6 key elements in effective innovation governance

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Earlier this week I ran a two-day workshop in Bali for the Malaysian Directors Academy on The Innovation Zone: Unleashing The Mindset.

I ran the same program in Phuket last October for another group of directors of large Malaysian companies, with the feedback from that session prompting the Malaysian Directors Academy to ask me to run the workshop again.

The topic of “innovation mindset” is an excellent one for company directors, as that must be the starting place for successful innovation initiatives.
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Do you have the passion of the explorer? If you do, what kind of employer could attract you away from entrepreneurship?

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Today the ever-inspiring John Hagel spoke in Sydney today about passion at work as part of AMP’s Amplify series, organized by Annalie Killian.

The story in summary, told at more length in the Unlock the passion of the Explorer report, is that:

* Technological change is creating ever-increasing pressures and challenges for institutions and individuals;

* In this world the rationale for large organizations to exist is no longer scalable efficiency, but scalable learning;

* The Center for the Edge looked to find examples of “sustained, extreme performance improvement” that reflects this scalable learning;

* What they found in common was deep passion, but a particular type of passion that they dubbed the passion of the “Explorer”
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In the Asian century, Australia is becoming Asian too

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Earlier this week I gave the opening keynote at the Institute of Chartered Accountants/ Centre for Accounting, Governance and Sustainability Thought Leadership Forum in Adelaide.

The day’s theme was The Australian Accounting Profession and Asia, with a strong emphasis on education given the participation of most of the heads of accounting departments of Australian universities. As such in opening the event I was asked to speak on the broader theme of “Australia’s Engagement with Asia”.

In my keynote I started from the broader context of the ancient and modern history of Asia and Australia, looked at current trends including demographic shifts that are shaping our relationship, the most important intersections between our economies and cultures, and finally the leadership required for Australia and Asia to engage more deeply into the future.

In the course of my research for the keynote I looked at changes in Australia’s population, and generated the following very interesting chart:

Asian-born-Australians
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics
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Availability in Europe in March and Latin America in April

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I have a very busy travel itinerary coming up, with keynotes scheduled on 5 continents in the next 4 months.

While I often travel for a single engagement, I look where possible to fit in other client work when I am travelling.

I currently have availability in Europe the week of March 10 before the Congres Intranet in Utrecht, Netherlands, which is apparently the largest intranet conference in the world, where I am running a pre-conference workshop on Tapping the Power of Internal Crowdsourcing and doing a keynote on The Future of Work and Organisations.
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In the future we will have relationships with our homes

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Today I was interviewed on The Daily Edition about the homes of the future.

Click on the image to watch a video of the segment.

DailyEdition_310114

The future of homes is a very rich topic that goes far beyond the usual chatter about internet-enabled refrigerators and integrated entertainment, and we weren’t able to cover much in a TV panel format.

However the main point that I made is that in the future we will have a very real relationship with our homes. Now homes are somewhere that we reside, and while we can shape them to our personalities, it is not currently a two-way relationship.

As we move forward, our relationship with our homes will comprise many elements.
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The age of self-creation: why ethics must be central to how we create the future

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One of my flurry of media appearances over New Year was on the Sunrise show, talking about what to expect in 2014.

Click on the image to see a video of my interview.

sunrise301213_2

We discussed emerging consumer technology trends, shifts in retail, and the idea of “self-creation”, which was one of my 14 themes in our 2014: Crunch Time report.

As I wrote in the report about the theme:
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The top 30 Thought Leaders in crowdfunding

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There is no doubt that crowdfunding has been one of the major trends evolving over the last couple of years in particular. It has caught the imagination of the public, and already had a large impact on how artists, startup ventures, and many others consider their funding options. The trend of crowdfunding has a long, long way further to go.

Israeli-based equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has just launched a list of the top 30 influential thought leaders in crowdfunding, those who have shaped how the industry is seen and understood.

They commissioned Evolve Inc to do the study, which took into account “a variety of factors including social footprint, popularity among industry insiders, engagement frequency, citations by influential writers in venture finance and other factors” to create a ranked list of the top 30 influencers from a pool of 800 people studied.

The top 5 are Perry Chen of Kickstarter, Naval Ravikant of AngelList, Slava Rubin of IndieGogo, Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, followed by a variety of entrepreneurs, regulators, politicians, media commentators, academics, and others.

I made the list (just!) at #29, probably mainly due to the success of my book Getting Results From Crowds and the crowdsourcing workshops I’ve been running around the world over the last couple of years.
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Why children (and adults) need to be on social media or get left behind

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Yesterday the West Australian newspaper began a five-part series on children and social media, beginning with a feature article introducing the topic.

The article’s title, Get online or ‘be left behind’ quotes an interview with me. It is very easy for journalists to focus on the negative when covering children and social media, so I’m very glad they took a more balanced stance.

The article began with an introduction to the issue, to the point of mentioning that English secondary school Eton has banned Snapchat. It goes on:

Sydney-based Ross Dawson, founder of think tank Future Exploration Network, said social networking was still in its early days. “We’re still fairly early on into what will become simply communication – life as we know it,” he said.

“Rather than logging on to Facebook and sharing some messages we are going to be in a world where we are sharing vast degrees (of information) with those who are close to us and to the world at large, and this communication will be intrinsic to life, our personal life and our work life.”

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Today Show: What to expect in the year ahead

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Early on January 1st this year, after a great New Year’s party and no sleep, I went into the studio to talk about what we should expect in the year ahead. The video is below

A few notes from what I discussed:
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Awesome video: we are building transparent machines of business exploiting society

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This fabulous video brings together a succinct telling of the privacy story of today with some exceptional 3D graphic animations and great sound. Watch it! (preferably full screen)

Transparent Machines™ from beeple on Vimeo.

In the Privacy section of our 2014: Crunch Time report we wrote:
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