Following up on my post on innovators using Google Trends I have been launching my browser with Google Trends as my home page just so I can get a feel for what people are searching for. 

Today's #1 was a treat. 

What can I say, being trendy isn't innovative. But you know what. Innovation isn't a just for geeks, mad scientists, or Stamford Grads.

The founder of Spanx Undergarments is quite an accomplished business and underwear innovator.

Link to Robert X. Cringeley's post titled: "The Final Days of Google: It is going to be an inside"

Hat tip to my dad over at Yankee Wombat for the heads up on this story and for turning me on to Robert X. Cringeley.

Are innovators trend watchers or trend setters?

IT WOULD SEEM OBVIOUS that people who are innovators don't worry about trends of being trendy in any sense of the word. But that got me to thinking - aren't people who innovate trend setters? And if a trend setter can be synonymous with innovation, which I believe is not much of a stretch, then one way to innovate is to anticipate the leading edge of trends OR help set their direction.  How would you anticipate the leading edge of trends?

Research, situational awareness, thinking. 

Who is innovating?

In a word...   

Google

Google has become so mighty and so damn good they're the butt of frequent barbs and jokes. Just this morning I posted an article on EXCELER8ion about them being taken to task for some lame email recruiting practices.  But you can't keep Google down, and you've got to love a company that makes SO MANY good products, that even people like me, who WANT to hate them, keep using the stuff they make EVERY BLOODY DAY. 

They're class innovators in every sense. 

What's my example to back this up? 

 

I just posted a summary of Business Week's latest

Back in November 2006 I was at a recruiting conference with my peers and I was speaking with a couple of friends and associates that I consider very intelligent.

The topic of the conversation was social networking site Facebook, and what we viewed as a couple of major strategic mistakes that their young founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, 22 had made. The first was one that had caused a revolt of Facebook users that initially wasn't handled so well.  At least as far as Facebook users were concerned. Facebook users responded with a major online petition that reminded people of the U.S. Vietnam anti-war rallies in the 60's.

"On September 5, 2006, Facebook introduced two new controversial features called "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed". The first of the new features, News Feed, appears on every Facebook member's home page, displaying recent Facebook activities of a member's friends. The second feature, Mini-Feed, keeps a log of similar events on each member's profile page.[26] Members can manually delete items from their Mini-Feeds if they wish to do so.

Some Facebook members still feel that the ability to opt-out of the entire News Feed and Mini-Feed system is necessary, as evidenced by a statement from the Students Against Facebook News Feed group, which peaked at over 740,000 members.[27] However, according to recent news articles, members have widely regarded the additional privacy options as an acceptable compromise.[28]"  -- Wikipedia reference

Following on the feels of pissing off the majority of their users they spurned an estimated one billion dollar bid from Yahoo! to purchase Facebook. It looked for all the world like Facebook would quickly become another example of a web 2.0 dot.wrong. 

The Bain Boys have released their annual report on top management tools for 2007 and corporate blogging and various social media like podcasting take their place on the list.

Back in the 90's I ran a strategic planning team for the Yellow Pages arm of Pacific Bell. It was a great job with a really good team and my first direct access to the executive floor and yes, even the executive washroom. Back then, Pacific Bell was paying Bain and Company millions of dollars to help re-engineer their business. Although the top Bain partners were known for their brilliant minds, they were also often deemed unapproachable by many at the company. I always had good experiences with them and especially their minions - otherwise known as their associates.

From Matt on 37 Signals blog on the paradox of the active user
What struck me about The Paradox of the Active User is that it relates so well to leadership, culture change initiatives, strategic planning, and business planning. It is a similar paradox that effects everyone in a company. We know there are things we should be doing that don't happen and when we look for solutions they appear so simple as to be useless. Of course, the elegant solution is the one people can understand, get behind and take action on. Think about how you would communicate your message out across a team spanning several countries, thousands of employees, in 50 offices. If you'd like to read the source material for Paradox, here's the paper in PDF format.

The right plan is the one that people can follow.

Your people will understand it and take it to heart, make it their own and then they'll make it real. The right plan is the one that is built on the highest collective expression of the group's highest aspirations. No plan should be more complex or simple than the ideas and ideals it contains. If it can be said in one page, and understood, then all the better, for work can begin and results can be attained that much faster.

This note on planning was inspired by a great book review over on George Ambler's The Practice of Leadership.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery