one of the projects i am working on is putting together a framework for corporate innovation.

one thing's for sure, this is no easy thing. but unfortunately - or fortunately - it is something of a must do. we as a nation are at a crossroad, and inflection point.

for the past several years, we prided ourselves as being a solid destination for foreign investment in manufacturing. our low cost structure, good infrastructure and investment friendly government policies helped to drive economic growth 1.0.

i would like to share with you my personal journey of the beginnings of the transforming an organisation from a traditional top-down command & control hierarchy based organisation into a desired empowered organisation where employees at the lowest team levels are empowered to serve the customers better, create more value and drive better organisational performance.

i was working with a large local organisation with a long history.

are we ready for the shift?

what the education system in malaysia needs today is more empowerment.

empower....

...teachers with the ability to develop and share coursewares, ideas and materials.

...parents to review their children's progress, compare and participate in the overall development of children's education

...students to be able to select the best form of learning and share ideas across a wide community

...policy makers with the ability to engage with the education stakeholders

Harrison Owen - Talk I - Leadership in a Self-Organizing World from Harold Shinsato on Vimeo.

we live in a world that is self organising. we should not delude ourselves that we can control it through commands, propaganda, rules and penalties. as dr ian malcolm in jurassic park said: "life will always find a way".

we have seen over the past few years the rise of collaborative activities that seem to drive a greater and faster level of innovation. the new web 2.0 technologies have enabled us to work together with people whom we've never met, but can leverage on each others' strengths resulting in faster development of new ideas and solutions.

but this seems to only happen over the internet/web. traditional organisations tend to fall behind in all of these new ideas. so how do traditional organisations and enterprises adapt to these trends and unlock the potential of their people?

http://socialsoftwarematrix.org/ is a site that evaluates social networking solutions for enterprises. it's introduction section says:

This website is indented to serve as an introduction to Social Software for enterprises.

The focus of the page will be on a comparison of the performance of different Social Software products in a set of defined business use cases. In addition the page will assess the chosen Social Software with respect to technological and business key factors for an enterprise implementation.

The results presented on socialsoftwarematrix.org are based on an internal evaluation of selected Social Software by the T-Systems MMS Consulting-Enterprise 2.0 team. We tried to be as objective as possible but we do not lay claim to final truth. Any feedback and discussion, on this page or on our blog http://www.besser20.de/ is highly appreciated.

On socialsoftwarematrix.org visitors will get an idea bout how Social Software can be used in a company as well as a comparative overview about Social Software products. Seeing the strength and weaknesses of a product in different use cases and the ability to compare multiple products for a single use-case can help a company to find the right Social Software for its specific needs.

The release of the Social Software Matrix is planned for the end of October. To shorten the waiting time and to give an introduction to Enterprise 2.0 we present to you our three parted presentation. Subscribe our newsletter to be informed when socialsoftwarematrix.org will be released.

there is also a set of presentations that give us a useful insight into enterprise 2.0:

i previously posted something on BMW's Vision EfficientDynamics concept (yes, it is a mouthful).

it is such an amazing and beautiful concept car that i think has to make it into production. this would certainly establish a name for BMW of being green and exciting at the same time: no compromises.

now, a couple of renderings of what might be the "real" thing has cropped up on bmwblog.com: here and here.

which one do you think is better?

the first rendering?

the second rendering?

i would think many cannot wait to see this car go into production.

dr randy pausch died on 25 july 2008 age 47. the father of 3 was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and lost his battle, but not before giving a series of lectures called the "last lecture". he talks nothing about the disease, religion or dispair. but his brilliant spirit shines through as he talks about achieving dreams, help others achieve their dreams and the quality of life in general.

very moving.

the first one is done on oprah winfrey (~10mins)...

source site - How Simplicity Can Help Creativity, Briefly

The judicious application of simplicity can help someone to create, whether that’s writing, creating art, designing, teaching, starting a small business, or in some other way making ideas take shape into reality.

People who want to create are hampered by complications — tools that are too complicated, projects that are too overwhelming, the distractions of the modern world, too many cooks, too many options, too busy.

Simplify, and many of these problems go away.

Clearing clutter is a great way to create space for new ideas, thoughts and creativity.

The hectic information age is generally bad news for creativity. We cannot run away from 24/7 service, technologies and communication. However, we can strive to do less in every area that we work on. Find non-value adding stuff. Ruthlessly chop them off.

Use technology to simplify.

Challenge everything we do. Why do we do things we've being doing all this while?