Infographic: In 80 Years, We Lost 93% Of Variety In Our Food Seeds

Seeds are tricky things. On one hand, we have the whole Omnivore’s Dilemma argument, that industrialized and genetically engineered food is probably bad. And on the other, we have strains of vegetables that can grow four times as much produce on the same plot of land as their heirloom counterparts--a successful, man-dictated genetics that we’ve actually been fueling for millennia. After all, we wouldn’t have the heirloom seeds of today if our grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather hadn’t saved the seeds from the sweetest watermelons or the most drought-resistant cantaloupes.

I don’t know that any of us can honestly assess the repercussions of our actions, but I do know one thing: This National Geographic infographic by John Tomanio is staggering. Using the metaphor of a tree, it charts the loss of U.S. seed variety from 1903 to 1983. And what you see is that we’ve lost about 93% of our unique seed strands behind some of the most popular produce. (Clever details: Where the root system should be strong, Tomanio has rendered a tree that looks like it could tip right out of the ground.)

In 1903, we had almost 500 varieties of lettuce. By 1983, we had just 36. Radishes, peas, and beets have fared no better. In fact, the most steadfast of the crops has been the tomato, which, probably due to the popularity of strange and tasty heirloom varieties, only lost about 80% of its seed diversity. It’s a shame to lose so many intricacies of nature’s tastiest gifts. But more worryingly, monocultures strip the land of nutrients: Where you once had self-sustaining harvest cycles, you get farm land denuded of nutrients that then needs copious chemical fertilizers to grow more food. And the crops themselves become vulnerable to plant diseases.

Still, a lot has changed in the public consciousness since 1983. Farmers markets aren’t just for hippies anymore--they’re lifestyle statements for everyone from young foodies to soccer moms. And as long as this trend stays alive, so too will many of the heirloom seed strands we have remaining.

[Image: NixPhotography/Shutterstock]

via fastcodesign.com

Rethink Your Business Approach. Driving Top Line Growth through Effective Innovation 

Strategies defining business in the 20^th Century no longer work in meeting today’s challenges. Companies are reinventing how they respond to consumers, employees and suppliers. At InnoThink Group we help companies find new methods of increasing top line growth and achieving competitive advantage.  

With InnoThink Group as your innovation partner, your company will create and implement growth strategies that work. 

Innothink Group is a strategic management and innovation consultancy.

Our Guarantee. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting nearly two thirds of our fees at risk subject to hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships with shared responsibility. See a few of our clients. 

We will enable you to: 

1. Effectively create an Innovation culture that drives top line growth
2. Total customer responsiveness
3. Develop creative leadership
4. Create uniqueness
5. Turn manufacturing into marketing weapons
6. Pursue fast paced innovations
7. Set qualitative innovation goals
8. Develop an inspiring vision
9. Create a sense of urgency
10. Demand total integrity
11. Exceed shareholder expectations
12. Increase top line growth

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How Not To Suffer The Fate of RIM Blackberry. A Lesson in Commoditization and Longevity

 

 

They have volumes in common with you.

It shouldn’t come to much surprise that the embattled Research In Motion, makers of Blackberry, will become that next failed company. Despite occasional resuscitation from loyal fans, reminiscent of Saab’s recent fiascos which lasted years too long, RIM created a niche only to fall prey to the enemy of the great: Commoditization. RIM’s stock is down ytd at this writing by a mind numbing 70%. This didn’t need to happen. 

RIM was “The” smartphone company until a competitor named Apple out innovated and out competed their own product. How did Apple deftly spring past RIM? Surprisingly with ease. RIM forgot they would have competition. Most would presume that RIM with its well priced iconic product Blackberry would assuredly not be affected by commoditization in which a product becomes indistinguishable from its competitors. You would be wrong. What is happening with RIM is probably occurring in your company. 

The road to ubiquity is laced with land mines.  At a time when business moves at the speed of thought RIM responded to business demands traditionally slow if at all. RIM was slow to advance from its core market of B2B to B2C which was fast becoming tepid and then continually released poorly designed products. Flanked by a perpetual assault by competitors i.e. proliferators on price and innovation such as Google android and Apple with their “rope a dope” techniques, RIM continued to over promise and under perform.

I find three reasons why RIM has failed. 

1. Deterioration – When low end competitors move in with low-cost, low benefit drawing the mass market.
2. Proliferation – When competitors develop new combinations of price and unique benefits attacking an existing market.
3. Escalation - When competitors squeeze profits by offering more benefits at the same or lower price.

If you were RIM’s CEO or Board person you would find they have faced two out of three of the challenges. Deterioration and proliferation.

 Now, RIM is undermined by a reputation of poor quality, lack of innovation an inadequate customer service.   

Earlier this year at RIM's Capital Market Day Mike Lazaridis founder and Co-CEO of RIM announced he was presenting on RIM’s Playbook. He discussed the features but little to nothing on differentiation. 

In Jonathan Geller’s the "Boy Genius” he writes: 

“Picture yourself sitting in an executive briefing at Research In Motion. You’d hear Mike Lazaridis unequivocally state time and time again that BlackBerry smartphones would never have MP3 players or cameras in them because it just does not make sense when the company’s primary customers were the government and enterprise. “BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government,” Mike Lazaridis would say in meetings. “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.” 

What does Mr. Jobs do? 

He strutted the iPhone which eschewed the design of then top players RIM’s BlackBerry and Palm’s Treo line. Avoiding groupthink, Apple and Jobs dropped the keyboard, and replaced the stylus with the finger and multitouch. RIM? 

Continues Geller: "When you hear Mike (RIM CEO) talk about the latest and greatest, it's been the same thing for ten years: security, battery performance, and network performance. RIM has positioned battery life and network performance for years. People are not concerned with iPhone batter life," one source told me. Network performance to Mike trumps any innovation a device like iPhone offers. Mike is convinced people won't buy an iPhone because battery life isn't as good as a BlackBerry."

This is a textbook example of deterioration. The outcome is predictable.

In today’s business environment there are new rules of war: 

• Speed
• Agility
• Adaptability
• Innovation
• Fierce competitive resolve.

This is the new world of business competition at the speed of thought. The old days are the old days. RIM's leadership looks grim. They are models of security conscious businesses for sure. A feeling of victory is understandable. But not where investors are lukewarm with growth prospects and more erstwhile competitors are nipping frantically at the flanks.   

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This Matters: How Microsoft grew into a giant

The tech giant was a no-name startup when it launched its MSDOS operating system in the 1980s. But the open environment it created with developers fueled its explosive growth.

By John Hagel and John Seely Brown, contributors

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates in 1986

FORTUNE -- Microsoft was still a no-name startup based in Redmond, Wash. when it launched its operating system, MSDOS in the early 1980s. From the beginning, however, the company believed that this was not your average product launch. MSDOS's design allowed it to adapt easily to different hardware, reducing entry costs for potential users. And Microsoft encouraged participants to tailor MSDOS for particular environments, meaning that the product could actually improve over time.

Like any good platform, however, MSDOS was only as valuable as its network. While it did not have a large user base in its early years, Microsoft (MSFT) soon negotiated relationships with tech giants like IBM (IBM) and Intel (INTC), fueling growth expectations and motivating more early adopters to sign on. In this way, the platform was able to quickly gain critical mass and achieve network effects -- that wonderful position when the value of the network increases for all participants as more members join. This growing value helped to attract even more participants. By relying on growing economic incentives to attract and engage participants, Microsoft significantly reduced the overhead costs that often slow, or even limit, the growth of more conventional business networks.

Perhaps even more important than its network size was how individuals interacted with and tailored the MSDOS platform. In some respects, the common platform leveled the playing field among participants, creating incentives for them to "protect their turf" by improving their own performance. As the number of participants continued to expand, both competitive pressures as well as the spoils of success increased, perpetuating a cycle of continuous innovation around the standard platform.

MORE: Games: A job recruiter's new best friend?

In many cases, different participants teamed up to make the network better, while others chose to work on their own. Without any intervention from Microsoft, these interactions among participants evolved into complex webs of collaboration, where the interactions were not just one-to-one, but among groups of different players. This resulted in an explosion of experimentation.  Many of these promising ideas were quickly adopted by other participants, and those that failed served as collective learning material.  In this way, each participant, and the ecosystem as a whole, learned much faster than they would have on their own. 

The first release of the Microsoft platform may seem like ancient history, but it illustrates the powerful potential of what we call "web ecosystems." In nature, the webs we discover can inspire awe and defy explanations. A well-constructed cobweb, for instance, can span a seemingly impossible distance from its central point and remain intact even in heavy rains and wind that send neighboring leaves and branches to the ground. It is no wonder, therefore, that this image of strength and subtlety has become an oft-referenced metaphor in so many other domains (yes, we're speaking of the World Wide Web, among others).

As we researched ecosystems (gatherings of business participants engaged in some form of collaboration), we found that the well-worn term perfectly characterized the nuances of MSDOS and other webs.  These ecosystems are particularly interesting because of their scalability -- webs have the potential to mobilize hundreds of thousands, even millions, of participants.  More than just scalability in numbers, webs also support a much broader range of innovation than other kinds of collaborative ecosystems. Just as intricate patterns emerge on the edges of spiders' webs, so too can distinct and exciting innovations emerge from different pockets of a given ecosystem.

MORE: New evidence that going green pays off

Web ecosystems often rely primarily on economic incentives to mobilize its participants. Platforms of some sort are usually involved in catalyzing and growing web ecosystems, but the platform developer often tries to expand participants' abilities to work with each other rather than tightly specifying what they can and cannot do.

Consider the differences between Apple's (AAPL) iOS app store to Google's (GOOG) Android marketplace. Apple's app platform, though highly profitable, does not constitute a web ecosystem. Apple's structured development regulations and rigorous screening process limit the scope for experimentation and require a significant level of interaction between the platform developer (Apple) and the participants. It offers the benefit of more reliability for its users and an adherence to certain quality standards.

By contrast, the largely open Android platform does represent a web ecosystem. Android offers more freedom for developers to experiment and test potential applications. The relaxed and flexible structure means that a greater number of "amateur" applications are available, but it also creates many opportunities for collaboration and innovation.

Though many of today's examples come from technology companies, the applicability of web ecosystems extends further than this domain. Consider the story of Malcolm McLean, a truck driver in the 1950s. After seeing the need for greater coordination between different groups working in shipping, McLean developed a standardized shipping container and made the standards available industry-wide.  By encouraging port authorities, shippers, and crane companies to invest in new equipment and practices to support this standard, McLean, much like Microsoft, was able to speed up adoption and quickly reshape the global industry.

We expect these web ecosystems to become more prevalent in the future. Big Data, for example, may become fertile ground for new web ecosystems. As certain companies accumulate richer and more detailed profiles of customer behavior, these bits of data can be used to create a "platform" that participants can use to develop innovative products and services. Government 2.0 projects, which make available data accumulated by various government agencies, represent another promising web ecosystem.

Web ecosystems have meaningful implications for many industries today. For starters, we would single out health care, financial services, media, and the energy industries ripe for disruption. But let's not stop there. Is your industry ripe for change at this scale? What would a web ecosystem need to look like in your field? Like stumbling across an ornate and resilient spider web, the results might surprise you.

Posted in: Company growth, Ecosystems, Hagel and Brown, Microsoft, Strategy

via management.fortune.cnn.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.