Sean Park Portrait
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A physical analogy for working in the Silicon Valley system is this: step one: build the most beautiful object you can. ... [hover]
- Don Marti, Linux Journal

Judy Estrin on corporate innovation.

A really interesting interview* with Judy Estrin (senior technology executive and author of Closing the Innovation Gap) via the good folks at McKinsey, on how companies should manage innovation:

I like to compare large businesses to factory farms. What they are supposed to do is produce things predictably at scale. And surprises aren’t welcome; you just want to mass produce and so the way you manage a factory farm is with techniques to eliminate surprises, eliminate defects, be close to your customer, optimize productivity and efficiency. And then what you want is little gardens or greenhouses, not one big lab but small gardens or greenhouses that are loosely connected to the businesses. So they might be located within a business unit, they might be in a corporate group – it depends on the culture of the company where they should be located. They might be outside of the corporate walls; it may be connections with companies in Silicon Valley. It’s all about nurturing, it’s all about surprises. It’s all about having no goals. It’s all about gaining information and being prepared for the future… Having a vision, having a shared purpose – those people can’t get isolated from what the corporate mission is because then they’re off in left field. But this loose coupling…and you don’t want to manage them the way you manage your day-to-day business.

It’s great to hear someone with Judy’s experience and credibility articulate many of the important ideas on the structural failing of corporate innovation; understanding and mitigating these failings is a key pillar in our business plan and value proposition. And obviously at Nauiokas Park we love her garden metaphor!

* unfortunately McKinsey is another site who doesn’t make it easy to embed the video elsewhere, so a link is the best I could do.

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Permalink||Comments|Filed under 'Business, Management, Sixth Paradigm'
Advanced economies. Looking for something broken, let’s see now…
  • I suspect we'll be hearing a lot more about tight coupling vs. loose coupling in the year ahead. That was very much a theme in "Demon of our Own Design" as well as in more general books on failure theory. I think we could nit pick a bit when Judy says, 'it's all about having no goals.' That's clearly not the case. But it IS all about having a federation of loosely coupled pieces.
  • If you hadn't already seen it you might be interested in a post I wrote last summer - Averting financial ecological disasters that was very much inspired by the writings of John Robb.

    Re "about having no goals." - I cringed a bit when I transcribed this and to be fair, if you listen to the interview, it is (more) clear from the context that she means no short term financial / production goals, rather than no goals at all; this is a limitation more of the format (a transcribed interview rather than a written editorial) than the substance. But you are right highlight that 'no goals' is obviously wrong.
  • transhumanist
    Mr. Park,

    I'm not sure which of your blog posts to post this comment to, so I'm picking the most recent one (given that many of your posts include the underlying theme of technology in finance, with mentions of luminary-like people such as but not limited to Cory Doctorow). A few days ago at TED (a conference you have frequently pointed video links to, in your blog posts), Ray Kurzweil announced The Singularity University as described here with this excerpt:
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    http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10155303-76.h...

    Singularity University is less a traditional university and more an institution that will feature intensive 10-week, 10-day, or 3-day programs examining a set of 10 technologies and disciplines, such as future studies and forecasting; biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; AI, robotics, and cognitive computing; and finance and entrepreneurship.
    ------------------------------------

    Well well, "finance and entrepreneurship" are going to be among the 10 disciplines mashed together in the condensed 10 week course that will cost $25,000 a pop. And then there is this fantasy world of Kurzweil's that he seems to be almost willing to fruition about the Singularity. Now -- look at what happened to Canary Wharf, Wall Street, Iceland, and the whole planet. The people running finance businesses are having just enough of a time getting to know Cory Doctorow courtesy of your blog -- you mean to tell me that Wall Street is going to buy into Kurzweil's fantasy world about transhumanism? What does a brilliant computer scientist such as Mr. Kurzweil (who deserves tons of respect for the work he has done such as in text to speech, optical character recognition, etc.) know about finance?

    Oh, Mr. Park, but here is the kicker that you probably didn't expect, and as a regular reader of your blog I expect you to follow up and drive transparency and integrity all the way with a personal follow up with Mr. Kurzweil that you will then kindly post to your blog herein. Allow me to take you down the a trip of memory lane. The date was 29 September 2005 when CNet interviewed Kurzweil, in which he boasted big time about his hedge fund. Allow me the honors of excerpting his comment about his allegedly superior software which would make his hedge fund "in the position of being the house in a casino"

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    http://news.cnet.com/Ray-Kurzweil-deciphers-a-b...

    You said at a speech last week in San Francisco that you were working on a project with former Microsoft CFO Michael W. Brown that'll result in a hedge fund. Can you tell me about that?

    Kurzweil: It's been a major project for about six years. It's applying my field, detecting subtle patterns, and using technology forecasting. Six years ago the project wasn't fully feasible because we didn't have rapid access to all ticker data for stocks. You really couldn't place trades very effectively online. The technology wasn't there--it can't take two weeks for the computer to make a decision that needs to be made in five seconds.

    (My system) doesn't make perfect predictions. But what we can do is predict them substantially better than chance. That puts us in the position of being the house in a casino. It places lots of bets, some win and some lose, but it consistently makes money. We haven't had a down month yet. It makes 80 to 100 percent returns a year.
    ------------------------------------

    Oh please, dear Mr. Park. Please request the Mother of All Transparency and ask Kurzweil to open up his books to show the world just how well his hedge fund has been doing before and during the global economic crisis. This is about reputation equity. This is BIG TIME in my humble opinion. I highly doubt that you will be unable to convince Kurzweil to open his books and show the world just how well his house in the casino has been doing. Oh mighty Ray, the Singularity is near is it not? And Mr. Sean Park is going to help make this a reality by showing the world that transhumanism has not yet arrived and you too are still very really a human. And of course Mr. Park, you won't let your connections with friends who work at or used to work at Google cloud your call for transparency and integrity right? (even though Google is supporting Kurzweil, et al with the Singularity University announced at TED).

    You know, one of my favorite futurists is Alvin Toffler. Perhaps Mr. Kurzweil's house in the casino hedge fund should consider some of his futurist forefather's words:

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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler

    Toffler explains, "Society needs people who take care of the elderly and who know how to be compassionate and honest. Society needs people who work in hospitals. Society needs all kinds of skill that are not just cognitive; they're emotional, they're affectional. You can't run the society on data and computers alone."[2]
    ------------------------------------

    The day will come when Kurzweil is very much human and his vegan calorie minimalist diet will not be as effective as he once thought, and he will need the compassion of society to help him out -- the same society that he claims his hedge fund has become the house in the casino.

    Mr. Park, this is right up your alley -- where technology and finance meets. We are in economic / finance chaos and the layoffs are being announced left and right. I wonder how Mr. Kurzweil feels about that?
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