Hutch Carpenter
VP of Product at Spigit. Father of two young 'uns who misses running marathons. Living in San Francisco, CA, Hutch blogs @ I'm Not Actually a Geek.
Is Google+ More Facebook or More Twitter? Yes
Quick, what existing social network is Google+ most likely to displace in terms of people’s time? Another Try by Google to Take On Facebook Claire Cain Miller, New York Times This isn’t a Facebook-killer, it’s a Twitter-killer. Yishan Wong, Google+ post A hearty congrats to Google for creating an offering that manages to be compared [...]
Getting Innovation Results from Our Cognitive Surplus
What is an organization’s most underused, most under-appreciated asset? Its brand? No, that’s well-utilized and appreciated. Its customers’ loyalty. Some would argue for that one, but it’s not a pervasive issue. Its distribution network? Not really. Its cash? No, CFOs take care of that. It’s their employees’ cognitive surplus. The stuff between their ears that [...]
Four reasons enterprise software should skip native mobile apps
The desire to “consumerize” mobile apps for their own sake is stoking today’s outsized enthusiasm with device-specific enterprise mobile apps at a time when HTML5 is right there staring us all in the face. Tony Byrne, Enterprise 2.0 B.S. List: Term No. 1 Consumerization The runaway success of the iPhone app store has demonstrated that [...]
Innovation Thrives between the Lines of Chaos and Control
Innovation killer #4: Create an obstacle course for ideas. Guaranteed way to kill the innovative spirit? Model your processes on Kafka’s The Trial or your typical parking clerk’s office. CIO Magazine, July 24, 2007 On the heels of the SpigitFusion release, I’ve had the opportunity to hear from a number of people on the topic [...]
Will Quorans Develop Enough Spine to Ensure Quality?
On Quora, this question was recently asked: Is the upvote bias towards more popular answerers a threat to quality on Quora? One answer caught my attention, and it’s one with which I wholeheartedly agree: I would say it’s very important for Quora users to use those voting powers to downvote answers by A-listers that are [...]
Three Pluses, Three Minuses of Quora as a KM System
Knowledge Management (aka “KM”) is a field that I don’t have personal experience in. It’s supposed to be practices, processes and systems where valuable knowledge of workers is collected and made available for others. KM continues to be an important topic for enterprises these days, but it also freighted with many failures and disappointments. Without [...]
Three Reasons Google Should Acquire Delicious from Yahoo
So the news is out. Yahoo plans to shutter Delicious, the largest social bookmarking site. Which is shocking, particularly among the tech savvy and socially oriented. Delicious is iconic for its application of social sharing and collective intelligence. Hard to believe Yahoo wants to shut it down. But wait…this doesn’t have to be the end. [...]
Have any companies successfully deployed game mechanics in enterprise situations?
Game mechanics are a popular subject these days. With good reason, as they have an important role in the future of participation and work. Which was covered here previously in Reputation and Game Mechanics Are the Future of Social Software. Seeing the uptick of game mechanics in leading edge consumer apps, curiosity not surprisingly turns [...]
Model for Employee Innovation: Amazon Prime Case Study
As more organizations expand the innovation mandate throughout their workforce, creating and maintaining an ongoing employee innovation program is critical. Sustainable innovation requires a process, not a haphazard, random luck approach. To that end, a useful model to follow is: The different activities address important aspects of innovation, from eliciting tacit ideas inside people’s heads… Read More
Using Open Innovation to Be Competitively Unpredictable
During a Twitter Q&A organized by open innovation thought leader Stefan Lindegaard, Psion Teklogix CEO John Conoley posted this: @johnCEOatPsionJohn Conoley we decided to embrace open innovation at #psion to be faster and comeptitively unpredictable September 2, 2010 5:08 am via TweetDeckRetweet How interesting is that? Using open innovation to be “competitively unpredictable”. I love [...]
Innovation Mullet: Simple in the Front, Complex in the Back
On a LinkedIn discussion, someone asked: “Structured or un-structured innovation. Which works better?” There are a number of ways that could be answered. I look at it this way: What’s the simplest structure you can live with? I’m focusing on the application of simplicity as much possible in the innovation process. But I’m also a [...]
Phone Cameras + Social Are Expanding the Historical Record
“There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.” In a critique of the rise of Instagram (current photo sharing app du jour), Laurie Voss argues that the rise of cheap, low fidelity cameras on phones is undermining the data contained in them. And it’s not just [...]
Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2010: The Rise of Idea Management
Gartner, Inc. maintains a series of well-followed reports, called Hype Cycles. Gartner Hype Cycles describe the various technologies that address a particular market. The Hype Cycle for the Emerging Technologies, 2010, was published publicly. Here is how Gartner Fellow Jackie Fenn describes this particular report: The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies features technologies that are [...]
The Benefits of Letting Others Recast Your Problem
At the recent Spigit Innovation Summit, MIT professor and leading Enterprise 2.0 thinker Andrew McAfee related the crowdsourcing story of Foldit, about which he also blogged. Foldit is an online game where rank amateurs can try their hand at folding pr…
iPad’s Climb Up the Disruptive Innovation Cycle
Blockbuster’s recent bankruptcy filing was yet another chapter in the Clayton Christensen annals of disruptive innovation. A major brand with convenient locations that got disrupted by a website and the U.S. Mail. Note that we’re seeing the backend of the disruption, when it all seems so clear. How easy is it to see such a [...]
