"Turning Recession on Its Head: Is there an upside to the Downturn"

Bruce Nussbaum is now Contributing Editor for BusinessWeek USA but his prime interest still resides in Design and Innovation and in that regard his blog NussbaumOnDesign is always worth a read. A piece entitled "Turning Recession on Its Head: Is there an upside to the Downturn" caught my eye for two reasons. One, it is a conversation that is occurring in an opne forum on Facebook - social media promoting discussion again and two the Facebook page came out of IDEO's London office. If you are interested in following a meaningful conversation about design, creativity and innovation in the recession, this is a really good place to start. 

People centred innovation with base of the pyramid

Here is one way innovation is being used to improve the lives of people with less resources on our planet... The Denmark-based Center for Sustainable Innovation (blog) is embarking on a new combined research and consultancy project about People Centred Innovation with Base of the Pyramid. The project, which is funded by the Danish Network for Research Based Userdriven Innovation - NfBI, will be exploring how to create new products and business models to improve the life of the half of the world’s population that is getting by on less than 4 USD a day (in comparative purchasing power as if they were living in the US), and how to put people first and include their needs and aspirations, and their knowledge and resources in this [which the UN calls Growing Inclusive Markets].

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A Sunday stroll around innovation and customers and voices

I came across an interesting blog discussing the differences between innovation and invention recently. The relationship between businesses and their customers was also conveyed in an interesting discussion. Check this out... Innovation takes place when the customer adopts something, not earlier. Invention by itself is relatively valueless .... until and unless someone comes along with a business model that allows people to consume the invention simply and efficiently.

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What Innovation Means For Small Businesses

Wall Street Journal have been looking at innovation and small business... The ability to innovate and smartly execute new ideas will make or break many businesses in the future, as we noted recently. But many small companies don’t know what that means – or how to create that magic spark. Jump Associates of San Mateo, Calif., consults Fortune 500 companies like Hewlett-Packard, Target and Procter & Gamble on how to bolster innovation in the workplace and identify new channels of growth. We spoke with Chief Executive Dev Patnaik about the role innovation should play in a small business, what it means exactly, and the common mistakes. Here are edited excerpts.

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Books offer advice on harnessing creativity

Richard Pachter from the Miami Herald has recently reviewed a few book releases on harnessing creativity that could be of interst to you, it's looking at things from a USA point of view though has some relevance to Australian's as well... How do we get out of this mess we're in? The United States doesn't manufacture very much any more, nor is agriculture likely to re-emerge as the driving force of our economy. American popular culture is still dominant throughout the world, but many of the movie studios and remaining record companies are foreign-owned. Ditto with industries like brewing (Miller, Anheuser-Busch), pharmaceuticals and many more.

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