21st Century Organization

GE's Ecoimagination Challenge: The Power of Ideas, Ecosystems and Scale

November 16 I was fortunate to attend GE's event announcing the first winners of their Ecoimagination Challenge that strives to speed solutions to smarter power grids and energy technology. GE CEO Jeff Immelt, Marketing CMO Beth Comstock, VC funding partners and challenge winners were in the room

GE contributed $100m that was matched by 4 venture capital companies to invest in new smart power solutions and companies. The announcement of the first 12 winners, who will receive $55m in funding, generated media buzz including from MarketWatch, the Huffington Post and Fast Company. Meet the winners on the GE Ecoimagination site and watch the announcement video highlights here:

   

Beth Comstock's frank opening remarks set the open tone.  GE understands it doesn't have all the best ideas and (because of it's scale) can play a convening role for smart grid innovation. 

Clear too is GE’s understanding of the power of ecosystems.  GE’s partnering with leading venture capital firms increases a funded companies chances of success. VC’s bring cash and business nurturing expertise while spreading  the ventures reach to an extended investor network. And winners get access to "GE's army of product developers, engineers and sales people".

By crowdsourcing the pool of ideas and energy around the Ecoimagination Challenge are maximized. 4,000 concepts were submitted from across the globe over the course of the 10-week open competition.

Clearly GE is not the first to discover the power of crowdsourcing. Eli Lilly's outsourced research and development program that became InnoCentive dates to 1998; Procter and Gamble has inspired others with Connect and Develop, that CEO Lafley instigated in 2000; and IBM has been using Innovation Jams since 2001. Still GE's Ecoimagination Challenge and the announcement presentations highlight the potential in appropriate openness and the power in creating idea and talent ecosystems to drive innovation.

What's your experience with crowdsourcing for innovation?  What companies and programs impress you?  How impactful do you see the Ecoimagination Challenge will be?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

From Videotex to Facebook: 22 Years Online. So What's Changed?

Thanks to Nancy White and Jo Murray, editor of The Knowledge Tree, the Australian e-journal of learning innovation, with colleagues Victoria Axelrod and Kiki Mulliner I've had the opportunity to co-author a piece on "Learning through participation and connecting intelligence: experimenting with a wiki to co-create". 

The article documents some of our lessons learned through the process but remarkable for me was the excuse to look back at my 22 years online, beginning at the Australian Caption Centre in 1985. Thanks to farseeing Caption Center founders Adam Salzer and Alexandra Hynes I helped create "Edutel", an educational content service for the launch of Viatel, a U.K. Prestel standard videotex service. As this was pre-Web there are few remnants to tell the story. Peter Hosie's reflections on the potential of videotex for education capture the times.

Coming to the U.S. I was fortunate to find my way to the Trintex offices in White Plains, NY where a group of smart, dedicated people were working hard at pioneering the NAPLPS based online consumer service launched as "PRODIGY" in 1988. 6 years later, December 1994, with AOL nipping at our heels, PRODIGY became the first online service to integrate a Web browser. 

In 2007, creating a Facebook 21st Century Organization Group with minimal effort and functionality I never imagined 20 plus years ago, I asked myself the question J. C. Spender uses to provoke discussion at New York Knowledge Cafe gatherings:

"So what's changed?".

Here are some reflections.

1. Today's Invisible Servers, Cables, Programmers and Code

I've heard Cliff Figallo tell wonderful stories about The WELL's early days and heroic efforts to keep the service up as new members joined, including tending the server dressed in formal attire. As PRODIGY grew each morning attention turned to the previous day's peformance levels.  There was a scheduled downtime during pre-dawn hours for maintenance. 

Today we just expect to be always connected wherever we are, and on the move without cable tethers. Failure to do so, like Skype's recent outage, becomes a news event. How many people ever consider the server network Google has around the world ensuring 24x7 access? Wikipedia cites 450,000 servers in data centers worldwide.

Similarly, where are the programmers?  No doubt behind the sites I log into every day ranging from Earthlink, through Facebook, Google,Typepad, Technorati, etc are hundreds of programmers working to add functionality and service stability. But I don't know them, the programming languages they use, or where in the world they are.  At PRODIGY programmers were highly visible, essential and valued colleagues with names, people whom I'm delighted to see when PRODIGY alum gather to mark another year.

And where is the CODE?  I created our Facebook 21st Century Organization Group without seeing a line of code. I considered this while applying John Pederson's rule for making del.icio.us tags display in a Wikispace, to our ConnectedIntelligence wiki. 

2. From Information Sparsity to Overload and Abundant Connections

Did anyone else notice the number of people admitting they were taking time away from being connected to reflect this summer? I sympathize with Stuart Henshall's frustration expressed in a Facebook wall post that as he contributes "to more and more "Streams" with twitter, facebook, social bookmarking, blog posts, wiki pages etc and I'd like to capture that all in one place." In 2007 with the exponential power of network laws at work, our skills are constantly being stretched to learn new tools and manage through this abundance.

3. TIME and ENERGY Become Increasingly Precious Resouces. Knowing when to say NO to Connectedness

Anders Hemre first focused me on the importance of allowing TIME for THINKING during a 2002 article interview.  With "REFLECTION" the topic of article co-author Kiki Mulliner's dissertation, we spent time during our article writing considering the importance.  In a highly connected world, as TIME becomes an increasingly precious resource, knowing when to say "NO" to connectedness to devote hours and ENERGY to creating value from available information and connections seems to me an essential skill.

4. The Technology is Catching Up to Support People Networking, Where the Real Value of Connectedness Lies

As PRODIGY yielded to AOL's mid 90's ascendancy on my office wall was a quote in a Jupiter Report citing Bob Smith from AOL saying:

"AOL understood people come for the content and stay when they get connected."

AOL's focus on chat and IM revealed that understanding.  Reports from the recent Always On Stanford Summit point to what's ahead online.  At minimum, as Facebook is revealing, the technology is catching up to support people connecting where early online services, from The WELL forward, suggested the real value of connectedness lies.

This post has grown long. I also pondered what HASN'T changed.  Grist for another time. 

Thank you for reading if you've persevered this far.  Your reflections and experiences about the evolution of online, and implications of connectedness, invited and welcomed as comments.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

PODCAST Camp NYC Success, Energy & Rick Santelli @ the Board of Trade

Post the success of PODCAMP NYC I've been considering WHY. 

This morning listening to CNC's Rick Santelli reporting from the Chicago Board of Trade around 8.40am provided some real clues.

Speaking about stock market statistics Mr.Santelli said:

"I love the market.

  It's my passion, my hobby, my job."

Video is here. Appears near end of segment.

PODCAMP NYC overflowed with people passionate and enthusiastic about podcasting, many working hard to turn a hobby into a job and business.

The energy in the room was contagious and noticeable because it is so often missing from established organizations. The work of Rob Cross and his colleagues at the Network Roundtable first focused my attention on managing energy in organizations.  Here's a recommended paper, fully available only to Roundtable members.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Note to CNBC: Love your TV channel but despite your HEAVY promo of the new web site have to tell you in my experience it's CLUNKY and your search engine needs serious help. Had to go to Google to locate Rick Santelli's bio (with bonus of discovering how widely he is mentioned.) And if perchance anyone at CNBC is reading, WAY too much CNBC branding in the header IMHO.