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Quarantined Conferences: Claustrophobic Technophiles or Attentive Audiences?

By Mark Drapeau
November 11, 2009

Loren Feldman. 1938 Media. Audience Conference. That’s about as much of a summary as you’ll find about the Audience Conference held in New York last Friday. That’s because there were no open laptops allowed during the performances. There was also no Wi-Fi, no video streaming, no tweeting, and no blogging. Something akin to omert� joined the members of the Audience...

The Fun Theory

By Linda Stone
October 20, 2009

Play is how our passions find us. Play is where failure isn't failure and isn't emotionally charged. Play is all about iteration and we iterate on the emerging questions that arise from within us and that we are driven to understand.

Mobile Banks in the Developing World Prove Simpler is Better

By Ben Lorica
September 17, 2009

Recent initiatives designed to make U.S. consumer financial products simpler and intelligible to customers, reminds me of a study we did on Mobile Banks† in the developing world. Designed to work on the simplest mobile devices and originally targeting the unbanked, mobile banks evolved from simple services (transfer of mobile air time) to become widely used money-transfer and mobile payment...

Technology Innovation Site Will Launch in the Fall

By Kyle Dent
July 23, 2009

The Henry Ford, the museum associated with Henry Ford and his company, will be launching a new web site focusing on recent innovation and the people who make it happen.

"Being wrong is a feature, not a bug"

By Andrew Savikas
July 1, 2009

A thoughtful piece from Michael Nielsen on the disruption of the scientific publishing industry includes a lot that's very relevant to other publishers and media companies. For example: In...

Nine Essential Truths for Entrepreneurial Success

By Mark Sigal
June 24, 2009

Leveraging the pattern recognition of others is one of the best ways to build upon best practices, while sidestepping avoidable mistakes. What follows is a primer of nine key lessons learned from doing eight startups (four as co-founder, four liquidity events). Read on...

Four short links: 17 June 2009

By Nat Torkington
June 17, 2009

NY Times Mines Its Data To Identify Words That Readers Find Abstruse -- the feature that lets you highlight a word on a NY Times web page and get more information about it is something that irritates me. I'm fascinated by the analysis of their data: boggling that sumptuary is less perplexing than solipsistic. Louche (#3 on the list)...

Four short links: 10 June 2009

By Nat Torkington
June 9, 2009

Apple's Cool Matrix-Style App Wall (TechCrunch) -- a huge collection of icons for many of the apps available in the App Store, arranged by color. Apparently, when someone purchased one, that app’s icon would pulsate. An App Store version of Google's search globe. Information visualization makes activities meaningful, beautiful, and useful, but not necessarily all at the same time....

Big fish, little fish: the benefits of cycling between start-ups and established companies

By Andy Oram
June 5, 2009

Tacit understandings among companies to refrain from snatching away each other's staff are illegal anti-competitive behavior. But going back and forth between large and small companies is key to cross-pollination.

The Myth of Macroinnovation

By Nat Torkington
May 26, 2009

An idea is making the rounds and appearing in articles like this New York Times piece, and it goes roughly thus: the age of the small inventor is over because to work on stuff that matters requires the largescale coordination of people and materiel that only governments and large corporations can provide. This notion that we're entering a Golden Age...

Results from Wolfram Alpha: All the Questions We Ever Wanted to Ask About Software as a Service

By Andy Oram
May 6, 2009

Software as a Service, known in earlier decades as Application Service Providers, upends the relationship between computer users and software. I'm seriously tempted to say that Wolfram Alpha takes the SaaS model to its extreme. So Wolfram Alpha's chances at scaling the heights of fame should force us to stop for a moment and run our own calculations concerning the value to us of data integrity, reliability, privacy, and innovation.

Coming to Grips with the "Unthinkable" in Publishing

By Andrew Savikas
March 18, 2009

While much of the Twitter chatter this past weekend was about the annual South by Southwest festival and conference, there was quite a bit of "retweeting" of links to a...

Another ditzy patent application comes up for examination by Peer-to-Patent

By Andy Oram
February 18, 2009

Peer to Patent project is examining a patent application that tries to get a monopoly on a trivial tagging mechanism similar to what millions of people use on blogs, social networks, and media sharing sites.

Radar Interview with Clay Shirky

By Joshua-Michele Ross
February 16, 2009

Clay Shirky is one of the most incisive thinkers on technology and its effects on business and society. I had the pleasure to sit down with him after his keynote at the FASTForward '09 conference last week in Las Vegas. In this interview Clay talks about The effects of low cost coordination and group action. Where to find the next...

Good Company Culture Comes in Small Packages

By Kate Eltham
February 3, 2009

Small publishers' culture of experimentation-by-necessity gives them a leg up on the large publishing "dinosaurs."

Peer-to-Patent and Article One Drag the Reclusive Patent Onto the Thoroughfare

By Andy Oram
January 31, 2009

Peer-to-Patent, a research project affiliated with several patent offices, and Article One Partners, a commercial venture, are trying to bring public participation into the patent system. This article describes and compares these organizations, highlights a new "post-issue" site erected last week by Peer-to-Patent to seek prior art on patents that have already been issued, and tries to tease out the social and economic trend represented by the organizations.

Work On Stuff That Matters: Video Interview with Tim O'Reilly

By Joshua-Michele Ross
January 15, 2009

Over the past few months I have been interviewing various people that are "on our Radar" so to speak. It recently occurred to me that we had never done a video with Tim. So last week Kirk Walter (bless him!) grabbed his camera and Tim and I took a walk behind the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol. We had a wide-ranging...

Seeing New Possibilities in Existing Technologies: An Interview with April Allderdice of MicroEnergy Credits

By Joshua-Michele Ross
January 10, 2009

This interview is with April Allderdice, CEO and cofounder of MicroEnergy Credits. MicroEnergy Credits has developed a mechanism using microfinance institutions and GPS cell phones to allow carbon credits to reach small households in the developing world. Until now the relatively high transaction costs involved in set up and verification of a carbon trade has made the market available...

Scott Berkun Talks about Innovation in Guy Kawasaki's New Book

By Sara Peyton
December 30, 2008

Scott Berkun, the bestselling author of The Myths of Innovation, discusses how innovators and inventors get their ideas in Guy Kawasaki's popular new book, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition.

Bailouts, Burnouts and Non-Linear Innovation

By Kurt Cagle
December 10, 2008

Think fractally, think non-linear, and help those of your linear friends, neighbors and political representatives who can't conceive that tomorrow will not be like today to understand that linear thinking is a dangerous, deceptive illusion.

When Times Get Tough, the Tough Invent

By Kurt Cagle
November 21, 2008

The best ideas are risky ... and often are not necessarily beneficial to the originator. At O'Reilly we recently had a discussion about the distinction between invention and innovation. Invention, the creation of truly novel ideas, especially the paradigm changers, is comparatively rare. It requires focused dedication, persistence, intelligence and a willingness to fight the status quo. This is because the status quo - our society overall - is resistant to the idea of change, and inventions by their very nature bring change.

EFF Attorney: Google Book Search Settlement Weakens Innovation

By Peter Brantley
November 20, 2008

In an editorial in The Recorder, Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says Google's settlement with publishers and authors signals an implicit abandonment of Google's legal team...

A Critical Choice Regarding Innovation

By Tim O'Reilly
November 11, 2008

This morning, via twitter, I came across two contrasting blog posts, one from JP Rangaswami (@jobsworth), and one from Martin Varsavsky (@martinvars), that seemed to me to sum up the very essence of the problem I've been calling out in my "work on stuff that matters" talks. In Faster Horses in the Age of Co-Creation, JP argues that Henry Ford's...

Bilski patent decision: trying to return patents to their technological origins

By Andy Oram
November 10, 2008

The software industry is abuzz--almost as much as the legal field--with a October 28 court decision that everyone regards as a verdict on business patents, and that some think it will change software patenting as well. I've just published an exploration of the issue. What I offer here is an inductive exploration based on hypothetical examples.

Scott Berkun on CNBC Monday - Watch the first episode

By O'Reilly Media
August 14, 2008

The Human Element, the first episode of a new season of CNBC's Business of Innovation is now online for viewing. This groundbreaking series focuses on how to make innovation happen in order to maintain a cutting edge. And Scott Berkun, O'Reilly's bestselling author of the Myths of Innovation joined this season's panel of experts. Watch the episode now.

Scott Berkun on CNBC

By O'Reilly Media
August 14, 2008

Scott Berkun, the author of The Myths of Innovation joins the expert panel on CNBC's the "Business of Innovation." The all-new five-part series starts tonight and analyzes the real-word issues and challenges facing organizations in today's global economy.

Photo Blog Shows Innovation Still Alive in Media Orgs

By Mac Slocum
July 31, 2008

Alan Taylor, a Web developer at the Boston Globe, hit the sweet spot between immersive storytelling and simple technology with his photo blog, The Big Picture. Taylor discussed the genesis...

BarCampBank is spreading

By Jesse Robbins
June 12, 2008

When Ben Black and I organized the first BarCampBank in North America last year, we hoped that it would spread. According to William Azaroff's post on NetBanker, the movement is there and growing: What's all this about BarCampBanks? From a North American premiere in Seattle almost a year ago, we've witnessed two more in the last few months, and eight...

Release Early, Release Often: Agile Software Development in Publishing

By Liza Daly
June 9, 2008

Agile software development has transformed online product development. Can it do the same in publishing?

DisasterTech from Where2.0

By Jesse Robbins
May 31, 2008

I was honored to speak with Mikel Maron at Where2.0 about innovation in Disaster Technology, a topic that is extremely important to me. Here is the video: This talk covers the ongoing efforts of: World Shelters, the UN Joint Logistics Centre, Humanitarian.info, InSTEDD, and Humanlink. You can read about the development of SMS GeoChat, the Sahana effort for Burma/Myanmar (Radar...

Storytelling 2.0: Alternate Reality Games

By Liza Daly
May 16, 2008

Storytelling is no longer passive entertainment. Alternate reality games are one new way publishers are engaging readers and turning them into participants.

Bezos on innovation, customer-focus and long-term thinking

By Tim O'Reilly
April 21, 2008

Business Week has a great interview with Jeff Bezos as part of their innovation issue. The interview is entitled How Frugality Drives Innovation, but Jeff talks about far more than frugality. Here's my favorite bit: Q: Every company claims to be customer-focused. Why do you think so few are able to pull it off? A: Companies get skills-focused, instead of...

Do Publishers Have the Stomach for Innovation?

By Andrew Savikas
April 11, 2008

Amid a post on what's wrong with venture investing, Umair Haque mentions publishing as a risk-averse industry unfriendly to innovation: And so what's happening isn't surprising. The dynamics of old boy's clubs are almost deterministically predictable: they fight tooth and...