Caught a great panel on January 12 on the topic of Retail Innovation. Especially wanted to hear Kal Patel, Best Buy’s EVP of strategy, a guy I’d heard great things about. Those folks were right, and I’m happy I got a chance to chat with Kal afterwards. Here’s a look at what he’s about, from a conference called Unlocking Innovation held last September in Minneapolis. In his presentation last week, Kal said ” ‘One-Minute Innovation’ is a book a lot of our employees are writing.” Though a survey found 80% of BBY’s employees think they’re innovating enough, the other 20% think not. My sense is Kal’s focusing on the latter (but probably trying simultaneously to change the thinking of the former). He said constant disruption is the goal at Best Buy, “always playing, experimenting.” Here’s another blogger’s take at what they call “bottom-up innovation” at Best Buy. Kal is definitely driving a lot of energy at this retail powerhouse, and one his favorite things to talk about these days is the Wiki they set up for their employees — one of the first major companies to do so. Any employee can set up a web page. Turns out the guy who championed it was Robert Stephens, the founder of Best Buy’s Geek Squad unit. It’s still in the early, experimental stage, another BBY manager told me, but employees are getting into it. One set up an online “Best Buy Acronym Dictionary,” which will surely help new employees get up to speed! (What big company couldn’t use that?) The entire panel discussion was fascinating. I also met the moderator, Mary Meehan, a co-founder of locally based trend-watcher Iconoculture, and Chuck Mooty, the CEO of one of the better known brand icons in these parts, Dairy Queen. Hey, now I’m only one apart from Warren Buffet!
Category: Innovation (Page 77 of 77)
Just met with a Minneapolis stealth startup that’s meeting with In-Q-Tel and the NSA next week. (Where do you meet with the NSA? As this guy was told, “Oh, we’ll tell you that when the time comes.”) Man, this harks me back to my days working with the first CEO of Secure Computing, Kermit Beseke, way back in late ’80s. He knew the NSA guys on a first-name basis. And the rest became history (starting in ’95, with one of the top-5 hottest IPOs for several years running). Wow, when you think of how many major technologies we take for granted actually started with the government, it’s amazing. How about a little thing called, oh, *email* for one? And the very Internet itself. I remember the guys at Secure Computing telling me about email, and then Mosaic and the Web, waay before they were much known outside of government circles. This world of stealth startups is so much fun I can hardly stand it! Oh, and by the way, for all you folks now scratching your head and wondering “Minnesota?” — this has nothing to do with government stuff, but, remember, that early search technology Gopher started right here, too…at a great school called the U of MN!
Interesting juxtaposition. How can you be open and still secret? Well, secret for a while, anyway. I attended a VC gathering the other day here in Minnesota, which was a panel about new trends and developments in software. One of the panelists was Matt O’Keefe, who founded Sistina Software, bought by Red Hat about two years ago. Matt now has a new (stealth) startup, about which I know little more than the name: Alvarri … even after the panel! And his web site sure is interesting! (If it’s even his.) But I sure know open source runs all through this new gig of Matt’s, with his stellar background.
Anyway, later in the panel, Matt came out with a comment about open source that jumped out at me: at Red Hat, only 2-3% of users actually pay for support. Another panelist, the software analyst at Piper Jaffray, said that’s the greatest challenge facing open source vendors, and the guy from Accenture tossed in that he doesn’t see that exceeding 5% anytime soon.
The whole notion of open source and new software startups came back to me when I saw Steve Larsen’s latest post on stealth company Krugle’s blog about the SD Forum’s meeting this week out in the Valley. Wish I could be a fly on the wall at that one.
With all the reliance we place on online communications today, it’s so easy to forget how important it is to break away and get facetime with people — and I’m talking specifically with lots of ’em, at events and conferences. Sometimes we have to force ourselves to do this, to leave the routine behind, but the payoff is great. I learned this years ago, when I found that jumping on a plane every now and then to attend (and report on) technology events energized me like nothing else. You just can’t beat getting into the middle of such gatherings of smart people and movers and shakers in this business. It isn’t just the intelligence you pick up at these things, but you meet the greatest people. I’ve compared it before to this, but it’s like to going to camp. Some of my closest professional colleagues and friends today I met at conferences, going back 6, 7, 8 years.
I’m happy to say now that the nice folks at Demo ’06 have seen fit to admit me as a press registrant. So, I *will* be blogging from there (and even posting in advance) — and I’m greatly looking forward to it! I know there wll be big energy at this happening. And I intend to capture as much of it as I can for you, along with lots of juicy details.
Don’t ya just love intrigue? I do. Stealth companies are so fascinating to me — trying to figure out what they’re up to, how they’re plotting their intro strategy, targeting their market, weaving their messaging, etc. (And I’ve been involved in my share of ’em.) The anticipation, the wonder, the pre-launch tension(!) — it’s a great part of this crazy technology business.
Heard of Krugle yet? You will. Just got an email from my good friend Steve Larsen (formerly of Minneapolis and now Menlo Park), and I noticed a little link at the bottom to Krugle’s new blog. They’re launching at Demo ’06 in Phoenix, it turns out, which is just a few weeks away. And, wouldn’t ya know it, I learned my buddy Doc Searls has already been involved in checking out this new technology. (Smart move, Steve — but then you’re the best I know at this game.)
I have my ideas of what Krugle’s about. But maybe, just maybe I’ll do my conference-reporting thing again and get out to Demo and blog from there…on Krugle and more (hey, 70 companies are participating!). If you’ve been with me for a while, you know I’ve filed conference reports on many, many tech events in the past, especially as a contributor for Conferenza, where I got to meet and work with such cool guys as Gary Bolles and Shel Israel. I hope I can get to this Demo, because I sense it will be really, really good…
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