Just weeks after FORTUNE magazine featured a cover story on the end of the Jack Welch era (complete with a giant red cross through Jack Welch’s face) , the two co-founders of MySpace - Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe - have landed on the front cover. Apparently, MySpace is everything that GE is not, as Patricia Sellers explains in her FORTUNE article on the MySpace Cowboys.

The MySpace site is all about user control, grassroots growth and authenticity - three buzzwords that are helping to ignite Web 2.0. While skeptics claim that the site’s relationship with Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. is starting to erode some of the freewheeling, indie appeal of MySpace, the site now ranks among the top three most heavily-trafficked web sites in the world. To give you an idea of the reach of the site, MySpace is currently home to 2.2 million bands, 8,000 comedians, thousands of filmmakers and “millions of striving, attention-starved wannabes.” In fact, the site is turning into a “lifestyle brand” that is popping up on the radar screen of major Fortune 500 advertisers.

No word yet, though, on whether Jack Welch has created a profile page on MySpace.

Tags: MySpace innovation

[images: FORTUNE]

According to ars technica, the German-language version of Wikipedia will get an experimental overhaul over the next few weeks in an effort to cut down on the types of “vandalism, edit wars and misinformation” that plague the Wikipedia site. In the German version of Wikipedia, any user will still be allowed to make edits to any article. However, those edits won’t show up in the live version of the site until a registered user with a certain level of time and experience approves the changes. As Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales points out, this change is needed to guarantee a certain amount of stability to Wikipedia entries. In fact, Wales even discussed the possibility of a “frozen” form of Wikipedia that would allow users to find older versions of Wikipedia entries. Anyway, the move to cut down on vandalism is a way to improve the integrity of the popular site:

“It’s a simple change, but one that could prevent the most juvenile forms of vandalism from ever appearing on the main site, which should do much to remove the appeal of vandalizing articles. The feature probably won’t deter more committed defacers and political operatives, but it should bring a stability to the site that Wikipedia currently lacks. If the pilot program is successful, the idea could eventually be incorporated into other Wikipedia sites.”

Tags: Wikipedia innovation

[image: How Popular is Wikipedia?]

Starbucks continues to blur the line between product innovation and business model innovation. Recognizing that it’s not enough simply to roll out new coffee products every six months, the company is searching for new ways to build out its entertainment offerings (i.e. selling CDs in stores, promoting movies like Akeelah and the Bee). As Springwise points out, Starbucks is now looking to extend its brand experience with the opening of a temporary arts and performance coffee house in New York City this fall. The Starbucks Salon will be open September 8-17, with tentative plans to open similar “pop up” salons in San Francisco, London, Beijing, and Boston sometime in the future: “The concept builds on coffee houses’ history of being informal venues for arts and entertainment, and the Salon will feature both up-and-coming and established artists, including Ursula Rucker, Jose Gonzalez and Jim Carroll. A website and full program for the New York Salon will be online on August 25th, and the coffee house will be located at 76 Greene Street.”

Tags: Starbucks salon innovation

[graphic: Springwise]

The legendary Bell Labs is looking to reinvent itself and remain relevant in the brave new world of innovation despite a series of devastating setbacks, according to Sara Silver in today’s Wall Street Journal. Instead of working on pure research as they did for decades, researchers at the R&D lab are now pushing forward with breakthrough technologies that can be commercialized relatively quickly. In addition, researchers are now expected to condense their research findings into quick-hitting 8-minute PowerPoint presentations. (The idea, presumably, is that any research project that can not be summarized in eight minutes or less is not worth doing.) Some have lauded Jeong Kim, the newly-installed head of Bell Labs, for radically overhauling the way research is done at the R&D facility, while others have lambasted his initiatives - such as establishing closer links with corporate sponsors and venture capitalists - as just a “totally crazy” idea.

What’s particularly troubling is that Bell Labs looks to be gutted even more once the Lucent-Alcatel merger is finalized. (Lucent CEO Patricia Russo denies this, but it’s easy to see that the writing is already on the wall.) Bell Labs, owned by Lucent Technologies, has already been reduced to a third of its former size over the past 10 years. If Alcatel has its way, Bell Labs will probably shrink even more:

“In addition, Lucent is planning to merge with Alcatel SA of France, a company that doesn’t do the kind of fundamental research that made Bell Labs famous. “Bell Labs does research with a big “R”; Alcatel does research with a little “r,” says Niel Ransom, Alcatel’s chief technology officer until 2005. The deal has stirred anxiety among scientists about what will happen if Alcatel, whose shareholders will own 60% of the combined company, asserts control. Some Bell Labs scientists, worrying that their jobs could be among the 9,000 expected to be cut after the deal is completed, are scouting for new work.”

Anyway, for anyone interested in reliving the good ol’ days, there’s a great collection of vintage Bell Labs photos from the 1960s over at Larry Luckham’s personal web site, including this one of a computer operations supervisor at Bell Labs.

Tags: R&D Bell Labs innovation Lucent Alcatel

[image: Bell Labs retro]