Listening to Minnesota Public Radio last week after my first meeting of the day, I caught most of a fascinating program on Midmorning called “Discovering China“, a discussion about Simon Winchester‘s latest book and his experiences which chronicle, “…the story of an Englishman’s adventures in China, and his determination to prove to the rest of the world that the Chinese were the first to create technological marvels.”
As I left my car and embarked upon a 15 minute walk from a parking lot to a building in downtown Minneapolis, I was pleased to have remembered my headphones as I fired up the iPhone MPR application developed by Minnesota-based Codemorphic (get the free app here for your iPhone from the iTunes store) and continued listening.
What I didn’t expect was the two minute story about a breakdown of Winchester’s car in the middle of nowhere in China, his iPhone, and what happened next.
After hearing this story and a bit more, I was so intrigued by the program that I wanted to hear it in its entirety, so the next day I went to iTunes and downloaded the 5/4/09 show and, for good measure, subscribed to the MPR Midmorning podcast. Either can be done here on iTunes if you’re interested in hearing the whole show.
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Ask people what the word “innovation” means to them and you’ll hear such phrases as, “…it’s all about making processes more efficient” or “…brainstorming new ideas and implementing them” or “…ways in which we can disrupt and leapfrog our competitors.” Clearly there are many ways to think about the process of innovation, but almost never do you hear entrepreneurs, business analysts or corporate strategists openly discussing the rate of change that’s occurring…
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