With blog coverage of the FORTUNE Innovation Forum continuing to roll in during the first two weeks of December, it’s time to hand out this year’s (unofficial) Best Blog Coverage of the FORTUNE Innovation Forum award. This year’s award goes to John Caddell, a Pennsylvania-based innovation consultant who writes the Shop Talk innovation & marketing blog and also contributes to the Futurelab blog on strategy, innovation and marketing.

There were three distinguishing characteristics that pushed John’s blog to the top of the list: (1) Real-time commentaries and analysis from the event speakers (2) Extensive highlights from the optional workshops and (3) Cool photos from the event. Not only was John soaking in lessons from A-list speakers like Gary Hamel (London Business School), Chad Holliday (DuPont), Bob Nardelli (Home Depot), Brian France (NASCAR) and Brad Anderson (Best Buy) — he was participating in a storytelling workshop from The Moth, making a unique Metamorphosis sculpture with the help of Sophie Marsham (pictured, right), and learning how to use images and illustrations to guide the innovation process in a workshop with Tom Wujec.

The runner-up this year for the Best Blog Coverage Award was the Style Station blog from Jinal Shah. (Keep an eye out for Jinal in 2007 - she’s planning on launching a new site called BeingMyBoss.com that will feature interviews with top entrepreneurs and innovators). She posted a great five-part summary of the event, complete with observations and commentary from a number of the speakers and optional workshops, as well as observations from the Innovator’s Studio.

[images: The Innovator’s Studio and Metamorphosis sculpture]

For publicly-traded companies, the easiest way to establish a link between innovation and value added is by tracking the stock price of the company and simultaneously assessing the consensus Wall Street opinion about the growth perspectives for that stock. The faster the company is growing, the more likely that the company is coming up with innovative new products and services - and the more likely the stock price will be moving north.

Anyway, with that as backdrop, the current issue of Barron’s features an interesting profile of Medtronic, which has been one of the most innovative companies in the medical device space. The company has been a long-time Wall Street darling; however, lately, analysts have been getting a bit worried that the company will no longer be able to sustain its impressive pace of growth. The company is still the market leader in pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (i.e. ICDs) but this market segment could be reaching a saturation point in the U.S. Recognizing this fact, the company has ramped up its innovation initiatives, hopeful of finding new products to bring to market. According to Barron’s, this strategy seems to be working:

“CEO Art Collins believes Medtronic can increase its sales and earnings at about a 15% yearly rate for the next five years. That would mean the Minneapolis-based company doubles revenues from the $11.3 billion shown in the fiscal year ended April 2006.

Medtronic has many shots at achieving those ambitions. Its sales of ICDs should thrive, thanks to innovations like wireless telemetry, which will let doctors monitor and treat patients wherever they might be - before patients land in the emergency room. As populations grow grayer, Medtronic should also see substantial growth in devices for managing other chronic diseases, of the spine, the pancreas and even the brain… “I think we are just scratching the surface now, says CEO Collins of the disease-management opportunities awaiting Medtronic.”

Barron’s is particularly enthusiastic about the next-generation wireless devices from Medtronic that will relay data through patients’ BlackBerry devices, allowing them to go almost anywhere and remain under their doctors’ care. (The title of the article is, appropriately enough, “Doctoring by BlackBerrry?”)

Anyway, if you have any kind of interest in the future of health care, it’s worth taking a look at some of the cool products on the way from Medtronic, as well as the company’s new partnerships with biotech companies like Amgen and Genzyme. For more on the company’s take on innovation, also be sure to check out the panel discussion featuring Stephen Oesterle of Medtronic at the recently-concluded FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City. What’s interesting is that Medtronic views doctors not as “customers” for its devices, but as “partners.”

[image: Art Collins of Medtronic]