Mission Driven Innovation

Innovation that is related to a particular mission, can be even more powerful than that which is simply responding to solving a problem or driven by the desire to simply make money. Innovation is difficult in the best of circumstances, which is why it is usually accomplished by individuals who are driven. And not just driven to please their boss in the drive to get promoted, but driven by a mission.

What is the difference between ambition, problem solving and pursuing a mission or a vision? Missions and visions are bigger than individuals and organizations. They may be related to a philosophy which can sometimes be expressed as a tag line, such as “Bicycles for the Mind” which was Apple’s tagline early on when I attended Apple Developer University and was emblazoned on the large three ring binder of materials we were all given. I mention this as I would have never know this was Apple’s philosophy had they not disseminated it in this manner, as it did not show up elsewhere.

At the early Apple providing the “Bicycles for the Mind” mission enabled them to engage 30,000 developers creating software applications none of whom were on Apple’s payroll. By the way, Apple thirty years later, now has 1,000,000 registered developers a big part of the reason they can stay ahead of their competition. I am pointing this out not to glorify Apple, but to show having a terrific mission which can be expressed as a tagline that is an encapsulation of a larger meaningful philosophy, can be a powerful motivator for innovation. Apple is not the most valuable company in the world only because of design and ambition, but because that design and ambition were subordinated to a vision / mission. In contrast I would characterize Microsoft’s mission during its early years as “Deliver business capability”.

In short the missions of the two companies although each powerful were very different. Microsoft, founded April 1975 in Albuquerque, NM cared more about business than individuals.

Apple founded a year later April 1976 in Cupertino, CA was completely focused on empowering individual end users.  Now Microsoft’s market cap in early July of 2015 is $358.53B and Apple’s market cap more than double at $726.7B.  Of course there are multiple reasons for this besides mission, but mission contributed and still contributes in a nonlinear manner.

Another personal example from academia. Stanford University, a private institution founded in 1885, currently has over 16,000 students and the fourth largest endowment of $21.4 billion, just ahead of Princeton with $20B. Cogswell Polytechnical College also a private institution founded in 1887, and has 462 students and an endowment of $2M.  One significant reason Stanford’s endowment is 10,000 times greater than Cogswell, with a student body only 40 times greater, is their founders stated very different missions. I am paraphrasing here because Cogswell has changed its mission and is now on a serious upswing. Henry Cogswell, a successful dentist and inventor of dental technology, wanted to provide “a technical education to working people” and Leland Stanford a tycoon, industrialist and politician wanted to provide; “learning …. of the highest grade”.

Both schools were both founded in the mid 1880’s, Cogswell in San Francisco and Stanford just a little south, with roughly the same $1M endowment but very different missions. The pursuit of turning out employable graduates vs. the pursuit of excellence, certainly influenced the current reality that Stanford’s endowment is now $1.25M per student and Cogswell’s is $4,330!

Having an excellent mission is incredibly important to any entity seeking to provide value to the world.

SVII Partnerships and Progress

SVII is happy to announce a new partnership on the east coast! Expanding out from Silicon Valley, SVII has launched a partnership with Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, MA. Along with the extension to the east, there are also changes back home, in the west. With new sponsors and a re-imagining of our live events, the work in the west is looking better than ever.

 

SVII is now officially bicoastal and we have two exciting new partnerships to announce.

Our monthly live West Coast programs are being rebooted after a brief hiatus. SVII Forums at Foothills is a partnership with our newest sponsor, the Foothills Tennis and Swim Club, who will host us at their beautiful facility in Palo Alto.

Our community can look forward to the same highly interactive provocative round table discussions on timely topics, anchored by the perspectives of our fascinating panelists. Ease of access is considerably improved over our recent locations — Parking is plentiful and the venue is just off Foothill Expressway between Page Mill and Arastradero, and near I-280, which is easier to navigate than US 101, especially during the evening rush hour.

In addition to improving our location, we are changing from 1st Wednesdays to 4th Tuesdays for at least the next three months on June 23rd, July 28th and August 25th. Mark your calendars.

For information about our first event, please check out the event announcement: From Makers to Manufacturing — details on the other summer events will be posted soon.

SVII East is also kicking off a great new partnership with Simon’s Rock College in Western Massachusetts to create an Innovation Corps, an educational Innovation Initiative commencing Tuesday May 26th. This program has a team of students working with SVII over the summer, and we will have some big news about the further development of our partnership with this prestigious institution in the coming weeks.

Thank you to everyone for your ongoing support and interest in innovation advocacy. This is going to be a great year for us all.

JUNE 4th 2013 (Recap): Innovation Feng Shui

In this event a discussion was held on utilizing interactivity at both a small scale and a large scale to help better progress. In the end the miscommunication caused by a lack of interactivity was cited as the reason innovation does not progress as well as it should.

On June 4th, the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute (SVII) help an event titled Innovation Feng Shui: Fueling Innovation through Interactivity. The event was hosted by Cogswell Polytechnical College in their auditorium, called the Dragon’s Den by its students and staff. This venue was chosen to allow multiple unique setups to be experimented with in the pursuit of a more engaging conversation. The purpose of the event was to discuss how we can encourage better communication through more freeform rules of engagement and through seating.

The event was attended by about 40 people, and at least half of the guests got a chance to jump into the conversation in some significant way. We enabled this by putting a “camp fire” in the middle of the darkened room with the attendees in a circle around it. This essentially put everyone on equal standing in the discussion and allowed people to feel more comfortable joining the conversation at any time.

The event was kicked off by a raw food presentation by raw food chef Jillian Love, who brought a selection of food all made from raw and vegan ingredients, including ice cream, chips with some dip, and salad. We then moved on to the main section of the event: the group discussion of interactivity and innovation.

Our discussion leader, Howard Lieberman opened the conversation by explaining the mindset behind the event’s setup, and asking for input on it. The group chimed in by endorsing the setup and structure—appreciating the capacity for a more fluid discussion. They additionally observed that the camp fire setup seemed reminiscent of ancient human gatherings where stories were shared and culture and connection was developed. This form of group communication is a form which is underused in modern society, in spite of how natural it is for us.

The conversation then moved on to the actual meaning of feng shui (a phrase used in the title of the event). An attendee pointed out that the origin of the word feng shui was the Chinese words for “wind” and “water”, as a metaphor for being in harmony with one’s environment. Additionally, there was much discussion on how being in harmony with one’s environment is important in not just group discussions, but most aspects of our lives, and just as importantly, our businesses.

After defining feng shui, we moved into discussing the broader topic of innovation and how it can be improved through fresh concepts like interactivity. One of our featured conversation instigators, Don Grayson, then pointed out that a many cities have the word “innovation” in their mission statement without really putting much effort into actually being innovative, as if the word is used just because people think it sounds good. Similarly, almost any organization will say that it wants to innovate, but many of those do not follow through, because of the sacrifices involved in achieving innovation.

At this point, someone pointed out that not all innovation is good. Innovation is just doing something in a new way, and it can be beneficial or harmful. Some changes actually lead to lesser efficiency or consistency, especially when the other is being pursued (e.g. you make a change pursuing efficiency, which leads to more failures, and vice versa). On a broader scale, even if an innovation is good for an individual or a company, it may still be bad for society, with unforeseen (or ignored) consequences outside of entity making the change. One example given was the “optimization” of the use of animal by-products in our food.

Moving into an even larger scope—governments and countries–one attendee brought up how Singapore was able to successfully achieve social innovation under a strong and controversial leader who imposed societal changes authoritatively. These changes have definitely been beneficial for Singapore, but at the same time, there is a question of whether their methods of achieving them were the best way. China is doing something similar in trying to modernize its country by incentivizing cities to be centers of innovation and technology. While China has the capacity to be more innovative than Singapore because of the size of the country, they also have a harder time changing the whole country, because of the vastness of its territory and population. In addition there was the concern of whether or not Singapore’s model will properly scale in China.

With so many problems in the world, someone asked, how can we actually get things done, citing the lack of proper communication that often happens. Somebody else pointed out that the problem is not that people aren’t talk, but that many aren’t listening, possibly being trapped in their own “bubble” of acceptable information. The way to fix this, perhaps, is not through more frequent communication, but through more efficient and interactive communication.

JUNE 4th 2013: Innovation Feng Shui

Fueling Entrepreneurship Through Interactivity

Can you have an engaging conversation with the back of someone’s head? How about the backs of 50 heads? How do you arrange groups of people in a physical environment for maximum interactivity, connection, and effectiveness in content capture and iteration? Whether you are an entrepreneur, incubator, community leader, or innovation advocate of another denomination, we all have a desire to initiate change, and to be active participants in the cultivation of new ideas rather than passive recipients of information.

In this event, we will be performing a group experiment in the arrangement of people in space to uncover the hidden ways that those arrangements affect our communication. With that as a starting point, we will then move on to the related areas of, How to groups of people effectively communicate in general? (whether they are a company, community, movement, etc). And how can groups of people be effectively organized to accomplish their goals as a group?

Come be a part of inventing the “feng shui” behind communities of powerful communicators.

This free event will be capped to 50 participants.

Attendance is FREE (while seats are available)!

Refreshments will be provided by Raw Food Chef, Jillian Love!(http://www.jillianlove.com/Home.html)

Optional: Bring a lamp or light source to use in collaboratively constructing our environment.

This event will take place at:  

The Dragon’s Den (Cogswell College)
1175 Bordeaux Dr
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Our conversation will be led by these key conversation instigators…

Gary Entwistle
Gary Entwistle of the Next Institute

Gary Entwistle, MBA 

Gary Entwistle is a skilled training and development practitioner with firsthand knowledge of management and supervision.  During the past thirty years, he has provided leadership coaching and development to thousands of managers. He is a Senior Learning Advisor for The Next Institute and Executive-In-Residence for the Banff Leadership Institute, Alberta, Canada.

Gary recently had the opportunity to practice what he preaches. A client asked him to implement his recommendations to turn the failing business around. He worked as General Manager to restore the business to profitability; to develop policies, procedures, and practices; and to strengthen management at all levels.

Don Grayson of GHG and Associates

Don Grayson, PhD

A licensed psychologist, Don has maintained an organizational psychology consulting practice since 1981. From 1981 – 1987 he was a Senior Consultant and a top performer for RHR International, Inc, the largest organization of consulting psychologists. Since 1987 he has maintained his own independent consulting practice.

He was a contributing author in “Coaching for Leadership – How the World’s Greatest Coaches Help Leaders Learn”. The chapter was cited in Coaching and Mentoring: How to Develop Top Talent and Achieve Stronger Performance in the Harvard Business Essentials, Harvard Business School Press. Grayson is a principle consultant at GHG and Associates.

Bret Sweet, Assistant Professor, Entrepreneurship

Bret Sweet, Assistant Professor, Entrepreneurship

Mr. Sweet is Cogswell’s first Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, following his work in launching the College’s Entrepreneurship program in 2010. He continues to develop Cogswell’s entrepreneurship curriculum and teaches a variety of entrepreneurship courses. He is certified by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), and has taught business building strategies to thousands of Bay Area low-income youths and their families. From 2003-2007, Mr. Sweet was the lead entrepreneurship instructor at BUILD, which provides entrepreneurship education to high school students in low-income areas boasts an excellent college acceptance rate for its seniors. His activities have garnered him a host of accolades, including the NFTE’s prestigious Teacher of the Year Award in 2004 and a speaking engagement at the 2012 NAACP National Convention. Mr. Sweet’s background is as an entrepreneurial musician, music promoter and restaurateur. He received a B.A. in Television and Radio Production from San Francisco State University and an MBA from the University of San Francisco.

Dr. Deborah Snyder, Chief Academic Officer & Provost

Dr. Deborah Snyder, Chief Academic Officer & Provost

“Dr. Snyder has a long history of higher education experience and was a pioneer in the adoption of online platforms in learning. Previously, Snyder served as senior vice provost for academic programs at Strayer University in Washington, D.C. and is author of The New Traditionals and e-Marketing Basics. The New Traditionals examined adult learners – those 25 and over – who comprise the majority of enrollees in higher education. She has been published in numerous education and marketing journals and has presented at several high-profile conferences.