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701 posts

Lean Strategy in 3 blows

Author: Andy Whitlock

This is a post about strategy, written with these assumptions in mind:

Lots of marketing strategists are increasingly interested in product innovation.
More and more innovation companies will adopt Lean methodologies.
Migrating strategists will have a massive shock and appreciate some tips.

You’ll be relieved to note that this isn’t a philosophical post. It’s a practical one. Because after all, we’re interested in making things, which means less talking and more doing...

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The work instinct

Author: Mike Laurie
Recently, I've been learning about the nature of work and Organisational Design (OD) from Naomi Stanford, who has a number of books and an excellent blog on those topics. Naomi's TEDx talk on the Future of Work from last October struck an unexpected chord with me.
 
In our house, every time we purchase anything that comes in a box, such as a pair of shoes, a TV or a blender, our children demand the box. They bloody love empty boxes and will fight bitterly over them. We're regularly forced to broker elaborate timeshare schemes or provide intermediation to enable shared custody of the empty boxes. We're not short of a toy or two in our house, my partner is a registered childminder so we have over 100 million different toys available for me to trip over. There are plenty of LEGO bricks left on the carpet for me to place the full weight of my body using just the ball of my naked foot.
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The rise of the killer robots

Author: Tim Malbon

I'm really lucky to be at TED Global in Edinburgh this week. (It's a tough job, but someone had to do it...)

And I've just seen one of the scariest talks *ever*.

As part of a session of talks about drone tech, the sci-fi author Daniel Suarez spoke about lethal autonomy - or, robots that can decide to kill humans on their own, without referring to humans at all. 

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Innovation fatigue

Author: Andrew Sprinz
 
I'm suffering from Innovation fatigue. 
 
All the book launches, fastidious processes and sales pitches have turned something that was once a rebellion against pointlessness into yet another excuse to play top-trumps with our opinions.
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It's not magic, it's software

Author: Tim Malbon
 
I was recently lucky enough to watch Nick Law of R/GA deliver a talk entitled, 'Innovation is not a big idea' at the Mirren Conference in New York.
 
I loved the talk. Nick Law is a magnetic speaker. I was mesmerized by his shiny venn diagram, temporarily losing all control of my critical faculties and believing every word for around 12 hours. Only afterwards did doubt steal in - about which more later...
 
The most exciting part for me, and the theme implicit in the title, is the epic shift in the nature of creativity away from being about the individual auteur/priest/magician handing off the brilliant 'big idea' to some technicians to execute, and towards a new model of creativity in groups. The latter is a mandatory requirement if you want to achieve anything of real value in a world that's been eaten by software - but it's an almost impossible challenge for the factories of 'big advertising', who are still clinging to 'the big idea' handed down by the magic-man. 
 
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Faking the future

Author: Andy Whitlock

A couple of weeks ago, my brain was treated to a Pint of Science in the form of a talk by Dr Eileen Gentleman on making body parts. Dr Gentleman whooshed us through a brief history of genetic engineering, including how eye injuries to World War II pilots led to the invention of contact lenses and why golden plates sealed in an ancient skull proved that not all alien materials are rejected by human tissue. And we were, inevitably, shown a photo of a mouse with an ear on its back...

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Lean Bureaucracy

Author: Mike Laurie

On Wednesday night I was talking to someone that works in innovation for local government. I wont go into too much detail about her position or the organisation she works for. She was asking about the way we work at Made by Many and we talked about the cross-over between lean practices in manufacturing, product design, Lean startups, innovation and UX. I was fairly  surprised and dissappointed by what I heard.

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Operational feasibility

Author: Andy Whitlock

Do you make ‘things’? You probably do. So do we — things are brilliant. 

Okay, you and I are a bit more sophisticated than that; we don’t call them things - not us - we know them as services, products, systems! We get the complexities of integrating platforms and prototyping user flows. The word ‘things’ doesn’t really cut it — these products can’t be dropped into an organisation as neat, self-contained packages. They have to be wired into the existing business or service. They are not islands, they are an extension of the organisation itself...

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Being smart about being lazy

Author: Andrew Sprinz

I touched on the concept of considered laziness here and here. It's a term which I'm sure I stole from @higgis, and which has subsequently been very nicely articulated in this post.

I can't be bothered to write more about what this means to me as a technologist, so here are some graphs which may help explain why I come across as such a laggard when talking about technology.

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