Andrea Meyer

Working Knowledge

Author of more than 450 company case studies and contributor to 34 books, Andrea Meyer creates custom content for online & print publications. Andrea writes & ghostwrites books, blogs, white papers, conference reports, success profiles, interactive workbooks, articles, executive education and eLearning content. Clients include Prentice Hall, McGraw-Hill, Cengage Learning, MIT, Harvard, McKinsey & Co, YPO, Wharton, OECD. Andrea has conducted case studies in Asia, South America & Europe; is a Certified Online Instructor; is a member of MENSA, Twitter elite, and is listed in Who's Who in America.

Kaplan’s Business Model Innovation Factory

0 comments 1,572 reads

Posted on 2012-04-26

Point: Experiment with new business models in a “connected adjacency” before committing to them.

Story: Saul Kaplan, founder of the Business Innovation Factory (BIF), just wrote a new book, The Business Model Innovation Factory. Kaplan shares 15 business model innovation principles, weaving in his personal experience (from Eli Lilly to Accenture to BIF) as well as experiences from numerous presenters at BIF’s Collaborative Innovation Summits. My favorite chapter in the book was “R&D for New Business Models.”...

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Arduino: A Tale of Innovation through Open Source

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Posted on 2012-03-31

Point: A collectively-motivated group of peers can develop innovations in a distributed online environment.

Story: When Hernando Barragán created a nontechie-friendly microcontroller board for artists, designers, and architects in 2004, his thesis adviser, Massimo Banzi, liked the idea. But Banzi wanted something simpler and cheaper for use in design class projects at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy. In particular, Banzi wanted a low cost, an integrated software environment, programmability via an everyday USB port, and a project supported by a community.

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Additive Manufacturing Multiplies Innovation Opportunities

0 comments 934 reads

Posted on 2012-03-05

Point: Additive manufacturing (also called 3D printing) technologies enable new design methods and local manufacturing by entrepreneurs.

Story: When designing a new part to be manufactured, designers traditionally had to define the shape they wanted and then pick the material that could support that shape (based on strength, flexibility, etc.). That is, they designed the piece separate from picking the materials. For more complex products, designers had to decompose the product into semi-independent parts that were designed and manufactured separately and then assembled with screws, welding, clips, glue, and so on. This deconstructive process risked incompatibilities between the parts, added complexity, and increased costs due to a assembly labor.

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Collaboration Curves Improve Innovation and Performance

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Posted on 2012-02-06

Point: Unlike the diminishing returns of the Experience Curve, Collaboration Curves offer continuous, exponential improvement and innovation through knowledge sharing and interactions among a group of participants.

Story: Most of us have heard about the Experience Curve, which traces how a company’s rising experience in making a product leads to declining cost of that making a product. On average, the cost declines 20-30 percent each time that a company’s experience in making that product doubles. The Experience Curve, which has been systematically studied since the 1960s, holds true across a wide range of industries. The sad flip-side of the Experience Curve, however, is that the rate of improvement declines over time because it takes longer and longer for experience to double. It has diminishing returns. Can anything be done to sustain the rate of improvement? Is there another way to keep on advancing? There is: Collaboration Curves....

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Collaboration in Innovation Competitions

0 comments 968 reads

Posted on 2012-01-12

Point: Innovation tournaments can be run either competitively or collaboratively, with each approach yielding better results for different purposes.

Story: In his second book, Best Practices are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition, innovation speaker Stephen Shapiro offers 40 tips on how to innovate efficiently. His tip #11, for example, tackles the topic of innovation competitions and tournaments. The tip focuses on what role, if any, collaboration should play in these bounty-driven events.

Innovation tournaments can be run either competitively or collaboratively, Shapiro says. In a competitive tournament, such as ones run by Cisco and LG Electronics, no participant can see rivals’ submissions. In a collaborative tournament, such as GE’s Eco-Imagination challenges, anyone can see a...

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Mayo Clinic’s Collaborative Innovation Process

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Posted on 2011-12-13

Point: Collaboration between doctors, patients, designers and lab technicians brings healthcare delivery breakthroughs.

Story: The inspiring origins of the Mayo Clinic illustrate the timelessness of collaborative innovation. Back in the 1880s, two brothers, Will and Charles Mayo, founded the clinic with their father, Dr. William Worrall Mayo, and introduced the concept of a group practice. The Mayos sought medical breakthroughs by bringing together doctors, laboratory experts, and business people. As the younger Will Mayo said, “In order that the sick may have the benefit of advancing knowledge, a union of forces is necessary.”

Today, we have the fruits of many medical breakthroughs but need better ways to deliver the breakthroughs in efficient and effective ways. Many chronic diseases, like diabetes, can be treated but depend on more than just a one-shot procedure in a doctor’s office...

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Innovation in 3D: Ice Dream #DSCC11

0 comments 843 reads

Posted on 2011-11-16

Point: Test large-scale innovations for 1/20th the cost by using 3D simulations to prove viability and performance.

Story: Forty years ago, Georges Mougin got an idea: solve water shortages in drought-ridden countries by towing an iceberg over the sea to them. Floating icebergs are pure drinking water, but they slowly melt into seawater. Why not harvest them before all that drinking water is lost?

The idea of towing an iceberg, however, seemed crazy. When he talked with scientists about the idea, objections abounded. “Once you get north of the equator, you’ll have nothing but a rope at the end of your tow,” said Wilford Weeks...

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Make Your Product a Narrative — #BIF7

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Posted on 2011-10-20

Point: Technology and innovation enable greater customer engagement through open-ended customizations, apps, add-on, and social features.

Story: At BIF7, John Hagel, author of The Power of Pull, highlighted what he saw as a distinction between story vs. narrative. A story is complete, self-contained, and has a beginning, middle, and end. Stories have audiences:...

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Breaking the Rules to Create a Bestseller

0 comments 950 reads

Posted on 2011-09-24

Point: Rule-breaking products may require business model innovations.

Story: At BIF7, Alex Osterwalder told his story of breaking the rules when creating his book, Business Model Generation, now an international bestseller. Creating this book meant taking a lot of risks.

The current business model for business books is broken, Osterwalder said. There are too many books and too few readers. Every year, another 11,000 new business books pile on top the 250,000-space of competing titles. The average book sells only 250 copies per year. Worse, book sales are declining: a 12% drop from 2007 to 2009. If Osterwalder wanted to create a book on business models that people would love to buy, he would need to innovate...

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The Search for Innovations

0 comments 994 reads

Posted on 2011-08-30

Point: Use roving cross-functional teams to hunt for promising new product and service ideas.

Story:
In a world of large organizations and diverse global hotspots for R&D, innovation occurs everywhere. Companies can tap those innovations through search processes, which may be cheaper and more effective than only using traditional “start from square one” R&D efforts. The rationale: there may be no need to re-invent the wheel if the wheel already exists somewhere inside (or outside) your organization.

Here’s how multinationals General Mills and Whirlpool approached the search for innovations. General Mills formed two “innovation squads” consisting of six-to-eight employees selected from multiple functions. The squads are tasked with hunting for ideas from inside and outside the organization – one squad focuses on finding ideas internally, the other focuses on looking outside the organization. The squads present the best...

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