Mark Trapp's Network

How companies approach innovation

Executives certainly see innovation as an important driver of growth, with some 70 per cent of top managers saying it is one of their highest priorities.

In addition, more than three-quarters of survey respondents say the huge amount of media attention to innovation has, at the least, raised their companies' awareness of the importance of innovation. Nineteen per cent say the attention has caused them to make innovation the main focus.

That importance is borne out in some of the decisions made by top managers. A majority, for instance, say they routinely decide where to focus innovation efforts, where and how to commercialise, or who works on innovation. But top managers don't seem to think they have a lot of control over the innovation process as a whole.

For instance, less than a quarter of respondents indicate that innovation budgets or targets are decided at the top. Further, many top managers lack a structured approach to making innovation decisions: though 40 per cent say they rely on a solid fact base, almost as many, 37 per cent, say they depend on a consensus of their peers; only 21 per cent rely on intuition.

Shared by Hutch Carpenter, like and 1 save total

Individual measurements in a social world – adoption obstacle? « Connected

Aha. Being social requires a stiff price: spending our most precious commodity, Time. So really, we are asking people to spend precious time to do something for which they are not measured. Fix this, and you will have removed a major obstacle to the inside-the-firewall business adoption of social networking and productivity behavior. (Gia Lyons)

Shared by Hutch Carpenter, like and 1 save total

Celery Computerless Email: Send and Receive Email by Fax without a Computer or Internet Access

Seen on @courosa 's Twitter stream.

Shared by Nathan Rein, like and 1 save total

Amazon's New Video Streaming Service Will Disrupt The CDN Industry

While Amazon's CloudFront service for on-demand video never really disrupted any of the larger CDNs in the market, this latest announcement drastically changes things. While Amazon is not going to take any large customers away from the CDNs, think MLB or Hulu, Amazon does have the potential to take many of the mid-sized customers who spend between $3-5k a month on video.

Shared by Hutch Carpenter, like and 2 saves total

Gary Hamel: Management’s Dirty Little Secret -- How to Increase Employee Engagement - Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 - WSJ

In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge. Success here is measured by profit per employee, adjusted for capital intensity. Apple’s profit per head is significantly higher than its major competitors, as is the company’s ratio of profits to net fixed assets.

Shared by Hutch Carpenter, like and 3 saves total

Breathe New Life Into Your Typography With These 22 Techniques - slodive

Shared by Brad Brooks, like and 2 saves total

Thoora | Profile for koltregaskes

Shared by Kol Tregaskes, like and 1 save total

50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design - Smashing Magazine

This round-up covers 50 beautiful and useful icons that may turn out to be life-savers for your next design. We present photorealistic icons, mini icons and pictograms, symbols and signs, free templates as well as Christmas icon sets and desktop replacement icons. Please make sure to read the license agreements before using the icons – they may change from time to time.

Shared by Hutch Carpenter, 2 likes and 42 saves total