Here's a video interview with Judy Estrin, serial entrepreneur and author of "Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy." It's conducted by The McKinsey Quarterly, but appears to be a registration-free bit of content.
Estrin's interview is broken into six parts, mostly running from between 2 and 4 minutes, except the minute-and-change of advice for the next president (the interview was conducted before last year's election):
- The importance of basic research
- How companies should manage innovation
- Learning from failure
- Innovating on three horizons
- What you can (and can't) learn from your customer
- How should the new president of the U.S. encourage innovation at the national level?
These vary in value. About innovation in the U.S., she's a Cassandra, and you'll either agree with her or disagree. Her observations of failure, and how the attitude in Silicon Valley has changed towards failure, is worth a listen if you care about Silicon Valley culture. Her discussions on how to manage innovation and her innovation model, innovating on three horizons, are excellent glances into how she's achieved her track record as a technology executive and entrepreneur. Her basic point about listening to customers is a fine reminder of things we should already know (though it irritated me to hear her say that IBM would never have come up with the PC if it had listened to her customers. First off, at least some of IBM's customers did want PCs, because of all the Apple IIs running around. Secondly, IBM had tried at least six times to create a 'personal' computer before the original IBM PC was introduced.) Her advice for the president is what you might expect: stimulate an industry around energy independence and fighting global warming.