Green Innovation or Just More Hype?

Over the years, we've heard so much green innovation hype, that many people have just turned it all off. In fact, I think they've gotten to the point where they don't believe any of it, just accept all of it, or are tired of thinking about it. Am I speaking for myself? In some regards yes, but more or less this is an observation. It seems these days with all the hype for alternative energy green technology, that if anyone wishes to get any play in the media they have to shout above everyone else. Meaning they have to turn the hype on to "Turbo" mode.

Indeed, I've seen a lot of bull, a lot of projects that are merely wasting government funds or are "green-global-warming-religion" based and not viable. As the coordinator for a think tank I see 100s of business plans of pie-in-the-sky concepts that are inefficient, unviable, and merely capitalizing on the green theme, and thus, deplore the money wasted on bogus nonsense. And yes, I've seen some brilliant project ideas also, but they are far and few between of course.

The other day, I was talking to a gentleman who is an inventor and innovator in clean energy technology. He was explained to me his wonderful offshore wind generation designs. He told me that due to the fact that it was offshore quite a few miles, the wind was more constant, and therefore it could produce reliable energy. I believe he spoke of a 40% improvement in efficiency. However, what does 40% really mean?

Does he mean 40% of the average of all wind turbine generators? Or does he mean 40% more efficient than the wind turbine generators in his State of Massachusetts? Does he mean that it produces 40% more energy than other wind generators of a different type put into the same location? You see, when innovators, entrepreneurs, and alternative energy startup companies start throwing around numbers about efficiency, people ought to ask questions. I'd like to use this as another example of some of the hype in green innovation that I've noted over the last good many years.

Now then, it's the same type of hype which causes citizens who read the newspaper to fall head over heels for the future of clean energy. The reality is that all of these green innovators hype their efficiency, but when push comes to shove their innovations just can't cut the mustard. If someone starts making claims about percentages, then maybe it's time we asked for empirical evidence from their prototypes. If they say they have not completed a prototype yet, then all the numbers they spout off are highly irrelevant, and we can't take them seriously. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 24,300 articles will be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..

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What Is Innovation And How Do You Achieve It?

At the present time, the continent of Africa is on the move economically. It is attempting to move from being an emerging market to being a middle class economy. Africa has the desire to be a significant player in the globalized economy. We are seeing the emergence of the African Gorillas.

If this is going to happen, African is going to need entrepreneurs to create jobs. Jobs are the key to Africa's development. Foreign aid has a chilling effect on a society. It makes a nation and a people dependent. When people are gainfully employed, if frees them. This is why jobs are so critical to the development of Africa. Innovation is the key to development of Africa.

Let's just ask a basic question, "What is innovation"? "How is it achieved?" Innovation is the creating of "cool stuff". This cool stuff is both necessary and unnecessary. Some things are cool, but not necessary, like jewelry or fashion, but they are nice thing to have.

Innovation is the bringing to life of Robert Kennedy's quote, "People see things and ask 'why' and "how" and "can we, I wonder". An innovator will see things and ask 'why not'. To create innovation, you also have to create a culture for it.

Innovation is the outdoing of the competition. Innovation does create competitive advantage for both a company, and also for a continent, such as Africa.

To be entrepreneurial, you must constantly engender new ideas. Good ideas happen whenever you have thinking people. How are they created? Receptiveness and reward are ways to engage people to give their best and feel they have a stake in the company. Through ideas, people challenge one another in a way that is not overwhelming. A leader will inspire competition and inspiration by showing their confidence that each person in the organization can express creativity in his or her own way. This new idea may be in product design, product usage. It may be in anything that involves the organization.

Innovation is mostly done by seeing how people use the product. Creativity and innovation is "hands-on" but it is also "hands off". It is observing "what works" and "what doesn't work". It is about honesty, and the foregoing of silos.

There is a "gotta". You "gotta" have a culture for this to work. You have to encourage people to discover new things, to see things differently. People in a professional culture have to be open to new things. Creativity takes leadership. Creativity is not just allowing people in an organization to just go off in their own direction. There must be at least some "adult supervision" for creativity to be developed.

You "gotta" allow people to make mistakes, because they will. You are dealing with new things. When something is new, no one really knows if the thing will work.

In creating a culture for creativity, the wisdom of crowds is imperative. Through encouraging employees and their ideas, you get a grassroots intelligence network. Employees will focus on new things in that are in marketplace. They and their work teams will talk about them, discuss their advantages and shortcomings, test them, play with them...and then wonder, "What can we do that is better?" From these discussions, new products will be developed. A benchmark for innovative companies is Google. They are encouraged to think of new things. These new things are discussed. They are then developed and created. Google Maps was created in this manner.

Dean Hambleton
dnhambleton

Innovation Skill Set: What Is Questioning And Why Is It Important?

To create innovation, we should always ask questions. Questions challenge the status quo, and this keeps our thinking fresh. It helps us notice changes in the market and questions allow us to respond to the market in real time. A basic question that can save many companies is, "Why do we do it like this". To become a great innovator, Robert Kennedy's question should be rephrased, "Our competitor's look at the process and say 'why'. We should look at the process and say 'why not---what is stopping us'?

There is a power in provocative questions. Many times a basic question unlocks truths that were not thought and which creates products and brands that were even on the radar screen. In 2001, General Electric was a consumer goods organization whose products and markets had matured. This was a critical juncture for GE. Jeffrey Immelt asked a basic question, "can we create dominate brands and strong, reliable revenue streams from markets of scarcity". He commissioned an intense study to investigate the market potential of sources of energy and products from the sun, wind, and water. General Electric discovered that these sources of energy, from avenues of 'scarcity', could create billion dollar revenue streams for G.E. Ecomagnation is a strategy that is not only creating billions in new revenue, but it is also creating massive amounts of good will for General Electric, as it creates jobs in the nations of emerging markets.

Jeffrey Immelt is a benchmark for what a great innovator is and does. An innovator constantly asks questions that challenge conventional wisdom. To be an innovator, you have to upset the status quo. The GE board originally voted down ecomagnation because they felt that GE could never make money at it. An innovator thinks about how to change the world that exists. Mr. Immelt observed. Mr. Immelt asked basic questions.

Questions to ask are "Why", "Why not", and "what if". Most managers' concentrate on existing production processes. Innovators challenge the assumptions. Cloud computing is becoming an important technology. A manager asked a basic question, "Why are we uploading software, when it can be done over the Internet".

Innovators intentionally come from an opposite direction. To be an innovator you must ask yourself a bunch of questions that are not conventional, as Jeffrey Immelt did. These questions may create a radically different alternative than the conventional means that have been in use. As in the case of GE, the following step after asking questions may create some critical new insights. These are insights that lead to large, new revenue streams, new markets, and new brands.
We compose restraints on our thinking when forced to deal with real-world limitations, such as resource allocations or technology restrictions. Great questions actively loose constraints on our thinking and serve as a motivation for out-of-the-box insights. As Google likes to say, "Creativity loves constraints." The constraints make us think of new ways that create new value propositions that our competitors can't match. General Electric's markets were mature. Where was new revenue going to come from? The constraints of the market created billion dollar revenue streams.

Dean Hambleton
dnhambleton