From owner-innovation-list@NewsScan.Com Tue Aug 29 11:01:55 1995
Subject: INNOVATION, 28 August 1995

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TRENDS


STRATEGIES


INNOVATIONS


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>TRENDS


CORPORATIONS PROMOTING ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Corporate America is chasing trendiness with wild abandon, and one commentator says that U.S. companies are "financing our social meltdown" by supporting the trend of advertising campaigns that are pro-impulse, anti-rules, and anti-self-restraint. Examples include: "Just Do It!" (from Nike), "Sometimes, you gotta break the rules," (from Burger King), "Relax. No rules here," (from Neiman Marcus), and "Peel off inhibitions. Find your own road," (from Saab). "While everyone is aghast over blatant sex, violent movies and gangsta rap, the ordinary commercial messages of corporate America are probably playing a more subversive role. The drumbeat of rule-breaking slogans has a devasting effect." (John Leo, U.S. News & World Report 4 Sep 95 p31)


RAISING THE IQ ON MACHINES

Machines will become "increasingly smarter, so the user can become increasingly dumber," predicts Marvin Minsky, co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. He anticipates that computers, which are likely to pervade the future household in the guise of thermostats, security systems, etc., will be transparently simple to operate. (St. Petersburg Times 21 Aug 95 p9)


THE FORBIDDEN FUTURE

"The future of technology can be predicted by looking at what researchers are discouraged from doing, whether it's playing games, reading wire services or messing around with fuzzy logic. The cool stuff is still disapproved of," says "Whole Earth Catalog" publisher and techno-guru Stewart Brand. (Forbes ASAP 28 Aug 95 p166)


BIG SAVINGS FOR BANKS

As banks move toward electronic alternatives, they expect to save a bundle. An all-electronic checking system could significantly reduce the $53 billion now spent each year on processing paper checks. "We see this as the replacement for the 63 billion checks written each year," says Chemical Banking's VP for technology planning.. "It reduces the cost of the paper check," which is handled about 12 times before it leaves the bank. A major trial could be under way by next year, predict banking experts. (Wall Street Journal 23 Aug 95 B10)


USE OF CORPORATE ETHICS STATEMENTS

A study of ethics statements used in large corporations reveals that more than nine out of 10 companies have a formal code of ethics, about one out two have values statements, and about one out two have a corporate credo. Corporate ethics statements are being revised more frequently, because top company executives now "realize that credos, codes and value statements are not the Ten Commandments and need to be updated to reflect the changing and complex competitive world of the 1990s." Some negatives: Ethics policies are not widely disseminated beyond the organization, and most are not tailored to specific industries, but are left rather broad in scope. (Patrick E. Murphy, "Corporate Ethics Statements: Current Status and Future Prospects," Journal of Business Ethics 14:727-740)


CRIMINALS MOVE ONLINE

Online criminal activity "has changed the whole face of corporate security," says a special agent with the FBI's national computer crime squad. "Corporate secrets used to be stolen one box at a time. Now the equivalent of a hundred boxes can be copied and e-mailed. All you need is one hacker, and the entire hacker community may know about it by sundown." With corporate secrets increasingly vulnerable, businesses are starting to worry about their liability for hacker attacks and the possibility of shareholder lawsuits if they're found to be negligent. "We're just now starting to see a crop of lawyers who understand how to proceed with legal action against companies that have had security compromised. It's just a matter of time before stockholder suits can be easily filed against any company that has been attacked. Corporate America will be held accountable for indiscretions in the way it manages the infrastructure," says a security consultant. Meanwhile, while the cops are scrambling to catch up, the robbers are way ahead: "This is where all the crime will be in the 21st century," says the head of a corporate intelligence-gathering firm. "Law enforcement officials are trying to get a handle on it, but they really can't stop it. When it comes to technology, criminals always seem to be one step ahead of law enforcement." (Information Week 28 Aug 95 p30)


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>STRATEGIES

COMBINING LONG-TIME PLANNING WITH RAPID REACTION

The international environmental organization Greenpeace could serve as a model for organizations trying to cope with a rapidly changing world. While being firmly committed to strategic campaigns that produce few results in the short term (but have important long-term payoffs), Greenpeace keeps about half of its $33 million annual budget and 25% of its staff time readily available for contingency operations in order to "create a place in the organization for entrepreneurial activity and risk-taking." (The Economist 19 Aug 94 p62)


ALL ABOUT TRUST

In high-trust societies, such as Japan and Germany, people are accustomed to forming relationships beyond the family, enabling production strategies such as "just in time manufacturing," which places a lot of responsibility on factory-line workers. In countries that are low-trust, such as France, work rules are highly codified and inflexible. The U.S. is currently moving from a high-trust to a lower-trust society, evident in the proliferation of litigation for solving problems rather than just trying to work things out in a more informal manner. The result is that management strategies that work in Japan, for instance, cannot be grafted onto a different kind of culture and be expected to work. In an increasingly global society, national cultures still count, and will continue to manifest themselves in unexpected ways as multinational companies attempt to implement the same policies in a variety of countries. (Francis Fukuyama, "Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity," Free Press, 1995)


DON'T PLAN FOR "THE FUTURE" -- PLAN FOR ALTERNATIVE FUTURES

One of the biggest mistakes of strategic planners is failing to identify the unconscious and implicit assumptions on which their plans are based. Will we always sell products through a traditional sales force? Will we always sell traditional products? Will competition emerge from industries that do not now compete with us? And so on. One way to avoid this mistake is to conduct "scenario analysis" to force consideration of alternative possible future conditions. A group of executives who went through such an exercise "generated a wide range of alternative, equally plausible operating environments and had considered the infrastructure and information needed to compete effectively in each." They realized that their previous strategy had been designed for a single possible future operating environment, and would have precluded success in other environments. So they renamed their previous plan "Madame Tussaud's Waxworks." (Eric K. Clemons, "Using Scenario Analysis to Manage the Strategic Risks of Reengineering," Sloan Management Review, Sum95 p61)


INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING: CHAIR VERSUS SOFA

Internet advertising has turned out to be expensive, and offers little accountability to advertisers or proof of effectiveness: "If you're advertising on the Web, you're probably paying about 40 times the cost per thousand of the equivalent print vehicle and don't even know it," says advertising media executive Ed Gotfredson. But maybe advertisers should just chalk it up to experience -- a learning experience that will help them get to the next (post-Web) stage of interactive advertising. Advertising executive David Verklin is looking beyond the Web to interactive television: "We are interested in the view from the sofa, not the view from the chair; computers are a chair-based media. The average American consumer spends almost 57 hours a week watching TV. Video is what commercial persuasion is all about." (Jeff Ubois, "Comparing Media Costs: Advertising on the 'Net Not Necessarily a Bargain," Digital Media, Aug 95 p1)


CUSTOMIZATION AS A CONDUIT FOR NEW PRODUCT IDEAS

The old paradigm: mass production. The new one: mass customization. Can the competing paradigms enjoy peaceful coexistence? Of course they can, and they should. Mass production offers standardized products built to inventory and focuses on achieving efficiency through stability and control; mass customization relies on flexibility and quick responsiveness using standardized modules assembled based on customer needs. Here's an example of how the two approaches interact in a bicycle manufacturing company: "Using the information gathered directly from consumers in the custom segment, product designers identify certain customer trends, such as popular color combinations and patterns, and unique customized features that are likely to appeal to customers of the broader mass-production segment of the industry." Thus, the mass custom factory acts as a conduit for new product ideas based on innovative users who show the way. (Suresh Kotha, "Mass Customization: Implementing the Emerging Paradigm for Competitive Advantage," Strategic Management Journal (16) Sum95 p21)


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>INNOVATIONS

WIND-UP RADIO

In 1995 we don't expect to find innovators using wind-up technology -- but that just means we're not thinking about the whole world. On hearing that Africans were unable to receive important health information because of the prohibitive cost of radio batteries, a British inventor has developed a clockwork radio that is wound up like an old gramophone. Twenty seconds of winding will power 40 minutes of listening. Future uses could include lamps or lights in the Third World and portable phones, calculators, or electronic games in the First World. (Financial Times 19/20 Aug 95 p9)


CONSTRUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT

Some people argue that technology is hard to control because the impacts can't be predicted until the technology is extensively developed and widely used -- at which point it is firmly entrenched and unamenable to modification. One way to avoid this problem is use construct technology assessment throughout the development of innovative ideas. The key is to examine the tension between the glorification of technology and opposing anti-technology campaigns, and replace them with socio-technical analysis from the very beginning -- focusing on "broadening the processes of technological development, on opportunities for societal learning, and new ways to manage technology in society." (Arie Rip, T.J. Misa, J. Schot, "Managing Technology in Society," Pinter Publishing 1995)


AUTOMATED CALLING FROM YOUR CAR

The Lexus GS300 Touring car has taken voice technology to a new level. The vehicle includes a a portable cell phone embedded in the center armrest up front, connected to a microphone and a set of push buttons on the left side of the steering wheel. You can program it to call on voice command by keying in the number and then repeating the person's or place's name three times at the voice prompt "Name, please." Once the computer has made a record of your voice pattern, all you have to do is push a button, and say the name at the prompt. The system recognizes only the voice of the person who's programmed the number, so two different drivers could record the word "office," and the system would dial the correct one automatically. For added convenience, the system lowers the stereo volume and air conditioning roar whenever a call comes in or is placed. (Miami Herald 21 Aug 95 p30)


ONE SMALL STEP TOWARD BIONIC MAN

German biophysicists have created a link between a microscopic spot on a silicon chip and a corresponding spot on a leech neuron, thereby producing a signaling channel that works in both directions, which is a requirement for prosthetic limbs of the kind imagined in the Six Million Dollar Man of TV fame. The chip stimulates the neuron to fire by inducing an electric charge inside the leech cell. (New York Times 26 Aug 95 E8)


TRACKING DOWN POWER PROBLEMS

When an underground power line breaks, finding the problem can be much more difficult than fixing it. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed neural network software that can track down the break, even to the point of identifying which manhole the repair crew should use to get to it. (Business Week 28 Aug 95 p77)


THIS SYSTEM GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN

A security system developed by Technology Recognition Systems uses the unique heat patterns emitted by facial blood vessels to identify personnel with high-security clearance. After an employee punches in a code and stands in front of the camera, the system takes a thermogram -- a computer image of the heat radiating from the person's face -- and compares it with one stored in memory. If it's a match, entree is granted. The system works under any weather conditions, and can't be fooled by a change in facial expressions or plastic surgery. (Popular Science, Sept. 95 p23)


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