The reverse panel at SVII’s 1st Wednesday January event turned out to be a great discussion about local and independant business among the business owners and innovators. The discussion focused on five tough questions. Read below for more.
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Business
Innovation applied to all dimensions of business including but not limited to: growing, expanding, managing, and maintaining a business.
Puzzles, Mysteries, and Muddles: Problem Solving and Innovation with Jerry Talley
We live in a world filled with problems that are more complex, more conflicted, and more interconnected than ever before. And yet we bring to this daunting challenge the same, linear problem solving model articulated in the 1950’s. Over the last 20+ years of consulting, my colleagues and I have come to believe there are 6 types of problems in the world — not just one! And each type requires a different strategy for successful resolution. The “one size fits all” strategy we have grown up with will not suffice if we are to address the volume and difficulty of modern day problems.
This limited view of problem solving has also limited our understanding of the role of innovation in problem solving. Each problem type calls for a different innovative focus.
When you discern the essential nature of any problem situation, you can pinpoint the most powerful strategy for addressing it, the point where innovation will add dramatic value rather than just variety, and the best role you can play in facilitating the process which often, if not usually involves improvisation.
For more information: JLTalley & Associates
Jerry Talley is the veteran of 3 careers. His first venture was on the faculty of Stanford University teaching in the Sociology Department for 18 years. Stanford was also the source of his PhD.
Coincident with that experience, he had a practice as a Marriage and Family Therapist for about ten years. He still sometimes lectures at Stanford and other Bay area schools on relationship issues.
Starting in the late 1970’s, he moved into organizational development consulting, accumulating over 250 client engagements since that time. For 16 years he managed the South Bay Organizational Development Network, a 500-member professional development group for HR, Training, and OD practitioners.
His clients have included companies in high tech R&D, hospitality, health care, the military, manufacturing, insurance, banking and credit unions, education, publishing, entertainment, mental health, city and county government, not-for-profits, and large consulting houses…and one organic grocery store.
Through all these experiences, the common focus was on how people think about and manage complex and troubling situations, and how they form relationships with each other (or not) in the process.
Virtual Worlds, Real Collaboration
Robin Harper, Consultant and Linden Lab veteran
Robert Ketner, The Tech Museum of Innovation
Online virtual worlds have enabled countless users to meet, train, learn, play, socialize, create and collaborate on complex tasks without regard to geography. The level of interaction provided by virtual worlds is proven to be deeper, and with more impact, than other online experiences. Some would say they have become indispensable elements to their core businesses.
Recently, the benefits and promise of multi-user, real-time environments have become better documented, and scores of variations on the basic product theme serve the diverse needs of users in all sectors. Still, many virtual world proponents say that the full impact of virtual worlds’ possibilities is yet to be seen on a vast scale. They maintain that the potential of virtual worlds extends far beyond what we experience today, and that the model is transforming not only online interactions, but the economy and our notions of community as well.
Tonight, two of virtual worlds’ strongest advocates will engage a discussion on the latest trends and successes in the medium. Bring your own input and experiences about how the real is becoming virtual, and the virtual is becoming real on many levels. Learn about the state of the art, and get an advance view of the state of the future as well, in this interactive session.
Bob Ketner is Virtual Community Manager for The Tech Virtual, a 2 year old project by The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose which is using virtual worlds to design, test, and prototype museum exhibits. Bob’s background encompasses product design, ecommerce, social media, and loyalty programs. In 2006 he founded the SDForum Virtual World SIG, and is the author (via an avatar) of the Metaverse Manifesto.
Robin Harper is partner and consultant at First 30 Services, a firm specializing in beginnings — creating new businesses and driving transitions in existing businesses. Previously Robin was VP of Marketing and Community Development at Linden Lab, where she led the emergence of the Second Life brand and supported this life-changing technology. Earlier, Robin was the VP of Marketing at Maxis, a division of Electronic Arts where she established SimCity as one of the most recognized brand names in entertainment software. She was named one of the Marketing 100 by Advertising Age/Newsweek .
Innovation on the Edge of Chaos
Bruce Sawhill, ePluribus Research
with Jim Herriot
Dr. Bruce Sawhill will tell the story of chaos theory from the viewpoint of how the history of science influences and is influenced by the history of civilization and cannot be considered separately. In particular, why is chaos theory a relatively recent invention when in principle it could have been discovered in Newton’s time? The implications for modern day personal and business life will be discussed.
Dr. Bruce Sawhill received his PhD in theoretical physics from Stanford University in 1985. After a postdoc at the Max Planck Institut in Munich, he settled at the Santa Fe Institute from 1991-97 to study chaos and complexity science. In 1997 he co-founded the Bios Group, a complexity science consulting group formed to apply cutting edge science to business problems. In 2002 he co-founded DayJet Corp., the world’s first per-seat on-demand jet taxi service.