Fathers Day is coming up soon, and I’m always on the lookout for innovative and practical gifts for dads who are “techies.”

My own kids are well-past the baby stage, but I thought I’d pass this on to those of you who know a new or expecting dad this month: A cordless video-enabled baby monitor. There are a few on the market now, including the Guardian Angel, a high-tech baby monitor that can inform everything about your kid even when you are not nearby.

From within 300 feet, the baby monitor from Swann fits well in a pocket or can be hooked into your belt. The package comes with a camera and a receiver. The ultra sensitive microphone hooked to the camera picks up even the slightest murmur of your child. The infra-red LEDs even provide night vision capability. The LCD color screen makes the video visible with ultimate clarity, and costs about $150.

For $20 more, there’s the Edge 12-inch digital photo frame with built-in MP3 player. The high-resolution screen has a sharp image display , and you can program it for an automatic slide show with multiple transition effects and display times.

To get your pictures rolling, you just insert your memory card or USB flash drive in the back of the Digital Photo Frame.

Or for half the price, the Space Monitor will help dads get a grasp on the universe. The hand-held star-locator computer works by entering the time and location in the Northern Hemisphere on the keypad.

The navigator shows them exactly where to find 66 of the brightest stars, 56 constellations and four visible planets. It can also track thousands of astronomical events through the year 2020.

The device includes 20 star charts, measures about 10 inches, and requires three AAA batteries.

Imagine a new and revolutionary technology that will produce reliable low-cost electricity from the floors of the oceans!

Now company in the U.K. has designed the prototype for the world’s first deep-sea tidal-energy farm. The underwater tidal farm will be built off the Welsh coast starting this year to provide electricity for 5,000 homes.

Click on the picture  or right here to see a cool Web video about how this sea farm works.
Tidal energy has the potential to provide a reliable source of green energy because it is predictable and guaranteed, unlike wind turbines, which are dependent on the weather.

Construction is due to start this summer and the proposed tidal energy turbines, described as “a wind farm under the sea,” should be operational by 2010. Eight underwater turbines will be installed on the sea bottom off St David’s peninsula in Pembrokeshire, South Wales. The project off the Welsh coast is being developed in partnership between the power company E.ON and Lunar Energy and is one of several tidal energy projects being considered in British waters.

The ebb and flow of tidal waters will provide the force to turn the blades of the turbines. It can generate electricity without the huge emissions of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. British energy companies are confident that the impact on wildlife will be minimal. The turbines revolve slowly enough for fish and other creatures to avoid being damaged by the blades.

Studies have suggested that Britain’s coastline offers enough tidal energy to supply at least 5 percent of Britain’s total electricity consumption. In U.S. dollars that translates to nearly a billion dollars a year!

My congrats to Kimberly-Clark for winning the coveted 2008 Visionary Award for SpaSensials, a fantastic innovative product!

SpaSensials was one of six finalists at the VISION 2008 Consumer Products Conference, organized by INDA, Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry. I was honored to champion this innovation while I worked at Kimberly-Clark, and am proud of the entire SpaSensials team for its great work!

If you’re not familiar with SpaSensials, click here to learn more about this amazing at-home spa treatment consisting of intensive moisturizing and conditioning socks and gloves.

It’s a product geared toward women who love the softness of a spa manicure and pedicure, without the salon prices. Advanced technology helps the intensive conditioning formula in SpaSensials products to quickly and effectively absorb into the skin. The nonwoven material keeps moisturizers on the inside, next to the skin.

Kimberly-Clark had some tough competition, and there were some great new innovative consumer products in the contest. The other five finalists were:

1. Curity Brand Nursing Pad, Covidien
(formerly Tyco Healthcare Retail Group) redesigned its nursing pad into a three-dimensional lemon shape that provides a more discreet fit.

It has a thinner fluff pulp/SAP core for improved dryness and comfort as well as a tissue layer on the top and bottom to better contain the core.

2. Do-Rite Disposable Dog Diapers, Do-Rites
Do-Rites are nonwoven disposable diaper/garments that are fashionable and also provide the protection of a disposable diaper, without looking like one.

3. PowerTex Glass Cleaner, Ecolab
With applications in both consumer and institutional products, this system offers an environmentally responsible spray bottle cleaning system that uses a chemically impregnated nonwoven “sleeve,” a trigger sprayer with a specially designed dip tube system and a bottle.

4. OMop Dry Sweeper Cloths, Method Products
The OMop Dry Sweeper Cloths are disposable dry sweeper cloths made from 100% PLA (Poly-Lactic Acid), a plastic derived from corn, and are designed to be used on a custom sweeping tool.

5. Consumer Shopping Bags, Reliance Industries (India)
These reusable shopping bags are made of reverse printed and laminated BOPP film on a polypropylene nonwoven and are designed to replace conventional paper bags and cotton cloth bags in the grocery and retail market.

I’m gearing up for the Corporate Portfolio Management conference Clearwater Beach, Forida, where I will be talking about how to organize to deliver a pipeline of innovative solutions.

PDMA and IIRUSA are putting it together, and I’m excited to be gathering with presentors from corporations like Intel, Johnson & Johnson, American Express and Motorola as well as Harvard Business Review, llinois Institute of Technology and Tufts Universities.

A lot of my clients want to know how to structure thier organization to actually deliver innovation. It’s a holistic approach that does not exclude the corporate culture element. You need to foster a culture of creativity and forward- thinking initiatives. I’ll be sharing a lot of case studies from companies like Kimberly-Clark, P&G, Hewlett-Packard, Visa and others who have designed unique org structures to build the critical innovation capabilities required to disrupt today’s marketplace and create economic value.

If you’ve never attended one of these conferences, I highly recommend it for next year!

IT outsourcing analysts have made big predictions for 2008 in the IT service market.

Experts expect the Indian rupee to continue its rise, keeping global IT service providers and customers on edge. Industry consolidation will continue. And as I’ve blogged recently, the offshore outsourcing market will continue to develop in India and beyond.
But will IT service providers figure out a way to provide more of the innovation their clients crave? Here are some top IT predictions from CIO magazine. (Click here if you’d like to peruse its pages—it’s a great resource!)

The Dollar

The continued decline of the dollar could be difficult for service providers to absorb. If the currency gap widens next year, expect Indian outsourcing providers to start indexing their prices to local salaries, promoting other offshore locations like China and Latin America, delay hiring of new staff, and building currency hedges into contracts.

Consolidation

The industry’s leading providers will gobble up smaller competitors in 2008. Tier-2 providers like ACS, Perot Systems and others have struggled, and as a result will become acquisition targets for larger providers or private equity firms. U.S.-based providers may be more likely to acquire midsize providers than their offshore brethren. Indian IT service providers, however, will continue to set up local delivery service centers in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. Likewise, American and European service providers will continue expanding their offshore presence to remain price competitive.

Politics

Large companies will most likely avoid announcing substantial agreements or employee reductions during 2008. The result could be a backlog of unsigned agreements pushing into 2009, which could put customers in the driver’s seat during negotiations during this election year.

Looking Beyond India

While India will remain the market leader in offshore IT services, clients are looking outside the subcontinent for alternatives. Thus, 2008 will be the biggest year to date of expansion of IT service delivery capabilities beyond India. As I’ve said before, think Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, China, and to a lesser degree, the Middle East and Africa.

Flight from the Big Cities

In India and beyond, outsourcing hot spots have become oversaturated, so many providers and customers are looking to set up shop elsewhere. A shortage of talent is emerging in the top cities across India, local universities are no longer providing an adequate number of qualified candidates, and recent tier-1 city grads are increasingly wary of starting at the bottom on the graveyard shift because they’ve got other options. That’s creating movement into smaller, less saturated cities.
The same story is occurring in dozens of outsourcing hot spots around the world.
As a result some IT service providers are jumping to second-tier cities in an attempt to sidestep the rush to set up shop in a major metropolis.

Transformation

Customers want more than cost savings. They want access to great talent, vertical expertise, process maturity, flexibility, the great and powerful “value add.” IT buyers want an outsourcing provider who can actually enhance the client’s revenues and not just their own.
That means IT service buyers can expect to spend more on outsourcing services in 2008 while deciphering which market changes warrant the upcharges and which don’t.

Call Center Culture

Clients are demanding improvement in the call center turnover rate. One industry provider reports that it loses half its staff during the first 100 days of work. Providers are beginning to respond to the sweatshop mentality of call centers, by creating more “client-centric” solutions, such as unique scripts and efforts to connect employees to the client’s corporate culture.

Green IT

The “Green” IT service trend will take root and become measurable and attainable in 2008, as outsourcing providers desire to decrease their carbon footprints by creating greener data centers, investing in environmentally friendlier buildings and campuses, and developing eco-friendly processes and policies.

Outsourcing Buyers Get Smart

In 2008, many outsourcing customers will be entering third and fourth generation outsourcing contracts—either renewing, rebidding or restructuring their deals. Many of those IT organizations are making smarter decisions, negotiating better terms, demanding better business-driven metrics and getting better at outsourcing lifecycle management.

I predict there will be plenty of new entrants to the outsourcing market this year to challenge the veterans and create their own innovative structures.

(Photo courtesy of the Post-Crescent)

2007 has been a great year for new beginnings! We’ve been in business for 12 months now, and I couldn’t be more excited about what we’ve accomplished. As we end our first year in operation, Innovationedge is getting a lot of attention both locally and across the globe. We’re working with more than 30 different clients, both companies and inventors, and a global scope that takes us to Russia, the Middle East and Europe.

I’m proud to end 2007 with headlines like last Sunday’s article in the Post-Crescent, the local newspaper in my neck of the woods. Business reporter Pete Bach and I sat down recently to talk about the meaning of Innovation, and why people often are confused by the terminology that many of us in the innovation space take as a given.

Pete did a fabulous job explaining terms like Open Innovation and Disruptive Innovation. The online version has an audio description of Open Innovation from our interview.

I’m glad he he was able to connect with one of my client companies, WD-40, an innovative company poised to build some very significant changes in its business model. This company is about so much more than spray lubricant for squeaks. If you’re not familiar with its product line, I invite you to check out the many familiar names you probably have in your home — household brands like WD-40 Lubricant, Lava Soap, Carpet Fresh and Spot Shot.  The company is learning ways to structure its analysis and find areas of opportunity.  The value they receive from us is learning how to change their culture, views, analysis methods, etc.

I can’t wait to see how clients like WD-40 and others make these significant leaps toward new innovation opportunities in 2008. This next 12 months will bring new growth for Innovationedge as well, and I’ll be sharing some exciting new projects in the weeks ahead.

On behalf of my entire Innovationedge team, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Is your company speaking to moms? One of my favorite topics to blog about is the Alpha Mom, and as I’ve said before, an Alpha Mom is an amazing woman. She isn’t necessarily wealthy, but she does control 85 percent of the household spending.

I like how nicely Gina Robison-Billups, the president of Moms In Business Network, sums it up: “Mothers influence everything we do…from what we wear, to what we eat, to what we drive. Because of their influence and purchasing power, moms are one of the most powerful economic forces in the world.”

Politicians are also trying to woo Alpha Moms, much as Bill Clinton appealed to “soccer moms” in the 1990s. A new bi-partisan MomVote.com website is targeting this massive audience, and was created after several 2008 presidential candidates asked for her help in reaching contemporary mothers.

On the corporate side, one marketing firm learned that 70 percent of these moms feel that companies are not doing a good job speaking to them. I think they’re just not speaking in the right language.

So what is the official Alpha Mom language and ways to communicate? Check out these facts:

• 80% of moms have watched an online video in the last week
• 87% of moms read blogs
• 90% of mothers use the same products at home and the office
• 5 million moms own their own business
• 88% of mothers refer to themselves as household CFO

Alpha Moms have their own unique way of communicating with one another. They are one of the greatest influencers in word of mouth marketing. According to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), the likelihood of moms telling others of a positive business experience or enjoyable product is 90-95 percent. In addition to that, busy working mothers rely heavily on the recommendations of other busy moms when investigating products and services to buy.

In other words, forward-thinking, innovative companies can’t afford to miss the target with the largest consumer group in the U.S.

I recently read a new study on innovation in emerging markets, and it confirms what I’ve blogged about in the past: navigating those emerging markets waters is a daunting task for most of us. According to the 2007 annual study on Innovation in Emerging Markets by Deloitte’s Global Manufacturing Group, more than half of the companies surveyed fell short of their revenue or operational goals in emerging markets. The report points to the many unique challenges we’re faced with in the areas of talent management, risk management and operating models.

Our thinking about emerging markets has changed. No longer do manufacturers see operations in China or India as simply a means to lower global operating costs. Now places like Hungary, Viet Nam and others are being added to the list of competitive markets as an avenue to grow the top line. Companies are also able to leverage even more sophisticated capabilities in emerging markets to handle high-value activities. This is quickly changing the global competitive landscape.

I highly recommend following this link to read this report, because it evaluates some of the strategic areas that companies need to address to succeed and realize the enormous market potential of the developing economies in China, India, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. It also highlights some of the innovative strategies that successful companies are deploying to win the war for talent, manage risk and structure their operations to achieve their revenue and operating goals in emerging markets.

There is still time to register and plug in to the Global Innovation Exchange 2007. It started today and runs through November 9th, but there is still time to register and get up to speed without missing a thing!  The entire conference is right on your computer, so you won’t need to travel, eat hotel food or even dress for success. 

The virtual conference is a groundbreaking online event focused on collaboratively sharing and diffusing innovation insights, strategies and next practices from around the world. I am one of the thought leaders featured in this three-day event, and I’m joined by leading experts from Johnson & Johnson, the Center, Denmark, and numerous other organizations from the US, Europe, India and the Middle East.  You’ll learn about emerging innovation models, tools and approaches in what is truly a  “learning community.”

Through real-time interactions, you can participate in introductions, presentations, Q&A sessions, informal networking and even facilitated breakout groups. Most of the presentations are delivered in the form of narrated PowerPoint slideshows that can be accessed and viewed at any time during the conference. You can even post questions and interact with the presenter and each other inside the presenter’s virtual conference room.

And while you won’t need business cards, you can do a lot of networking in the “Collaboration Café.”  A directory of participant profiles, instant messaging and virtual meeting rooms encourage additional networking and knowledge sharing. In addition, a variety of resources including speakers’ presentations, white papers, articles, and website links are available to all participants through a searchable knowledgebase.

Here is the site for the Global Innovation Exchange 2007 conference: http://www.innovation-point.com/GIE2007/index.htm

I am very excited to point you to a new magazine article featuring our Innovationedge team and the work we do. The article is titled, To the Edge, and you’ll find it in the November issue of Marketplace Magazine. The editor has really captured the essence of what Innovationedge and its people are all about!

I’m all smiles for the new cover shot in this month’s Nov. issue of Marketplace Magazine! 

 
The monthly publication is aimed at  northeast Wisconsin business owners, CEOs and upper-level management professionals in a wide range of industries like manufacturing, finance, law,  medicine, construction, commercial real estate, economic development and  higher education. It’s great to see that these businesses think and dream beyond their borders, spending an enormous amount of energy and focus on global partnerships.  We are excited to be living and working among these forward-thinking entrepreneurs.The November issue is already generating a lot of buzz around and beyond our own office, and I could not be more proud of my team!