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Special thanks to Futurist Thomas Frey - http://budurl.com/FuturistThomasFrey

Notes From the Future . . . The “Blook”

by Melissa Giovagnoli and Peter Balbus

This is the beginning of a very cool adventure: the creation of a community-produced “blook” – an interactive blog transforming into a published book . . . with your help. We will be regularly taking your ideas, should you choose to share them, and grow a powerful and collaborative center of the future that, we hope, will become a reality very soon.

You will read about how we came up with the idea of an innovation center; how the center will be different from incubators; how it will not be a competitor to other innovation initiatives or organizations, but, rather, a facilitator of innovation events and a connection point for the city of Chicago’s innovators as well as innovators around the country and the world. We intend to be inclusive, connective and directive in our work. We want the process that is called “managing from the future” that will have us (with lots of ideas from you) writing about what the center will look, sound and feel like to take on a transformative quality, enabling you and us to test drive a way of innovating.

So, imagine Chicago, October 10, 2010. In the Borders store on Michigan Avenue that is currenlty scheduled to close its doors at the  beginning of next year, now reopens its doors with a group of passionate, very collaborative innovation professionals and 30 corporate sponsors who are also an integral part of the new center. Additionally, Borders does stay in the store–only as a much smaller version with a kiosk instead of lots of inventory. Now, the inventory is online mostly. (Note: not sure if you know this but Amazon is Borders online).

Now imagine further that you are able to walk into the store and innovate new ideas, products and services for your own organization? Imagine connecting with other supportive professionals who help you or co-create with you? Imagine that this retail site is now redefined as a site that connects a vibrant high-touch innovation experience with the best high-tech tools currently available. Imagine also that you have access to thirty of the most innovative companies in the U.S. regularly running contests to find the best new products and services for their customers? Imagine further that these companies then showcase the winners of these contests at the center helping others gain insight as to what it takes to innovate more effectively?

Join us, Peter Balbus and myself, Melissa Giovagnoli, as we journey together to evolve a new concept in retail . . . The Networlding Innovation and Collaboration Center of Chicago . . . redefining retail. Following is the outline we will be working off of in the many weeks to come with lots of questions we will ask ourselves and you to determine what will have happened in the center to create a unique launch pad for accelerating innovation.

Notes From the Future Outline

i. Prologue – Written by Melissa Giovagnoli – What was the original genesis of the Innovation Center concept?  How long of a gestation period was there?  What earlier attempts had been made?  What was learned from those experiences?  What specific events/encounters provided the catalyst that made the whole thing possible starting in 2009?

I. Chapter One – 11-11-2011 – Reminiscing about our beginning days in the Innovation Center that opened the year before on 10-10-2010… What did we set out to accomplish?  What were our motivations?  What resistance did we encounter?  Who encouraged us? What people were instrumental to our early success?  What role did networlding play? What was it about the Innovation Center concept that truly caught people’s interest and passion?  How did we leverage outside ideas and our blogosphere community to help enhance our vision and accelerate our progress?

II. Chapter Two – A day in the life of the center as it is “today” (11-11-11) – The user experience. What are the key differentiating attributes of the user experience?  How are people using the Center?  What value are they generating/receiving?  What makes the Center so successful?  How has this changed over the last year?

III. Chapter Three – Opening Day October 10, 2010. What did the beginning structure look like the day it opened?  Did we have all 30 kiosks in there?  What was our business and revenue model?  What initial mistakes did we make? What fortuitous events helped make it happen?  What was the initial public reaction? What near-disasters did we finesse?

IV. Chapter Four – The first week. What happened during that first week of the center being opened?  What did we learn?  What did we commit to fix?  How did it change our assumptions or operating models?  What would we have done differently from the beginning of only we’d known…

V. Chapter Five – The early months. What happened within the first 90 days?  What were our first 3 major initiatives?  How were they germinated?   how did we get them to the stage of moving to engagement with design engineers from a couple of the companies in the center (check out www.inventright.com or www.edisonnation.com for examples of companies).  Who were our first corporate sponsors?  What made them decide to participate?

VI. Chapter Six – Crisis! What unexpected event happened ~ 4-6 months later that nearly caused the Center to collapse?  (A little dramatic effect that occurs in every good story…)  How did we rescue it?  What help did we get from an entirely unexpected source?  What sacrifices were we forced to make that turned out to pay huge dividends later?  What seemingly unrelated sub-plot first mentioned in the prologue and carried along at a low level of intensity in Chapters I-V suddenly emerges as an unexpected, vital component of our success?

VII. Chapter Seven – The Center – 2^nd Generation. How did the Center emerge better, stronger and with more innovative impact as a result of the events in Chapter Five?  How did we know that the Center was now completely out of danger and would be an extraordinary success?

VIII. Chapter Eight – Events in the Center. What kinds of things went on during that first year – especially those that could only have taken place in the unique environment of the Center?

IX. Chapter Nine – Impact of the Center. What tangible, measurable results has the Center produced in its first year?  What additional kinds of activities are there underway that will yield even greater impacts an dividends.  Where did we create unexpected value?  What didn’t we expect that happened?

X. Chapter Ten – What’s Next? Having spent the first nine chapters in reflection mode, now we pivot and look to the future.  Sister Centers are now in various stages of opening in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, London, Prague and Milan.  Interest has been expressed from unexpected sources – DARPA, DOE and other leading-edge US government agencies want to develop a similar concept to help drive early-stage innovation on government projects.  NASA wants to build a Center dedicated to establishing a manned base on Mars.  The World Bank and Gates Foundation want to fund the establishment of local Innovation Centers across Africa to help foster self-help solutions to the daunting problems of Aids, energy, food and tribal feuding — from the same people that these challenges affect the most.

Tags: entrepreneurship, futurist speakers, innovation, innovation and chicago, innovation speakers

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Networlding Innovation and Collaboration Center, Notes From the Future Outline, homepage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.