Another week and another collection of interesting ideas from around the internet.
As always, thoughts and/or comments are greatly appreciated.
- Warren Buffett’s bet against innovation [BusinessWeek: Innovate]
In proclaiming an “all-in wager on the economic future of the United States, Warren Buffett just paid $44 billion for a 19th century technology platform, a railroad, that carries 20th century goods—coal, agriculture, imports from Asia, petroleum. This is a vision of an America mired in the past and in economic and political decline. And Buffett just might be right. He has a great track record betting against innovation. - Embracing Innovation: a new methodology for feature film production in Australia [Centre for Screen Business]
Do too many Australian films fall into a budgetary ‘no-man’s land’ – not big enough to compete with the US studios, yet too big to stand a chance of commercial viability in a market flooded with independent films? Robert Connolly’s recommendations provide us with valuable grist for the mill as we, in the IT industry, work our way through the current evolutionary phase our industry is going through, driven by the shift from large, on premises applications to a future increasingly dominated by cloud solutions. His approach to the problem is also an excellent model of how to engage with the wholesale transformation of an industry. - 10 examples of minimum viable products [Venture Hacks]
Brilliant products are rarely the result of brilliant ideas. Most products start small, as minimum viable products, and then grow as the customers and developers work together to learn what the product should be. - What do the crowds know about innovation? [Innovate on Purpose]
Companies use different strategies and techniques for crowdsourcing ideas. All of these approaches help gather ideas from the crowd, but they also serve as trend spotting and public relations opportunities as well, and some companies might be more interested in these secondary effects. As Henry Ford pointed out, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”