The Weekly Innovation - Issue #2

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There is no rubbish or fake news, no nonsense, and no tiresome and long articles, just straight-to-the-point digests of the best pieces of innovation from around the web.

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Here's The Problem With Google's Innovation Strategy

This week has seen Google pull the plug on two products it once had hight hopes for: Google Inbox and Google+. They now join the huge company’s cemetery of applications, services or hardware, which currently hosts 158 graves; not bad for a company that is barely 20 years old. Old timers like myself have grown weary of Google’s penchant for simply announcing that a service is finished, usually without giving any reasonable explanation as to why.

Among Google’s nine principles of innovation are “ship and iterate”, produce products very quickly, get them to market as a prototype if necessary and use feedback from users to improve them; and “failing well”, eliminating products that do not meet expectations but rather than being a stigma, instead generate pride. Two principles that, together with the other seven, have made the company an ideas factory that pumps out innovation at an impressive rate. At the same time, it systematically disappoints users who have invested time and effort in many of these products, telling them basically to find themselves a substitute.

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Remember Sometimes Humans and Technology Just Don't Mix

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Tech, Innovation And People: The Three Vital Ingredients For Business Success

Companies in all industries and across all regions are feeling the impact of enormous transformation and change. Pressure is mounting, as businesses compete against new disruptors entering the market, and look to ensure they stay ahead of the curve when it comes to established competitors. In the face of drastic transformation and increasing competition, organisations are more reliant than ever on new technology to deliver business benefits and improved outcomes; you only have to look at the expectations of business leaders about the potential of emerging technologies including AI, machine learning, quantum computing and 5G, in everything from healthcare to financial services, and even the public sector.

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Online harms white paper: could regulation kill innovation?

It’s rare to describe a government white paper as “trendy”, but among the small community of people who think deeply about how to rein in the the power of big tech, that’s exactly how these proposals will be seen.

The online harms white paper attempts a neat magic trick that tries to offer regulation that won’t scare away the titans of technology, while still providing enough teeth to ease the tabloid campaigns for accountability and action.

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It has helped IKEA to reduce waste by 32%

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Subway's Menu Gears Up for an ‘Innovation Renaissance’

Subway and Tastemade officially announced the expansion of their first-of-its-kind global food innovation partnership on April 2. The previous Friday, the world’s largest restaurant chain, with more than 44,000 restaurants in 110 countries, and the modern media brand that boasts an audience of over 250 million monthly active viewers, held a special event at Tastemade’s Studios in Santa Monica to talk about the extended alliance, which is now a multi-year agreement with plans to move beyond the U.S.

Built on a shared platform of insights and innovation, the two companies are actively collaborating to develop new menu items. And for a brand not historically known for vast menu innovation, this is a major deal for Subway.

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Why this NYT columnist says Apple's age of innovation is over

The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo discusses his op-ed 'The Incredible Shrinking Apple,' in which Manjoo criticizes Apple's lack of innovation. Business Insider's Henry Blodget also weighs in.

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What role does government play in innovation?

If you're a government — say, the Chinese government — looking to spur more innovation in your country, how do you do that? You can think of innovation as a ladder of sorts. It might start with imitation and then progress to adaptation, like tweaking a foreign idea to develop it for a local market. Finally, hopefully, you reach invention, perhaps even big, industry-changing ones. But the steps needed to climb that ladder can be elusive and murky. There's only so much governments can do, says Regina Abrami, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Marketplace’s Tracey Samuelson talked to her about China's efforts at state-sponsored innovation. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

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Bezos Interview

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Purposeful innovation: How startups are solving challenges plaguing Indian healthcare 

India is poised to be the world's third largest economy by 2030, according to Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg. While India has witnessed strong economic growth in recent years, it has not made commensurate progress in other areas, such as healthcare. Improvements in healthcare expenditure, outcomes, and infrastructure, especially on the public side, have not kept pace with economic growth. 

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Investing in Disruptive Innovation

In the late 1800’s, three innovation platforms shaped the world as we know it today: the telephone, electricity, and the internal combustion engine. Today, five powerful innovation platforms are accelerating at the same time: DNA sequencing, robotics, energy storage, deep learning, and blockchain technology.

Cathie Wood, CEO and CIO of ArkInvest, is leading the way in investing in disruptive technologies at a time when many investors are holding back due to uncertainty. Azeem Azhar and Cathie discuss the multi-trillion-dollar opportunity in exponentially-developing industries, the role of incumbents, and how investors can shift gears to find comfort in risk.

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Sweden Is Leading The Way

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Make Innovation Work For You: 5 Questions To Consider

Too often, healthcare leaders are caught by the idea of the bright, shiny object of innovation, without thinking through to the application. The industry today may be in the immature arc of the adoption curve, where the ability to create technology is outpacing the ability of providers to effectively deploy them.

Leaders need to ask: Do the people using a new tool or executing an innovative idea find it helpful or burdensome? What specific healthcare goal does a specific innovation improve? Is it achieving a desired outcome?

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Walmart Needs To Rethink Its Innovation Program

Katie Finnegan yesterday announced on LinkedIn that she plans to resign from Walmart and specifically from both her roles as founding principal with Store No8 and as CEO of Spatial&. Having followed Finnegan and the Walmart PR machine closely over the past few years, at first this news was perplexing, but upon reflection it actually may not be that surprising at all because “innovation” is so much more difficult to do in practice than it is to say with air quotes.

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Crazy Wearable Device

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