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Pete Jakob IT discussions in business media always seem to cover the same topics: mid-tier businesses and tech; IT investment (too much? too little?); data storage (and the environment); information security; and whether good tech people can be good managers. more...
Pete Jakob IBM Software Group Marketing Manager (UK, Ireland & South Africa)

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Innovation is not an island
We all talk about innovation, but when it comes down to it, how many of us actually bother to encourage it in our business? Maybe they need to take a page out of IBM's book, as ITworld.com reports: "IBM Corp. will invest $100 million over the next two years in 10 potential new business opportunities after conducting a massive trawl for ideas among its staff, partners, customers and academic institutions."

These ideas came out of "InnovationJam" and involved "IBMers from more than 160 countries - among them leaders from deep science and technology to the frontiers of business thinking - their clients, business partners, and even family members to join in a new form of collaborative innovation". The result was over 45,000 ideas, which were eventually whittled down to ten.

We may not all have quite as many friends and business contacts, but the fact remains that "collaborative innovation" is going to be a big part of tomorrow’s business models. And as Andy Stanford-Clark, master inventor at IBM's development lab at Hursley in Hampshire (and, you may recall, tracker of llamas), said following the first phase of the Jam, "We're doing stuff that people have never done before, that they're not trained to do in business school or technical schools. Watching people learn how to collaborate around an idea is fascinating."

Who knows – the darkest corners your business may be hiding some great ideas. What are you doing to find them?

Posted: 15/11/2006 Comments: 0
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I run a small manufacturing business with 500 employees. Should I be worried about GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance) issues? And if so, how can my IT help?

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