Andrew Hargadon

Shifts happen

When quantity is a quality all its own... Some innovative work in wind turbines is interesting for both its potential and for the response it evoked.

(to read more on The Hargadon Files, follow the link)

Reid Hoffman on social networks

Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn wrote a wonderful article on The real way to build a social network that is a must read for anyone who recognizes the value of networks for innovation.

Facebook friends...

As the NYT reported, scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan (report posted here) have found that the average number of links connecting one arbitrarily selected person to another was 4.74 (in the U.S., it was just 4.37).  So what's news? 

Entrepreneurs and Society: Kauffman Foundation's "3 Things" video

The Kauffman Foundation just posted a nice sketchbook talk by CEO Carl Schramm (embedded below), summarizing the good and vital research the company has supported that looks at the role of entrepreneurs in society.  These numbers should guide both policy and personal decisions.  

Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison

Last week, Bob Sutton asked me to add my two bits to the dog-pile surrounding the “Steve-Jobs-is-the-modern-Thomas-Edison” analogy. I initially balked. There were plenty of folks who’d already made this connection. Then I balked because Bob’s own brilliant post on Apple took the discussion in a much more productive direction.  Over the weekend, however, I bit. Not because of how the analogy fit, but because of how it didn’t.

Biomedical Engineering Entrepreneurship Academy 2011

This morning our 2011 Biomedical Engineering Entrepreneurship Academy comes to close.  45 university research scientists from across the country, full professors to first year grad students, arrived on Monday morning with their research and the desire to see it become a reality. After an intensive week of work, they're pitching their proposed businesses for the first time and to a jury of potential investors.

Finding new problems

What if innovation was not about solving problems?  This thought nags me whenever I'm forced to read about the grave responsibility of "innovation" to solve such persistent problems as climate change, healthcare, poverty, and education.  Or listening to how innovation might solve all of Acme, Incorporated's problems but especially that gaping hole in Q3 revenues for 2012, their obsolete technology platform, or declining share values.

What is innovation

I’ve never met anyone who was against innovation. Why is that? 

My hunch is because we are too lax with our words. Innovation, creativity, invention, and entrepreneurship are one-sided terms—they refer, typically, only to those successful outcomes we read about, enjoy in our daily lives, or look to for solving major problems like healthcare or global warming. Before talking any more about innovation and entrepreneurship, then, let’s make sure we’re talking about the right thing.

Addendum to Forks in the Road

I posted earlier about the different ways that valuable ideas may come out of university research labs.  But this series of posts is as interested in how ideas, born inside large and established companies, can also emerge to have significant impacts on broader society. This may seem like an unnecessary charity—like helping corporate executives cross the street—but it’s not.  Large companies are arguably the most infertile ground in which to grow an idea into a new business. 

In Facebook, who's got your back?

Networks play two very different roles in innovation. Broad-ranging social networks are great for moving knowledge about ideas, technologies, and people from where they're known to where they're not. And those with broad-ranging networks tend to be in a better position to see these ideas. But ideas are not so valuable in the innovation process, as I and others have argued.

This past week's New Yorker features a terrific article by Malcolm Gladwell, "Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted," that illustrates this difference—between social networking as our kids know it and social networking as our parents' generation did.