Creative Critics » boek

The Fred Factor

koen — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 08:42:25 +0000

The Fred Factor is a rather small book that gives the details on how someone can, by its own motivation, get the extraordinary out of something rather common. The book gives an explanation of how the behaviour of someone can change when and if they commit to it. Some of the topics in the book are rather obious, but re-reading them every once and a while makes one reflect again on how we sometimes can go the extra mile and make a huge different.

We all have values. This book is about making sure that we don’t forget about these values when we are doing our job. Let’s all care and have a little Fred in us..

This book is worth the reading.

Koen

The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary

Title:	The Fred Factor
ISBN:	0-385-51351-8
Pages:	112
Author:	Mark Sandborn

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Fred Factor

Open Innovation

koen — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 07:26:00 +0000

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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Crossing the Chasm

koen — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:05:43 +0000

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.

Wikinomics

koen — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:07:00 +0000

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.