Koen’s blog

Last week, I discussed here an article of Bart, to create a device to use our touchpad as a drawing pad. And see: Datanews announced yesterday the invention of the touch pad pencil. Unfortunately, no source was mentioned

Bartb made an interessting suggestion a few days ago on its blog on dropzone. Current technology as most of us carry around to do our job and to support our online life, is missing one feature….

Bart is making the point that it would be one of those major improvements in the touchpad so “(…) it can be used with a stylus, in absolute mode, turning it into a small drawing pad”

Interesting point of view. A few weeks ago I had made the decision to purchase a new laptop PC. After being a Tablet PC user since the launch of Windows XP Tablet Edition, I was used to having drawing capabilities with me at all times. However, that came at a cost. Not only in Euros (that too!!) but as well in speed, screen resolution and the choice between portability and affordability.

So yes, please dear hardware-constructors, hear this request for change so we can have a basic drawing pad in the touchpad. I am willing to pay a little more for the feature anyway!

I finished a few days ago this excellent book by Henry Chesbrough (He is also the author of “Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape“. I will have that book with me to read on holidays the second half of this month).

In this book, the author describes his experience in several R&D units and starts his search for a better innovation model. Where most companies we can think of have a practice of “closed innovation”, the author takes us to different examples where the organization has changed the culture to an “open innovation”, where a lot of intellectual property (IP) is shared with a large community of people outside the organization. Some organizations have done the maths: If we have a few hundred specialists in our company and we know that there are thousands of specialists outside our company, where is the most likely place where innovation will happen? So these clever organizations open their innovation and R&D to the outside world: They leverage on the knowledge of more brains than they ever can hire.

I am, by experience, a strong believer that the author is right with the ideas. Putting them in practice is a whole other game. It will require organizations that truelly believe in innovation to think about ways to open IP with the outside world, without jeopardizing the core values of the enterprise. This book and the practices described creates new challenges for todays and tommorows business leaders. Oh and by the way, if you think this does not affect your particular sector or industry, think again: there are three industries: those that have open innovation in practice today, those that are migrating towards open innovation based models and those that will have to follow later

Enjoy the reading!

Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating And Profiting from Technology

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Our weekend off in Barcelona, and the good weather that “forced” us to take some time off at the beach, was the exact opportunity to finish the last few pages of Crossing the Chasm, a brilliant book by Geoffrey A. Moore. It’s a shame I never finished this book earlier. It describes the struggle that many high tech companies have to bring their products to the market. And it gives some excellent advise on how to deal with it.

Een lange intercontinentale vlucht is het ideale moment om nog eens een boek volledig uit te lezen. Nadat ik op de Gartner conference in Barcelona in mei bijzonder aangesproken werd door een keynote speech van Don Tapscott, heb ik nog tijdens de speech mijn PC opgestart en twee van de mans boeken online besteld. Vandaag heb ik Wikinomicsuitgelezen. Op een bijzonder leesbare wijze pakt de auteur de verschillende topics aan die onze maatschappij aan het veranderen zijn. Niet alleen de “oude” economische modellen, maar ook de invloed van zaken zoals Secondlife en open source op onze manier van zaken doen.

My intercontinental flight today allowed me to catch up on reading. After hearing Don Tapscott presenting an excellent keynote speech at Gartners Symposium in, I ordered two of his books online before the end of his excellent talk. The book that I could finish today, was Wikinomics. This very accessible book describes the different changes in our society, not only the changes to our “old” economical models, but also the influences of movements such as Open Source, Secondlife and alike.

Let me tell you a story today. I find it so hilarious that I wanted to share it with you. It showed that Scott Adams is still finding new Dilberts stories in real corporations.

We are assisting an enterprise in a strategic innovation exercise. Recently, our consultant who is taking care of this mission participated in an important conference call. The topic of the conf call was to set the scene and define budget targets in a multi-year plan.

Most of the management of the enterprise was present in the phone call, along with some other consultants.
A manager that has been supporting the innovative ideas was presiding this call. The meeting was directed towards a very disruptive innovation by this manager. It would change most aspects of our clients business model over the next few years dramatically.
The chairperson of the meeting made very strong commitments to the future and all participants were very enthusiast about the ideas of that one manager.

At that time, our consultant received in its mailbox an official communication, issued by the top management of the enterprise, stating that this one manager (who at that time was on the phone aggressively committing to a path with bold changes) had resigned from the company and would be leaving within the next ten days…