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Written by Ron Willett
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Friday, 02 May 2008 |
Innovation and Our Digital Tsunami
The Internet can truly be labeled an American innovation,
along with the manufacturing of PCs and their constituent microprocessors,
perhaps the most significant innovations the U.S. can claim in the last two
decades. In spite of anti-competitive roadblocks and attempted restraint of
trade by Microsoft, those technologies set off that tsunami of digital
innovation. Entrepreneurial spirit
of a creative class has thus far maintained it, in spite of new monopoly
threats from our legacy telecomm corporations.
It’s instructive to take a long look back at the Internet’s
origins. It started as a defense
project, to create a packet-based secure communications mode, moved into a grey
area between government and the private sector, then blossomed almost two decades
ago as a private sector movement.
Notably, none of the legacy corporate communications providers led
charges. Lastly, the
world-wide-web was developed in Europe, igniting its adoption of digital
technology, now threatening to make the U.S. an also-ran.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 01 June 2008 )
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Written by Ron Willett
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Thursday, 24 April 2008 |
Innovation and K-12 Education
Reactions to the title may range from “what’s the need,” through “an oxymoron,” to “urgent need.” Not a good omen, the first reaction is likely to come from many of its K-12 establishment and bureaucrats. Critically, the latter reaction has been coming for at least two decades from responsible corporate leaders who will ultimately employ K-12 products, to little avail.
Pragmatically, there are attempts to innovate in education – charter schools, legitimate STEM curricula, digital innovations, problem-based learning, interventions that work in low income schools, real teacher development – they don’t get past being splinter efforts. Why? That merits some answers if any thoughts on innovating in the genre are to be pertinent.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 24 April 2010 )
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Written by Brian Willett
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Friday, 04 May 2007 |
Twenty-Two Things They Probably Did
Not Teach You In B-School In the hyper-world of corporate management, some of the first logic to bite the dust, in favor of management gimmickry, or the business technique of the week, is common sense and uncommon wisdom.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 02 June 2007 )
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Written by Dr. Brian Willett
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Monday, 02 April 2007 |
Looking for R&D’s “Mr. Goodwrench”
In my profession, the question of what is “good” Research and Development is often debated. My answer is -- developing a technology and/or product that target customers want and need, with few or no reliability issues, and at an affordable price (both to manufacture and to sell) constitutes good R&D. Simply put, it is the products you and I use everyday. However, answering how one goes about setting up the conditions for delivering that technology or product, is not quite as simple and is the mission of this article.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 14 April 2007 )
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Written by Paula Bartholome, MSOD
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Thursday, 29 March 2007 |
Collaboration: A Series of Conscious Choices
My small town of 2500 has its own volunteer fire department as well as a paid police force and water treatment plant. We are surrounded on three sides (the fourth side is all water) by a township that has no police, no water treatment facility but does have it’s own volunteer firefighters. To me as a casual observer, it seems both logical and practical that the township would want to work with its nearest neighbor to obtain water and police protection, paying for what was used. And as a city taxpayer, I’m interested in controlling my taxes, so the idea of finding efficiencies in equipping, training and staffing firefighters is appealing as is being compensated for providing water and police protection to our neighbors for a reasonable fee. This seems to be a perfect opportunity for mutually beneficial collaboration on public services...neighbors helping neighbors.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 14 April 2007 )
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Written by Dr. Ron Willett
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Wednesday, 21 February 2007 |
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Re-Inventing Innovation, or Not
Innovation consultants have proliferated faster than either technology or new products over the last decade. They offer many prescriptions, with great diversity of views, but scant evidence about what really works, every time. Perhaps there can be no clarifying reduction of views; by their very nature innovative processes may ultimately be as diverse and heroic as their practitioners and fruits.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 14 April 2007 )
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Economy & Work 
