Innovation [2009-06-15]

Another week and another collection of interesting ideas from around the internet.

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

This issue:

  • Powering Ideas [Review of Australia’s Innovation System]
    Australia’s innovation agenda for the 21st century. Well worth the read
  • Who Drives Software Innovation? The “Best-of-Breed vs. Giants” Debate [SmartData Collective]
    Is it the industry giants or the smaller, and more agile, best-of-breed players that drive innovation in our industry?
  • The Future of the Workplace [Monocle]
    In the first edition of Monocle’s Design Dialogues, an intimate series of discussions on key design issues, they throw the spotlight on the future of the workplace.
  • How Twitter will change the way we live [Time]
    Are tools like Twitter changing the dynamics of innovation? Traditionally we have used metrics to measure innovation which capture the inputs to the productization process; numbers like volume of patents generated or size of R&D spend. As Steven Johnson says toward the end of this article, “if you measure global innovation in terms of actual lifestyle-changing hit products and not just grad students, the U.S. has been lapping the field for the past 20 years”. What should we measure (as what’s measure is what gets done) if we want to innovate like Twitter?