Hutch Carpenter

Spigit

Hutch Carpenter is VP of Product for Spigit. Spigit helps companies manage innovation, providing idea management and prediction market software for enterprises. The goal is enable easy capture of ideas by employees, customers and partners, and convert the most promising to innovative initiatives.

On the Utility of Thinking in Terms of Jobs-to-Be-Done

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Posted on 2012-02-01

In a recent post examining the future of retail, I used the jobs-to-be-done approach to break down the industry. And I’ve been using it more in other ways. It’s quite useful as a basis for innovation.

The premise of the jobs-to-be-done approach is that it provides a much better basis for innovation. The focus is on unmet needs of customers. Compare this to asking wide open, pie-in-the-sky types of questions.

I thought about this when I saw this question posted on Quora:

What currently nonexistent websites would you want to be created?

Wow. Talk about an open ended question. I don’t know about you, but that question doesn’t help me. I get brain freeze. I need a prompt to come up with...

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5 Social Business Truths

1 comments 2,058 reads

Posted on 2012-01-21

Meritocracy trumps hierarchy: Companies don’t get a “pass” on Wall Street or the London Exchange becauswe they’re been around way before new companies. Political candidates aren’t immune from beingf being upended when they don’t perform. Why should work be any different? Companies that focus on the meritocracy are focused on growth. Those that pay too much attention to hierarchy are limiting their growth.

Knowledge and ideas want to be free: When you learn something new, ever feel the urge to share it? When you know something that can help, don’t you want to...

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Carving Up the Retail Industry by Customer Jobs to Be Done

0 comments 250 reads

Posted on 2012-01-12

Online retailers had a heck of 2011 holiday season, up 15%. Whew, in a tough economy no less. But the news wasn’t as good for some physical retail stores. Sears Holdings announced disappointing sales and will be closing over 100 stores. Best Buy same store sales dropped, and some have expressed their sentiment that the retailer is on a long downward...

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Four Innovation Insights Customers Provide

0 comments 756 reads

Posted on 2011-12-16

Customers, properly, have been having a renaissance of sorts in terms of business thinking. Peter Drucker famously espoused a very customer-centric business philosophy. Nowadays, social CRM represents the return of a customer-first orientation. Last year, Altimeter published the 18 use cases of social CRM. Included in those use cases were several that relate to innovation.

Customers are a rich source of innovation insight, and the ultimate authority on what innovation is useful. So it’d be good to understand what types of insights they provide. OK, not just good. Vital. While the incorporation of customers in the innovation process is…...

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Is Google+ More Facebook or More Twitter? Yes

0 comments 505 reads

Posted on 2011-07-13

Quick, what existing social network is Google+ most likely to displace in terms of people’s time?

Another Try by Google to Take On Facebook

Claire Cain Miller, New York Times

This isn’t a Facebook-killer, it’s a Twitter-killer.

Yishan Wong, Google+ post

A hearty congrats to Google for creating an offering that manages to be compared to both Facebook and Twitter. The initial press focused on Google+ as a Facebook competitor. But as people have gotten to play with it, more and more they are realizing that it’s just as much a...

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Four reasons enterprise software should skip native mobile apps

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Posted on 2011-06-06

The desire to “consumerize” mobile apps for their own sake is stoking today’s outsized enthusiasm with device-specific enterprise mobile apps at a time when HTML5 is right there staring us all in the face.

Tony Byrne, Enterprise 2.0 B.S. List: Term No. 1 Consumerization

The runaway success of the iPhone app store has demonstrated that people love mobile, and seek the great user experiences that mobile apps provide. You see these wonderful little icons, beckoning you to give ‘em a tap on your phone. You browse the app store, find an app that interests you, you decide to try it on and see if it fits.

And all the cool kids are doing the native app thing. Path is...

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I'm Not Actually a Geek

0 comments 959 reads

Posted on 2011-05-08

On Quora, this question was recently asked:

Is the upvote bias towards more popular answerers a threat to quality on Quora?

One answer caught my attention, and it’s one with which I wholeheartedly agree:

I would say it’s very important for Quora users to use those voting powers to downvote answers by A-listers that are just not good enough. There is a LOT of expertise by practitioners now, it’s up to us to upvote knowledgeable answers and downvote answers without substance when they occur, regardless of how popular the responder might be.

This is a critical cultural element that must take hold in Quora...

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Will Quorans Develop Enough Spine to Ensure Quality?

0 comments 764 reads

Posted on 2011-03-07

On Quora, this question was recently asked:

Is the upvote bias towards more popular answerers a threat to quality on Quora?

One answer caught my attention, and it’s one with which I wholeheartedly agree:

I would say it’s very important for Quora users to use those voting powers to downvote answers by A-listers that...

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Three Pluses, Three Minuses of Quora as a KM System

0 comments 753 reads

Posted on 2011-03-07

This question was posted on Quora, “In 10 words or less, what is Quora?” My answer:

Powerful application of crowdsourcing and social networking to knowledge management

Knowledge Management (aka “KM”) is a field that I don’t have personal experience in. It’s supposed to be practices, processes and systems where valuable knowledge of workers is collected and made available for others. KM continues to be an important topic for enterprises these days, but it also freighted with many failures and disappointments.

Without the benefit of a KM history, I wanted to look at Quora in the context of someone with an objective today: how do I make it easier for employees to find and share their knowledge?

In that cntext, I see three really good things about Quora, and three things that distort its value.
...

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Beyond Social CRM: The Open Innovation Revolution

2 comments 4,473 reads

Posted on 2010-08-30

The idea of bringing customers into the process of defining the products and service of your organization is one that is gaining a lot of steam. One manifestation of that is the increased interest in Social CRM. In this scenario, companies engage their social customers for feedback and marketing purposes. Taking it a step further, Mark Tamis and Esteban Kolsky see the higher purpose as organizing the business around the newly social customers.

And then there’s Stefan Lindegaard.

Stefan is a leading open innovation consultant and author of the recently published book, ...

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