Apparently, the U.S. Defense Department is growing increasingly concerned about Canadian coins embedded with tiny RFID transmitter devices that could be used to conduct double top-secret espionage operations against the U.S. In fact, the government has even sent out warnings to its defense contractors about the sinister Canadian spy coins:

“The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada. Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins. The U.S. report doesn’t suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn’t describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them. Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon’s classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.”

Of course, the U.S. doesn’t actually believe that our respectable neighbors to the North have anything to do with these spy coins. Instead, all clues seem to point to China, Russia or France - experts claim that all of them “actively run espionage operations inside Canada with enough sophistication to produce such technology.” The idea of Canadians spying on Americans: “Unthinkable.” At least, that’s the official word from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

[image: The Spy Who Came In From the Canadian Cold]

Well, the latest issue of FORTUNE magazine finally hit newsstands yesterday, featuring Google as The Best Company in America to Work For. Maybe it’s my growing skepticism about GOOG at $500 a share and my unbridled jealousy about Google employees getting free meals, free spa treatments and free doctor visits on location at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley, but here’s a preposterously scary question to mull over during the weekend: Is Google the new Enron? Now, I’m not insinuating that there’s any kind of financial shenanigans going on at Google, only that the valuation numbers at Google just are not adding up the way they once did.

As much as I love Google and wish the company all the best as it attempts to march past $500 per share, does it strike anyone that Google bears a striking resemblance to Enron in several key areas: a stratospheric stock price that nobody really questions; constant adulation by the media, consulting firms and Wall Street analysts for “innovation”; and the all-important front cover of Fortune factor. (At one point, FORTUNE named Enron as the “most innovative company in America” for six straight years!)

Anyway, the cover of FORTUNE magazine features a group of thin, wealthy and casually-dressed Google employees whooping it up and having fun, together with the headline: Google is the New #1. Just like Enron, Google has been touted as America’s most innovative company year in and year out. Enron claimed to be an oil & gas company, but was really a big-time financial derivatives company. Google claims to be an Internet company, but is increasingly becoming a big-time advertising and media company.

OK, OK, maybe I’m overplaying this issue. (It’s tough to be a contrarian these days!) But, ask yourself, when was the last time you actually clicked on one of those annoying text ads or bought anything from Google?

Kevin Desouza, a faculty member at the University of Washington, recently visited HP Labs in Palo Alto, California in order to better understand the company’s innovation processes. As Desouza points out, “the single most important enabler of innovation at HP is their history and culture of innovation. From the days of Hewlett and Packard, HP is a company that recognized the value of innovation throughout the organization. HP focuses on all aspects of innovation: product and service innovation; innovation in business models; cultural and organizational innovation.”

In a wrap-up of his HP Labs tour on the Leveraging Ideas for Organizational Innovation blog, Desouza also provides an overview of the innovation portfolio approach, examines the role of collaboration within the innovation process, and explains the importance of having mature stage-gate processes to screen ideas and innovations.

[image: HP’s first product]