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From Times Online

May 19, 2008

Get ready for the future

In our exclusive podcast, management author C K Prahalad talks about the ideas presented in his book The New Age of Innovation

Julie Daniels and Carol Lewis

In his new book, The New Age of Innovation, management author C K Prahalad and co-author M S Krishnan, present a blueprint for corporate growth and innovation.

Download the podcast to hear him discuss his new ideas, give examples of companies which are ahead of the curve in delivering unique customer experiences and gives practical tips on how managers can be more innovative.

The book Prahalad and Krishnan explain how management practices and organisational structures will need to change in the next 12 years to meet the growing demand for greater efficiency and creativity.

Key points:

1. Individual customer experiences will become increasingly important. Value is now based on personalised experiences for the consumer. Regardless of whether they serve a handful or huge numbers of customers, companies need to have the ability to focus on the single customer and offer him or her a personalised service. Prahalad calls this approach N = 1.

2. Innovation will be driven by flexibility and efficiency. Resources to create this unique customer experience need to be gathered from inside and outside the organisation. Companies don't need to own these resources, but they need to be able to access them and use them as required. Organisations will become less hierarchical and more attuned to their individual employees and suppliers to help give them this flexibility.This phenomenon is termed R = G (Resources from global sources).

3. Innovation is underpinned by new approaches to technology. All businesses will need to become e-businesses with flexible IT structures at their core. Innovative IT approaches will be vital to providing unique customer experiences to tech-savvy members of the FaceBook generation and driving efficient use of resources as determined by R = G.

4. Managers need to start planning for this future now. Prahalad and Krishnan predict that by about 2020 their predictions will be reality and managers will be operating in this new environment. They urge managers to start thinking about this future in their corporate strategy, IT and talent management processes today.

The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value Through Global Networks by C.K Prahalad and M.S Krishnan (McGraw-Hill, £15.24)

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ICO OnlineOffice Explained

ICO OnlineOffice Background

It has been a long time in development and thought. We started back in 1998 (as HHN) developing online editing systems which has been updated into our current system. In 2004 we began the online exploration and integration of numerous tools. In 2006 we were one of the first (if not the first) organizations in the World to put their accounts (beta) live online. This was accomplished by using Zoho embedding into our Online Editing System. We continued to develop some online apps but our resources were too thin to move further. In 2006 it also became apparent that Google was now getting a stronger presence through it's Google Docs online applications and was a strong contender to become the market leader by building on it's Gmail service. The sheer size and creativity of Google has now evolved into Google Apps, a complete (well nearly) online office suite with promise of a lot components and developer applications. We have experimented since 2006 with both Zoho and Google and the time is now to declare our preference. We have field tested Google Apps and feel confident that we can build and customize the present and future ICO OnlineOffice on that platform. A considerable part of ICO is now paperless, with Online AFEE's and expense re-imbursements. As of Monday 25 May 2008, the ICO OnlineOffice as part of the Support Desk in our website is enabled. The ICO OnlineOffice is accessed via the Support Desk or direct at:

http://OnlineOffice.InnovativeCommunities.Org

ICO Operations Group will receive access username and passwords shortly.

What you can do... Communicate, Share and Collaborate (info edited from Google Apps) Communicate: Stay in touch within ICO and externally - via email, IM and VOIP. Email everywhere: Access your email -- all of it -- from any internet-connected computer, with the same rich user experience. Mobile access: Access email from your BlackBerry® smartphone or your mobile device's browser, and instant message with your business contacts. Plenty of capacity: With up to 6 GB of storage (soon to be 25 GB) you don't need to delete or archive important messages or attachments to a local disk. Your inbox has room to grow. Keep track of all your communications: Email and IMs (Instant Messages) might be two different things, but that doesn't mean you need to keep them in two different places. Automatically save your IMs alongside your mail. Voicemails in your email inbox too? Yes. Find it all: With Google search technology in your inbox, meticulous foldering is a thing of the past. Find emails, attachments and IM conversations in fractions of a second. Go Global: English, Spanish, Japanese, Russian or Icelandic, Gmail's user interface is available in 40 languages, so everyone can join in the conversation.

Share: Publish information, documents and calendars. Share with everyone: Need to publish the latest travel policy? The agenda for the next department meeting? Easily share documents with your entire organization. No need to upload, post and tag like in traditional document management systems. Just publish. Share with just a few: Of course, some documents need not be seen by everyone. Easily restrict permissions to the people who are supposed to view or edit the document. Keep everyone in the loop: Publish calendars of events, meetings and deadlines that anyone (or just a select few) can view alongside their own agenda items. Access critical information on the go: Because all of your documents are available to you on the web, you can always pull up that important file from any internet-connected computer. Find it all: Don’t remember the name of that important document? Quickly find information within all of your own documents and in the documents shared with you, with powerful Google search capabilities. Collaborate: Stay in sync with everyone on your team. Get on the same page: Collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations, that multiple people can contribute to at the same time. See other people's updates in real-time as they happen. Be on the same page -- literally -- with everyone who needs to be involved. Create, upload or email: Create new documents from scratch, or upload an existing file. Starting with an email attachment? No need to download and then upload to Google -- just forward it to a special email address, and we'll convert it to an editable online document for you. Take them offline: Of course every now and then, you’ll need to take your document offline or just send it around the old fashioned way. You can easily save as documents as HTML files, Word docs, Excel spreadsheets or even as PDF files. By using Google Gears (a browser add-on) you can work offline and when back online, the file will automatically update to the web. A very powerful tool for our ICO team members especially in the developing world with infrequent and expensive internet connections. Go back in time: Easily see all the different versions of a document that existed over time, compare them and quickly revert to an older version if you need to. Rough day at the office? Did your laptop hard drive crash? Did your motherboard get fried? No worries; your documents are safe with us -- and are saved automatically as you work. Further Resources:

ICO OnlineOffice Menus: (using Google Apps customized for ICO)

Your ICO Desk...

	Desktop: This is where you start. You have immediate access to electronic AFEE's, expense forms etc.
	ICO Sharing...This is your other major area. Get the latest information you need and also share with the ICO Team. This important area is explained further below.
	Email: Your ICO email and contacts are here in the familiar GMail format including mail search tools and integrated chat. Please use the ICO Online Office to receive and send emails, not your home account. Opens in new tab.
	Docs: Create, share and collaborate on documents in real-time. Including word doc, spreadsheet and presentations which are compatible with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Opens in new tab.
	Calendar: You can view and add to the ICO Calendar as well as devise your own custom calendar which you may share or share just some items with selected people. Opens in new tab.
	Filing Cabinet: Important ICO documents are filed here, generally in PDF format for viewing and downloading. Should you have a file to add, please email it to the OnlineOffice.
	Fax Service: ICO subscribes to an online fax service. Documents can be faxed through the fax site or even via email, which will arrive in your recipient's fax machine.

ICO Sharing...

Back to your Desktop: This is where you started. You have immediate access to electronic AFEE's, expense forms etc.
ICO Sharing... Get the latest information you need and also share with the ICO Team by the extensive user-friendly creative tools provided.
ICO Sandbox: We are all about creativity, innovation and sharing of concepts and ideas. This is the area to share with the ICO Operations Group.
ICO Notices: Information on ICO events and activities are detailed here, as well as marked in the Calendar.
ICO Sites: This is an extremely powerful area to enable you to create and share with the rest of the team by designing your own internal mini-site. Highly customizable and user-friendly.
ICO Forum: Our existing Forum has been greatly simplified to enable easier posting and reading of information to encourage more use. The Forum will be replaced with a Blog as soon as an integrated one is available from Google Apps. Opens in a new tab.
ICO Library: As well as our books and materials available for borrowing and reading, we also will be including resources information. Please email the OnlineOffice with additions.
ICO Latest News: Will take you to the Latest News area of the main ICO website. Opens in a new tab. Please keep up-to-date.

ICO Blog

Sunday, May 25, 2008