(Credit: Boston.com)

What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?

What innovation are you still waiting for?

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I admire everyone trying to think differently. There are so many people innovating there isn’t just one person to name. I think ultimately innovators are successful because of their passion for success. Remember Steve Jobs failed his first time at Apple and was fired by the board. A good idea isn’t the key to success. It is execution, timing, market conditions and a whole lot more.

Jonah Staw, co-founder and CEO of LittleMissMatched, heads-up a lifestyle brand that is based on “innovative and creative mixing and mismatching.” LittleMissMatched launched in 2004 with a collection of mismatched socks sold in odd numbers to encourage girls of all ages to express themselves. The “nothing matches but anything goes” philosophy knocked people’s socks off, and sales jumped from $5 million to $25 million in just three years. Today, the LittleMissMatched product line includes everything from socks, winterwear, and sleepwear to books, bedding, and furniture for mismatched mavens of all ages. LittleMissMatched products range in retail price from $5 to $1,200 and are available at specialty boutiques and department stores nationwide. The company recently announced $17.3 million in private equity funding, expanded distribution, a new flagship store in Manhattan, and a series of new products.

My company is 100% based on innovation. We created a company that was founded on the premise of selling three-packs of non-matching socks. Talk about a challenge — we were completely changing the way people got dressed each morning. We set out to tell the world that it was okay to not match your socks and as such, you should buy them in a novel way. Our socks are uniquely paired to look great together. What we discovered is that our socks are something that are simply FUN. They are so fun that people what to tell their friends about them. Our customers lift their pant legs and say, “Hey check out my socks!,” this is certainly innovation in the world of socks. Our challenge is to translate this innovation into other product categories so that our brand is cohesive. At LittleMissMatched we believe that simple product innovations make our success. People will talk about our products if we give them unique products that are easy to talk about. We have furniture that you can draw all over with a dry erase pen. Why have you ever done that before? We have bedding that flips and switches to make 192 combos in one bed set. For us, innovation is key to our long term success. The good news is that every product category in the world can be missmatchified.

If I had a list, I would be working on those innovations instead of what I am doing at LittleMissMatched! With all seriousness, I am very focused on building a brand based on creativity and innovation. I believe our brand has a broad enough foundation to explore the world!

Innovation is such a broad term. I was recently on a McKinsey panel discussing innovation, and we opened by going around the room. There were more than 25 chief strategy officers from major US corporations. The moderator asked what was the most innovative product, and 90% of the audience said the
iPod. I said the Post-It Note. Why? It is so simple it’s obvious. It has become a fixture on the physical American desktop. It is useful. It invented a new category…before there were note cards, stationary, thumb tacks and more. Now we have the Post-it. Innovations are simple, elegant solutions that make things better. Better doesn’t necessarily mean more efficient…it could be more fun, easier to use, beautiful. You get the point.

We are a small company with a short history. Our historical benchmarks are not relevant yet because we are rapidly growing. I think the biggest barriers are companies that say they want to be innovative but they don’t truly plan for innovation. They look at their historical benchmarks instead of forward at the possibilities. At the McKinsey panel I described earlier, a chief strategy officer from a Fortune 500 company said, “20% of our new products are now required to be driven by innovation.” I asked, “Is the company setting aside 20% of your time to develop innovation?” Of course the answer was no. Innovation doesn’t just happen. Organizations must understand that they must change culturally and structurally to enable innovative thinking. Ultimately, I believe the executive office suite must also be populated by innovative thinkers or innovation doesn’t have a chance of success.

Which innovation “failure” did you learn the most from, and why?

What is your most successful innovation? How did you find it?

In your opinion what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

How do you define innovation?

Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation and what do you think makes them successful?

The kind of people who are innovation seekers are what I call “yes to no” people. They are the type that says, “Hey that is a really great idea, but I think it would be even better if…” They are expansive thinkers. They are not the type that says, “Nope, that idea won’t work because xy or z.” We have worked as hard as we can to hire “yes to no” people. We want everyone to have an open mind, but ultimately, we want them to be filters/curators at the right time so that they can make the hard decisions that will grow our business. If I can pass one lesson on, it is to hire “yes-to-no” people!

It depends on how we define success. I personally love our furniture. Maybe that is because I flew to China to help finalize its development. It was a brutally challenging trip so I am enamored with the end result. If we look at units sold, our socks win the award. If we look at dollars/SKU sold, then our bedding wins. Each of these innovations were found by breaking conventional norms to bring a true value proposition to our customer. Imagine a world where now one bed in a bag we sell gives you 192 combos when all of our competition only gives you one option. When we are at our best, we subvert the marketplace…in other words, we don’t talk about thread count, we talk about combos. What this means is that we don’t actually have competition. Why? Because of our version of innovation!

I don’t ever believe in failure. I believe in learnings. Our first sock package almost disintegrated in your hand, but it was a totally unique package…it failed functionally, but it led us to where we are now. We are only four years old as a company, so each step we take is a learning. Success never happens spontaneously. As they say, “practice makes perfect.”

As Wall Street struggles to redefine itself, Cisco is busy this week introducing its latest wave of collaboration products to compete with Microsoft, IBM and Oracle.

The WebEx platform.

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Cisco Systems )

Most of Cisco’s $40 billion in revenue comes from selling infrastructure to power networks and data centers. Don Proctor, senior vice president of Cisco’s software group, called collaboration the “next phase of the Internet” and a $34 billion market opportunity. It’s clear that Cisco hopes to bundle its communications hardware and software, creating collaborative infrastructure in a box, as it goes after more share of market and mind with its growing product portfolio.

PostPath and Jabber, two recent Cisco acquisitions, will be build into WebEx Connect for e-mail and instant messaging in the coming months, McConnell said. WebEx will be priced in the sub-$10 range per seat per month.

Cisco has also found a way to make its high-end, $300,000 TelePresence videoconferencing product more attractive to large corporations with multiple locations. Telepresence Expert on Demand provides integration with the Cisco Unified Contact Center, dealing with scenarios in which an expert can be summoned to a session. For example, a bank branch could call upon an expert in financial planning to meet with a customer via Telepresence.

WebEx, the Web conferencing service that Cisco acquired in March 2007 for $3.2 billion, has been turned into a Web applications platform. WebEx Connect includes e-mail, calendaring, team spaces, bookmarking, and document sharing, and integrates with the Unified Communications portfolio. Like Salesforce.com, Facebook and other Web platforms, WebEx will allow third parties to build applications (widgets) that integrate with the platform and sell them through a marketplace. Cisco plans to add soft phone, video phone, speed dialing, and federated presence widgets.

“It’s a major launch for us, including a comprehensive update to our Unified Communications platform, a new collaboration client for WebEx and Telepresence Expert on Demand,” said Rick McConnell, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Unified Communications division.

“With the Telepresence system installed, you hit speed dial, which integrates with the Contact Center and rounds up an expert to address questions,” McConnell said.

Caroline Records specializes in introducing international music stars to U.S. audiences. Naturally, this means executives are often less sure of whether a foreign performer can find a niche audience here. Spending big on untested and unknown acts doesn’t make sense. As part of the digital-only promotion, EMI didn’t seek radio airplay for Yelle’s music and didn’t buy banner or print ads in traditional music magazines like Rolling Stone or Blender.

“We’re definitely spending less than on a traditional campaign,” Rougvie said. “It doesn’t make sense when you’re going out the door to spend a lot of money putting out a physical product and taking in costs before you know what (the demand is).”

The label couldn’t have asked for a better test case than Yelle. The 25-year-old from St. Brieuc, France, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that she grew up with the Internet and fully understands its power to promote and distribute music.

Beyond the cost savings that digital music offers, Rougvie says there is growing need for an act to obtain a “groundswell of digital support” from music blogs, download stores, and MySpace to prove to a label that it can attract fans and is worthy of a larger investment. For that reason, focusing on digital at the beginning of a promotion makes sense.

French singer Yelle is helping to usher out era of disc promos

“I don’t know when my first EP on vinyl will come out,” said Yelle, whose real name is Julie Budet. “I don’t know whether it will come out. I think it’s a bonus if it does. It’s a plus. I think now you can download music, buy CDs, and that’s what people really want. But I would be really proud if my album will be out in vinyl.”

For an industry that has been decimated by digital technology, this is an example of how at least one of the four largest music labels is putting it to work.

She is unwittingly helping The EMI Group, one of the four largest music companies, to push CDs further into the shadows. Already a star in her own country and a growing nightclub favorite in the U.S., Yelle was being promoted until recently in this country exclusively through digital means.

The movement to phase out discs as promotional devices has been around for some time. Last year, EMI drastically scaled back the numbers of CDs it sent out as promos. Just a few years ago, the label may have sent out CDs as complete albums. Now it distributes secure online access where retailers or reviewers can hear songs.

Naturally, EMI is trying it again.

Instead, executives took to MySpace, music widgets, and powerful music blogs like Pitchfork. The label started digital and stayed digital until it reached a critical mass. On April 1, EMI finally released a CD version of Yelle’s album, Pop Up.

(Credit:
EMI Music)

For decades, music labels trying to break in an act pressed thousands of vinyl records or CDs to distribute to disc jockeys, record stores, journalists, and fans. Those types of promotions have grown too expensive in an era of shrinking music sales, says Jeff Rougvie, general manager of EMI’s Caroline Records, who is leading Yelle’s U.S. campaign.

While Yelle is a fan of digital music and technology, she says there is still a place for plastic.

A version of “A cause des garcons” has been viewed 3.5 million times since August. Her songs have also been heard on such TV shows as “The Hills” and “Entourage.”

Sweet faced and playful, French electro-pop star Yelle seems an unlikely figure to stick a dagger into the heart of a much-loved but quickly disappearing staple of the music industry.

Yelle, pronounced Yeah-elle, was discovered by EMI’s unit in France one week after she posted “Short Dick Cuizi,” a song that took swipes at a member of a rival band. She renamed the song “Je veux te voir” and then released Pop Up, which features three songs, “Je veux te voir,” “Parle a ma main,” and “A cause des garcons” attracting big audiences at YouTube.

Digital allows EMI to get product to niche audiences affordably as well as generate incremental income for the company. Hikaru would later go on to sell 7.2 million downloads worldwide.

EMI says it has already seen positive results.

Keep people from viewing the data hidden in Office docs
You may be sharing more information than you intend to when you send someone a Word document, Excel worksheet, or PowerPoint presentation. If two or more people have worked on the file, there’s a good chance that anyone who opens the file subsequently can view insertions and–more importantly–deletions made by each person, as well as any comments they may have made, and other personal information relating to the file’s creator. Microsoft’s Remove Hidden Data program for Office 2003 and XP will remove such data in a file before you share it. (See below for a description of Office 2007’s built-in Document Inspector, which functions similarly.)

Propose as many as five different meeting times and let TimeBridge Personal Scheduling Manager poll attendees find the best one.

After you download and install the program (and after Microsoft “validates” your copy of Office), you’ll find a Remove Hidden Data option on the File menu of your Office apps. You can also remove the hidden information from several files at once by running the program separately. Among the information the program removes are comments, revision marks, deleted text, user names, and macros.

I counted 67 different features, though more are being added all the time. While technically free, ExTools is officially donationware; the developer requests a donation of $5 or more, so if you find it useful, drop a few dollars in the e-hat to help ensure that the features keep on coming.

Keep your secrets by running Office 2007's Document Inspector before sharing your files.

Teach Excel some new tricks with ExTools
If you could create your own Excel toolbar, it would probably include a list of your favorite worksheets, a super-clipboard for storing text you reuse frequently, and the ability to save and back up a worksheet with one click. It may also let you switch a vertical range to horizontal (and vice versa) with a single click, reverse the order of a row of cells just as quickly, and save a selection as an Excel, text, HTML, or comma-delimited (CSV) file. You get all these features and more with ExTools, and its partner for Office 2007, ExTools RX.

Office 2007 adds the Document Inspector that cleanses Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 of revisions, versions, presentation notes, hidden rows and columns, and other metadata, including personally identifiable information. To activate this feature, click the Office button and choose Prepare>Inspect Document>Inspect. After it runs, select Remove All as necessary.

Tomorrow: For bullet-fast app launches, skip the menu and go straight to the command prompt.

Poll attendees to find the best time for a meeting
Everybody’s busy, as anyone who has ever tried to schedule a meeting with more than two attendees quickly learns. TimeBridge Personal Scheduling Manager is an Outlook add-in that lets you send e-mails to the attendees with as many as five proposed meeting times. They select the times they’re available or not, and they can even mark one of the times as “best.” Once all the people respond, the program sends you and the attendees an e-mail suggesting the best time, which it adds to your Outlook calendar. The program places a toolbar in Outlook 2003 and 2007, from which you can create a new meeting, view your scheduled meetings, and edit your account settings.

You have to register (name, e-mail address, and time zone) to send meeting invitations, but attendees need not sign up, though they can invite others, and add the meeting to their Outlook or Google Calendar. You can also network your calendars to see who’s available when prior to scheduling the meeting.

Send text messages from Outlook
If you use Outlook 2003 or 2007 and you’re having a hard time keeping track of your text messages, why not let the program manage your SMS correspondence for you? The Microsoft Office SMS Add-in lets you treat each message like an e-mail: save drafts, view all sent items, forward them as e-mail or SMS, even spell-check messages before you send them. There are some restrictions, however: you can send messages to any phone on a GSM network, but you can’t retrieve messages from the phone, and the program does not support Flash SMS or the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

View the responses of meeting attendees by clicking a link in the TimeBridge Outlook toolbar.

YouTube comes to PowerPoint
No matter how many fancy transitions, jumping graphics, animated lines of text, or “borrowed” comic strips you add to your PowerPoint slides, your audience will be sawing logs unless you provide them with content that matters. Shyam Pillai’s YouTube Video Wizard lets you insert a YouTube video in any version of PowerPoint from 97 to 2007 with just a few clicks. After you download and install the program, just click Insert>YouTube video, insert the video’s URL, choose to play it once or loop it, set the size and placement of the playback window in the slide, and then run your presentation. The video will be embedded in a slide, complete with Flash control. You must have a working Internet connection to run the video, and there’s not much you can do to embellish the slides they appear on, but now you can let lonelygirl15 help you get your message across.

But its exact ties to tech and entertainment are unclear. “The project may have originally been associated with Yahoo but the project was killed off before launch,” TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington wrote. “But if our sources are right, the idea has lived on and a team in Los Angeles is working to launch it in the next few months.”

Here’s another theory: What if this is in conjunction with some kind of upcoming Spielberg project, a sort of uber-viral meta-campaign along the lines of the HBO Voyeur Project? (Whatever happened to that, anyway?)

(Credit:
Hanna-Barbera)

Who wants to believe? TechCrunch reported Monday night that Steven Spielberg is developing a new social network where people can talk about their encounters with the paranormal and extraterrestrial.

On Steven Spielberg's rumored social network, maybe you can discuss whether that ghost was really a ghost or just the creepy old caretaker from the abandoned amusement park.

The investment firm was not immediately available for comment.

A trio of German entrepreneurs-turned-investors may have invested in Facebook, TechCrunch wrote Tuesday.

The European Founders Fund does not appear to be affiliated with longtime Facebook investor The Founders Fund, spearheaded by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.

According to the European Founders Fund’s Web site, the brothers have already invested in a number of social-media ventures: business social network LinkedIn, the Second Life-based Anshe Chung Studios, and the German social network StudiVZ, which was acquired last year. Prior to becoming investors, the Samwers founded Alando (purchased by eBay) and Jamba (purchased by VeriSign).

It’s no secret that Facebook has been hunting for new investors ever since it was pegged with a whopping $15 billion valuation following Microsoft’s famous purchase of a $240 million stake. Some of the rumors pertaining to potential investors, like a shadowy bit of gossip involving unnamed hedge funds, have turned out to be unsubstantiated.

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Microsoft must spend some days gazing around in a stupor. The company continues to print money yet its most recent product launch of Vista fell on deaf ears. Microsoft of course wants money, but it also wants to be thought of as a leader in the software world, and with Vista it is definitely following…but who it’s following, nobody knows.

Great! So…why buy Vista in the interim, which is by all accounts a memory and power hog, and is grossly inefficient? Customers seem to get Gates’ logic, however, and have been buying Macs in droves which requires less power, less memory, is more efficient, and is a heck of a lot nicer to use. Thanks for the advice, Bill!

We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there…[which will require] lower power, take less memory [and] be more efficient.

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Apple)

Apple also said to expect details on “some exciting new enterprise features,” which at first blush sounds to me like a method of getting the iPhone to work more closely with corporate e-mail software. It’s not clear whether the SDK will actually become available next week, or whether Apple is planning to use the occasion to explain what options developers will have for getting their applications on the iPhone. Check out our report on the iPhone SDK and the possibilities for official third-party application development for more background on what might be discussed next week.

Apple distributed invitations Wednesday morning for “an
iPhone software road map” event next week, which means we’re finally going to hear details on the plans for an iPhone software development kit.

As you might be aware, next week is March, not February, which means Apple will have missed its deadline for shipping the SDK this month. Still, on Thursday, March 6, at 10 a.m. PST the company will hold a “town hall” meeting at its headquarters in Cupertino to discuss the State of the iPhone, and probably answer several questions about how iPhone application development will unfold.

Apple will be playing host twice next week, holding its annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday and then two days later having us all trek down I-280 once again for the iPhone event.

Because the FCC has to certify every phone sold in the United States, not to mention test its SAR rating, the agency’s online database offers a lot of sneak peeks to those who dig. And to save you the trouble, Crave has combed through the database for you. Here are a selection of filings from the past week on new and upcoming cell phones. Click through to read the full report.

August may be a slow month for news, but it’s not a slow period for new cell phones at the Federal Communications Commission. This week we saw a CDMA HTC Hero (Sprint, anyone?) and Whitestone, the LG GD900 Crystal, the Samsung Jalou, and the return of the Sony Ericsson Satio.

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HTC)

Hello to the Hero.