Tuesday to be the crew to help set it up. Be there right at 5:30 because another show will end at that time and we go LIVE at 7pm. Again, our class is the only ones that will be guaranteed seats--everyone else will have to be on a guest list. There will also be a reception afterwards. The show is limited to 90 seats but everyone else can watch on a web feed.
We also worked on our Manifesto. This is still a work in progress and nothing in set in stone, but we did decided on these four points:
1. Encourage Wild Ideas
2. Go for Quantity
3. Make it tangible
4. Be a successful Failure.
Some Manifesto subsets are: - Build on the ideas of others - Work collaboratively
The main part about class was that we are going to head in a new directing and instead of just talkig about innovation in general, we are working on innovation in Advertising and we will be reinventing advertising for the future, This requires us to look at part and present advertising and see where its going. We are going to be building the agency of the future. Some things that we need to ask is why aren’t there any agancy’s in the 50 most innovative companies in the world? where are widen and kennedy? chiat day? St. Lukes? Wexley school for girls?
Assignment
We will start seeking out new style agencies – make a list ON THE HOMEPAGE. Imagine the agency that we will create people for, utilizing and promoting both intelligence and attitude. “Rome wasn’t built in a day but we are building Rome. We will create an ad agency in the CU j-school – “an in house agency." We will create the structure. When we come back 10 years from now, we will actually see what we created. Start looking at whats changing/ what has changed. We know there has been an explosion of media,YouTube – people watch entertaining commercials constantly, nothing dies, Customization – one person can have their opinions heard/ made/ listened to, Microbreweries – local again, TiVo – capture/ control culture, Guerilla advertising – more means to get messages out. Advertising has gotten more democratic. Imagine that it might not be an agency at all. WE WILL STILL DO COMMERCIAL MESSAGING. So start listing and researching agencies and agency types. Search by looking online and look up “innovative agencies (advertising)” check out AdFreak.com and FireBrand.com. Be super ravenous to find information and remember that we are going to make the structure.
Feb. 26 (2)
In today’s class we mainly discussed how we could go about making our classroom environment innovative by coming up with a manifesto of a variety of items to base our atmosphere on. This was a difficult task however because in today’s world everyone is trying to be “innovative” and we found it somewhat tricky to come up with items for our manifesto that haven’t already been done before. Ideo is the organization that we have been basing our innovative manifesto on. Some of Ideo’s ideas that our class liked are “encourage wild ideas (or unconventional ideas),” “go for quantity,” “make it tangible,” and “build on the ideas of others.” We ended up deciding to keep all of the items that the class added to the manifesto and instead narrow it down later as we move further along in the course. We were also asked to start thinking about advertising in the context of where it’s been and where it’s going (the “advertising agency of the future”). How can advertising be re-invented for the future? Our assignment is to think of examples of agencies who are reforming advertising. A couple agencies that we were asked to look into include Wexley School for Girls and St. Lukes and some websites we were asked to check out include firebrand, ads of the world, and adfreak. - Maggie
Feb. 28 (1)
In class we discussed how Advertising is changing. It's changing with emerging technology; its becoming more interactive, more viral, mobil, and Internet based. Everything is becoming "branded". We know have: branded content, branded entertainment, branded celebrities; the media has taken over. Media is any place you can put a message and have it be seen. Where you see something has a significant affect on how you accept or percieve the message. Media is now more important than ever. It is our job as a class to "Rethink" Advertising. What needs to be changed, and what should we keep? How do we clean up advertising to assure that everything produced is quality, innovative and creative? Our task is to study the model agencies, collect ideas for: structure, organization, environment, strategy, and attitudes. From these ideas we will come together to create our own innovative advertising agency.
Feb. 28 (2)
In today’s class we were asked to think about how we would change advertising. What would you keep? What would you toss? What would you introduce? We discussed creative, “out there” type ads that capture ones attention versus plain ads that are made strictly for the purpose of selling. Creative ads are always more entertaining but if one does not know what is even being sold than what’s the point of the ad? On the flip side though, ads that are straight to the point add nothing to the product that is being sold. In class we stressed the fact that consumers are purchasing the image of the product and not simple the product on its own. We also touched on the fact that in today’s world media is really anywhere that one can place a message and get it noticed. Advertisers have some pretty different options for advertising today that they didn’t have a few years ago even. We were asked to think about how to structure an agency in order to do good work and if it is good work, does it matter what form it’s in? Our assignment is to pick 3 agencies that we like and pull ideas from them. - Maggie
Week 8
Mar. 4-
Mar. 6-
Week 9
Mar. 11-
Mar. 13-
Week 10
Mar. 18-
Mar. 20-
Week 11
Mar. 25- SPRRRRIIIING
Mar. 27- BRREEEEEAK!
Week 12
Apr. 1-
Apr. 3-
Week 13
Apr. 8-
Apr. 10-
Week 14
Apr. 15-
Apr. 17-
