Get Inspired

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
 –Albert Einstein

AYA recommends:
Living Thing
by Peter Bjorn and John

CHRISTINA recommends:
TED Talks: Bill Strickland

The Ultimate Question
by Fred Reichheld

COLLIN recommends:
Star Trek
Directed by J.J. Abrams

Tonight
Franz Ferdinand

KAREN recommends:
Manners
by Passion Pit

Soul Vegetarian

LUKASZ recommends:
Bomb It
A film by Jon Reiss

MICHAEL recommends:
Atomic Sketch Event

The Show 'n Tell Show

Let Canright Communications analyze the content in your marketing and sales collateral, and save you money in the process. We'll assess your existing materials—from brochures and websites to presentations and RFPs.

We're offering assessments for $400 through the end of June. For more information, contact Collin Canright by email or at (773) 248-8935.

What’s Inside

Normal Redefined
Whatever normal was in the past few years will not be normal in the coming years. That much is clear. READ MORE>

Social Reading
Nowhere is the need to change more apparent than in the media industry, as the articles I have been reading over the past few days show. READ MORE>

Events
MIT EF and Innovation Awards Calls for Entries. READ MORE>

Milestones
Canright produced user and administrator guides for Kaufman Hall, an independent consulting firm offering guidance to executives in the healthcare industry. READ MORE>

Collin was recently recognized by both Chicago's Social Media Club and local technology columnist Ron May. READ MORE>

Normal Redefined

By CHRISTINA CANRIGHT

In conversations with clients over the past four weeks, one of the themes is that business will not return to "normal." Whatever normal was in the past few years will not be normal in the coming years. That much is clear.

Companies likely have changed pricing and are working on product and marketing strategies. But more of a transformation is needed.

As a new economy emerges, businesses have an opportunity to use these financial struggles to redefine themselves. In fact, their survival may well depend on it. The word innovation is no longer just about products and services a company offers, but about the companies themselves. Innovation and redefinition is coming about from the inside out, and if done well, has companies reassessing themselves and seeing possibilities they could not fathom before. The overly used phrase "necessity is the mother of invention" is no longer a hollow platitude in this context.

In Support of Innovation

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum of Chicago's May 20 meeting, a panel of authors who have written books on innovation discussed pathways out of the current economic situation. One panelist, Praveen Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Innovation Science wrote later in an email published in The May Report of May 27, 2009:

"The points I wanted [to] emphasize in my interactions really focus on the critical need to empower and bring out the best intellectual output of the individual... We are in the midst of a potentially uncomfortable but necessary new age—what I would call the intellectual revolution."

The innovative companies now will be those who learn how to empower their people, says Dr. Robert Wright, who leads our Entrepreneurs group at the Wright Business Institute. "Each person has a perspective that's valuable. Innovation is required to empower them to come forward and be themselves."

Although this is no easy task, and, as Mr. Gupta emphasized, "potentially uncomfortable," we are on the edge of transformational times for companies and individuals. They are indeed uncomfortable. But has normal (read: comfortable) really ever taken us anywhere before?

Social Reading

By COLLIN CANRIGHT

Nowhere is the need to change more apparent than in the media industry, as the articles I have been reading and saving to my delicious account over the past few days show. (Delicious is a social bookmarking tool, a useful form of social media eclipsed in awareness these days by Twitter, Facebook, and the like.)

Most of these articles concern social media and its uses and influences. There are no tidy answers here but a lot of thought-provoking questions.

In Defense of Distraction

The end of blogging

A Fortune magazine blogger muses whether Twitter and Facebook and their short updates are making blogging obsolete, just as people worry whether blogging has made journalism obsolete.

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

Clay Shirky suggests that journalism is far from obsolete but newspapers are. This blog post covers the economics of the business and looks back to the social disruption of Gutenberg's invention of movable type.

Not by Links Alone

This article, in Josh Young's Networked News blog, gives a thoughtful critique of the conventional wisdom that news is moving to Google, which is good for all because Google levels the competitive playing field.

Events

MIT EF and Innovation Awards Calls for Entries

We've been working this past month on promoting the 2009 Whiteboard Challenge, the premier event of the MIT Enterprise Forum. The event is June 16, and registration opens on May 29. Visit the MIT EF Chicago website for details and to register.

The Chicago Innovation Awards committee is also accepting nominated entries for its 8th Annual Innovation Awards in October. Nominations will be accepted for innovative new products and services in the greater Chicago area from now until July 31. Past winners have included Millennium Park, Abbott Laboratories, and the American Cancer Society. Visit the Innovation Awards website for more information.

Milestones

Kaufman Hall Hospital Advisor Guides

Canright produced user and administrator guides for Kaufman Hall, an independent consulting firm offering strategic and financial management guidance to executives in the healthcare industry. Canright revised and updated the guides for Kaufman Hall's Hospital Advisor® software that provides facility-based hospitals and facilities with financial planning assistance. Kaufman Hall's James Bodan, Senior Vice President of Software Operations, told Collin: "I just took my first look at the Hospital Advisor guides and continue to be impressed. You really help raise the professionalism and polish of our documentation."

Collin in the Spotlight!

Collin was recently recognized by both Chicago's Social Media Club and local technology columnist Ron May. In last week's The May Report newsletter, Ron applauded Collin for spreading the word around town about the upcoming MIT EF Whiteboard Challenge. He considers Collin's actions a welcome sign of teamwork among Chicago's technology organizations.

Collin was also interviewed at the Social Media Club's April event in conjunction with SOBCon09, an annual bloggers gathering. See the event video here.