Stranova

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 34, published December 11, 2008. As the business environment grows more intense internally and business expands more globally, it is getting tougher and tougher to stay in close contact with our most important business associates and employees. In our podcast interview this time, Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski, CEO of Virtual Distance International, helps us understand how this “virtual distance” between our people networks grows -- and what steps we can take to shrink that “virtual distance” down to a more manageable scale in the future. The end result of such steps can be increased company innovation, improved job performance for individuals and teams, and dramatically improved business results.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 33, published June 9, 2008. In terms of profitable ideas generated per square mile, the country of Israel houses one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial high-tech communities in the world, rivaled perhaps only by Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, that same community has had problems leveraging its technological leadership into the ability to build large companies based on these ideas. Why that may have come to pass -- and what is already happening that may change all that -- is the topic we explore with our guest this time, serial entrepreneur Shai Schiller, CEO of Modula, Ltd.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 32, published May 29, 2008. As in many industries, the world of software for web publishing is dominated by one major player and a scattering of smaller players scrambling for their own piece of the market. One company that has found a way to rise above it all is Softpress Systems Ltd. of England with their flagship web design product, Freeway Pro. This product, which evolved from an earlier page layout product for Apple’s Mac computer line, has grown into a strong competitor through a combination of continuous innovation, strong attention to strategic partnerships, and careful attention to the needs of the fanatical Mac user community. Learn how Softpress Systems made this happen and how their string of strategic innovation continues with their latest release, Freeway Pro 5, from Softpress’s U.S. Marketing Manager, Mr. Ian Schray.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 31, published May 6, 2008. In our interview with entrepreneur Assaf Barnea, you will hear about a highly unusual type of business startup, an incubator specializing in projects related to all aspects of water technology, from water purification to the methodology of moving water through a system. In addition, you will learn about what is to many of us an even more innovative way of creating a business incubator: in a public/private partnership with the government of Israel itself, where the government takes on most of the risk -- and everyone reaps the benefits. It is a great story of what such collaboration can do -- and can mean in the future -- for all of us.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 30, published January 28, 2008. Planning the future of our cities has become far more complex than ever before, involving considerations of population age distributions, the need for schools, traffic flow, tax revenue planning, pollution concerns, weather patterns, and of course the regional land features themselves. Complex computer models are often required, using tools that are well beyond what might be ordinarily available to any given region. Arizona State University’s Decision Theater innovation, a computerized immersive visualization environment with extensive modeling tools and developed only a few years ago, is now making it possible for cities around the world not only to plan far more systemically for that future, but also to visualize how their current decisions may affect many future generations to come. Joining us to help us all "envision" this strategic innovation is Dr. Deirdre Hahn, Associate Director of the Decision Theater.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 29, published September 2, 2007. With its seemingly effortless ability to spread the word rapidly about new products and services, viral marketing has become advertising’s modern equivalent of the Holy Grail. One of the most important segments of this new field is Viral Gaming, in which your product or service is featured in a custom-designed online computer game. The game keeps you on the site while educating your customers on all the aspects of your product. And even better, the game gets passed around from customer to customer in record time and with little intervention from you, because it is fun to play -- all at the same time that it spreads the word about your company’s message. In our current interview, with Matt Ramsay, Business Development Director of InBox Digital, one of the biggest players in digital marketing, you will learn about how Viral Gaming works -- and why it just might change the way you think of marketing your company in the future.

Voices from 2020, Vol. 9, Published August 31, 2007. Mr. David Sibbett, President and Founder of The Grove Consultants International, shares a wide-ranging conversation with hosts Bill Veltrop and Firehawk on how small businesses will evolve by 2020, networked together and yet localized far more than we see in present day 2007. Hear his vision of the “Bifurcated Buzzing Networks” where very big business coexists with even more small ones than ever before, and how the world of collaboration and networking will turn out to play an even more important role for both of them -- in the future.

Voices from 2020, Vol. 8, Published June 30, 2007. In this eighth episode of Voices from 2020, hosts Firehawk and Bill Veltrop interview Diego Navarro, Founder and Director of the Digital Bridge Academy at Cabrillo College in Watsonville, California. The Digital Bridge Academy is a highly innovative program designed explicitly to help accelerate the readiness of students who are “under-prepared” for college in any number of ways (including “at-risk” students, who make up sometimes over 90% of the student population), and the Academy does this – not in years, but in only one semester. In this episode, learn about how the Academy “Lights the Fire for Learning” in these students, and how it has transformed the whole concept of education – and the lives of many – by the year 2020.

Itanium Solutions Alliance, Vol. 4, Published June 26, 2007. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Walid Najjar of the University of California Riverside's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, about his innovative approach to modeling scientific applications using a specialized Itanium2 supercomputer with an embedded Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) system. Using this approach, Dr. Najjar and his team achieved a performance speed increase of over 1000 times what comparable desktop systems could deliver, and was named a finalist in the 2007 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards, in the Entrepreneurial Innovation category.

Itanium Solutions Alliance, Vol. 5, Published June 26, 2007. For the fifth of this series, we interview Bill Blake, CEO of Interactive Supercomputing, on his company's innovative Star-P software system, which allows advanced desktop software such as Matlab and Python to "run" on supercomputer systems without having to reprogram the software, and its application to the National Cancer Institute's advanced genomic profiling computational work. For this work, Interactive Supercomputing was named a finalist in this year's Itanium Solutions Alliance awards, in the Humanitarian Impact Category.

Itanium Solutions Alliance, Vol. 6, Published June 26, 2007. In this sixth interview of our series, we talk with Daniel Poff, Director of Database Administration and SAP Basis at Kindred Healthcare, about his company's major upgrade challenge from a five-year old server platform and how they dealt with issues such as dramatic growth in business complexity, internal reorganizations, business acquisitions, and an over 10X increase in overall database size. For his team's creative work and very successful upgrade, Kindred Healthcare was named a finalist in the 2007 Itanium Solutions Alliance awards, in the Enterprise Innovation Category.

Itanium Solutions Alliance, Vol. 2, Published May 30, 2007. In this second of a series of interviews with the winners of the Itanium Solution Alliance’s Innovation awards, we have as our guest Bill Worley, the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Secure64 Software Corporation, a startup targeting the development of software and integrated hardware solutions for DNS server design, and the winner of this year’s Entrepreneurial Innovation Award. Through development of their own proprietary design architectures and leveraging the built-in security capability of the Intel Itanium2 ® processor, Secure64 has created a system that is invulnerable to the malicious attacks that plague other such solutions.

Itanium Solutions Alliance, Vol. 1, Published May 30, 2007. In this first of a series of interviews with the winners of the Itanium Solutions Alliance’s Innovation awards, you’ll have the opportunity to hear Mr. Neil Heydon-Dumbleton, of the Royal London Group, speaking about how conversion to an Intel Itanium2 ® solution for their Scottish Life Assurance Division has produced dramatic gains in performance for their customers along with significantly lower operating costs for their business. For our regular Stranova listeners, this is a detailed inside look at how high-tech strategic innovators plan and implement their breakthroughs, to the benefit of us all.

Itanium Solutions Alliance, Vol. 3, Published May 30, 2007. In this third of a series of interviews with the winners of the Itanium Solutions Alliance’s Innovation awards, we talk with Dr. Carlos Simmerling of Stony Brook University, about his breakthrough modeling supporting advanced HIV and AIDS research using the latest supercomputer technologies and the Intel Itanium2 ® processor, which in turn have earned him this year’s Humanitarian Impact Winner award.

Voices from 2020, Vol. 7, Published April 11, 2007. In this seventh episode of our Voices series, the four founders of the Monterey Institute for Social Architecture, including our podcast regulars plus Mike Thomas and Peter Gaarn, host a roundtable discussion on how the essence and aims of corporations have evolved since 2007 – and up to the “present day” of our current podcast – brought to you from the year 2020. Competition has been replaced by strategic partnerships as “the order of the day” throughout most business ecosystems as of this time, and it is the goal of each business to actively ensure proper care and attention to each of its stakeholders – even more so than in the past.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 16, Published April 6, 2007. 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.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 28, published April 4, 2007. 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, 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.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 27, published January 7, 2007. 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, Hunter Lovins, 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, 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.