CALL FOR CANADIAN VENTURE INCREASED LEADERSHIP
7 years ago I was a partner in a Tier one private venture capital firm, called XDLI, led by serial entrepreneurial Toronto leaders like Michael Bregman, and Dennis Bennie. Prior to joining XDLI, I was a partner with Accenture and all the excitement in the dot com space drove me to jump ship and in some respects jumped on the band wagon of the excitement to find the next holy grail. This was in 2001 - 2003 when the market was exciting as valuations were competitive and felt like the wild wild west. As we know the market came to a crashing wake-up call in 2003, and the venture capital industry in NA started to implode, and has been course correcting ever since.
However the trend continues to decline which has me personally very worried about Canada's long term economic smarts in innovation and commercialization.
Unfortunately in Canada, there is still too much retraction of VC investment activity. According to a recent Deloitte Survey released in TORONTO on September 7, 2010 — Venture capitalists (VCs)Canada expects their industry to contract further while those in emerging markets, including China, India and Brazil, expect to see theirs expand over the next five years, according to the 2010 Global Venture Capital Survey by Deloitte, Canada's Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) and several other international industry associations.
According to the survey results, two thirds (66 per cent) of Canadian survey respondents expect the number of venture firms to decrease between now and 2015, while a great majority of venture capitalists in China, India and Brazil anticipate adding more venture firms in their country during the same time frame. Venture capitalists in the U.S. and the European continent also expect an industry tightening in their respective countries, but the Canadian industry is much more vulnerable to such a trend given its much smaller size.
The outlook for the dollar amount of venture capital available for investment in the next five years followed similar trends, with half of Canadian respondents seeing a decline or no change. In fact, 11 per cent of respondents predict a decline of more than 30 per cent, the second worst outlook of any country surveyed. Comparatively, respondents in Brazil, China and India see healthy increases. The institutional source of funds is also expected to be weak by Canadian VCs: Only 25 per cent of Canadian respondents believe limited partners are likely to invest in the country’s venture capital funds in the next five years, compared to 92 per cent for Brazil, 91 per cent for China and 76 per cent for India.
The 2010 Global Venture Capital survey, which measured the opinions of more than 500 venture capitalists worldwide, also examined the factors contributing to each country’s outlook and identified sectors of future growth.
Government policies to increase the size of the domestic VC industry seen as key to maintaining a capital venture industry in Canada
ADDITIONAL PERSPECTIVES
As opposed to past years, and following recent Deloitte-led changes to Section 116, Canadian respondents did not say that tax policy or regulations were creating an unfavorable climate for venture capital. Only 28 per cent cited tax rules as a major barrier. And they are positive on government support of R&D, with 67 per cent naming it as a favorable factor, second only to Israel.
Despite those advantages, when asked about the dangers of a lack of an established VC industry, Canadian VCs were by far the most critical in the world, with 61 per cent suggesting our lack of critical mass is creating a poor climate for investment and innovation. In contrast, VCs in other developed nations saw this as a non-factor, with only seven per cent on average mentioning it.
“Clearly, Canadian venture capital firms are up against serious competition from emerging markets, as are their counterparts in the U.S and Europe. But with the small size of the Canadian industry, the impact of this decline is even more devastating for Canada,” said John Ruffolo, National Leader, Technology, Media & Telecommunications Industry Group, Deloitte.
“This is an urgent situation and policy makers need to move quickly with measures that improve the odds of this vital sector here at home” Ruffolo added. “We need to get more dollars into the hands of existing Canadian VCs, and encourage the creation of more domestic VCs. A reinvigorated Retail Venture Capital program (particularly in Ontario), angel and VC investing tax credits, and the expansion of government-sponsored fund of funds programs are the three main priorities. Some of these measures have been adopted in Quebec, and that province’s venture industry has seen growth in both the number of firms and the amount of capital available for innovation.”
Clean tech and new media/social networking: Opportunities to seize now for the future
Despite numerous challenges, survey respondents across the globe show interest in new investment opportunities on the horizon. In looking ahead, respondents singled out clean technologies, healthcare services and new media/social networking as areas of great interest over the next five years.
Clean tech is the leader overall, with 67 per cent of Canadian survey respondents expecting increased investments. It is also ranked number one by China (95 per cent), Brazil (92 per cent), India (90 per cent), U.K. (85 per cent), U.S. (72 per cent) and Germany (71 per cent).
New media/social networking is seen as the second key sector of the future by 50 per cent of Canadian venture capitalists as well as 58 per cent of respondents in the U.S. and 64 per cent in Germany. Healthcare services were ranked second by survey respondents in China (92 percent), India (89 per cent), France (69 per cent) and the U.K. (62 per cent).
“With characteristic optimism, venture capitalists are already looking ahead to new growth industries and opportunities. In order for Canada to participate fully in this new economy, we need to have a larger and better-financed VC community to help incubate and grow these industries of Canada’s future,” concludes Ruffolo.
NOTES:
This blog has been sourced from major extracts from the Deloitte and CVCA Global Trends in Venture Capital: Outlook for the Future The Global Trends in Venture Capital: Outlook for the Future Survey was sponsored by Deloitte in cooperation with the Canadian Venture Capital Association and numerous other VC associations around the world. It surveyed venture capitalists in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Deloitte received 516 responses from general partners with assets under management ranging from less than US$100 million to greater than US$1 billion. The survey was conducted during March and April 2010. Of the total number of respondents, 61 per cent were based in the Americas (of which 7% or 36 firms were Canadian,) 16 per cent in Europe, 23 per cent in Asia Pacific.
Showing posts with label Helix Commerce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Helix Commerce. Show all posts
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Social Voice Strength on the Web and Implications to Changing Business Models
In August 1991, Sir Timothy John Berners Lee put the first website online. The first consumer web we recall were the likes of: AOL, AMAZON, eBAY, and Yahoo.
Little did we appreciate the impacts new models like: PayPal, TicketMaster would have on revolutionizing and creating the transactional web.
The new era we are in is the Social Era as solutions like :Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Orkut create a more faciltiating, engaging and rewarding social experience. It's now all about self-expression, naked conversations, relationships, user affiliation, trust and user generated content.
The Social Web is now called Web 3.0 or the Semantic web.
Larry Weber in his book, Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build your Business, says that:
" The social web is the online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments, and opinions. It includes social networks such as: My Space, Gather, Friendster, BlackPlanet, Eons, linked and hundreds more. It also includes branded web destination sites like: Amazon, Netflix, and eBay. It also includes enterprise sites such as: IBM, Circuit City, Cisco, and Oracle. The social web is a new world of unpaid media created by individuals or enterprises on the web."
The real job of the marketing professional in the social web is to aggregate customers. You can do this in two ways:
1.)Providing compelling content to create a pull factor to return again and again and spread the word to others to create a following by creating retail rich media experiences, and
2.) Visibly becoming an influencer in the public arena and actively participating in the conversations.
Brian Solis, Founder of Future works says:
Social Media is no longer an option or debtable. It represents a powerful, and additional channel to first listen to customers, stakeholders, media, bloggers, peers and other influencers and in turn build two way paths of conversation to them.
Yes conversations are taking place about your company, product and service right now with or without you. This represents priceless opportunities to build relationships and shape perceptions at every step. In the process, you become a resource to the very people looking for leadership, expertise, visions, and also solutions.
The most important driver for outbound and proactive online relationship is that's its measurable and absolutetly tied to the bottom line. Much in the same way that Web marketers integrates calls to action and dedicated splash pages to direct responses, successful conversations can also benefit from strategically carved inbound and interconnected paths that can be tracked and measured.
From listening, participation to analytics, social media creates new opportunities to make deep and meaningful connections, forge relationships, and influence without manipulation. And, in the process, we also earn a place within their network as a trustworthy resource."
David Meerman Scott lists three uses of blogs for marketing and PR:
1.) To easily monitor what millions of people are saying about you.
2.) To participate in those conversations by commenting on other's blogs.
3.) To begin and to shape those conversations by creating and writing your own blog.
Social professional niche networks abound and they will continue to flourish. For example, Art Cloud for the Art world, Inmobile for the wireless industry, MarCom Professional for Marketing communicators, Sermo for Physicians, etc.
In summary, Cluetrain Manifesto proclaimed:
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering, and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter - and getting smarter faster than other companies.
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny, and often shocking. Whether explaining, or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked."
Implications:
Every Canadian business should have a cleared defined digital social media strategy in place and reaching out to the world for new growth connections. If you cannot afford to hire FT engage PT professionals from outsourcing Social media solution providers, a growing trend globally as marketing professionals and business recognize being social is a skill and a core competency.
Helix has a new offering on social media outsourcing solutions. Want to hear more reach us at info@helixcommerce.com.
Little did we appreciate the impacts new models like: PayPal, TicketMaster would have on revolutionizing and creating the transactional web.
The new era we are in is the Social Era as solutions like :Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Orkut create a more faciltiating, engaging and rewarding social experience. It's now all about self-expression, naked conversations, relationships, user affiliation, trust and user generated content.
The Social Web is now called Web 3.0 or the Semantic web.
Larry Weber in his book, Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build your Business, says that:
" The social web is the online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments, and opinions. It includes social networks such as: My Space, Gather, Friendster, BlackPlanet, Eons, linked and hundreds more. It also includes branded web destination sites like: Amazon, Netflix, and eBay. It also includes enterprise sites such as: IBM, Circuit City, Cisco, and Oracle. The social web is a new world of unpaid media created by individuals or enterprises on the web."
The real job of the marketing professional in the social web is to aggregate customers. You can do this in two ways:
1.)Providing compelling content to create a pull factor to return again and again and spread the word to others to create a following by creating retail rich media experiences, and
2.) Visibly becoming an influencer in the public arena and actively participating in the conversations.
Brian Solis, Founder of Future works says:
Social Media is no longer an option or debtable. It represents a powerful, and additional channel to first listen to customers, stakeholders, media, bloggers, peers and other influencers and in turn build two way paths of conversation to them.
Yes conversations are taking place about your company, product and service right now with or without you. This represents priceless opportunities to build relationships and shape perceptions at every step. In the process, you become a resource to the very people looking for leadership, expertise, visions, and also solutions.
The most important driver for outbound and proactive online relationship is that's its measurable and absolutetly tied to the bottom line. Much in the same way that Web marketers integrates calls to action and dedicated splash pages to direct responses, successful conversations can also benefit from strategically carved inbound and interconnected paths that can be tracked and measured.
From listening, participation to analytics, social media creates new opportunities to make deep and meaningful connections, forge relationships, and influence without manipulation. And, in the process, we also earn a place within their network as a trustworthy resource."
David Meerman Scott lists three uses of blogs for marketing and PR:
1.) To easily monitor what millions of people are saying about you.
2.) To participate in those conversations by commenting on other's blogs.
3.) To begin and to shape those conversations by creating and writing your own blog.
Social professional niche networks abound and they will continue to flourish. For example, Art Cloud for the Art world, Inmobile for the wireless industry, MarCom Professional for Marketing communicators, Sermo for Physicians, etc.
In summary, Cluetrain Manifesto proclaimed:
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering, and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter - and getting smarter faster than other companies.
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny, and often shocking. Whether explaining, or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked."
Implications:
Every Canadian business should have a cleared defined digital social media strategy in place and reaching out to the world for new growth connections. If you cannot afford to hire FT engage PT professionals from outsourcing Social media solution providers, a growing trend globally as marketing professionals and business recognize being social is a skill and a core competency.
Helix has a new offering on social media outsourcing solutions. Want to hear more reach us at info@helixcommerce.com.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Innovation on Steroids
How do you drive an organization forward to achieve the most rapid innovation possible?
Based on my twenty plus years in both corporate (enterprise) and also supporting very early stage software companies, it strikes me the realities are still the same.
1.) Having a very clearly defined product or service vision of what you are trying to achieve, and an understanding of why the market should purchase this experience from you needs to be very acute and differentiated?
2.) Developing an employee engagement culture that ensures talent is motivated by your vision, mission and can believe the results you are striving to achieve are real and they can align their minds and hearts to focus on realizing the dream or customer promise you are aspiring to fulfil.
3.) Creating a customer experience that is uniquely differentiated to other experiences in the market. Each customer touch point makes a difference along the value memory highway. How you condition an organization to think and behave can be explicitely programmed into your organizational culture DNA, but also must be embedded into your business processes and measurement systems.
All these points add up, but there is nothing more critical than ensuring that you can successfully commercialize your products and services and secure consistent customer footprints, and create a brand that creates a following.
We are now at the same that employee engagement and customer engagement are constant heart beats in developing innovation capacity.However to drive innovation on steroids we need to add to this current formula fix a focus on community experiences.
What needs to be added to the mix?
As more and more trust moves to web based experiences where consumers rely on purchasing guidance or advice from trusted networks, the only growth engine remaining for innovation capacity is really community influence and mining for community intelligence to propel growth more rapidly forward.
When one looks at the success of companies like Zappos (shoe retailer sold to eBay for $850 million after attempts from eBay and others failed), or other companies like eBay or Facebook which are aggregating communities around deep product niches demonstrate new approaches to developing corporate business models.
Pathways for Innovation Execution Excellence
If you are looking to develop a deep digital social media strategy around your product or service offering, we have two new offers at my firm that may interest you:
1.) Digital Social Media Market Differentiation Rapid Scan - we quickly look at your digital social media offerings, scan the market, and give you clear recommendations of ways to differentiate and improve your go to market capabilities.
2.) Pilot Innovation Community Bazaars - we have learned that developing a rapid pilot with an existing community to test your product or service is a very effective way to gain rapid customer insights. There is a community these days for almost everything so stepping back and going directly to an existing community vs creating a new community is a far smarter way to innovate and be more agile.
Based on my twenty plus years in both corporate (enterprise) and also supporting very early stage software companies, it strikes me the realities are still the same.
1.) Having a very clearly defined product or service vision of what you are trying to achieve, and an understanding of why the market should purchase this experience from you needs to be very acute and differentiated?
2.) Developing an employee engagement culture that ensures talent is motivated by your vision, mission and can believe the results you are striving to achieve are real and they can align their minds and hearts to focus on realizing the dream or customer promise you are aspiring to fulfil.
3.) Creating a customer experience that is uniquely differentiated to other experiences in the market. Each customer touch point makes a difference along the value memory highway. How you condition an organization to think and behave can be explicitely programmed into your organizational culture DNA, but also must be embedded into your business processes and measurement systems.
All these points add up, but there is nothing more critical than ensuring that you can successfully commercialize your products and services and secure consistent customer footprints, and create a brand that creates a following.
We are now at the same that employee engagement and customer engagement are constant heart beats in developing innovation capacity.However to drive innovation on steroids we need to add to this current formula fix a focus on community experiences.
What needs to be added to the mix?
As more and more trust moves to web based experiences where consumers rely on purchasing guidance or advice from trusted networks, the only growth engine remaining for innovation capacity is really community influence and mining for community intelligence to propel growth more rapidly forward.
When one looks at the success of companies like Zappos (shoe retailer sold to eBay for $850 million after attempts from eBay and others failed), or other companies like eBay or Facebook which are aggregating communities around deep product niches demonstrate new approaches to developing corporate business models.
Pathways for Innovation Execution Excellence
If you are looking to develop a deep digital social media strategy around your product or service offering, we have two new offers at my firm that may interest you:
1.) Digital Social Media Market Differentiation Rapid Scan - we quickly look at your digital social media offerings, scan the market, and give you clear recommendations of ways to differentiate and improve your go to market capabilities.
2.) Pilot Innovation Community Bazaars - we have learned that developing a rapid pilot with an existing community to test your product or service is a very effective way to gain rapid customer insights. There is a community these days for almost everything so stepping back and going directly to an existing community vs creating a new community is a far smarter way to innovate and be more agile.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Community Launch Checklist for Online Collaboration
Community Launch Checklist
Online Communities take a lot of time and energy to be successful. Organizations must understand and prepare for the investment associated, from strategic planning to implementation and execution.
While planning the launch of your online community, we recommend you consider the following:
Roles and Responsibilities
Have you aligned the internal roles and responsibilities required for an online community? In the planning phase, it is imperative that you have full cooperation across all functional teams and groups within your organization.
* Do you have an executive team in place to approve and sign off on strategic initiatives?
* Is your legal team ready and prepared to discuss branding and governance policies?
* Has your IT department allotted sufficient time and staff for the integration and maintenance of the technology?
* Have you built a support team to help customers and community members successfully use the platform?
* Is your marketing ready to lead the way in terms of setting the tone and handling the daily tasks of managing the community?
Be sure you have staffed a social media strategist to lead the overall launch of the community, as well as a community manager or facilitator to support daily developments.
Operating Budget
Have you allocated sufficient funds to successfully build and launch your online community?
* What types of features and services will your site provide to users?
* Are you launching a basic or more advanced site?
* Will your site require design customization?
* Do you have the finances readily available to staff accordingly?
* Do you have the finances readily available to properly market and advertise the community, both at launch and beyond?
Notwithstanding the initial costs of partnering with a community vendor, organizations must take into consideration the costs associated with launching the community, hiring staff and other ongoing expenses. While the costs involved with selecting a vendor will vary, depending on the features and services provided, organizations should expect to allocate approximately $50,000 to $100,000 annually for a basic online community.
Community Research
Building a community that already exists is not generally recommended.
* Have you determined whether your community already exists?
* Is it beneficial to create a new online community or simply engage customers where they already are?
* Have you researched the community offerings of your direct competitors?
* Do your competitors’ communities have a high activity level?
* Is there a demand for a new online community?
By closely monitoring the competition, organizations can determine what is working and what isn’t, and how best to approach plans for an online community.
Policies and Training
A Governance Plan is an important component of the community as it provides the foundation for dealing with unpredictable situations.
* Do you have a dedicated community manager and/or facilitator and a social media strategist to prepare the governance procedures?
* Do you have a rapid response process and guidelines in place to deal with any negative incidents from the community?
* Have you trained the appropriate individuals so these guidelines can be properly enforced?
The more formalized the process, the more successful your community will be.
Technology Integration
Community platforms require development, design and integration with a company’s existing channels.
* Is your IT department ready to tie the community together?
* Have you allocated the time and budget required for future upgrades and maintenance?
* Is your IT team trained in community platform integration?
While the community vendor may be available to assist with the integration, your IT department is solely responsible for the entire integration process.
The Community Launch
Organizations will reap the rewards of a successful online community only if they have customers and members who actually use it.
* What methods of communication will you use to promote the launch of the site?
* Have you designed newsletters, blogs, forums and other similar features on your site?
* Are you leveraging promotions to market the launch?
The launch of an online community should be treated no different than the launch of a new product, and creative, non-traditional means of marketing and advertising will undoubtedly attract people to the site.
Goals, Benchmarks and Measurement Standards
Online communities require detailed timelines and expectations.
* Have you prepared an editorial plan, a strategy for growth and a guideline for specific milestone dates?
* What are your goals and objectives?
* What means will you employ to track the success of your online community?
* How will you collect this data?
* Do you have a team in place to monitor and report on measurement expectations?
Communities are highly measurable, and must be measured in order to track its success.
The wiki text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution License agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Source: Community Launch Checklist Submission for Enterprise 2.0 wiki template contest. Submitted by Stephen Rahal IGLOO INC. NOTE: HELIX is a VAR of IGLOO www.helixcommerce.com
Online Communities take a lot of time and energy to be successful. Organizations must understand and prepare for the investment associated, from strategic planning to implementation and execution.
While planning the launch of your online community, we recommend you consider the following:
Roles and Responsibilities
Have you aligned the internal roles and responsibilities required for an online community? In the planning phase, it is imperative that you have full cooperation across all functional teams and groups within your organization.
* Do you have an executive team in place to approve and sign off on strategic initiatives?
* Is your legal team ready and prepared to discuss branding and governance policies?
* Has your IT department allotted sufficient time and staff for the integration and maintenance of the technology?
* Have you built a support team to help customers and community members successfully use the platform?
* Is your marketing ready to lead the way in terms of setting the tone and handling the daily tasks of managing the community?
Be sure you have staffed a social media strategist to lead the overall launch of the community, as well as a community manager or facilitator to support daily developments.
Operating Budget
Have you allocated sufficient funds to successfully build and launch your online community?
* What types of features and services will your site provide to users?
* Are you launching a basic or more advanced site?
* Will your site require design customization?
* Do you have the finances readily available to staff accordingly?
* Do you have the finances readily available to properly market and advertise the community, both at launch and beyond?
Notwithstanding the initial costs of partnering with a community vendor, organizations must take into consideration the costs associated with launching the community, hiring staff and other ongoing expenses. While the costs involved with selecting a vendor will vary, depending on the features and services provided, organizations should expect to allocate approximately $50,000 to $100,000 annually for a basic online community.
Community Research
Building a community that already exists is not generally recommended.
* Have you determined whether your community already exists?
* Is it beneficial to create a new online community or simply engage customers where they already are?
* Have you researched the community offerings of your direct competitors?
* Do your competitors’ communities have a high activity level?
* Is there a demand for a new online community?
By closely monitoring the competition, organizations can determine what is working and what isn’t, and how best to approach plans for an online community.
Policies and Training
A Governance Plan is an important component of the community as it provides the foundation for dealing with unpredictable situations.
* Do you have a dedicated community manager and/or facilitator and a social media strategist to prepare the governance procedures?
* Do you have a rapid response process and guidelines in place to deal with any negative incidents from the community?
* Have you trained the appropriate individuals so these guidelines can be properly enforced?
The more formalized the process, the more successful your community will be.
Technology Integration
Community platforms require development, design and integration with a company’s existing channels.
* Is your IT department ready to tie the community together?
* Have you allocated the time and budget required for future upgrades and maintenance?
* Is your IT team trained in community platform integration?
While the community vendor may be available to assist with the integration, your IT department is solely responsible for the entire integration process.
The Community Launch
Organizations will reap the rewards of a successful online community only if they have customers and members who actually use it.
* What methods of communication will you use to promote the launch of the site?
* Have you designed newsletters, blogs, forums and other similar features on your site?
* Are you leveraging promotions to market the launch?
The launch of an online community should be treated no different than the launch of a new product, and creative, non-traditional means of marketing and advertising will undoubtedly attract people to the site.
Goals, Benchmarks and Measurement Standards
Online communities require detailed timelines and expectations.
* Have you prepared an editorial plan, a strategy for growth and a guideline for specific milestone dates?
* What are your goals and objectives?
* What means will you employ to track the success of your online community?
* How will you collect this data?
* Do you have a team in place to monitor and report on measurement expectations?
Communities are highly measurable, and must be measured in order to track its success.
The wiki text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution License agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Source: Community Launch Checklist Submission for Enterprise 2.0 wiki template contest. Submitted by Stephen Rahal IGLOO INC. NOTE: HELIX is a VAR of IGLOO www.helixcommerce.com
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Virtual Worlds and Innovation(s).
We have spent the last two years researching, and developing virtual world experiences in numerous experiments internally and with clients - all with the goal to understand how Generation Virtuals will change and impact the future consumer/customer landscape.
Some of the interesting findings that we have determined are:
1.) Generation Virtuals (children ages 3-14) socialized on Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, or WebKinz look at virtual worlds as an extension to their real worlds.
2.) Generation Virtuals will continue to have multiple personas intergrated into both their virtual experiences and real life experiences.
3.) Generation Virtuals love the multi-media, colorful and rich 3D interactive experiences and find 2D experiences on the web boring and lacking "fun factors."
4.) Generation Virtuals will choose customer experiences that leverage 3D "fun" experiences into traditional purchasing experiences.
The Entertainment Economy is rapidly evolving as Virtual Worlds continue to integrate with real world and digital intelligence content and distribution models(mobile, web, etc).
From our research, the Asian communities are rapidly leading in this evolution and for Innovation to occur more rapidly in Canada - Canadians must rapidly understand entertainment, artistic design, and social media experiences integrated into traditional processes. Governments are stimulating national policy to promote V worlds for eLearning and new solution delivery models, in particular in Singapore.
What we have seen in the Canadian environment is a very weak receptivity to Virtual Worlds in leveraging how these solutions can add value to the enterprise for eLearning, recruiting, employee on-boarding experiences, product development and many other solutions.
There are some bright lights slowly starting to emerge as companies like Rogers experiment with Virtual worlds to train their distributors in Second Life, the ten pound gorilla. Other companies like IBM are the most prolific in this space in Canada globally with over 33 islands. They are also leading the global virtual standards movements so objects developed in diverse virtual world environments can easily be transported from one VW platform to another to achieve increased ubequity.
The Ontario Government have also been successfully experimenting for recruiting new employees using second life learning experiences, however their continued marketing of their investments and community building efforts are not up to par to drive traffic to their websites and create sustainable community participation.
Helix is very committed to helping our clients develop successful business models that tap future capabilities. Virtual Worlds is one key enabling solution that as Canadians striving for increased innovation capacity need to learn 4 key things:
1.) What are these solutions?
2.) How can they be applied to the enterprise?
3.) What are the best practices,and lessons learned?
4.) How do I successfully get started?
We have recently issued our NEW Virtual World Research Report and it is available for purchase now at our new publishing center.
We also have developed a conference center that our clients can experiment in to learn how to use these solutions in a low risk learning lab environment, with instructional guides or event planning resources to support learning and growth for leveraging these new solutions.
Helix has also developed a NEW virtual worlds community to help our clients learn more about these capabilities.
We hope you will join us...and together we can learn how these new business models will shift current and future business models.
Call us at(647)477-6254 to learn more or post a blog comment.
Some of the interesting findings that we have determined are:
1.) Generation Virtuals (children ages 3-14) socialized on Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, or WebKinz look at virtual worlds as an extension to their real worlds.
2.) Generation Virtuals will continue to have multiple personas intergrated into both their virtual experiences and real life experiences.
3.) Generation Virtuals love the multi-media, colorful and rich 3D interactive experiences and find 2D experiences on the web boring and lacking "fun factors."
4.) Generation Virtuals will choose customer experiences that leverage 3D "fun" experiences into traditional purchasing experiences.
The Entertainment Economy is rapidly evolving as Virtual Worlds continue to integrate with real world and digital intelligence content and distribution models(mobile, web, etc).
From our research, the Asian communities are rapidly leading in this evolution and for Innovation to occur more rapidly in Canada - Canadians must rapidly understand entertainment, artistic design, and social media experiences integrated into traditional processes. Governments are stimulating national policy to promote V worlds for eLearning and new solution delivery models, in particular in Singapore.
What we have seen in the Canadian environment is a very weak receptivity to Virtual Worlds in leveraging how these solutions can add value to the enterprise for eLearning, recruiting, employee on-boarding experiences, product development and many other solutions.
There are some bright lights slowly starting to emerge as companies like Rogers experiment with Virtual worlds to train their distributors in Second Life, the ten pound gorilla. Other companies like IBM are the most prolific in this space in Canada globally with over 33 islands. They are also leading the global virtual standards movements so objects developed in diverse virtual world environments can easily be transported from one VW platform to another to achieve increased ubequity.
The Ontario Government have also been successfully experimenting for recruiting new employees using second life learning experiences, however their continued marketing of their investments and community building efforts are not up to par to drive traffic to their websites and create sustainable community participation.
Helix is very committed to helping our clients develop successful business models that tap future capabilities. Virtual Worlds is one key enabling solution that as Canadians striving for increased innovation capacity need to learn 4 key things:
1.) What are these solutions?
2.) How can they be applied to the enterprise?
3.) What are the best practices,and lessons learned?
4.) How do I successfully get started?
We have recently issued our NEW Virtual World Research Report and it is available for purchase now at our new publishing center.
We also have developed a conference center that our clients can experiment in to learn how to use these solutions in a low risk learning lab environment, with instructional guides or event planning resources to support learning and growth for leveraging these new solutions.
Helix has also developed a NEW virtual worlds community to help our clients learn more about these capabilities.
We hope you will join us...and together we can learn how these new business models will shift current and future business models.
Call us at(647)477-6254 to learn more or post a blog comment.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Supporting Women in Canada spurs Growth and Economic Success
By involving women in national economic policy, Canada is forging a model for empowering women and building the strength of domestic and global marketplaces.
Women are stepping forward as never before. They are becoming leaders, financial managers, business strategists, risk-takers and entrepreneurs. Canadian business and government are embracing this involvement, with an understanding that women and women-led businesses are an increasingly potent global economic force.
Canada is a world leader in the area of women’s entrepreneurship. A recent study showed that Canadian women are among the most entrepreneurial of all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
Over the past two decades, Canada has witnessed an increase in women’s entrepreneurship of over 200%. Since 1997, women in Canada have started small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at about twice the rate of men. Industry Canada reports that in 2004, 47% of all Canadian SMEs were owned to some degree by women.
A recent Royal Bank of Canada study showed that if women experienced the same opportunities and labour market circumstances as men, personal incomes would be $168 billion higher, an additional 1.6 million women would be employed in Canada and the gross domestic product would increase by 21%. Numbers like these should make government leaders, economists and business people sit up and listen. But do they?
Another recent study, Gender Challenges for Women in the Canadian Advanced Technology Sector, showed that dramatically fewer women than men break into senior corporate management. The study, published by the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management in association with the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance’s Women in Technology Forum, examined gender differences in enterprise creation, management practices and business performance.
Address work–life balance
The study shows that work–life balance is one of the main challenges to women’s success in the advanced technology sector, for both employees and entrepreneurs.
In fact, 60% of businesswomen surveyed cited work–life balance among their top three challenges, along with inadequate leadership skills and a shortage of women mentors. While more women are becoming owners of SMEs, women-owned firms are generally smaller, newer, more concentrated in service industries and, on average, less profitable than SMEs owned by men.
Canadian women exporters generate almost 40% of their sales in foreign markets. Women-owned firms do business with Canada’s most important trading partners: the United States, Asia and Europe.
Not surprisingly, the United States is the dominant market, where 74% of Canadian exporters are making sales. Following close behind, 60% of exporters report activity in Asia and 58% sell in Europe. While the number of women exporters continues to grow, more than half (57%) of women exporters in Canada indicate that they encounter gender-specific export challenges. The two most commonly cited examples are cultural differences and not being taken seriously as business owners.
Creating conditions for women’s success
Since its creation in 1976 to “coordinate policy with respect to the status of women and administer related programmes”, Status of Women Canada (SWC) has worked alongside its governmental, non-governmental and private sector partners to influence policies and major initiatives that have significantly benefited women and girls in Canada.
At the helm is newly appointed Minister of State (Status of Women), Helena Guergis. With a proven interest in women’s issues, and as a former small business owner herself, Guergis becomes the minister responsible for this small but vibrant organization as it emerges from a period of dramatic change and redevelopment.
Recognizing that a considerable gender gap remained in many aspects of Canadian life, SWC began modernizing and streamlining to make itself more accountable to the Canadian public, to be more responsive to changing needs of Canadian women and men and specifically to address barriers to women’s full participation in all aspects of Canadian life. SWC’s strategic direction is now three-pronged: to improve women’s economic security and prosperity; to enhance women’s personal safety and security; and to encourage women’s participation in leadership and decision-making roles.
SWC promotes women’s ownership in the workforce, encourages their participation in non-traditional careers and helps to ensure equal access to employment and parental benefits. This means supporting women’s entrepreneurship effectively and in very concrete ways, domestically as well as globally. In this respect, SWC collaborates with its partners to assist women in improving their financial and economic literacy, developing business and leadership skills, gaining access to mentors and achieving success in the economy and in society.
SWC enhances women’s personal safety and security by influencing government policies and programmes, and funding commercial and non-profit organizations to carry out projects that meet the needs of girls and women, particularly in the areas of violence, economic prosperity and leadership development. Notable among SWC’s partners is the Native Women’s Association of Canada and its bold, grass-roots Sisters in Spirit initiative, which confronts violence against aboriginal women head on.
SWC encourages women’s participation in leadership and decision-making roles by intensifying partnerships with governments, the private sector and the broader Canadian public to ensure women are fully represented at corporate and government decision-making tables. An active proponent of leadership training for women, SWC promotes opportunities for girls and women to acquire the skills they need to wield influence in the corridors of power and the global marketplace.
There are new partnerships with key government departments, particularly those with a clear role in the day-to-day lives of Canadian girls and women. Not surprisingly, some of SWC’s strongest working relationships are with federal economic and social affairs agencies.
One of the most fruitful and mutually beneficial relationships is with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). In January 2008, DFAIT sponsored a Canadian businesswomen’s trade mission to Jamaica and Barbados. Guergis, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, led the very successful mission.
Partners in women’s prosperity
In Canada, one challenge for SMEs is to sort through the many resources and programmes available for those who meet particular needs. This can be daunting for non-traditional women entrepreneurs.
Ten years ago, in response to global marketing trends, changing demographics, growing interest among women in flexible self-employment and rapid advances in technology, the Government of Canada created export promotion programmes to educate women about international trade opportunities and give them a leg up in international markets.
Since then, DFAIT has sponsored a series of all-women trade missions to a number of cities in the United States (Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago), as well as to Australia, the United Kingdom and, as noted previously, Jamaica and Barbados. The missions have given participants a chance to familiarize themselves with local markets, experience different business cultures, network with business contacts and develop their international business know-how.
By the time Ms Guergis led the women’s trade mission to Jamaica and Barbados in January 2008, she had a long list of political achievements, both as a member of Cabinet and, before that, as an opposition party critic on world issues and international trade. After serving as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade from January 2006 to January 2007, she was promoted to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Trade (with additional responsibilities for amateur sport). One of her priority files was women in trade.
In June 2008, as part of the Government of Canada’s efforts to heighten awareness of supplier diversification, she led another businesswomen’s trade mission, this time with a group of women from eastern Canada active in the food industry, to Philadelphia and New York.
Among its various efforts to create the conditions for women’s prosperity, SWC is currently working with partners to explore the potential for women business owners to be certified by WEConnect Canada (see related article, page 28), a newly formed women’s business enterprise. (A women’s business enterprise is a company that is at least 51% owned, managed and controlled by one or more women. The concept was developed by the US Women’s Business Enterprise National Council.) Supplier diversity enhances trading opportunities for under-represented groups including women, minorities and aboriginal people. For Canadian businesswomen seeking to expand, certification would open the door to supply chains in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Women and global entrepreneurship – trading in equality
Many examples exist of initiatives to expand the ranks of businesswomen, women managers and women entrepreneurs throughout the developed and developing worlds.
For example, in March 2008, Goldman Sachs announced it will invest $100 million over five years in a global initiative it calls “10,000 Women”. The project will form partnerships between universities in the United States and Europe and business schools in countries with struggling economies, such as Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania, to provide 10,000 women with high-quality business and management training. Goldman Sachs is currently developing similar partnerships in the United States to serve disadvantaged women within its own borders.
Meanwhile, voices of organizations like The International Alliance for Women (TIAW) are increasingly difficult to ignore. With more than 50,000 members worldwide, TIAW “unites, supports and promotes professional women and their networks to work together, share resources and leverage ideas” to foster economic empowerment for women. The winner of this year’s TIAW World of Difference Lifetime Achievement Award is Haifa Al Kaylani, the founder of the Arab International Women’s Forum. “This award recognizes each year the extraordinary achievements of one powerful woman and affirms the power within every individual to make all the difference in the world in the betterment of women,” says Al Kaylani.
Women entrepreneurs and the future
By creating the conditions for women’s prosperity, both domestically and internationally, SWC and its partners are helping to ensure continued prosperity for the whole nation. The more opportunities we provide and the easier we make it for women to start businesses, maintain them and expand into global markets, the stronger we make our economy.
In these uncertain times – indeed in what some are calling a global economic crisis – the growing ranks of well-trained and highly motivated Canadian women entrepreneurs are poised to affect – significantly and positively – the outcome.
The will is there. Our work lies now in positioning women front and centre in the global marketplace.
Clare Beckton is a lawyer, author, academic and career civil servant. Since joining the Human Rights Section of Canada’s Department of Justice in 1984, Ms Beckton’s career with the Government of Canada has been on a sharp incline. She took time out in 2005 to complete an MPA (Master of Public Administration) with a focus on leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government as a Fulbright Scholar, and has now been appointed to the Kennedy School’s Women’s Leadership Board.
In 2008 she received the Woman of the Year Award from the Federated Press for “exceptional achievement and outstanding leadership by a Canadian woman”, and she was also recently named one of Canada’s “Top 100 Women” by the Women’s Executive Network.
As coordinator and deputy head of Status of Women Canada, Ms Beckton brings her skills and experience to a wide range of domestic and international forums, such as the Women Leaders Network, a pivotal body that advises Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders on gender issues and ensures women are considered in the development of regional economic and trade policies and perspectives.
The next blog entry will discuss how to attract more women into the workforce in the IT sector in Canada, and what initiatives are underway to help strengthen the Canadian landscape.
Sources: Clare Beckton, Coordinator and Deputy Head, Status of Women Canada
Women are stepping forward as never before. They are becoming leaders, financial managers, business strategists, risk-takers and entrepreneurs. Canadian business and government are embracing this involvement, with an understanding that women and women-led businesses are an increasingly potent global economic force.
Canada is a world leader in the area of women’s entrepreneurship. A recent study showed that Canadian women are among the most entrepreneurial of all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
Over the past two decades, Canada has witnessed an increase in women’s entrepreneurship of over 200%. Since 1997, women in Canada have started small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at about twice the rate of men. Industry Canada reports that in 2004, 47% of all Canadian SMEs were owned to some degree by women.
A recent Royal Bank of Canada study showed that if women experienced the same opportunities and labour market circumstances as men, personal incomes would be $168 billion higher, an additional 1.6 million women would be employed in Canada and the gross domestic product would increase by 21%. Numbers like these should make government leaders, economists and business people sit up and listen. But do they?
Another recent study, Gender Challenges for Women in the Canadian Advanced Technology Sector, showed that dramatically fewer women than men break into senior corporate management. The study, published by the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management in association with the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance’s Women in Technology Forum, examined gender differences in enterprise creation, management practices and business performance.
Address work–life balance
The study shows that work–life balance is one of the main challenges to women’s success in the advanced technology sector, for both employees and entrepreneurs.
In fact, 60% of businesswomen surveyed cited work–life balance among their top three challenges, along with inadequate leadership skills and a shortage of women mentors. While more women are becoming owners of SMEs, women-owned firms are generally smaller, newer, more concentrated in service industries and, on average, less profitable than SMEs owned by men.
Canadian women exporters generate almost 40% of their sales in foreign markets. Women-owned firms do business with Canada’s most important trading partners: the United States, Asia and Europe.
Not surprisingly, the United States is the dominant market, where 74% of Canadian exporters are making sales. Following close behind, 60% of exporters report activity in Asia and 58% sell in Europe. While the number of women exporters continues to grow, more than half (57%) of women exporters in Canada indicate that they encounter gender-specific export challenges. The two most commonly cited examples are cultural differences and not being taken seriously as business owners.
Creating conditions for women’s success
Since its creation in 1976 to “coordinate policy with respect to the status of women and administer related programmes”, Status of Women Canada (SWC) has worked alongside its governmental, non-governmental and private sector partners to influence policies and major initiatives that have significantly benefited women and girls in Canada.
At the helm is newly appointed Minister of State (Status of Women), Helena Guergis. With a proven interest in women’s issues, and as a former small business owner herself, Guergis becomes the minister responsible for this small but vibrant organization as it emerges from a period of dramatic change and redevelopment.
Recognizing that a considerable gender gap remained in many aspects of Canadian life, SWC began modernizing and streamlining to make itself more accountable to the Canadian public, to be more responsive to changing needs of Canadian women and men and specifically to address barriers to women’s full participation in all aspects of Canadian life. SWC’s strategic direction is now three-pronged: to improve women’s economic security and prosperity; to enhance women’s personal safety and security; and to encourage women’s participation in leadership and decision-making roles.
SWC promotes women’s ownership in the workforce, encourages their participation in non-traditional careers and helps to ensure equal access to employment and parental benefits. This means supporting women’s entrepreneurship effectively and in very concrete ways, domestically as well as globally. In this respect, SWC collaborates with its partners to assist women in improving their financial and economic literacy, developing business and leadership skills, gaining access to mentors and achieving success in the economy and in society.
SWC enhances women’s personal safety and security by influencing government policies and programmes, and funding commercial and non-profit organizations to carry out projects that meet the needs of girls and women, particularly in the areas of violence, economic prosperity and leadership development. Notable among SWC’s partners is the Native Women’s Association of Canada and its bold, grass-roots Sisters in Spirit initiative, which confronts violence against aboriginal women head on.
SWC encourages women’s participation in leadership and decision-making roles by intensifying partnerships with governments, the private sector and the broader Canadian public to ensure women are fully represented at corporate and government decision-making tables. An active proponent of leadership training for women, SWC promotes opportunities for girls and women to acquire the skills they need to wield influence in the corridors of power and the global marketplace.
There are new partnerships with key government departments, particularly those with a clear role in the day-to-day lives of Canadian girls and women. Not surprisingly, some of SWC’s strongest working relationships are with federal economic and social affairs agencies.
One of the most fruitful and mutually beneficial relationships is with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). In January 2008, DFAIT sponsored a Canadian businesswomen’s trade mission to Jamaica and Barbados. Guergis, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, led the very successful mission.
Partners in women’s prosperity
In Canada, one challenge for SMEs is to sort through the many resources and programmes available for those who meet particular needs. This can be daunting for non-traditional women entrepreneurs.
Ten years ago, in response to global marketing trends, changing demographics, growing interest among women in flexible self-employment and rapid advances in technology, the Government of Canada created export promotion programmes to educate women about international trade opportunities and give them a leg up in international markets.
Since then, DFAIT has sponsored a series of all-women trade missions to a number of cities in the United States (Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago), as well as to Australia, the United Kingdom and, as noted previously, Jamaica and Barbados. The missions have given participants a chance to familiarize themselves with local markets, experience different business cultures, network with business contacts and develop their international business know-how.
By the time Ms Guergis led the women’s trade mission to Jamaica and Barbados in January 2008, she had a long list of political achievements, both as a member of Cabinet and, before that, as an opposition party critic on world issues and international trade. After serving as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade from January 2006 to January 2007, she was promoted to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Trade (with additional responsibilities for amateur sport). One of her priority files was women in trade.
In June 2008, as part of the Government of Canada’s efforts to heighten awareness of supplier diversification, she led another businesswomen’s trade mission, this time with a group of women from eastern Canada active in the food industry, to Philadelphia and New York.
Among its various efforts to create the conditions for women’s prosperity, SWC is currently working with partners to explore the potential for women business owners to be certified by WEConnect Canada (see related article, page 28), a newly formed women’s business enterprise. (A women’s business enterprise is a company that is at least 51% owned, managed and controlled by one or more women. The concept was developed by the US Women’s Business Enterprise National Council.) Supplier diversity enhances trading opportunities for under-represented groups including women, minorities and aboriginal people. For Canadian businesswomen seeking to expand, certification would open the door to supply chains in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Women and global entrepreneurship – trading in equality
Many examples exist of initiatives to expand the ranks of businesswomen, women managers and women entrepreneurs throughout the developed and developing worlds.
For example, in March 2008, Goldman Sachs announced it will invest $100 million over five years in a global initiative it calls “10,000 Women”. The project will form partnerships between universities in the United States and Europe and business schools in countries with struggling economies, such as Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania, to provide 10,000 women with high-quality business and management training. Goldman Sachs is currently developing similar partnerships in the United States to serve disadvantaged women within its own borders.
Meanwhile, voices of organizations like The International Alliance for Women (TIAW) are increasingly difficult to ignore. With more than 50,000 members worldwide, TIAW “unites, supports and promotes professional women and their networks to work together, share resources and leverage ideas” to foster economic empowerment for women. The winner of this year’s TIAW World of Difference Lifetime Achievement Award is Haifa Al Kaylani, the founder of the Arab International Women’s Forum. “This award recognizes each year the extraordinary achievements of one powerful woman and affirms the power within every individual to make all the difference in the world in the betterment of women,” says Al Kaylani.
Women entrepreneurs and the future
By creating the conditions for women’s prosperity, both domestically and internationally, SWC and its partners are helping to ensure continued prosperity for the whole nation. The more opportunities we provide and the easier we make it for women to start businesses, maintain them and expand into global markets, the stronger we make our economy.
In these uncertain times – indeed in what some are calling a global economic crisis – the growing ranks of well-trained and highly motivated Canadian women entrepreneurs are poised to affect – significantly and positively – the outcome.
The will is there. Our work lies now in positioning women front and centre in the global marketplace.
Clare Beckton is a lawyer, author, academic and career civil servant. Since joining the Human Rights Section of Canada’s Department of Justice in 1984, Ms Beckton’s career with the Government of Canada has been on a sharp incline. She took time out in 2005 to complete an MPA (Master of Public Administration) with a focus on leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government as a Fulbright Scholar, and has now been appointed to the Kennedy School’s Women’s Leadership Board.
In 2008 she received the Woman of the Year Award from the Federated Press for “exceptional achievement and outstanding leadership by a Canadian woman”, and she was also recently named one of Canada’s “Top 100 Women” by the Women’s Executive Network.
As coordinator and deputy head of Status of Women Canada, Ms Beckton brings her skills and experience to a wide range of domestic and international forums, such as the Women Leaders Network, a pivotal body that advises Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders on gender issues and ensures women are considered in the development of regional economic and trade policies and perspectives.
The next blog entry will discuss how to attract more women into the workforce in the IT sector in Canada, and what initiatives are underway to help strengthen the Canadian landscape.
Sources: Clare Beckton, Coordinator and Deputy Head, Status of Women Canada
Friday, June 20, 2008
Innovation Best Practices - 3M Case Study
Introduction
We have been working with a number of global organizations on innovation practices for New Product Introduction (NPI) and have found in companies like: SAP, Microsoft, Bell Canada, Siemens etc, - that operationalizing innovation from its early creative stages is a stocatto like tango. Balancing creative tension to ensure innovation downstream execution traction requires tremendous leadership navigation and skill.
It is so difficult for multi-nationals to avoid putting pressure too early on the creative design phases in their short-term hunger for ROI results that more often than not new innovation ideas at the conceptual or ideation stages are squashed or so heavily restricted that the creative and expansive energy is so diluted that results are impossible to achieve.
What we do know is the front end creative process at the ideation phase is a thorn in many organization's side as they strive to improve front end effectiveness to ensure ideation to execution is achieved. This requires more leaders to develop skills and competencies in leading innovation effectively to achieve sustainable growth in their organizations.
Less than 25% of organizations in North America are confident on their organization's ability to innovate or have a cleared defined new product or service innovation capability that is robust and adds business value.
Services or NPI Innovation Questions we hear consistently in our client experiences include:
1.) How does my organization innovate more effectively?
2.) How does my organization filter and track what we fund?
3.) How do we avoid filtering ideas out too early or lose track of them?
4.) How much discipline do we ned to drive innovation forward?
5.) How we evaluate more effectively early stage service innovation concepts?
6.) How do we get our leaders more comfortable in dealing with ambiguity, uncertainty, the messiness of creativity?
7.) What decision making practices are role model?
8.) What business processes and systems should we use for tracking service or NPI innovation?
There are many companies that are executing robust innovation programs, practices, and processes. We will target to feature a case study of a new company every week that helps to answer these eight questions to share our knowledge and help move along our capacity to innovate more effectively.
Case Study - 3M
3M is a $16B technology company with reach into health care, electronics, industrial, safety, consumer and office products. Most famously remembered for its' innovation solutiono - post it notes. 3M has more than 40 business units world-wide and offices in more than 60 countries. In 2002, the company celebrated a century of innovation since its founding.
Innovation a Foundational Core Value of 3M
For companies to innovate more effectively, cultural capabilities are critical with leadership effectiveness to engender confidence in employee minds and hearts. Employees need to know they can take risks to be creative, experiment, think outside the box, and be rewarded for demonstrating innovation thinking. They need to believe they are encouraged to be life-long learners, and enabled to continually learn and improve work products or services.
As the retired chairman of 3Com said: "Innovation is the key to our growth as it delights our customers and it's the basis for long lasting customer loyalty."
3M Innovation Best Practices
The five best practices that 3M prides itself in are:
1.) Six Sigma
2.) 3M Acceleration
3.) eProductivity
4.) Sourcing Effectiveness
5.) Indirect Cost Control
What is important to understand about 3M is their KM and Innovation program office which supports the companies 5 business units puts a tremendous amount of focus on culture and guiding principles.
The pillars of 3M's innovation platform are:
1.) Shared World-class Technology
2.) Shared Customers, Channels and Brands
3.) Shared Manufacturing
4.) Shared Global Infrastructure, and
5.) Shared Cultural Innovation Values, Practices, Processes and Toolkits
A best practice for cultural innovation is to use stories for rapid cultural diffusion to celebrate heroes of innovation who passionately and consistently pursue new ideas or find new context to discover new meaning and rapidly share their knowledge creating social energy networks to co-create collaboratively.
They have a freedom rule for inspiring creative imperatives as any person in a lab can spend 15% of his or her time experimenting on any new idea that could add value to 3M. This creative jazz time is not tracked; it is a freedom role to reflect, think, and learn to encourage ideation in its earliest stages of creativity - unencumbered by reporting practices.
3M's success has been predicated on its ability to foster collaboration in both formal and information approaches, and their cultural norms are very mature in supporting knowledge sharing - a core requirement to foster and seed innovation capacity development.
Technology Enablers
The company has a number of technology enablers to support innovation. They use:
- streaming videos to collect learnings and make them available for global access,
- comprehensive lotus notes databases for collaboration and knowledge access, and
- an Idea hopper which captures and helps filter ideas to move from concept to funding phases of implementation, etc.
The library and information services group has as its core mission to help 3M employees worldwide create, share and use knowledge more effectively throughout the organization, so there are strong Electronic Library solutions, virtual help desks to source know-how, etc.
Strengthening People Innovation
3M uses a number of talent management techniques to support innovation such as:
-staff rotational assignments to develop new skills to strengthen innovation talent capabilities,
- reward and recogntion programs for people to share ideas and receive peer recognition,
- connecting its scientists with its customers,
- training talent on problem solving approaches such as 6Sigma, and also
- promoting story telling as a leadership competency to help on cultural diffusion to celebrate innovation successes, and celebrate talent moments of creativity.
The company also leverages communities of practice and learning techniques to support the continual flow of internal knowledge.
What opportunties must 3M pursue for new innovation robustness?
Based on our analysis of 3M's financial reports,innovation patents,and research,3M is like many global companies not as externally integrated with its customers to leverage next generation collaboration and organization of the future practices which are highly web 2.0 and social mediated driven.
There are major opportunities to bring in solutions for social network analysis, collaboration experiences leveraging new collaboration platforms, like Mzinga, providing product managers with collaboration labs with customers using blogs, and wikis, etc....
With the speed of knowledge diffusion and know-how outdated often in less than 12 months -- applying more real-time and on demand ways of developing and sustaining innovation will be critical to 3M's future growth.
What 3M does have to constituate world-class leadership attributes:
- charts the course - or sets the vision
- raises the bar - creates tension to achieve performance excellence
- energizes others - creates passion to motivate others to create and follow
- resourcefully innovates - values creativity but also balances accountability to execute
- lives the 3M values (which go back 100 years and hold true today - satisfy customers with superior quality, value and services, provide investors an attractive return through sustained quality and growth, respect the social and physical environment, and be a company that employees are product to be part of
- and delivers results.
These attributes combined with business accumen, functional expertise and corporate knowledge supports 3M's overall leadership model.
Conclusion
Innovation is a core competency at 3M and is at the heart of the company's culture.
They appreciate the fragility of innovation in its weakest creative design moments, but also reinforces shareholder value which needs to be top of mind to ensure accountability in the culture.
At the same time, 3M allows freedom for ideation 100% unemcumbered from stiffling and controlling business processes which is a rarity in business today.
This Helix Commerce believes is an operating practice which differentiates 3M from the pack and in our collaboration world - enables butterfly wings to beat beautifully without constraints - creating a potential to change the winds forever in the services innovation war that is rapidly unfolding.
We have been working with a number of global organizations on innovation practices for New Product Introduction (NPI) and have found in companies like: SAP, Microsoft, Bell Canada, Siemens etc, - that operationalizing innovation from its early creative stages is a stocatto like tango. Balancing creative tension to ensure innovation downstream execution traction requires tremendous leadership navigation and skill.
It is so difficult for multi-nationals to avoid putting pressure too early on the creative design phases in their short-term hunger for ROI results that more often than not new innovation ideas at the conceptual or ideation stages are squashed or so heavily restricted that the creative and expansive energy is so diluted that results are impossible to achieve.
What we do know is the front end creative process at the ideation phase is a thorn in many organization's side as they strive to improve front end effectiveness to ensure ideation to execution is achieved. This requires more leaders to develop skills and competencies in leading innovation effectively to achieve sustainable growth in their organizations.
Less than 25% of organizations in North America are confident on their organization's ability to innovate or have a cleared defined new product or service innovation capability that is robust and adds business value.
Services or NPI Innovation Questions we hear consistently in our client experiences include:
1.) How does my organization innovate more effectively?
2.) How does my organization filter and track what we fund?
3.) How do we avoid filtering ideas out too early or lose track of them?
4.) How much discipline do we ned to drive innovation forward?
5.) How we evaluate more effectively early stage service innovation concepts?
6.) How do we get our leaders more comfortable in dealing with ambiguity, uncertainty, the messiness of creativity?
7.) What decision making practices are role model?
8.) What business processes and systems should we use for tracking service or NPI innovation?
There are many companies that are executing robust innovation programs, practices, and processes. We will target to feature a case study of a new company every week that helps to answer these eight questions to share our knowledge and help move along our capacity to innovate more effectively.
Case Study - 3M
3M is a $16B technology company with reach into health care, electronics, industrial, safety, consumer and office products. Most famously remembered for its' innovation solutiono - post it notes. 3M has more than 40 business units world-wide and offices in more than 60 countries. In 2002, the company celebrated a century of innovation since its founding.
Innovation a Foundational Core Value of 3M
For companies to innovate more effectively, cultural capabilities are critical with leadership effectiveness to engender confidence in employee minds and hearts. Employees need to know they can take risks to be creative, experiment, think outside the box, and be rewarded for demonstrating innovation thinking. They need to believe they are encouraged to be life-long learners, and enabled to continually learn and improve work products or services.
As the retired chairman of 3Com said: "Innovation is the key to our growth as it delights our customers and it's the basis for long lasting customer loyalty."
3M Innovation Best Practices
The five best practices that 3M prides itself in are:
1.) Six Sigma
2.) 3M Acceleration
3.) eProductivity
4.) Sourcing Effectiveness
5.) Indirect Cost Control
What is important to understand about 3M is their KM and Innovation program office which supports the companies 5 business units puts a tremendous amount of focus on culture and guiding principles.
The pillars of 3M's innovation platform are:
1.) Shared World-class Technology
2.) Shared Customers, Channels and Brands
3.) Shared Manufacturing
4.) Shared Global Infrastructure, and
5.) Shared Cultural Innovation Values, Practices, Processes and Toolkits
A best practice for cultural innovation is to use stories for rapid cultural diffusion to celebrate heroes of innovation who passionately and consistently pursue new ideas or find new context to discover new meaning and rapidly share their knowledge creating social energy networks to co-create collaboratively.
They have a freedom rule for inspiring creative imperatives as any person in a lab can spend 15% of his or her time experimenting on any new idea that could add value to 3M. This creative jazz time is not tracked; it is a freedom role to reflect, think, and learn to encourage ideation in its earliest stages of creativity - unencumbered by reporting practices.
3M's success has been predicated on its ability to foster collaboration in both formal and information approaches, and their cultural norms are very mature in supporting knowledge sharing - a core requirement to foster and seed innovation capacity development.
Technology Enablers
The company has a number of technology enablers to support innovation. They use:
- streaming videos to collect learnings and make them available for global access,
- comprehensive lotus notes databases for collaboration and knowledge access, and
- an Idea hopper which captures and helps filter ideas to move from concept to funding phases of implementation, etc.
The library and information services group has as its core mission to help 3M employees worldwide create, share and use knowledge more effectively throughout the organization, so there are strong Electronic Library solutions, virtual help desks to source know-how, etc.
Strengthening People Innovation
3M uses a number of talent management techniques to support innovation such as:
-staff rotational assignments to develop new skills to strengthen innovation talent capabilities,
- reward and recogntion programs for people to share ideas and receive peer recognition,
- connecting its scientists with its customers,
- training talent on problem solving approaches such as 6Sigma, and also
- promoting story telling as a leadership competency to help on cultural diffusion to celebrate innovation successes, and celebrate talent moments of creativity.
The company also leverages communities of practice and learning techniques to support the continual flow of internal knowledge.
What opportunties must 3M pursue for new innovation robustness?
Based on our analysis of 3M's financial reports,innovation patents,and research,3M is like many global companies not as externally integrated with its customers to leverage next generation collaboration and organization of the future practices which are highly web 2.0 and social mediated driven.
There are major opportunities to bring in solutions for social network analysis, collaboration experiences leveraging new collaboration platforms, like Mzinga, providing product managers with collaboration labs with customers using blogs, and wikis, etc....
With the speed of knowledge diffusion and know-how outdated often in less than 12 months -- applying more real-time and on demand ways of developing and sustaining innovation will be critical to 3M's future growth.
What 3M does have to constituate world-class leadership attributes:
- charts the course - or sets the vision
- raises the bar - creates tension to achieve performance excellence
- energizes others - creates passion to motivate others to create and follow
- resourcefully innovates - values creativity but also balances accountability to execute
- lives the 3M values (which go back 100 years and hold true today - satisfy customers with superior quality, value and services, provide investors an attractive return through sustained quality and growth, respect the social and physical environment, and be a company that employees are product to be part of
- and delivers results.
These attributes combined with business accumen, functional expertise and corporate knowledge supports 3M's overall leadership model.
Conclusion
Innovation is a core competency at 3M and is at the heart of the company's culture.
They appreciate the fragility of innovation in its weakest creative design moments, but also reinforces shareholder value which needs to be top of mind to ensure accountability in the culture.
At the same time, 3M allows freedom for ideation 100% unemcumbered from stiffling and controlling business processes which is a rarity in business today.
This Helix Commerce believes is an operating practice which differentiates 3M from the pack and in our collaboration world - enables butterfly wings to beat beautifully without constraints - creating a potential to change the winds forever in the services innovation war that is rapidly unfolding.
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