Education

Innovation applied to all dimensions of business including but not limited to: growing, expanding, managing, and maintaining a business.

Martha G. Russel Biography

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Martha G. Russell
-Executive Director of Media X at Stanford University

-Senior Research Scholar at the Human Sciences and Technology Advanced Research (H*STAR) Institute at Stanford University

-Senior Fellow at the Institute for Innovation, Creativity and Capital (IC2) at The University of Texas at Austin.

Martha has established collaborative research initiatives in technology leadership and information sciences for national science agencies and technology companies, pioneering early public-private partnerships in microelectronic and information sciences and in manufacturing technologies.

She has led interdisciplinary research programs at the University of Minnesota and The University of Texas at Austin and has spearheaded interdisciplinary leadership programs for national agencies and consortia. Martha has developed planning/evaluation systems and consulted regionally and internationally on technology innovation for regional development.

She has a doctoral degree in Policy Analysis focused on Technology Transfer from the University of Minnesota, and a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Dr. Russell studies innovation ecosystems using data-driven visualization methods for systems analysis and is promoting the development of new media metrics for the persuasive impact of interactive, place-based and social media. She serves on the advisory boards of the Journal of Interactive Advertising and the Journal of Technology Forecasting and Social Change.

Improvising Inventors

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An integral part of innovation is failure, you need to be open to failure in order to part take in innovation. But what happens when you fail. Instead of starting over and trying again, you can improvise. In this event we explored how inventors can take advantage of an unsuccessful situation simply by improvising.

 

March 3rd’s First Wednesday event will revolve around an open panel discussion with local inventors that focuses on the relationship between improvisation and invention. Often, successful activities do not turn out as anticipated; adapting and improvising are core competencies for innovators.

This SVII program will bring together several inventors for a discussion concerning the types of improvisation they have utilized to become successful.

The following inventors will be participating in March:

Ed Austin – Flings
SVII member Ed Austin developed the pop-up recycling and trash containers known as Flings. An inventive way to make recycling easier, Flings are now available at Safeways across the country. More information can be found online at http://www.flingsbins.com/

Joy Mountford – QuickTime
During her time at Apple Computer, Joy Mountford managed the Human Interface Group; the group that developed QuickTime, AppleSearch, and Macintosh Finder, among other software programs. She was also the founder of Apple’s International Interface Design Project. An interview with Joy can be found at http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/JoyMountford

Todd Basche – Wordlock
CEO of Wordlock, Inc., Todd Basche invented the Wordlock padlock because he could never remember number combinations. Prior to developing Wordlock, Todd was VP of Software Applications at Apple, responsible for creating iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. More information about Wordlock can be found at http://www.wordlock.com/

Puzzles, Mysteries, and Muddles: Problem Solving and Innovation with Jerry Talley

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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.