Here at the Business Innovation Factory, we're fortunate to have opportunities, like our recent BIF-2 Collaborative Innovation Summit, to bring our innovation community together for face-to-face interaction. But we're equally as committed to capturing these experiences so others who cannot join us in person can still benefit from the experience. To that end, we just launched our Innovation Story Studio which includes most of the stories from BIF-2 as well as BIF-1 and a few other mini-features we've developed. The intent is to build a library of videos for our community and we'd love any recommendations you have of people we might develop stories around. So if you have a good story to share, just let me know.
Go to the Innovation Story Studio

BIF-2 co-host Richard Saul Wurman was right when he told us that if we brought interesting people together under one roof to share very personal stories, magic would happen.

"At my conferences,” he said, “the best speeches were always by brilliant, vulnerable individuals who could tell a fresh story about their passions, ideas and failures. They don't spoon-feed information or talk down to the audience. They let people taste and experience their ideas for themselves. And the audience creates its own intelligent connections among all the different ideas presented."

Wurman’s concept of “intelligent connections” is significant. Our own chief catalyst, Saul Kaplan, had perhaps one of the defining quotes of the event when he said that "innovation takes place in the space between people." After two days of interacting live, without email, text-messaging, or skyping, it became clear that the space Saul is referring to must be filled with conversation. That’s how things get done.

Yet innovation requires explanation. And that’s not an easy thing to do. Because for as many people who approached me during the summit telling me how wonderful the experience was, the same number of folks couldn’t make the connection between the event and the Business Innovation Factory. “I don’t get it,” someone said. “What exactly do you do,” another asked?

To answer that question, let me segue for a moment and remark on storyteller Bob Ballard. The stories he shared were probably the same stories he’s shared hundreds of times over during the past couple decades. But you know what? It didn’t matter. Through his passion and conviction, we all felt he was telling his story for the very first time. And more importantly, we believed him.

For those of us on the BIF team, including our members, partners, and research advisors, we truly believe in what we’re doing. We just have to do a better job sharing it and, more importantly, bringing people into the conversation. Whether he knows it or not, after last week, I’m part of Bob Ballard’s conversation. I’ve retold his story with several people I know, I’m emotionally engaged in what he’s trying to do and I want to know more. If he were to make the leap and ask me for help tomorrow, I’d be there.

So who is the Business Innovation Factory? If BIF-2 represented the 'who' of innovation, the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) represents the 'how'. The idea is to transform the entire state of Rhode Island into an innovation laboratory-specifically a laboratory to test new business models. Rhode Island has, to say the least, a very compact geography. We have densely concentrated resources that serve just over one million people. (Thanks to Larry Keeley who delivered the funniest line of the summit–“What’s not to love about Rhode Island? All their maps are drawn actual size.”)

Bill Taylor, who is one of our research advisors, recently said, “RI is never going to out-muscle the bigger states, but it can out-think the bigger states.” Through BIF, our size becomes a competitive advantage as Rhode Island serves as a real world test-bed for companies who want to prototype and study new business models—models that require the networking of various capabilities and ideas across the public and private sector. We’re currently managing a small portfolio of innovation projects through our four 'experience' labs focused on the student, patient, citizen and consumer.

BIF-2 was an opportunity for us to continue making “intelligent connections.” Next up is turning those connections into meaningful interactions. We invite you to join the conversation and in the coming weeks, promise to deliver on specific ways for you to get involved. In the meantime, if you have anything you’d like to say, about BIF, about the event, please send them to me. Or better yet, pick up the phone. I can be reached at 401.359.1979.

After digesting all the stories from BIF-2, there seems that innovators have one trait in common: they look at gnawing problems -- whether it's how to get more kids invovled in science and engineering like Dean Kamen's First program or how to get more innovative ideas from teams really fast like Ivy Ross at Old Navy -- and then figure out the problem. With two parts logic and analytical thinking and eight parts passion, determination and relenetlessness.

If organizations want to be more innovative maybe it's time to hardwire these qualities into more hiring practices, and performance and reward systems. Just because someone has experience in a field or industry with a a name organization doesn't mean that that person is a good hire -- or its the least bit creative, passionate or, well, innovative. Most hiring requirements are Neanderthal, and seem to be designed to eliminate risk-taking, problem solving types who could make a difference. Executive recruiters exacerbate the problem.

Case in point: Alph Bingham of InnoCentive remarked at the conference that many of the brilliant "solvers" in his network would never be hired by companies whose most difficult problems they just solved.

Maybe the questions to ask people as we look to hire or partner with them are the two questions that Randy Antik asked all of us at the conference: "What's the next great idea for you? What is the next big chapter in your life?"

For more on good questions and provocative quotes from the conference, please check out this post.

Renee Callahan already blogged about this yesterday but I feel compelled to do it again. (It's just that good.) Honestly, I don't know how he did it, but visualization artist extraordinaire Peter Durand of Alphachimp Studio managed to capture each storyteller through our 2-day Collaborative Innovation Summit. Frankly, my arm would have off mid-way through day one, but Peter continued, and created dozens of visual profiles from each session. The good news is that he's sharing his work and you can view his drawings here.

Notwithstanding Peter's great doodling ability, his magic comes from his ability to capture the essence of each story. No small feat to listen, draw and capture meaning all at the same time.

Peter really went above and beyond the call of duty because in addition to his visual representations, he also shared one of the best stories of the 2-day summit. We'll be posting it next week to the Business Innovation Factory website, so be sure to check back.

BIF-2 is over and from my humble vantage point, I believe we succeeded in our goal to let great people tell great stories. Throughout the summit, innovators from across sectors and disciplines took center stage to share their own personal experience in creating innovation and driving change. The bad news is that all good things must come to end. The good news is that video transcripts will be available in just a few days. Stay tuned and check back to the Business Innovation Factory next week!

I'd also like to thank our incredibly faithful group of bloggers who participated in the jam and provided such great feedback, insight and unique perspectives about the summit. My head is still reeling from all the great stories I heard and, just as important, the great connections I made. The blogosphere has its place, but face to face interaction just can't be beat. And frankly, sometimes I lose sight of that.

I want to thank Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation who, in between his live-blogging efforts, also created some really good podcasts with several of our storytellers. Be sure to check them out here.

I'm going to take some time now to sit back and digest. I'll leave you with something that Randy Antik said during his story...because all too often, in both our personal and professional lives, we find ourselves playing defense. We defend our position, we defend against competition. According to Antik though, "innovation is on the offensive team." And it's a good place to be.

Okay everybody, even though BIF-2 is over, that doesn't mean we can't post one more podcast for your listening pleasure. As with the others, click on the bold "Interview" link for the podcast and on the storyteller's name for more information on him.

Interview with Alph Bingham (9:19)

Enjoy!

Day 2 at BIF-2...

Another great day here in Providence at the BIF-2 Collaborative Innovation Summit. Today's host was WSJ columnist Walt Mossberg and the presentations seemed to swing more widely in terms of subject material. It started with Dean Kamen, who is of course the well-known inventor of the Segway and other technological marvels. In a soft-spoken and steady manner he extolled the benefits of innovation to companies and to America in general. "Not every company and organization needs to be innovative. Only the ones that want to be relevant and successful."

Kamen's talk focused on education - specifically how US kids are falling behind significantly in math and science. "How will America be better with millions of recipients instead of millions of contributors?" Educational tactics and priorities need to change, he argued. The problem is not supply and demand, it is demand and supply. Science and technology needs to be treated and presented as fun and interesting (not hard to do), just like sports and pop culture are now. ... He then profiled the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) annual robotics program which has grown from a small high school gym in 1992 to the Astrodome in recent years. And they announced that every school in Rhode Island will now have this program available. "We're not building robots, we're building relationships - between kids and serious adults."

Who could possibly follow that? Well, next up was Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect and a semi-regular mention on Creative Generalist. (Check out my recent interview with Frans here.) His presentation was an outstanding rapid-fire summary of the book's main idea (intersectional thinking) and how he came to write it. 15 minutes was way too short and I think the whole crowd was left hungry for more.

Ophthalmologist Bill Tsiaris followed with a primer on angiogenesis (the development of new blood vessels) and how it could be at the centre of a $63 billion market by 2010. Tsiaris described three types of vision loss - retinopathy of prematurity (infants), diabetic retinopathy (young adults), and age-related macular degeneration (older adults) - and described the research going into curing them.

Self-professed geek Peter Gloor told his story of cybermapping the internet in its early days and cautioned innovators to not focus too much and too early on the money side of start-ups. More interestingly, I found, was Gloor's notion of stars versus galaxies as they relate to social networks. Stars are people at the centre of several disconnected personal relationships whereas galaxies are people who connect all of these personal relationships. "Don't be a star, be a galaxy." The galaxy guy has more power because he has more "betweenness" and that matters more than your number of friends. Catch that, MySpace?

I've always been curious about InnoCentive and their open approach to research. It's founder Alph Bingham was on hand to talk about how problem-solving by strangers; by people who would never otherwise be found because they are not in the business or because they are outside of particular disciplines. He related the types of innovation he finds to Edison vs. Archimedes, or iterative innovation vs. "Eureka! I found it!" discovery. ..."The biggest competitor is the status quo."

The conference has been held in a beautiful recently-renovated 242-seat theater. Curt Columbus is the artistic director of that theater, Trinity Rep. Shirking PowerPoint, Columbus passionately argued that American theater has unfortunately become a ticket transactional experience but that for it to thrive it needs to once again become a community. Theater, he believes, counters the social isolation brought about by TVs, cars, iPods, and other modern trappings. "Democracy cannot exist in that isolated setting." "The space where innovation is possible is the space in between people."

Up next was Betsy Cohen, a senior VP at Nestle/Purina. She touched on cutting across functions, brands, companies, and cultures to be a champion of innovation. To be honest, it was a lot of corporate speak and not particularly insightful for someone in such a lofty organizational position.

Former Seinfeld writer Andy Robin showed some clips from a movie he and others have recently created called Live Free or Die. His three tongue-in-cheek tips:
1. Caffeine, chocolate, and sugar work.
2. Sleep dreams are worthless.
3. If struggling, struggle in company - find a creative partner.

Co-founder and CTO of nTag Interactive Rick Borovoy described his very clever electronic conference badge system. Unfortunately, his presentation was overly complicated and mired by technical troubles so it was difficult to get his drift. I think it was that a technology needs to have a solid core for it to withstand the pressure of multiple stakeholders (in his case everybody from sponsors and event organizers to researchers and technical designers). "Your choices make choices."

Artist Michael Singer gave one of the conferences more eloquent presentations. It was about complexity and how communities and innovation are actually not all that simple. Singer has been especially successful at rethinking infrastructure and integrating smart design into previously dumb buildings like waste management facilities. "We need to begin looking at everything that human beings create as serving more than one function." This is someone whose work I wish to read more about: www.michaelsinger.com.

Marketing consultant Randy Antik shared four of his innovation AHAs:
1. Be unstuck
2. Aim high
3. Focus on your passion
4. Determine your role
"Innovation is a team sport. Innovation is the offense."

To the right of the stage a fellow by the name of Peter Durand has been doodling his impressions of each presenter. Today was his turn to take the stage, which he did in hilarious style dressed as a caveman. More seriously, he and his teammates at Alphachimp Studio have just launched The Missing Link, a cool practical archive of conference visualizations. Check out Peter's BIF-2 drawings here.

It was great to hear Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor speak. (He just launched his new book Mavericks at Work.) He discussed tapping into the feedback of customers and used Fluevog and Threadless as examples - companies that are largely fueled by the brainpower, effort and collective tastes of its customers. "There are people so talented and so hardworking out there and they will work with you if all you do is ask." The question is no longer "How do I manage people?" but rather "Am I the type of person that other people want to work with/around?"

MIT bioelectronics guru Hugh Herr spoke about how innovation is courage. He shared with us some of the leading technologies in prosthetics, such as smart knees and powered ankles. As he puts it, the key to the future will be combining recently matured disciplines (robotics, tissue repair, etc.).

The event's closer was a charming woman named Alice Wilder. Alice runs the research and development efforts for Nick Jr.'s groundbreaking preschool television series Blue's Clues. She spends a lot of time observing the viewing and learning habits and behaviours of very young kids. She spoke of how the show's production was ego-less ("it really is about the kids") and how important a factor attentional inertia is. Once you have a child's attention, it is easier to maintain it. ... Also lamenting the state of education today, she challenged the crowd to create communities where people can watch kids learn. Seeing what sparks kids' interests, she noted, is a very special experience.

Bob Ballard was yesterday's final speaker at BIF 2 and my guess is that he has told the same anecdotes about his career and experiences a thousand times. Even the sharpest blade dulls over time, but Ballard's blade seemed sharp as ever. My assumption is that he is an exceptional fundraiser -- a necessary skill for a true explorer. In only 15 minutes he got us all jazzed about everything from the Titanic, to 12 foot worms at the bottom of the ocean, to a new inner space center to be launched in the Ocean State. It is hard to not admire Bob and be incredibly impressed by his life story.

Dean Kamen was today's first storyteller and perhaps the world's most famous living inventor. Kamen wasn't selling his funky Segway scooter (although we did see an amazing application of that technology in a wheelchair), he was laser focused on his education program called FIRST. He's been promoting and growing FIRST for more than 15 years and it's been amazingly successful. Of course (and thankfully), he's not nearly done, since his mission is to give kids the opportunity to embrace science and mathematics and view them as meaningful and worthwhile disciplines.

A mentor once told me that good leadership is like writing in the snow. You write your message in the snow and over time, new snow covers it up. So you write your message again. And again. And again. Until it sticks.

Here are two more podcasts with BIF-2 storytellers. Please click the bold "Interview" link to access the podcast and the name to access more information about the storyteller.

Interview with Frans Johansson (14:56)

Interview with Jim Lavoie (11:11)

Finding quiet spots at this conference is really tough, but I think you will be able to hear everything okay. Enjoy!

Hugh Herr's story of extreme innovation started when he lost both of his legs from the knee down in a mountain climbing accident.  Told by his doctor that he would never climb again, Herr took to the machine shop. He perfected prostheses for his own use that not only allowed him to climb again, but to do things with his engineered feet that the human body couldn't do. Herr's extreme engineering allow him to wedge his "foot" into a narrow rock fissure, climb ice floes with crampon-feet, or extend his height to 7 feet tall. Herr has truly ripped up the assumptions of what amputees can do, balled them up, and threw them off the top of the cliff.

Herr's guiding mantra is Simplicity through biological inspiration. Whether we are putting the body in the machine, or the machine into the body, simplicity is the key, because the interface must be humanized, even if the internals of the bionics are complex. Herr's designs at the Biomechatronics Group in MIT's Media Lab combine complex algorithms, advanced materials and powerful processing to make knees, ankles and feet that act like the biological version.

The key to Innovation is courage - don't listen to anyone who tells you it ain't possible.

As much blogging is happening here with the BIF Blogjam, it is not the only place where BIF-2 is being covered real time. O'Reilly editor Brian Jepson is blogging up the proverbial storm over at his Jepstone blog, including images of each speaker. To see Brian's coverage, go here.

If there's anyone else out there blogging BIF-2, mail me at renee.callahan -at- gmail.com, and I'll make sure we link to you.