by admin | Oct 7, 2014 | Innovation
If you are under the age of 50, there’s a good chance you are fiercely attached toSesame Street, the show that shepherded so many of us through our toddler years. You may remember sitting in rapt attention, wondering if anybody would believe that Mr. Snuffleupagus was real, or giggling hysterically about Oscar the Grouch’s musical ode to trash. For generations of viewers, Sesame Street is a portal to a simpler, more innocent time in their lives. This creates something of a quandary for the show’s producers: how do you keep evolving a show so it doesn’t get stale without offending its devoted fans? “It’s a lot harder than we make it look,” says Carol-Lynn Parente, executive producer of Sesame Workshop, who’s spent 25 years lovingly crafting the content of the show. “When you’re trying to keep a brand that is 45 years old fresh, you have to do it within the essence of what it is. Trying to stay relevant within the confines of people’s expectations is a tricky fence to walk.” To make things even more complicated, Parente tells Fast Company that Sesame Street–whose 45th season launches today–is written on two levels: for children, of course, but also for the parents who are watching with them. She says the show was never meant to simply educate children, but to foster better communication between toddlers and their caregivers. “The show has to be furry, heartfelt, educational, funny, and clever for both adults and children,” she says. “Any piece of content you produce always has to be some version of all of those things mixed into one.” Read more about it...
by admin | Oct 6, 2014 | Innovation
Risk aversion comes in many forms and faces. When the purchasingdecision chain is full of doubters, this can bedevil an entrepreneur’s attempts to find innovation-minded customers who will go out on a limb and try a new way of doing business. The media and entertainment industry offers a great example. It’s all sparkle and sizzle on the outside but when it comes to internal processes, decision makers often have an intense fear or change. The resistance is understandable. Much is at stake with TV and film production: There’s a need to monetize assets so that everyone is paid, plus the reputations of all involved on the screen and behind it are on the line. The pressure-packed global production cycle and 24/7 news cycle mean there’s little spare time to recover should a new technology fail to deliver. Read more about it...
by admin | Oct 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
The biggest challenge to innovation is not how to generate new ideas and opportunities. It’s how to make innovation a deeply embedded capability in the organization. What usually happens is that companies focus most of their efforts on the front end of innovation – so they launch some kind of ideation initiative with a lot of hoopla and they get a whole bunch of ideas. But then they hit a wall because there is no back end – there is no organizational system for effectively screening ideas, aligning them with the business strategy, allocating seed funding and management resources, and guiding a mixed portfolio of opportunities through the pipeline toward commercialization. So, invariably, what we find is that the whole innovation effort eventually withers. And all those enthusiastic innovators inside and outside the company become cynical and discouraged as they watch their ideas go nowhere. Read more about it...
by admin | Oct 3, 2014 | Innovation
Just look at the likes of Woolworths, Polaroid, Alta Vista, Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders… the list goes on. All steamrollered by strings of ones and noughts and changing consumer behaviour. But why are so many big companies so bad at it? “Typically, big companies are much more conservative than start-ups and won’t do anything that is untested or could risk future profits,” says George Deeb, managing partner at business consultancy Red Rocket Ventures. “Innovation efforts really require a very different, more entrepreneurial risk-taking mindset.” Jackie Fenn, a specialist in innovation at research consultancy Gartner, told the BBC: “Size can add to the challenges. A strong brand can have a fear that failure may damage its reputation. Read more about it...
by admin | Oct 3, 2014 | Innovation
During the last seismic Apple announcement, in 2010, I was at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco as Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, a device he said was so singular it would create its own landing strip. When the expected reveal came, there was a huge roar, and I looked around to see many of my fellow journalists clapping their hands red. I was an interloper in the land of tech announcements, but I was surprised that a group of cynical-by-nature reporters had been so completely won over in the moment. Read more here....
