Industry Week points out that it is still possible to submit an application to become an innovation advisor to U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez: “Dubbed the Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy Advisory Committee, the panel of not more than 15 members is slated to counsel Gutierrez on new or improved measures of innovation that will help explain how innovation occurs, its extent across the economy and how innovation affects economic growth and productivity.”

The final day to submit an application is September 29.

Tags: innovation government commerce Carlos Gutierrez

[image: Carlos Gutierrez]

Here’s the latest in consumer-generated innovation. As seen on Yahoo! Music, music superstar Janet Jackson is soliciting the help of her fans to design a cover for her new album, “20 Years Old,” due out on September 26:

“The Design Me contest requires participants to download images of Janet, create proposed album covers, and to post the creations on the contest page. Contestants will vote for their favorite submissions, and Janet will select her top four favorites, which will be used for the first one million copies of the album. Janet and her beau Jermaine Dupri, President Virgin Records, Urban Music, came up with the idea for the promotion. “We were going on the website and looking at all this creative stuff the kids were doing, and it amazed us,” Janet says. “They were taking old pictures and they were just very creative with all the designs. We said, ‘Let’s have these kids design our album cover.’”

Anyway, the new album “20 Years Old” celebrates the 20th anniversary of the release of her 1986 mega-smash album “Control,” which included hit singles like “Nasty,” “What Have You Done For Me Lately,” and the title track. Thus, it’s fair to assume that the winning entry will include some sort of homage to that album. For examples of Janet Jackson artwork that fans have already created, check out the Design Me site and click on “most popular cover designs.”

Tags: Janet Jackson design me design

[image: Janet Jackson]

The X Prize Foundation, which organized the highly successful $10 million Ansari X PRIZE competition that was eventually won by Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne, just announced the creation of a new X Prize to inspire entrepreneurial innovation in the automotive industry. Although the details are still being firmed up, it looks like the prize will encourage cutting-edge research into automobile fuel efficiency. Not sure if the new prize will require alternative fuel sources or traditional fuel sources (i.e. gas from the local filling station), but the premise sounds interesting enough. Mark Goodstein, the recently appointed executive director for the new X Prize, explains what the new award is all about:

“The X PRIZE is about changing paradigms. The current paradigm is that it’s perfectly acceptable to drive a car that only gets 20 or 30 miles per gallon. This prize is about leveraging cash and opportunity to effect positive change in the environment, economy and geopolitics.”

Anyway, you may recognize the name Mark Goodstein - he was the founder of GoTo.com as well as the founder of X1 Technologies (no relation to the X Prize). With a successful serial entrepreneur at the helm, the new X Prize competition should get off to a running start. John Neff of Autoblog suggests that the cash prize will finally spur some real breakthrough innovation in Detroit:

“As fun as the X-Cup race to outer space was, a major breakthrough in fuel efficiency for automobiles would be a much more useful achievement than being able to cart fat cats with deep pockets into lower orbit. No official word yet on the contest’s rules or what the prize will be, though we suspect it will likely be in the many millions.

Since it seems that the auto industry moves only by the hand of market pressure, here’s hoping that a large quantity of cash will motivate all those amateur engineers out there to save us from oblivion. You can bet that Autoblog will be sponsoring Eric Bryant, our own resident engineer, who can build a vehicle out of a garbage can, a roll of duct tape and a wire hanger that runs on Boo-Berry Kool-Aid and gets 168 mpg.”

Tags: XPrize fuel automobile

In 2004, the X Prize Foundation awarded $10 million to Burt Rutan and the SpaceShipOne team, launching the era of private manned space travel. Based on the spectacular success of that prize competition, the nonprofit organization is back with another innovation challenge, this time hoping to spur a breakthrough in the decoding of human DNA. In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Antonio Regalado provides an update on the X Prize Foundation’s latest multi-million-dollar innovation prize:

“The Santa Monica, Calif., foundation plans to offer a $5 million to $20 million prize to the first team that completely decodes the DNA of 100 or more people in a matter of weeks, according to foundation officials and others involved. Such speedy gene sequencing would represent a technology breakthrough for medical research. It could launch an era of “personal” genomics in which ordinary people can learn their complete DNA code for less than the cost of a wide-screen television. Details of the award are being worked out, and officials say they don’t expect anyone to claim the prize for at least five to 10 years. The award will be the centerpiece of an ambitious effort by the X Prize Foundation to become “a global brand that establishes people as geniuses and innovators,” says its chief executive and founder Peter Diamandis, a medical doctor and former aerospace entrepreneur.”

More on the X Prize Foundation:

X Prize Foundation encourages DNA decoding [Slashdot]

X Prize Foundation diversifies into biotech [The Methuselah Foundation]
The next X Prizes [LiveScience.com]
Fuel for thought [Fast Company]

Technorati tags: innovation Xprize

[image: “DNA of cats,” via Flickr]

At the FORTUNE Business Innovation blog, we’re pleased to announce the winner of our latest “Get Back In the Box” contest promotion. Rita Patel’s winning entry, which described how HSS Ventures in New York has created an open source business model within the healthcare industry, was judged as the best overall entry by Douglas Rushkoff.

Douglas explains why Rita is the winner of a free autographed copy of his forthcoming book Get Back In the Box:

“HSS Ventures is an interesting example of a non-profit institution, Hospital for Special Surgery, adopting a for-profit model - HSS Ventures - while maintaining a collaborative approach to the reinvention of surgical technologies. Of course, the “consumer” in this case is the MD, whose in-the-field research and needs can trickle back up to the people developing the products.

The tricky part - which HSS Ventures seems to have tackled - is creating structures through which everyone involved can participate in the Intellectual Property or other profit. And, as I’m sure they will learn if they haven’t already, the more free they are with every piece of knowledge they accumulate, the more they’ll end up profiting off it. Innovation simply is NOT a zero-sum game.”

For those interested in learning more about HSS Ventures, here’s an extended excerpt from Rita Patel’s winning entry:

“HSS Ventures is the entrepreneurial arm of Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City. (HSS is a leading institution in the field of orthopedics and rheumatology)

Inherent in HSS Ventures’ mission is that it is a continuously evolving effort whose main foundation is collaboration between all parties in the musculoskeletal field. To date, it has taken the form of the following:

1. Commercial Research and/or Product Development - Collaboration between doctors, researchers, engineers, scientists and industry (companies) to develop new products/technologies

2. Developing an incubator with New York City and financial organizations to discovering, funding, and developing promising early-stage technologies in the orthopedics and rheumatology sector involving doctors, researchers, engineers, and scientists

3. Strategic Advisory Services to companies bringing together leading business and clinical experts in orthopedics to assist companies in fulfilling their business goals

4. Technology Commercialization of intellectual property for (a) individual inventors, (b) institutions with intellectual property who may need marketing assistance, and (c) companies with intellectual property that may not be suitably aligned with its current portfolio or goals - leading to licensing and/or company formation.

5. Investing with co-investors in early stage orthopedic companies requiring input from doctors, researchers, engineers, scientists

The organization as part of its strategy each year evaluates how to change with the industry as well how to further the collaboration by developing new forms to do so as well by forging new relationships.”

The FORTUNE Business Innovation blog is pleased to announce the fourth of its “Get Back in the Box” contests. Douglas Rushkoff, a globally-recognized thought leader on media, marketing and Internet culture, has created a fourth reader contest based around the notion of goodness from the “inside-out,” as described in his forthcoming book Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out:

“Questioning the ethical commitment of a company such as Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream may be as outlandish as questioning the long-term profitability of a Wal-Mart. The company was started with end-to-end social responsibility foremost in mind. It is committed to using organic ingredients, grown in a sustainable manner, from local farmers wherever possible, and with continuous monitoring of environmental impact. The company’s “social mission coordinator” oversees an employee-led grant-making program,and the human resources epartment is one of the most caring and lauded in any industry.

But when push comes to shove, Ben & Jerry’s makes ice cream in a nation where 64.5% of the population 20 or older is overweight, 30.5% are obese, and type II diabetes is at an all-time high. According to the World Health Organization, obesity-related illnesses claim more than 500,000 lives each year. Ben & Jerry’s chocolate-dipped waffle cones each pack 320 calories and 10 grams of fat before any ice cream is added. Its homespun ads showing cows on clean pastures make ice cream look positively healthy. Does encouraging charitable giving, environmental responsibility, and fair labor standards compensate for the obesity encouraged by its products and marketing campaigns?”

Based on that excerpt from Rushkoff, What example can you provide of a company that does its good works from the inside-out, as its primary function rather than merely a portion of revenues? Some examples Rushkoff includes in his book are Honest Tea, conceived from the inside out as a way to reduce sugar intake and provide jobs for aboriginal people, or Voxiva, a successful for-profit company born out of a non-profit idea to provide healthcare connectivity in developing regions.

Submit your selections over the next few days for your favorite example of an “inside-out” socially responsible company and you could win a free, autographed copy of Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out by Douglas Rushkoff. The most innovative entry, as judged by Douglas, is the winner. That’s all you need to know – so start submitting today (either by adding comments to this blog entry or sending email responses with “CONTEST” in the subject line to: basulto@gmail.com).

The FORTUNE Business Innovation blog is pleased to announce the third of its “Get Back in the Box” contests. Douglas Rushkoff, a globally-recognized thought leader on media, marketing and Internet culture, has created a third reader contest based around the open source model of innovation as described in his forthcoming book Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out:

“The companies most threatened by the open source model of innovation are the ones that see their greatest innovations as behind them. If you’ve already invented your best cell phone, mop, marketing methodology, or catcher’s mitt, you will spend more time guarding your secrets than coming up with new ones. Even if you enjoy a competitive advantage today, you carry on with the lingering knowledge that it’s only a matter of time before someone else figures out a better way to do what you do. To stave off this inevitability, you lock down your advantage and processes as much as possible and maintain a closed source enterprise — even to yourself.”

Based on that excerpt from Rushkoff, “What examples can you give of a non-computer-related business that has, nonetheless, opened itself up to collaborative innovation?” For example, did you know Procter and Gamble has an entire division now dedicated to collaborating with other companies on new technologies? That’s how they got Mr. Clean Magic Eraser!

Submit your selections over the next few days for your favorite example of an open source innovation model and you could win a free, autographed copy of Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out by Douglas Rushkoff. The most innovative entry, as judged by Douglas, is the winner. That’s all you need to know – so start submitting today (either by adding comments to this blog entry or sending email responses with “CONTEST” in the subject line to: basulto@gmail.com).

At the FORTUNE Business Innovation blog, we’re pleased to announce the winner of our latest “Get Back In the Box” contest promotion. Scott Rubin’s winning entry, which described how the Nintendo brand has become a form of social currency for consumers, was judged as the best overall entry by Douglas Rushkoff.

Douglas explains why Scott is the winner of a free autographed copy of his forthcoming book Get Back In the Box:

“The winner is Scott Rubin, for his astute and multi-faceted appraisal of Nintendo as social currency. Scott’s was the only entry that looked at both how the brand is serving as a social currency for old school Nintendo users, as well how the technology itself has been retooled to allow for social interaction between users while they play.

Honorable mention to nominators of Apple - a company that has certainly demonstrated full knowledge of the power of social currency - and Verizon, a company that is showing a growing understanding of some of the basic principles at play. Some of the others, while examples of interesting and clever marketing schemes, didn’t relate directly the principles of social currency.”

For all the Nintendo fans out there, here’s an extended excerpt from Scott’s winning entry:

“Apple would normally be the obvious choice for the brand with the most social currency value, but I think that today Nintendo is beating them out.

In the past few years Nintendo has been selling official merchandise through stores like Hot Topic. These t-shirts, hats, etc. are all advertisements that say “I played Nintendo back in the day”. People who are in college and high school now are buying this stuff up like crazy. They don’t actually want it to have a conversation with Nintendo about the old school days, they want to use the Nintendo brand to find other like-minded people.

Nowadays kids are growing up never having even seen the original Nintendo or even the Super Nintendo. 10 years ago this was unheard of. If you tell someone who grew up with the original NES that the first RPG you played was Final Fantasy 7 or that the first Mario you played was Mario 64 it blows their minds. They’ll look at you like some strange creature who knows nothing about video games. So they are turning back to their childhood with shirts that say “know your roots” or “classically trained” in order to find the shrinking number of people they can identify with. There was a machine that identified the first ten to 15 years of their lives and now they are using the brand as social currency to connect with others who had the same experience.

But to give Nintendo the extra points they came out with the Nintendo DS. Not only does the Nintendo DS have great games and everything, but you can use the device itself to communicate with other DS users nearby. It uses wireless internet technology to allow people to write and draw small monochrome messages to each other in a chat room, but not over the Internet (yet). They can only communicate within a certain distance of one another. But what you end up seeing is that at any event where there are likely to be many geeks like LAN parties, anime conventions, geek trade shows, etc. There is an immediate network of Nintendo DS users that forms. They find complete strangers with pictochat and then play games against each other… The Nintendo brand is the most effective social currency out there right now.”

Congratulations, Scott!

[image: nahuel31 via flickr]

The FORTUNE Business Innovation blog is pleased to announce the second of its “Get Back in the Box” contests. Douglas Rushkoff, a globally-recognized thought leader on media, marketing and Internet culture, has created a second reader contest based around the notion of “social currency” as described in his forthcoming book Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out:

“Today’s marketers believe that the way to capture and retain customers is by engaging in a conversation with them. The strategy is to create a brand so compelling and layered that people want to have a relationship with it. Detroit’s brand managers believe that kids will develop loyalty to one car brand by the time they are 10, and then — if properly engaged over the years — maintain brand “fidelity” throughout their adult lives. Homemakers are to pick one brand of fabric softener over another because they are endeared to the market-research-generated bear that appears in its commercials. Such surface distinctions are no longer enough. The commodification of brands, combined with the widespread use of brands as social connectors, rather than ends in themselves, has made this strategy obsolete.

In an age of interactive media, customers don’t want to communicate with brands or their spokespeople, anymore. They want to communicate through them. Brands for this era can become a form of social currency, offering opportunities for affiliation and, at best, even authorship.

Choosing a brand, today, is more like joining a club. It conveys not simply a willingness to be associated with that brand’s values, but a desire to associate with the people who have already joined. Those brands that can appeal to people on this level — as social facilitators and meaning systems — rise to the level of secular cults. The best brands today are not merely names on products consumers can own, but cultures to which people feel they can belong. And cultures begin with real people.”

Based on that description by Rushkoff, “What is your favorite example of a brand that serves as social currency - a way for customers to communicate not with the brand itself, but with one another?”

Submit your selections over the next few days for your favorite example of a “social currency” and you could win a free, autographed copy of Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out by Douglas Rushkoff. The most innovative entry, as judged by Douglas, is the winner. That’s all you need to know – so start submitting today (either by adding comments to this blog entry or sending email responses with “CONTEST” in the subject line to: basulto@gmail.com).

Over the past two weeks, the FORTUNE Business Innovation blog has been highlighting the types of big thinkers and strategic viewpoints that will be part of the upcoming FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City. We’re now pleased to welcome Douglas Rushkoff, a globally-recognized thought leader on media, marketing and Internet culture, as a regular contributor to the Business Innovation blog. During November, in the weeks leading up to the forum, he will be contributing unique insights and views about business innovation and commenting on different topics that appear on the blog. (He’s also helping us judge a business innovation contest - more of that below. Or, if you’re impatient, skip to the fourth paragraph)

His forthcoming book, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out, is full of insights and observations about the ways that companies can re-connect with true innovation, instead of becoming lost in jargon-speak about efficiencies, business transformations and strategic overhauls. It’s an interesting premise – that after decades of being told to “think outside the box,” it’s now time for corporations to start thinking about ways to “think inside the box.”

Since the theme for the FORTUNE Innovation Forum is “Innovation is Everybody’s Business,” we’d like to open the blog doors to our readers to hear their opinions on business innovation, and specifically, about ways that companies can think “inside the box” to generate positive change.

With that in mind, we’re pleased to announce the first of our weekly contests on the site: “What is your favorite business innovation hack?” We’re not looking for the latest consulting strategy du jour or the newest theory from an Ivy League business school – we’re looking for the types of simple, everyday business innovations that help companies re-connect with their customers and partners.

Submit your selections over the next few days for your favorite “business innovation hack,” and you could win a free, autographed copy of Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out by Douglas Rushkoff. The most innovative entry, as judged by Doug, is the winner. That’s all you need to know – so start submitting examples of ways that companies can start getting back into the box (either by adding comments to this blog entry or sending email responses with “CONTEST” in the subject line to: basulto@gmail.com).

Not sure where to begin? Here are two “business innovation hacks” from Doug’s new book to get you started:

“Adobe Systems, the software company responsible for Photoshop, has encouraged a porous relationship between its developers and its users. As a result of the free flow of information, the user community ends up developing a great many of the “plug-ins”for Adobe’s programs, and takes its delight when their efforts are integrated into the next release, for the benefit of all.”

“Shoemaker John Fluevog offers an “open source
footwear” forum on his Web site through which his fans can create and
post their own footwear designs. Fluevog picks finalists from among
the hundreds of entries and then invites the online community vote for their favorite one.”