Innovation versus Reinvention

Mitch Joel asks an interesting question about internal innovation versus industry reinvention. From my experience and perspective, the answer is a function of how well an organization values its people, their innovations or ideas borrowed from other early innovators.

Industry disruptions can come from within an organization or from outside. Does it really matter who came up with the slideware? Rio and Compaq were the first companies that produced MP3 players in 1997, but Apple was the company that everyone assumes came up with the iPod concept in the first place.  Someone at Apple marched a solid idea up to Steve Jobs and voila, several divisions within the company started moving very quickly. The culture and management team were open to new ideas and hungry for innovations that would help reboot a company that was in need of a disruption.

New graduates that are interested in pure innovation or building out creative visions and stories, should be thinking about this as they head out for interviews. If its a large company, ask how people get rewarded for new ideas and how they get presented. If the answer leaves you confused, think about working for a smaller company that has a solid innovation, great early customers and ability to execute.

Be prepared for branding opportunities

Displaying yourself means taking a strategic view of all your opportunities to record and capture yourself presenting to your class, gathering field data or simply practicing your craft. When you get your course outline and list of key assignments for the term, think about all the opportunities you will have to capture select moments on video or with your camera.

What are select moments that represent branding opportunites?

1. Field research
2. Class presentations
3. Interviews with specialists
4. Group work with your team
5. …there are endless possibilities to capture compelling content that speak to your professional interests, passions or experiences you will have college or university.

Two journalists from an Australian TV show, brought their digital camera to a staged protest during a guest lecture from John Yoo.  He is the lawyer that wrote the legal brief that suggested torture was simply enhanced interrogation. In this case, I do applaud the two gentlemen for acting out in protest to this man’s views.

Tech Tuesday: Great Brainstorming and Outlining Tool

I have been using an open source product called Freemind for a couple of years.

Freemind is a fantastic tool for brainstorming, planning and organizing. I also use it for building outlines for presentations, essays or in the case of WhyHire.me, content for our students!

The software lets you easily manipulate ideas, move them around, hide whole sections and finally, output the results to several formats including Excel and HTML.

You can download and use the software on ANY machine including Windows, Mac, Linux…check out this link for more screen shots and a link to the download. Its FREE!

Canadian Olympic Team Warehouse Sale at Algonquin

Guest Blogger: Emma Van Steen, Student Algonquin Sport Business Management Program

The Algonquin College Sports Business Management Program is proud to be hosting the Official Canadian Olympic Team Warehouse sale.  This retail event is the result of a graduate studies project that worked in partnership with the COC.  The sale is a clear out process for the COC, in preparation for the Vancouver 2010 games.

We are selling everything from Official Team jackets, t-shirts, boots, flop-flips, hats and luggage from these 3 major international sporting events – with items starting as low as $5.  Hundreds of products in all different sizes. One sale only!

This event will run Friday, July 17th from 9am to 9pm, Saturday July 18th, from 9am to 5pm and Sunday July 19th from 9am to 4pm.  The sale will be Algonquin College, T building, room T102.  Payment options are cash, credit card, and cheque with proper Id only.

This blow-out sale has super deals featuring beautiful clothing items from Beijing (2008), Torino (2006) and Rio Pan Am (2007).  Team Canada Athlete gear are available at discounted prices (50% to 75% Off) that are not available anyplace else – ever!!

For more information, clothing pictures and other updates you can visit our Facebook page or take a look on YouTube.

Bundanoon goes global with a local effort

A great story has erupted out of Bundanoon, Australia (about 2 minutes into this CBC story). When a local bottling company went asking for a permit to extract 50 million liters out of the local water supply for bottled water distribution, the local BUSINESS people took issue with the notion of the whole town paying all that markup just to gain access to what comes right out of the tap.

It got people thinking..why not ban bottled water all together across the town? Sure enough, its happening now. Vendors are selling re-usable bottles and the town is installing more public water fountains.

So what can be drawn from this? The green movement can happen anywhere and be facilitated by anyone. In this case, business people simply looked at the micro-economics and said enough.

It pleases me no end to see this form of grass roots change. When I see programs such as the Signature Learning Experience, I am hopeful we will see more people take similar actions. This program aims to deliver graduates that are ready to “apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to be socially responsible in a diverse world.”

Social responsibility starts at home and has the potential to ripple around the world. My bet is, the people of Bundanoon had no idea how far and wide their story would travel. I have no doubt, this will trigger similar civic acts around the world.