DNA Of A Successful Book

6 Ways To Create A Culture Of Innovation

Source - http://bit.ly/13YA47S

WRITTEN BY: Soren Kaplan

Every organization is designed to get the results it gets. Poor performance comes from a poorly designed organization. Superior results emerge when strategies, business models, structure, processes, technologies, tools, and reward systems fire on all cylinders in symphonic unison.

Savvy leaders shape the culture of their company to drive innovation. They know that it’s culture--the values, norms, unconscious messages, and subtle behaviors of leaders and employees--that often limits performance. These invisible forces are responsible for the fact that 70% of all organizational change efforts fail. The trick? Design the interplay between the company’s explicit strategies with the ways people actually relate to one another and to the organization.

Here’s how to influence the soft stuff.

1. BE INTENTIONAL WITH YOUR INNOVATION INTENT

Most corporate visions and missions sound alarmingly alike: Become the #1 provider of blah, blah, blah. These generic, broad-based goals might rev up sales teams, but they do little to spark ingenuity. Perhaps the worst thing a company can do is give “innovation marching orders” without any guide posts. That’s when the focus gets lost and teams spin their wheels.

The goal: Frame the way you want to change the world, and make it about the customer. For example, the software company Intuit--the developer of Quicken, Quick Books, and TurboTax--makes its mission abundantly clear: "To improve our customers’ financial lives so profoundly they can’t imagine going back to the old way."

2. CREATE A STRUCTURE FOR UNSTRUCTURED TIME

Innovation needs time to develop. No one ever feels like they have time to spare. People get so consumed with putting out fires and chasing short-term targets that most can’t even think about the future.

Giving up control when the pressure is greatest is the ultimate innovation paradox. That’s why iconic brands like 3M and Google give their employees about 10% “free time” to experiment with new ideas. The software company Atlassian encourages employees to take “FedEx Days”--paid days off to work on any problem they want. But there’s a catch: Just like FedEx, they must deliver something of value 24 hours later.

Companies such as Intuit use time as a reward because they believe it’s the biggest motivator of corporate intrapreneurs. Intuit gives its best business innovators three months of “unstructured” time that can be used in one big chunk or spread out over six months for part-time exploration of new opportunities. So using time wisely creates a major incentive to get more time to play with (hopefully wisely).

3. STEP IN, THEN STEP BACK

Providing “free” time for employees to experiment with new technologies, products, or processes can catalyze the next big thing. But too many companies--and the consultants they hire--attempt to over-engineer the innovation process. A better option: Give just enough structure and support to help people navigate uncertainty and tap into the creative process without stifling it.

There are some pretty good off-the-shelf tools that can help build employee skill sets. Some of the best are freely available, such as the Stanford Design School’s Boot Camp Bootleg. Intuit applied the design thinking underlying Stanford’s model to create its Catalyst Toolkit, a guide that was made available to all employees and the public and which includes self-serve ingredients for cooking up innovation.

People as diverse as software engineers to human-resources managers have used the toolkit to innovate internal work processes or create new products, including SnapTax, which lets customers file their taxes in less than 15 minutes on their mobile phones. Promoting these types of toolkits help convince employees that leaders care about their development while they also promote best practices that can be adapted to the needs of the individual or team.

4. MEASURE WHAT’S MEANINGFUL

Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “What’s measured improves.” Said another way, You get what you measure. For many companies, coming up with ideas often isn’t the problem. The challenge is turning them into something real that delivers an impact. So what metrics should you use?

First, you have to figure out what to measure. In its early days, Facebook measured how often its users returned to its site. Everything they did focused on blowing out this single metric. OpenTable, the restaurant reservation service, focused on two metrics that allowed it to become the dominant player: growing the numbers of restaurants in its network and increasing the number of consumers making reservations.

Customer-oriented numbers are clearly essential. But other indicators can drive internal innovation, too. After Proctor & Gamble realized the importance of outside partnerships in driving market breakthroughs, the company decided to measure (and increase) the percentage of new products that used breakthrough technologies from partners. Externally driven innovation jumped from 10% to more than 50% and resulted in new products, including Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and Tide Pods.

Other metrics that promote organizational innovation include:

• Percent of revenue from products or services introduced within a given period of time (say, the last fiscal year).


• A pipeline of new ideas that includes a set ratio of short-term products or services and longer-term game changers (say, 75%-25%).


• Percent of employees who have been trained and given tools for innovation.


• Percent of time dedicated to discovering, prototyping, and testing revenue-generating new products, services, or business models (say, 10-20%).

5. GIVE "WORTHLESS" REWARDS

Recognizing success is critical, but most companies stop there. An annual innovation award is just not enough to catalyze a culture of innovation. Sure, formal rewards are good for the short term--but they don’t keep people truly engaged.

The most powerful and robust type of recognition--the kind that shapes organizational values--often occurs more informally. Several members of Colgate-Palmolive’s Global R&D group initiated a “recognition economy” by distributing symbolic wooden nickels to colleagues who had made noteworthy contributions to their projects. The fortunate recipients didn’t hoard their winnings. They passed them on to others who had chipped in on projects that they themselves had led.

Nickels are now distributed in meetings, but it’s not uncommon for employees to return from lunch and find a few nickels anonymously placed on their desks. It’s a fun and validating idea; such informal acknowledgments encourage a collective spirit and help promote the free flow of ideas.

6. GET SYMBOLIC

Symbols represent the underlying values of an organization, and they come in many forms--values statements, awards, success stories, posters in the hallways, catch phrases, acronyms, and, yes, those wooden nickels. Those who intentionally curate the innovation symbols of their companies essentially curate their innovation cultures.

Intuit installed the kitchen table where Scott Cook dreamed up the company with his wife in its innovation center--and employees are encouraged to sit around it for idea jams. Netflix names its corporate conference rooms after blockbuster movies (for one, King Kong) as a reminder of the continuous breakthroughs its employees are creating and promoting.

But symbols can be more than just physical objects. Poignant experiences, for example, live on as stories and folklore--and shape the mindsets and behaviors of new and existing employees. At Google, the story of the time Sheryl Sandberg made a bad decision that cost the company millions lives on--not because of the error itself but because of co-founder Larry Page’s response: “I’m so glad you made this mistake,” he said, “Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk.”

Rather than let stories naturally unfold from leaders’ unconscious behavior--which may or may not support innovation--some companies explicitly shape stories to convey key values. The trendy fast-food chain Noodles & Company created a kind of corporate folklore when it invited local marching bands to show up and spontaneously play at nearly 100 locations around the country. Finding differentiation in the fiercely competitive fast-food field is a tough and ongoing effort, and the story remains a constant reminder that everyone needs to consistently “march to the beat of a different drummer.”

NO RUBBER STAMPS

Every company’s culture is inherently different. So when you’re cultivating innovation, you’re cultivating a unique system. Which means you have to be thoughtful about your approach. Whatever you do, it should align with the values of the company and with the company’s goals. And in each case, you have to make it easy and rewarding for the people whose roles and dynamics influence the very innovation culture you’re trying to cultivate.

 

Live Your Legend

Source - http://liveyourlegend.net/

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UN9za_ejk40]

Litecoin

Source - http://litecoin.org/

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant payments to anyone in the world. It is based on the Bitcoin protocol but differs from Bitcoin in that it can be efficiently mined with consumer-grade hardware. Litecoin provides faster transaction confirmations (2.5 minutes on average) and uses memory-hard, scrypt-based mining proof-of-work algorithm to target the regular computers and GPUs most people already have. The Litecoin network is scheduled to produce 84 million currency units.

One of the aims of Litecoin was to provide a mining algorithm that could run at the same time, on the same hardware used to mine bitcoins. With the rise of specialized ASICs for Bitcoin, Litecoin continues to satisfy these goals. It is unlikely for ASIC mining to be developed for Litecoin until the currency is widely used.

 

SEO Periodic Table

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1224"] SEO Periodic Table[/caption]

Planet Naming Standards for Groover Universe

 

The Planet Naming Standards were approved by the Triburst Alliance in the Aeon of Conquest, Star Year 1245. The standards are as follows

Standard Atmospheric Conditions - Rating of conditions of a planet based on the normal range of breathable air for humaniods. These conditions are 20% - 30% oxygen, 70 - 80% nitrogen, and hazardous chemicals at less that .005% of the total makeup of the atmosphere.

 

Classification

 

U - Unknown - Atmosphere has not been surveyed or changes so much that classification is impossible.

 

D - Destroyed - Planet physically no longer exists, however remains on the records.

 

L - Lethal - Atmosphere does not exist or contains chemicals lethal to humanoid life. Fully enclosed safe atmosphere equipment or magic is required.

 

H - Hazardous - Atmosphere is hazardous to humanoid life, extreme caution must be used if using anything less than a fully enclosed safe atmosphere equipment or magic.

 

G - Gear Required  - Planet requires breathing aids, atmosphere may be breathable for short durations. Breathing aids are required, however a fully enclosed safe atmosphere equipment or magic is optional.

 

S - Safe - Atmosphere is within safe limits, however localized atmospheric conditions could be rated N, H or L.

 

Tech Level - Tech Level is of the domaint race or races of the planet. Triburst Survey Teams base this on several factors including power structure, ability to rise above other races, technological prowess and others. Technology is a average of all branches of techonlogy, any planet with an advanced technology branch will be noted in the comments section of the Triburst Planet Guide

 

Classification

 

D - Destroyed - Planet physically no longer exists, however remains on the records.

0 - Primitive

1 - Cloth/Wood

2 - Stone

3 - Brass

4 - Iron

5 - Steel

6 - Industrial

7 - Pre-Stellar

8 - Stellar

9 - Advanced

 

Magic Level - Magic Level is of the dominant race or races of the planet. Triburst Survey Teams base this on several factors including power structure, ability to rise above other races, magalogical  prowess and others. Magic is a average of all methods any planet with a advanced magic method will be noted in the comments section of the Triburst Planet Guide.

 

D - Destroyed - Planet physically no longer exists, however remains on the records.

0 - Anti-Magic - Warning planet actively repels magic, this can be hazardous or lethal to the magic user.

1 - Low Magic

2 - Minimum Magic

3 -  Below Average Magic

4 - 5 Average Magic

6 - Above Average Magic Levels

7 - Abundant Magic

8 - Magic affects all living things

9 - Magic affects everything

 

Note - Any planet will a Magic Level of 6 or better is theorically capable of producing a device capable of space flight.

 

Triburst Planet Code - random unique 6 digit code for all planets that have been explored by the Triburst Survey Teams. Planets known by the Triburst Alliance but have or will not be explored by the Triburst Survey Teams will have a code of NL.

 

Stellar Zones are as follows

 

Alliance Zone (AZ) - Planets 0 - 750 on the x/y galactic grid (0,0 is the center of the galaxy and location of the Eye of the Groover)

 

Fringe (FR) - Planets between 751 and 999 on the x/y galactic grid, Warning to Ship Captians these planets are not under Triburst control and do not follow Triburst Alliance law use caution. Alliance help may or may not be within procom (Projected Communication Device) range.

 

Wildspace (WS) - Planets outside the galactic grid. Ship Captains use EXTREME caution navigating and exploring this zone. Alliance help WILL NOT be available.

Example Planet Naming Standards

 

Planet Common Name - Tincur

Planet Standard Code - H00NL

Stellar Zone - WS

Comments - Tincur contains devices left by the race known as the Bloodrots. Use extreme caution on or around this planet. Quaz Bloodrot is exiled on the planet, DO NOT APPROACH.

 

Planet Common Name - Tree Home

Planet Standard Code -  S38131982

Stellar Zone - AZ

Comments - Tree Home is the base planet for the Elfhim one of the 3 races that lead the Triburst Alliance.

 

Planet Common Name - Kaneon

Planet Standard Code -  S77001137

Stellar Zone - FR

Comments - Kaneon contains maglogical radiation from being a dumping grounds for failed technology and magic experiments by the Bloodrots during the Aeon of Godslaying. This accounts for higher magic and tech levels than noted on the Standard Code.

 

Planet Common Name - Pittorg

Planet Standard Code -  DDD782421

Stellar Zone - FR

Comments - Pittorg is sister planet to Kaneon, planet was destroyed by the gawds at the end of Aeon of Godslaying for punishment of thier crime. Planet exists as a asteroid belt around Kaneon

 

Crosspost - Top 10 reasons for business failure

Source - http://bit.ly/1a0VmXo

Some start-ups seem to get everything right the first time around. They are able to build successful products/services and a brand for themselves, and walk steadily on the path of growth. Some other start-ups are not so lucky. They struggle with being accepted by the public and, ultimately, fail and face closure.

What differentiates a successful business from the others? Why does a business fail? SupportBiz lists the top 10 reasons for business failure.

1.     Lack of market opportunities

You might have a wonderful business idea and think that your products/services are great, but that does not mean that your potential customers will think the same. One of the major reasons for start-up failure is the lack of market opportunities for their products/services.

The importance of market research cannot be stressed enough for a start-up. It is always advisable for an entrepreneur to conduct detailed market research to determine the viability of introducing his/her products/services to the world. Market research will clearly indicate the availability of market opportunities for the start-up’s products/services or the lack thereof.

2.     Lack of a business plan

Many businesses fail because they do not have a structured business plan ready to guide them when they need it. Several entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of a business plan, and avoid making one. However, that is not such a great idea.

A detailed business plan indicates the path that the start-up should take at different stages of its growth, including various aspects like marketing, product/service development, expansion, finance and customers. It serves as a guiding light for the start-up. It also provides the entrepreneur with an opportunity to thoroughly think about his/her business idea, and where he/she wishes to see it in the next five to 10 years.

3.     Inability to execute

The inability to execute a business on a day-to-day basis is another major reason behind start-up failure. Many entrepreneurs have a great business idea, but they are unable to take appropriate decisions, stand up to challenges, face risks and grab opportunities on a timely basis.

The services of an experienced business mentor can help a great deal in such cases.

4.     Inappropriate revenue model

Many businesses fail because they do not have a suitable and detailed revenue model. A revenue model serves as a guide for business, at different stages of its growth, and guides the entrepreneur’s actions and decisions. The lack of one can create confusion and frustration, lead to a lack of cash flow and, ultimately, the failure of the business.

Start-ups should try to avoid this situation at all costs. They should not underestimate the importance of a good revenue model, and have one ready well in advance. The services of a financial expert might be taken for this purpose.

5.     Inefficient team

An inefficient team of employees is another major reason behind the failure of a lot of start-ups. A team of inexperienced or inefficient people will not be able to take the right decisions at the right time, and not lead the business on the way to growth.

A good team is an asset for any firm, and hence, a start-up should invest in one right from the beginning. If the entrepreneur is inexperienced, he/she should try to find a co-founder who has managed his/her own business before.

6.     Lack of resource planning

Running a successful business takes a considerable amount of resource planning, including personnel, cash, industry contacts, marketing resources and distribution networks. Inefficient utilisation of available resources can lead a business to failure, as can the lack of availability of these resources.

It is, hence, crucial that an entrepreneur undertake thorough resource planning well in advance, and have a systematic plan for the same in place. If necessary, the services of experts might be taken for this purpose.

7.     Lack of intellectual property protection

A start-up might have the most wonderful of products/services, but they will be rendered valueless if duplicated by a competitor. This will, ultimately, lead to the failure of the business firm.

It is, therefore, essential that a start-up file for patents or copyrights on time, to safeguard their products/services.

8.     Increasing competition

An increasing level of competition in a start-up’s industry might spell out doom for it. If there are a number of firms coming up in the industry with similar, or better, products/services, it might put a start-up out of business.

To avoid this situation, it is advisable that an entrepreneur undertakes thorough research before launching his/her start-up. A start-up would be viable only when there is limited competition in the relevant field. It is always better for a start-up to choose a niche area, create products/services with unique features, and invest in building great customer relationships, in order to not be affected by competition.

9.     Insufficient marketing

A start-up might have the best of products/services, but that alone will not bring in customers, help it create a brand for itself, and grow steadily. Marketing efforts are inevitable to spread the word about the start-up and its products/services. Insufficient marketing can, hence, be one of the reasons for the failure of a start-up.

A start-up should have a well-thought-out marketing plan ready in advance, outlining the marketing activities it will undertake at different stages of growth. The channels of marketing chosen should be suitable to the firm and its products/services, and be able to reach its target customers.

10.  Giving up

Another common reason for start-up failure is entrepreneurs giving up too early. Setbacks and challenges are common in a business environment, and the entrepreneur should have the gumption to stick through the bad times. Often, entrepreneurs give up on their businesses when they face a series of setbacks. Had they held on, they might have seen better and brighter times.

Having a deep-seated passion for the business idea and faith in the plan are must-haves for all start-up entrepreneurs. These will tide them through the bad times, and help them take appropriate decisions to improve their situation. The services of a business mentor would be invaluable in such cases.

 

Newsblips for 6/3/2013

Data Science News Roundup: Becoming A Profession At $300/Hour - http://onforb.es/1aWQPD8

Richard Branson on Self-Awareness for Leadership Growth - http://bit.ly/10Mgyx2

Since Yahoo! Is Going To "Let Tumblr Be Tumblr," What Are They Actually Gaining From The Acquisition? - http://onforb.es/18Ne45T

Blake Kernen: The Case for Community Service - http://huff.to/16Ec4gy

5 Shocking (But Not Surprising) Things About Microsoft - http://onforb.es/1aWRCUI

7 Traits Of Amazing Volunteers and IMHO business leaders - http://onforb.es/11zGXcS

Yes, It's Possible To "Network" Without Being A Scumbag - http://bit.ly/17T8oYo

7 Weekly Must-Do's For Entrepreneurs - http://onforb.es/17jlbCI

5 Powerful Ways Leaders Practice Patience - http://onforb.es/17T993I

6 Lessons In Creativity From James Cameron - http://bit.ly/14pcu3b

5 Ways To Simplify Your Business - http://onforb.es/1aX2j9O

Small Business Guide to SBA Loans - http://bit.ly/18JD6Ac

Overview for Buckshot USA

 

Buckshot, USA is a small southern town full of secrets and mysteries, from the ring of ash around the town that never gets wet, cover with leaves, snow or dirt. Anyone standing on the layer tend to step off quickly. Or the greenish glow under one of the many town outhouses. Old Missy Lou, the head of the historical society always puts up a fuss anytime anyone even mentions tearing down the outhouses. Which for some reason never seem to stink or overflow.

 

The only way in and out-of-town is Old Snake road was barely more than a tractor trail with delusions of grandeur. What state it's in no one knows, people who have seen the city limits of Buckshot say it's all over the south, as far north as VA and as far south as the bayou's of LA. With a rickety old bridge on either side of town crossing over the ring of ash, all sorts of technology tends to fail if it touches that ring. Most of the people have been born, raised, married and buried without ever leaving town, right along with their forefathers. Sure Buckshot has visitors and newcomers, but for various reasons they never seem to stay long. Townfolks say its cause the “Roadies” , visitors or newcomers, don’t understand how good their town can be, the “Roadies” always look at the bad or the strange like Mr. Major Duroc who looks like an upright pig, but everyone knows it's because of the brutal conditions of the factory he worked in up North.

 

In town is plenty of places and things to do from shopping at Chung Lee’s Grocery, Maybell’s Curio’s and Collectables, Shady’s Pool Hall, Smith and Smith Tires, Old Hang Em High Park and many other attractions.

I am looking writers, artists and others to help me build flesh out this town and make it the new Castle Rock of Creepshow, Twlight Zone and Outer Limits type horror.

 

 

Rural Start-Ups of NC - About

This section is to highlight and hype your startup if your in rural NC