Rendez

Invited speakers were invited to present at the 4th Symposium of the 21st-Century Center of Excellence Program at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. David Ing led with a presentation on "Service Science, Management and Engineering: Overview and Perspective", on behalf of IBM Americas Group.

Marja Toivonen spoke on the "Collaboration of Industry, Academia and Government for Promoting Services Research in Finland".

Jim Kijima described a "New Service Innovation Educational Program at Tokyo Tech".

Hiroshi Deguchi outlined "Service Sciences, Management and Engineering: Its Research Domain and My Research Map".

These formal proceedings marked the launch of a new educational program for master's engineering students at Tokyo Tech.

The Rendez project was invited to participate in an invited workshop on Service Science, Management and Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.  As an meeting of international experts, we had attendees from Finland, Japan ...

... the UK, United States and Canada.

Marja Toivonen led off with a presentation on research in Finland.

After hearing Marja's presentation, Yuriko Sawatani showed her some of the research she's been doing in Japan.

Participants had an opportunity to exchange ideas.

To give us a different perspective on innovation, David Hawk arranged for us to meet Eric Hoffman at the University of Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging. This is one of the leading research labs of its type in the world, with close relationships with industry. On the tour of the medical center, we saw an MRI machine that will soon be replaced by a newer model.

In working hand-on with the equipment, the engineers and technicians have devised some tools with improved flexibility.

Taking advantage of the proximity of the Rendez research team in the New York area, we scheduled a briefing at the Industry Solutions Lab at IBM Research in Hawthorne, NY. With weather slowing down some of the travellers to the meeting, we started with a tour of the demonstration floor.

Information technologies and multimedia technologies are converging, as in these demonstrations on video surveillance.

One of the advisors to the Rendez project, David Hawk, hosted the Rendez team for a research meeting at the School of Management of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Minna sketched out a summary on two whiteboards. On the left was Views to Implementation.

On the right whiteboard were ideas on Exploration, Implementation and Dissemination.

Winter weather was discouraging in New Jersey. The opportunity to freely discuss research ideas was helpful in advancing and verifying our ideas on innovation.

The Business Week in collaboration with Boston Consulting Company has announced results for the 50 most innovative companies. "In a climate when innovation efforts and research and development budgets are likely to see more scrutiny than ever, our 2008 list of the World's Most Innovative Companies adds three financial measures to the mix to determine the rankings."

And the TOP 10 are
1 Apple
2 Google
3 Toyota Motor
4 General Motors
5 Microsoft
6 Tata Group
7 Nintendo
8 Procter & Gamble
9 Sony
10 Nokia
 
Tags: innovation

As follow-through from introductions made in Tokyo, three professors from the Tokyo Institute of Technology visited Finland.

At Nokia House, researchers collaborated on a Rendez workshop on Management Development for Service Business Innovation, exchanging and jointly developing knowledge.  Kyoichi Jim Kijima spoke about the Service Innovation Educational Program to be launched in the spring at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Hiroshi Deguchi described some of the prior research on Agent-Based Social Systems.

In August 2007, after the ISSS meeting at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Rendez team convened a generative conversation on innovation.  A digest of the talk is available.  Each of the researchers shared experiences and perspectives on innovation.

Kazuyoshi Hidaka from the IBM Tokyo Research Lab discussed services science, management and engineering (SSME).

 

Yoshi Horiuchi discussed generative conversations.  Fumio Kodama reviewed the background on demand articulation.  Gary Metcalf spoke about management development.

Since one part of the Rendez -projet has been trying out new social media, here is yet an other experiment.  I have started using Flock as my private browser, since it provides an excellent access to  social media sites: Facebook, Flickr, del.icio.us and YouTube as well as good service with blogs with RSS feeds.

Now I'm trying to use Flock for posting a blog message to Rendez.

With my favorite picture of wiki collaboration. Sometimes innovation relates to ways of working, and working with David Ing, he has introduced me some very interesting and practical web.2.0 technologies, before I even knew what they were called.

This picture appeared twice to me during the last week.  First I saw it Anthony Williams (New Paradigm) presentation at Nokia House, them is IBM's Social Media evangelist Luis Suarez's elsua-blog, who trying to get rid of his work related e-mails by using other social computing media. Blogged with the Flock Browser

Business Week has launched a Global Innovation Index, which is made up of 25 of the most innovative public companies around the globe, based on The Most Innovative Companies rankings, an annual survey prepared by BusinessWeek in partnership with Boston Consulting Group. The Innovation Index is calculated at the end of each trading day, and the results are posted online the next morning.
Last year results of the Most Innovative Companies rankings were published in May. Interesting too see, how the list has evolved.

 
 
Cisco has an interesting innovation competition on-going - I-Price.
Cisco's CEO is inviting  all interested people to participate their innovation competition.
The winning team has an opportunity to be hired by Cisco, and get funding for their new business idea.
Cisco will be investing ~ $ 10 over three years to develop, staff and go to market with the selected idea.
There were over 1 000 ideas suggested in the first stage.
Cisco's innovation blog keeps people posted how competition proceeds.
 
Good example of crowdsourcing.
 

The March 2008 issue of Fast Company published their list of the most innovative companies.
Among the TOP 10 were

1. Google
2. Apple
3. Facebook
4. GE
5. IDEO
6. Nike
7. Nokia
8. Alibaba
9. Amazon
10. Nintendo

It will be interetsting to see shortly how the next Business Week innovation list for the year 2007 will look like.
- Minna

If you're curious about alternative views on management education for our changing world, you can surf over to a blog entry by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, where he describes an MIT course this fall on Technology-Based Business Transformation.

Irving WB retired from IBM earlier this year, and has had a full career with the company.

At the MIT Sloan Management Review, there will free access to the Business Insight Series for about another month.
This is a promotion co-sponsored by IBM and the Wall Street Journal, providing open access for a limited period of time. MIT Sloan Management Review is normally accessible only by subscription.
There's two ideas that readers might consider:

• Firstly, about content: there's some interesting articles on innovation that are worth reading, if not citing.
• Secondly, about business model: what does it mean to a publication that normally relies on a subscription model to get a sponsorship from third parties. Is this a case where intellectual capital is exploited positively, rather than just withering away behind locked doors?

Enjoy!