It turns out Portland, OR, where I live, is a MAJOR bike town.  It's even home to the "Initiative for Bicycle and Pedstrian Innovation."   And there is indeed an astonishing amount of innovation in cycling these days, and I'm not talking about performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals.   Much of it is at the high-end.   Check out, for example, the supreme portability of this Co-Motion Espresso Co-Pilot, which runs at about $3,500.

Perhaps this is why Shimano got together with IDEO to ask their help with a particular business problem: while profits for the cycling industry were going up, ridership was going down.  They wanted to figure out how to get more people riding again (people like me) and the output of their collaboration was a reference design for the coasting bicycle category (this is often called the cruising category).  One element of their objectives was right up my alley:  To tap into people's desire to reconnect with the easy, joyful feeling of riding bicycles that we remember from when we were kids.   Here's the reference design (which won an IDEA Design award).

And here is my bike.  It's technically not a cruiser (for instance, no pedal brakes) but it borrows from the reference design principles (Shimano is a Trek OEM.)   It won't fit in a suitcase, but it wasn't $3,500 either, and I'll be all over it this summer.  Brring, brring!!  You can't see it, but it has a bell.

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Hoorah for the BMGF and Michael Bloomberg for boosting anti-tobacco efforts with their announcement of $500 million to amplify the work already initiated through Bloomberg's MPOWER approach (Monitor tobacco use and the policies to prevent it; Protect people from tobacco smoke; Offer people help to quit tobacco use;
Warn about the dangers of tobacco; Enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship;
Raise taxes on tobacco.)   Here's how the Economist covered it. 

I went to the media sites of RJ Reynolds, Altria (parent of Phillip Morris) and British American Tobacco Company and found no mention of this announcement. 

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G. Pascal Zachary's latest Ping column in the Sunday NYTimes is a good illustration of how companies are beginning to engage in sub-Saharan Africa, so much so that it can be said that at least for some sectors and technologies, it's truly an "emerging emerging market."   What's interesting is that experiments and focus in one market, in this case Kenya, can help them develop models that are extensible into other markets, or even "ported" back into developed markets, where they can learn from the leaner or lighter solutions that are often required, or where the underdevelopment of infrastructure can actually inform the corporate learning since it also means experiments that are free from the baggage of the old infrastructure or the change-resistance of the "installed base."

The work that Zachary is pointing to with Google involves engagement with Kenyans in country and at HQ.  He highlights both the promise and the possibility of failure in his piece.

What I find hopeful about this piece is that it's evidence of a next step--a step beyond the merely anthropological, which is what I see more often.  When I was an anthropology major, I had never heard of the term "corporate anthropologist" but it's become more common in the last 10 years.   (I've seen the term used in the developed world too, and I like it in some ways--it communicates that a company is curious, open, willing to move out of their corporate environment and really watch, listen and observe.  So for instance, Microsoft uses the "anthropological approach" to watch some of its customers fully in context, so they can learn what is truly useful to them.)  There's nothing wrong with the anthropological phase as long as it is just that -- a phase--what Tom Guarriello describes as "ferret mode" in his interesting blog (This Blog Sits at The:  Intersection of Anthropology and Economics.)   So as applied to the developing world, two issues:   One, we all know the associations with western-style anthropologists in remove places--curious, but disengaged; not really able to think outside of academic models, which again, are--Western.  Plenty of gotchas there.  Two, if a company is in ferret mode for too long, it's still wearing rubber gloves--it's not fully "in it" yet.   Watching, listening and observing is necessary for formulating a first take, but putting skin in the game, starting to formulate objectives and beginning to act--is the where the action is.  This is where it gets interesting and where innovations--and failures on the path to innovation--begin to happen.

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BusinessWeek's IDEA design awards are out today, and looking through them is like being in a candy store.   Design is sort of the golden child of the innovation dialogue, and for good reason:  it's so easy to trace the path by which innovation processes found a tangible outcome.  Design innovation feeds both sides of the brain:   the notion that something is problem-solving and efficient (however measured) is appealing enough, and so many of these designs measure up to these criteria, but as you will see, elegance and beauty also get their due.  You must check out the slide show of the winners--there are more than 200 entries, but you should look at every one, even if for only a few seconds. 

A few observations:

--Tools, tools, tools. 

--Phones, phones, phones.   And lighting concepts. 

--Apple, Apple, Apple (and iPod after-market products)

--Green (as a color, not just a design point, especially bright green.  Yellow and orange, too.)

--Socially responsible designs rate highly.  There are two different concepts to fight malaria, including this one that has a sock in it because mosquitoes are attracted by bacteria that lives on human feet:

--A number of designs intended for off-the-grid applications or "optional" solar power. 

--Not enough designs for the other 90 percent.   The obligatory OLPC, of course, and another exception, a low-biomass stove:

--As BusinessWeek notes, student designers pull off some amazing concepts, and of course, the designs are international.  There are lots of Asian winners--South Korean ones really leaped out at me.  Relating to my last post, by the way, a surprising number of awards went to Brazilian designs.

And here are a few of my favorites: 

The Muwi lawn mower.  It presses cuttings into blocks that can be used for play structures, lawn furniture (literally), and then returned to nature:

Adiri natural nurser (i.e., baby bottle):

An amazing wheelchair for athletes:

A clever clock, that lets you map out your day:

Coming soon to my desktop, if I can arrange it:

 And here is a potentially world-changing innovation if I ever saw one.  

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I'm taken with this research from the folks at Atlas of Ideas about how Brazil has the potential to self-consciously develop itself further as an innovation economy.  It sets out the current state of the state in Brazil, which has innovation in its DNA far more than I understood, and offers a projection of science and technology-based innovation there over the next 10 years.  (I'm having a bit of a disconnect as I think about how the "B" has virtually fallen out of the "BRIC" conversation lately, and this research indicates maybe it shouldn't have.) 

Because they underscore how critical communications and storytelling are to the heart of innovation, these two recommendations particularly resonated with me:    

1. (Brazil needs to) tell a new innovation story.  Part of this process of engagement needs to be focused on creating a new national conversation about innovation.  Brazil needs the confidence to write a new chapter in its innovation story...We heard earlier about the cynicism that still lingers from earlier attempts to write such a story--the techno-optimism of earlier periods giving way to a cynicism that "Brazil is the country of the future and always will be." Policy makers, NGOs, business leaders and academics need to confront that cynicism head on.
2. Make the most of the global limelight.  Brazil needs a stronger national "elevator pitch" to potential collaborators in science and innovation

Story as a driver of vision formation has been behind social change movements as well as business innovations over the years.  Story can create possibility, leading to belief, and belief can drive actions.  We've often suggested to our clients--"be the story you want to tell"--it's a more right-brain way of helping them organize their actions, think about other players (characters) and voices, and begin to move forward. 

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