Posts Tagged ‘Entrepreneurship’
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
In my work on business models I always felt intuitively that there are as many connections to systems thinking as they are between systems and networks, but I never had the opportunity to explore these links further. That is until a project with Philadelphia University offered the opportunity to dig a bit deeper into the matter. The project was in the context of Philadelphia University’s Fellow Program, which exposes the faculty of the College for Design, Engineering and Commerce (DEC) to pairs of Fellows from different disciplines through 1-2 day workshops.
For this particular workshop I teamed up with Prof. Jeremy Bowes of OCAD University, who teaches the graduate course “Understanding Systems” in the Strategic Foresight & Innovation program and who was on sabbatical and ready for that kind of exploration. Over several weeks Jeremy and I worked hard on comparing approaches, vocabulary and concepts until we had a common foundation to actually talk about the workshop’s content itself. From there our exploration began and slowly a common vision of the interplay between systems and business models started to emerge. We presented our understanding of that interplay at the Philadelphia workshop on December 14 and 15, which was well received. Now the exploration continues and there are many more insights to gain.
Philadelphia’s DEC College is in itself a bold experiment in interdisciplinary post-secondary education, building a common core between the faculties of Design, Engineering and Commerce. By creating the space for faculty and fellows to explore and experiment they are creating an excellent innovation environment to bring much needed answers to the state of post-secondary education.
Tags: business model, collaboration, Entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership
Posted in The Nabou Chronicles | No Comments »
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
The increasing complexity of problems faced by governments, businesses and organizations of all kinds is driving rapidly the awareness that solutions to such problems can only be attained through teams that are highly diverse in every dimension imaginable. but beyond the ‘designed” diversity that such awareness can bring, there is still a random element of chance, of luck, of being in the right place at the right time. Can we do something about this luck element to improve our odds of success?
Thor Muller CTO & Co-founder of Get Satisfaction answers this question with: Yes! Serendipity is not blind luck. It’s a skill-set common to the world’s most admired businesses, and it produces quantifiable results.
Thor will unveil a new framework—the eight elements of planned serendipity—that organizations and individuals can use to make a habit of serendipity at the upcoming Unfinished Business Lecture on Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 5:45 PM at OCAD university’s AUDITORIUM, Main floor, 100 McCaul Street.
The event is free but you need to register here.
Tags: collaboration, Community Futures, Entrepreneurship, innovation, Intelligent communities, openness, serendipity
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Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011
The idea was intriguing. Create a lab where faculty and graduate students of the Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) graduate program at OCAD University could practice foresight and innovation professionally on real-life projects. However, the beginnings of the Strategic Innovations Lab (sLab) were very modest: No dedicated staff but rather two faculty, who are teaching in the SFI and undergraduate programs, plus a few external professionals who were interested enough to invest time and effort on a volunteer basis. Most of the people involved were also participating in getting the SFI program up and running in record time while managing the challenges posed by the novelty of its concepts and design.
Fast forward two years. The SFI program’s success is widely acknowledged inside and outside the institution. In September 2011 the program will be taking in its third cohort. Meanwhile, the sLab has moved from small projects to a few major ones: the Media Futures 2020, a collaboration of multiple organizations led by sLab is about to be wrapped up; an sLab team has been contracted to provide inputs to the strategic planning process of OCADU for 2012-2017; members of sLab are participating in the team leading the “Take Ontario Mobile” (TOM), a collaborative project developing a vision for enabling Ontarians to access services from any device anywhere; and sLab has just started an important foresight project on Economic Futures Ontario (EFO).
Among the characteristic buzz and apparent chaos of project deadlines and the completion by the 2009 cohort of their Major Research Projects for graduation an interesting and promising capacity in the field of foresight is emerging. sLab specific methodologies are solidifying and one can almost touch the experience gained through intense engagements with real projects.
We are proud to have been involved since the beginnings in these interesting activities and look forward to continue to contribute to this unique space that sLab is carving for itself.
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Government 2.0, healthcare, innovation, leadership, mobility, OCAD, OCADU
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Monday, October 25th, 2010
Organized by the Centre for the Study of the United States at the University of Toronto in collaboration with a number of other organizations including the Faculty of Information, the Munk School of Global Affairs, and the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI), the conference looks at the DIY Citizenship movement from a broad range of perspectives.
An interesting line-up of plenary speakers is framing the various sessions and panels of the conference. It includes among others Ann Balsamo from the Annenberg School of Communications, whose work focuses on the relationship between culture and technology; Suzanne de Castell from the Faculty of Education at the Simon Fraser University, whose work spans literacy, technology, gender, educational game theory, research, design and development; Natalie Jeremijenko of New York University, whose award winning work explores the opportunity presented by new technologies for non-violent social change; and Steven Mann, a proliferate inventor from the Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, whose wok includes wearable computing, hydraulophone and the concept of “sousveillance” (“the effects a surveillance device has on others”).
The conference is sold out. However, you can still register for the public opening event titled “Supporting the DIY Citizen: social and legal challenges of online participatory politics and culture”, a dialogue with Henry Jenkins and Corynne McSherry taking place on Thursday, November 11, 5:30PM, Tanz Neuroscience Building, 6 Queen’s Park Crescent, West.
Manara will be presenting a paper on “Sustainability for Critical Thinking & Making Collectives” in the afternoon session of Saturday November 13.
Tags: collaboration, Community Development, Community Futures, Entrepreneurship, innovation, xCLINIC
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Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
Over the past summer I was invited by Ted Maulucci, the CIO of Tridel to attend with a number of other CIOs a few sessions exploring an initiative called “! Million Acts of Innovation”. The idea was that CIOs are responsible increasingly for achieving productivity and performance improvements in their organizations, but many are not sure how to proceed, what works and what doesn’t, and what kind of resources and risks are at play.
In the early couple of sessions, we quickly established that Canada is slipping dangerously in a number of indicators even within OECD countries: productivity, creativity, and more recently competitiveness. The proper response seemed to require a broad movement for change with intensive exchange of knowledge and experience, dissemination of reproducible models, and visualization of achievements and success stories. The name “! Million Acts of Innovation” seemed therefore appropriate.
Discussions continued over the following sessions on what the cornerstones of this initiative should be. A number of areas emerged:
- A need for large scale mentoring
- Opportunities to collaborate with universities in a more dynamic and efficient way
- Issues related to intellectual property when developed in a collaborative environment
- Methods for counting and measuring innovation acts
- Creating diversity at all levels of the organization
- Recruiting and retaining millennials as employees and customers
The focus in all of these was doing rather than saying. The main method envisaged initially was that of facilitated small group conversations. As a result of these summer deliberations, the idea evolved to holding a series of events inviting CIOs to discuss specific issues. The first such event will be held downtown on September 22, 2010 and will be discussing the potential of collaboration between business and universities.
The ambition is to inspire a broad-based movement by many CIOS and IT Directors to initiate actions for change in support of improving their organization’s performance, competitiveness and sustainability. It is an interesting initiative worthy of consideration and support, particularly if more thought is given to designing the program details. A number of parties are considering sponsoring the initiative including the CIO Association of Canada (Ontario Chapter) subject to clarifications sought. There is a LinkedIn group that you can connect to and you can read about the initiative here.
Tags: CIO Canada, CIOCAN, collaboration, Entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership
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Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
While collaboration tools have been around for a while, recent developments in social networking are rapidly changing the collaboration space, which is becoming a critical component of the productivity and innovation capabilities of organizations.
Collaboration Tools for Innovation is the topic chosen for the April 9 session of the YTA Business Innovation group. John Myers, VP and General Manager of Communications Solutions Group at Open Text will be the speaker for this session. He will demonstrate some new solutions and frame the discussion about collaboration tools in the innovation context.
The session is held 12 noon to 1:30 PM at the Regus Business Centre, 15 Allstate Parkway, 6th Floor, Markham. Attendance is free but you need to register at the YTA web site:
http://www.yorktech.ca/calendar?eventId=67992&EventViewMode=EventDetails
Tags: collaboration, Entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership, social media
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Saturday, March 20th, 2010
Design with Dialogue (DwD) is a community of practitioners of facilitation and collaboration methods that meets monthly at the Strategic Innovation Lab at OCAD. DwD members were recently involved in facilitating collaborative design events at ChangeCamp and the XCLINIC‘s XCAMP.
DwD is inviting all who are interested in designing user experiences to a special session (additional to the monthly DwD meeting) welcoming Dennis Schleicher, Director of User Experience for Sears, to Toronto Tuesday, March 23 from 7-9 pm at OCAD’s sLab, room 600.
Dennis’ workshop will provide an introduction to the practice of Bodystorming as a method for engaging people in simulating experiences and processes by designing them through joint acting and improvisation of envisioned situations. Dennis has written about three forms of Bodystorming on his noteworthy blog site Tibetan Tailor. Guess which one he will do, and come prepared to play!
Attendance is free but you have to register here.
Tags: bodystorming, collaboration, DwD, Entrepreneurship, innovation, Marketing, Overlap, xCAMP, xCLINIC
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Now in its sixth year, the Canadian Business Leadership Forum shares first-hand accounts of successful strategies and leadership initiatives that teach attendees new skills and innovative ways of thinking.
Organized by Canadian Business Magazine, the day-long program will be held on October 21, 2009 at The Carlu in Toronto and is aiming to inspire, motivate, and help deliver competitive advantage to organizations. The Foush is a featured speakers at this conference. More details on the speakers lineup can be found here.
Rahaf will be also signing her book Yes We Did on location.
Tags: Add new tag, Entrepreneurship, innovation, Keynote, leadership, Magazine, New Media, Obama campaign, social media, Voices that Matter, Yes She Did
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Thursday, October 1st, 2009
After months of hard labor, several writer blocks, and many inspirations co-authors Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur have completed their book Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. It was released hot off the press September 30, 2009.
The book provides an excellent overview of business models, both existing and emergent. It includes the Business Model Canvas tool, which has been put to the test already in a variety of situations with excellent results. Business Model Generation also stands out among similar business books in the care and effort invested in its design under the creative auspices of Alan Smith of The Movement.
Adding to the many interesting aspects of this book is the story of its writing. 470 practitioners from 45 countries collaborated with the co-authors on its content through a wiki-type collaborative environment called the Business Model Innovation Hub. [Full disclosure: I am one of the 470 contributors - No material interest in sales though]. The authors released chunks of their book as they were writing them and hub participants engaged in review, critique and contributions to those chunks. Even designs were put in front of the hub members. On the day of its release there were already 1000 copies pre-purchased in 55 countries!
The result is an outstanding book that is definitely worth reading. The story of the book making is worth telling on its own. We were hoping it could be told at the Fifth Business Innovation Factory conference held next week in providence, RI. Timing problems prevented securing one of the slots for story telling. We’re still hoping to be able to tell this remarkable story on the sidelines of BIF-5 and in other venues.
You can see a 72-page PDF preview of the book here. If you are interested in getting your copy, you’d be well advised to purchase it from the authors site here where the book will be available for limited time at the affordable price of $36. After that the book will be sold through Amazon with an anticipated price of $70.
Congratulations to Alex and Yves on their achievement. We are proud to have participated in this interesting and creative undertaking.
Tags: Add new tag, business model, collaboration, Entrepreneurship, innovation, Intelligent communities, manara, openness, unbook
Posted in Misc, The Nabou Chronicles | No Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Last week Helix Commerce International invited a select group of guests (including Manara) to a breakfast event at the Cricket Club in Toronto to share some of their research and findings on commercial use of virtual worlds and launch their first report on the subject, based on over 2 years of research on 27 companies using virtual worlds.
Helix CEO, Cindy Gordon, provided an interesting overview about Canada’s latest ranking in innovation among OECD countries (we ranked 13 out of 17, which is a D!) and some thoughts on how to support a revival of innovation leadership in North America. Then Kathryn Gibson presented a live demo of the newly launched Helix Innovation Center in Second Life (SL) with a brief guided tour to a number of business properties as well as a sophisticated jazz club in that virtual world. Kathryn is the virtual world Ninja at Helix and has designed an impressive space for the Helix Innovation Center. You can read her blog or follow her on Twitter or better by seeking her outstanding avatar in SL.
Kaline Hax Avatar
In the discussion we learned of several technology initiatives underway, most of them at the pilot stage and exploring various social media applications for building communities including virtual world presence. Major Canadian corporations involved included Rogers, a couple of Canadian banks, and investment firms.
Not many people think of virtual worlds when speaking of social media. Judging by the serious investments being made by a number of technology heavy weights (IBM, Intel etc.) it is safe to predict that this space will witness increasing importance and growth in the near future.
Stay tuned for more as we delve deeper into this aspect of social networks.
Tags: Community Development, Community Futures, Entrepreneurship, Helix, Marketing, New Media, Second Life, social media, virtual world
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