Stranova

"Can You Hear Them Now? VoIP, Intellectual Property, and the Verizon/Vonage Battle". The patent infringement lawsuit between Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) pioneer Vonage and telecom giant Verizon is almost over. And although Vonage just won an important legal "stay" to allow it to keep in business and continue to market to new customers, it may not stay in business for long. This week's episode of Strategic Edge explores the implications of this fight on strategic innovation in the area of VoIP, and why the battle alone is actually for the best for the entire telecom business ecosystem.

"Collective IQ and Human Augmentation", with computer pioneer, visionary thinker Doug Engelbart, founder of the Boostrap Institute. Our latest podcast features Doug Engelbart, a visionary who has helped shape many of the major inventions of what we now think of as the internet as well as the early stages of computing, from early concepts of microelectronics to the invention of the computer mouse. In this weeks’ podcast, learn how one man’s lifelong passion to create a meaningful legacy of work that could benefit all mankind has provided the drive and the vision to take him to perhaps his most challenging innovations yet, the means by which we can harness our Collective Intelligence and realize his complex concept of vast human Augumentation.

Voices from 2020, Vol. 6, "Rapid Innovation in Collaborative Groups", Published February 10, 2007. In this episode of our Voices from 2020 series, hosts Bill Veltrop and Firehawk interview Stu Winby, strategist in the field of group creativity, on how to help groups innovate faster and more effectively as a collaborative field. Listen and learn how his concepts of the Decision Accelerator and related approaches have been used to change the way social and business innovation works – and what their dramatic effects for organizations of all kinds will enable– by the year 2020.

"Natural Capitalism", with Hunter Lovins, founder and President of Natural Capitalism, Inc. As business gets involved in dealing with both the tremendous environmental challenges facing the world today, and elects to “go green” on a level we've never seen before, business also is learning that partnering and learning from nature is also a pretty good economic “bet”. In this week’s episode of Stranova, the founder and President of Natural Capitalism, Inc., explains how embracing a new partnership with nature is not only the right thing to do, it’s “good business” as well.

Voices from 2020, Vol. 5, "Identity, Society, Communications, and Sustainability", published December 19, 2006. In Part II of the Voices from 2020 interview with the 2006 Winner of Japan’s Goi Peace Prize, futurist and social scientist Duane Elgin (with hosts Firehawk and Bill Veltrop) takes us even deeper into our understanding of what it will mean for all of us to live more fully “sustainable” ways of life.

Stranova Strategic Edge Vol. 15, published December 10, 2006. "Peace as a Strategic Innovation". The challenge of “waging peace” in our world today is that war itself is already deeply entrenched in our society in many ways – in government, in our economies, and even in how our language is able to describe war so fully, while the concept of peace has only shallow roots and even fewer words to describe it – outside of simply as “the opposite of war”. In this episode of Stranova Strategic Edge, we explore why war is such a difficult system to supplant, and how some radical non-traditional approaches to creating new peaceful ecosystems are helping peace “break out” throughout the world, in places you might never expect.

Voices from 2020, Vol. 4, "Identity, Society, Communications, and Sustainability", published November 12, 2006. In our fourth installment of the “Voices from 2020” series, our guest is Duane Elgin, a visionary social scientist and evolutionary activist. In his books Voluntary Simplicity, Promise Ahead, and Awakening Earth, he showed us all paths for how individual and collective will can be harnessed to create a more sustainable future for the universe. In this episode of “Voices”, listen and learn how individuals, societies, and businesses can develop deeper and more meaningful relationships with each other, with the earth, and with the universe as a whole, and will have created a much brighter future for all by 2020.

"Success Built to Last", with entrepreneur and author Mark Thompson. It is an interesting paradox in our business lives that we often spend our careers chasing success without taking the time to think more deeply about what it really means to us. In this episode of Stranova, you’ll hear some of the insights that Mark Thompson and “Success Built to Last” co-authors Jerry Porras and Stewart Emery learned in their interviews with over 300 successful people – as to how to cultivate a more profound understanding of success – and how to achieve it on both a personal as well as professional basis.

Stranova Strategic Edge Vol. 14, published October 18, 2006. "The Process Advantage". We’ve heard so much about the latest gadgets, new business forms, and the concept of “disruptive technology”, that many of us have missed the most significant of all categories of strategic innovation: those in which customers are given the opportunity to change the way they used to do something in a profound and different way. In our latest episode, learn how and why this approach to innovation can be in fact the most transformative of all strategies -- by exploring examples from Toys ‘R Us ® to Intuit’s Turbo Tax ® to Apple’s iTunes ®.

Voices from 2020, Vol. 3, Published October 7, 2006. In this the third podcast in our “Voices from 2020” series, our intrepid time travelers FireHawk and Bill Veltrop once again visit an ideal year 2020, this time to interview Tom Atlee, who for many years has been one of this planet’s most articulate champions of our potential to turn our social and environmental challenges into positive developments for our society. Tom is a founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute. His 2003 book, The Tao of Democracy: using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Works for All, introduced us to what it takes to tap into our capacity for wise democracy. In this interview Tom reveals how, in 2020, we have collectively begun to awaken, not only to face up to our various global challenges, but also to learn how to use the energy of global crises to fuel our conscious evolution as a people. His stories reinforced the importance of societal feedback loops as advanced by Gil Friend and Jeff Saperstein in our second Voices from 2020 podcast. He also highlighted the role played by some pioneering corporations in actively supporting our moving toward social and environmental wholeness.

"The Knowledge Web", with author and entrepreneur James Burke. For hundreds of years, we have built our learning systems in celebration of and in support of the “knowledge specialist” as perhaps the most valued member of our organizational teams. The problem with such specialization is that it often ignores a far more significant source of innovation, one which draws from the insight of interconnecting two or more seemingly unrelated ideas or disciplines to create a truly novel “new” one. In our episode this week, James Burke, the world-renowned author and creator of the “Connections” book and related TV series, suggests a way out of the “reductionist rut” of placing too much faith on “specialists” for critical thinking AND strategic innovation. With his Knowledge Web project – and more than a few pointed concepts on how our educational and learning systems haven’t really grown up much since the 17th century, Mr. Burke’s ideas should provide some exciting “food for thought” on how you may want to change the way you manage innovation and learning in your own organization.

Stranova Strategic Edge Vol. 13, published September 17, 2006. "Reflections on 9/11". Now, some five years after the horrific acts of terrorism on September 11, 2001, we are only just beginning to understand the full implications of the event in all aspects of our lives. In this special edition of Stranova Strategic Edge, we explore how direct consequences of 9/11 have impacted the world of business at large, with discussion of the airline, oil, automotive, publishing, and movie industries, among others. We also close with some thoughts for all of us to consider as what our legacies from this could be going forward into the future.

Voices from 2020, Vol. 2, Published September 5, 2006. In this second of the “VOICES FROM 2020” series, Bill and FireHawk interview Jeff Saperstein, who has worked extensively in both business and academia and is passionately committed to coming up with measures that help us make the shift towards wholeness, and Gil Friend, President and CEO of Natural Logic, who comes at the measurement opportunity from years of engagement and innovation in the intersection between economy, ecology and community -- on the subject of how changing the metrics we use to measure success can lead to deep transformations in business and all parts of life.

"Protecting Creative Works in the Internet Age", with Mike Linksvayer, CTO of Creative Commons. The Internet has made it relatively easy to distribute materials such as Microsoft Word® documents, Powerpoint® presentations, graphics files, and even podcasts over the internet. Email has been one distribution means, websites have offered another, and the growth of RSS feeds to help propogate both blog content and podcasts have created yet another wave. Individual creativity distributed over the internet is growing faster than ever, it seems, but until recently the only way to legally “mark” it as something you own was limited to marking it as “Copyrighted Material”. Unfortunately, this “one size fits all approach” is often too restrictive, making it effectively illegal even to download something marked as “Copyrighted”, except for the so-called (and, to many, confusing) “fair use” provisions of the law. In this week’s episode of Stranova, “tune in” to learn how in just a few years of existence the innovative non-profit enterprise Creative Commons has changed all that, through its introduction of “common sense” legal “creative work” licenses that make it easier to distribute your creative works as broadly as you want, while still retaining the legal rights you may may need.

Stranova Strategic Edge Vol. 12, published August 14, 2006. "The Podcasting Business, 2006". Almost 6 years after the original concept of podcasting was first formally proposed, and just over one year after Apple announced iTunes would list and help promote podcasts created by just about anyone, the business of podcasting is hotter than ever. Our current reflective podcast on our own industry, offered exactly one year after Stranova’s first interview series was launched, provides insights on how this all came to be, where it’s heading, and some tips on how to make it work most effectively for you.