As seen on a plaque at Scienceworks in the House Secrets exhibit.

James Dewar invented the vacuum flask in 1892 to keep laboratory gases cold. Twelve years later, Reinhold Burger manufactured the Thermos to keep our picnic drinks hot.

A nice demonstration of the third of Peter Drucker’s seven sources of innovation.

Innovation based on process need.

Or, put another way, James Dewar scratched an itch; though he did play Edison to Reinhold Burger’s Sameul Insull.

Posted via web from PEG @ Posterous

• Obliquity & John Kay.
• John Boyd & OODA.
• My arguments on
  • why innovation should not be the race for the new-new thing,
  • snowmobiles, and
  • the need to have a clear focus on the problems you want to solve.
• Peter Drucker and his Seven Sources of Innovation.
• The Sony Walkman story.
• Steve Jobs on why Apple doesn’t do market research.
• Which came first, iPad or iPhone? Turns out, Apple iPad was first.
• The no-stars all-star.
• Seth’s Blog: But what have you shipped?

Leave a comment if I’ve missed anything and I’ll try and find a reference.

As seen on a plaque at Scienceworks in the House Secrets exhibit.

A thrifty tea merchant from New York named Thomas Sullivan is credited with inventing the first tea bag in 1908. Looking to save money, Sullivan reportedly distributed small samples of tea in silk bags instead of little metal tins. It wasn’t until after he saw restaurant and coffee shop owners brewing the entire bag of tea leaves that he realized the potential of his actions.

A nice demonstration of the first, and most valuable, of Peter Drucker’s seven sources of innovation.

The unexpected. The unexpected success, failure or outside event.

Posted via web from PEG @ Posterous

As seen on a plaque at Scienceworks.

The penicillin mold was a pest, not a resource. Backteriologists went to great lengths to protect their bacterial cultures against contamination by it. Then in the 1920s, a London doctor, Alexander Fleming, realized that this “pest” was exactly the bacterial killer bacteriologists had been looking for – and the penicillin mold became a valuable resource.

A nice demonstration of the first, and most valuable, of Peter Drucker‘s seven sources of innovation.

The unexpected. The unexpected success, failure or outside event.

Posted via web from PEG @ Posterous

As always, thoughts and/or comments are greatly appreciated.

This issue:

• Peter Drucker’s Seven Sources of Innovation [Snake Coffee]
  A good example of applying Peter Drucker’s Seven Sources of Innovation to the emergence of Sony’s Walkman.
• Building Snowmobiles and a Fine-tuned Situational Awareness [Law Enforcement & Security Consulting]
  John Boyd saw innovation as essential to winning in a changing environment — be that the battle field of our modern business environment. A skill he termed building snowmobiles.

  “A loser is someone (individual or group) who cannot build snowmobiles when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change; whereas a winner is someone (individual or group) who can build snowmobiles, and employ them in the appropriate fashion, when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change.”

• Operational Excellence – once an enemy, now a friend to innovation? [Innovate on Purpose]
  Operational Excellence is focused on streamlining business processes — reducing variation and waste to try and increase their velocity and reliability. This usually makes it the enemy of innovation. Is it time to turn this attitude on its head?
• IT’s Not about the Technology [Fast Company]
  Gartner researcher Tom Austin on why your head of IT should be a cultural anthropologist and why you should think twice before you block YouTube.