magnify360 Blog

Definitely off topic for my usual online marketing rants, but this post by Dave Caolo on “Kitchen Computing” really caught my attention.

I can remember going to countless past CES shows touting the internet enabled refrigerator… And it looks like its still coming back over and over again.

Am I the only one who has looked at these things and said “WTF?”. I really don’t want to make the decision on which fridge I buy based on whether it has a substandard computer installed in it. Do I care if it can see that I’m out of milk? I can probably just as easily hit the “OUT OF MILK” button that into on my computer that is sitting 4 feet away, put it in my iphone, or maybe, just maybe we could “Bluetooth Enable” all the milk cartons…. Are we really that lazy?

What I really want is a simple table, maybe even small laptop (13″ is fine) that sits on the kitchen counter, where I can look up recipes for “Jills-World-Famous-Coffee-Liqueur-Brownies”, catch the google news update, watch anderson cooper on AC360, and maybe even, just maybe, remember the milk.

Dave’s post http://bit.ly/1zO6W2 reminded me that there have been lots of attempts to do this right, but none so far that has come even close to the mark. My trusty ibook G4 is sitting on the kitchen counter right now, doing exactly this.

What’s your kitchen computing solution? Post a comment or drop me an email.

Great article by Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch….

Bureaucracy, checks and balances, and all the rest. Its the fear of mistakes and taking risks that kills innovation more than anything else.

http://bit.ly/m3X9

Coming from the question of how are people born with innovation and entrepreneurship, Joe Costello, CoFounder and CEO of Cadence Design Systems, once said that he thought every country has the same number at birth, but that most countries / cultures beat it out of their children before they ever have a chance.

How much does conformity cost a company or our whole country? Its huge. I’ve seen the difference when our team members feel empowered to take risks, and the output it both great and scary at the same time.

Imagine if everyone had to ask for permission before taking action on their best ideas.. How much would get done? Nothing. And in this economy we’re seeing way too many people slowing down their pace, making sure they have *sses covered by getting their bosses approval, and not taking risks. “You couldn’t get fired for buying IBM.”

But what will turn around this economy? A huge change back to an irrational but measured risk taking…

More on that in a future post…

Your comments, thoughts on this? Is innovation nature or nurture? Are governments and company over-reactions causing more harm that good?

Olivier
CEO & Founder, magnify360