How should we innovate the cities of our dreams?

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The gleeful sense of aspiration coursing through cities today is more than mere “urban renewal.” The very assumptions about what makes a city a city are being challenged. We’re in a period of spectacular innovation and a dizzying demographic shift that 50 years from now might make the great migration to the suburbs look minor by comparison. Time was, and not that long ago, crime was swallowing cities whole. Today you can sleep in Zuccotti Park without being mugged. (Hell, you’ll hardly smudge your pajamas.) But the protests against economic inequality that are rumbling through our cities right now are also a sign of the dissonance that hums just below the surface of this new urban era. They’re a reminder that if the young people occupying Wall Street are going to keep our cities evolving, then the old model — gentrification by fiat — will need to change, as well.

This new column will focus on how we forge our new urban future and how we create cities that reflect our values. We will cover this intersection of innovation and inequality, of urban design and the problem of poverty, and how one might help solve the other. Cities today are cleaner, healthier, safer and greener. They’re also more expensive. But wealthier, snazzier cities needn’t be gilded jewel boxes for the 1 percent. Better transit, smarter development and improved amenities can benefit those who need them most. And there’s reason to be optimistic that they will, because the generation that will retrofit our old cities with new ideas is the same one that’s currently developing an instinctual aversion to economic unfairness.

In hindsight, we could have seen this new urban groundswell coming. Two or three decades ago, cities were suffering from a toxic stew of debt, crime, poverty and drugs. Corruption at many levels was often the status quo, and “Murder Capital of America” became a dubious buzz phrase that was passed from city to city like a baton. But by the early ’90s, for an amalgam of reasons that have been debated ever since, things began to shift. The crack epidemic receded. Cities got safer. “Friends” debuted.

By the time Rachel quit her job at Central Perk, young people with money and college degrees were inundating cities like a flash-flood. Blight withdrew, and entire neighborhoods were remade overnight. Some longtime residents were forced out by rising rents, while others quickly became millionaires as their property values soared. Among the new arrivals themselves, there was a hasty hashing out of the rules: whether development should trump preservation, whether you should pay a brokers’ fee, whether babies could be brought to bars. Some worried that cities like New York were losing their edge. Tiny culture wars erupted (Hasids vs. hipsters! bicyclists vs. drivers!) as everyone tried to figure out the new pecking order, the new urban way of life. You may read this article in entirety at via salon.com.

Speaking 

As the CEO and founder of InnoThink Group, Jim can help your organization enhance the strategic innovation and competitiveness of your business policy and strategy, with an emphasis on increasing top line growth. 

 If you’re interested in having Jim speak at your next event, simply use this form to send us your details and speaking requirements, and we’ll be in touch shortly. Or you may call us at 719-649-4118. 

 

When Failure Isn’t Free: Why Success Always Start With Failure

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Companies often develop crisp stories about how they have nurtured a “culture of innovation.” They say that all their employees can be innovators, and even take some initiative to move their ideas forward. Not only that, they claim, but failures are tolerated, if not celebrated. Failure is, after all, an integral part of the innovation game.

That may be, but as Financial Times economics columnist Tim Harford points out in his new book, there is one small problem: Contrary to the gospel of open innovation and dorm-room programmers, failure is rarely free. In fact, it’s becoming more and more expensive.

When real dollars are at stake, there is a big difference between a bad failure and a good one. A bad failure is expensive and emotional; it results from a willingness to experiment without the discipline to learn. A good failure, by contrast, comes as quickly and as inexpensively as possible; it is managed through a rigorous process of testing clearly stated hypotheses.

It is not easy to run disciplined experiments. But a company without such discipline — and without a way to reward innovators for only good failures — is a company without a true culture of innovation. It is a company that spends money aimlessly in hopes of stumbling upon success, instead of one that smartly and swiftly adapts.

— Chris Trimble

 

An excerpt from Chapter 3 of Adapt: Why Success Always
Starts with Failure

 

Look at the world’s leading companies and consider how many of them — Google, Intel, Pfizer — make products that would either fit into a matchbox, or have no physical form at all. Each of these large islands of innovation is surrounded by an archipelago of smaller high-tech start-ups, all with credible hopes of overturning the established order — just as a tiny start-up called Microsoft humbled the mighty IBM, and a generation later Google and Facebook repeated the trick by outflanking Microsoft itself.

This optimistic view is true as far as it goes. Where it’s easy for the market to experiment with a wide range of possibilities, as in computing, we do indeed see change at an incredible pace. The sheer power and interconnectedness of modern technology means that anyone can get hold of enough computing power to produce great new software. Thanks to outsourcing, even the hardware business is becoming easy to enter. Three-dimensional printers, cheap robots and ubiquitous design software mean that other areas of innovation are opening up, too. Yesterday it was customised T-shirts. Today, even the design of niche cars is being ‘crowd-sourced’ by companies such as Local Motors, which also outsource production. Tomorrow, who knows? In such fields, an open game with lots of new players keeps the innovation scoreboard ticking over. Most ideas fail, but there are so many ideas that it doesn’t matter: the internet and social media expert Clay Shirky celebrates ‘failure for free.’

Here’s the problem, though: failure for free is still all too rare. These innovative fields are still the exception, not the rule. Because open-source software and iPad apps are a highly visible source of innovation, and because they can be whipped up in student dorms, we tend to assume that anything that needs innovating can be whipped up in a student dorm. It can’t. Cures for cancer, dementia and heart disease remain elusive. In 1984, HIV was identified, and the US health secretary Margaret Heckler announced that a vaccine preventing AIDS would be available within a couple of years. It’s a quarter of a century late. And what about a really effective source of clean energy — nuclear fusion, or solar panels so cheap you could use them as wallpaper? We suggest readng the remainder of this research via strategy-business.com

 

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. Jim is board president of a charter school located in Colorado Springs whose sole purpose is to prepare otherwise disadvantaged students more competitively for college. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.    

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Is Starbucks ditching bug dye from its Strawberry Frappuccinos?

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(Credit: AP)

(CBS News) Are Starbucks' Strawberries & Creme Frappuccinos about to undergo an ingredient makeover?

Starbucks likely to change controversial drink
Starbucks Strawberry Frappuccinos dyed with crushed up cochineal bugs, report says

Last week, the vegan and vegetarian news site, thisdishisvegetarian.com, reported that the popular pink drink was colored by "cochineal extract," a dye that comes from the crushed dried bodies of cochineal bugs.

The extract is somtimes called carmine or crimson lake. Despite the dye's use dating back thousands of years when it was first used to color fabric, a bug brouhaha boiled over as protests and petitions from outraged vegan groups were ramped up.

"This was known as a drink that vegans can safely consume," Daelyn Fortney, co-founder of thisdishisvegetarian.com, told USA Today. "We're not trying to cause any problems. Our point is, vegans are drinking this and it's not vegan."

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz sat down with CBS This Morning and discussed the bug backlash.

"No good deed goes undone," Schultz said, alluding to the fact that Starbucks switched from artificial coloring to a natural ingredient.

"We tried to embrace an all-natural method for this product. In fact, we discovered that most women in America wearing red lipstick have this ingredient," he said. "It's everywhere, it's all-natural."

Schultz may not be exaggerating when he says it's everywhere. BuzzFeed reports products like strawberry Yoplait or Mango Madness Snapple contain the coloring agent.  KPHO CBS 5 in Phoenix reports it's also found in some cheeses and in women's cosmetics like one Cover Girl Blush and one Revlon Lip Gloss.

But whether you're vegan or just plain don't like the idea of  consuming bugs, fans of the strawberry frozen drink may soon be able to have it without worry: Schultz said the company will "probably" switch out the beleaguered ingredient for another all-natural alternative.

"We are examining it and probably will reformulate it," Shultz said. "We're looking at (alternative ingredients). We're going to make the right decision."

Here is Howard Schultz on CBS This Morning:

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via cbsnews.com