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.

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.

Stranova Strategic Edge Vol. 15, published December 10, 2006. 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, 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.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 26, published November 3rd, 2006. 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. 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.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 25, published September 25, 2006. 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. 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, automotive, oil, 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.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 24, published August 28, 2006. 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. 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.

Stranova Interview Series Vol. 23, published August 7, 2006. In this episode of Stranova’s interview series, we take you to the year 2020, in a time where business has been transformed in radical ways, leaders in all walks of life operate on a more systemic level than ever before, and even the whole concept of leadership has been raised to an entirely new level. In this “preview” of our new podcast series “Voices from 2020”, learn how the many choices we are making new could lead to a transformational “brave new world” of business – and organizational life – in less than two decades.

Stranova Vol. 22, published July 31, 2006. Since 1962 when Buckminster Fuller first went public with the idea of a Geoscope, many have been fascinated with his vision for a “giant, 200-foot diameter, miniature earth” that would provide an “electronic” visual representation of everything from weather to the various ways we human beings impact our “Spaceship Earth” on a daily basis. Listen to this week’s interview to learn how, thanks to a creative re-visioning of his concept and the application of the latest digital visualization technologies, Fuller’s Geoscope will be coming to life soon in ways far more powerful than his own original conception.

Stranova Strategic Edge Vol. 11, published July 17, 2006. Up until very recent times, the high fashion industry sold its goods exclusively through a network of small company-owned stores and high-end resellers such as Neiman-Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. Increased sales were created principally by adding more product lines, which tended to increase as much expense and inventory issues as anything else. With the growth and rapid maturation of internet selling has come a unique opportunity, however, to expand high fashion retail sales both through an entirely new class of online resellers as well as innovative “boutique” web storefronts for the resellers themselves. Listen and learn how 2006 looks to be the “breakout year” for this new class of high fashion salesmanship.

Stranova Vol. 21, published June 27, 2006. While most of us in the so-called developed countries rest on our laurels, regions such as India, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Ireland, and Israel, among others, are surprising us with unexpected rapid economic growth. They’ve learned to leverage the power of communications in the information age, rapid learning often supported by a joint public/private partnership within the countries, and strong business relationships with the rest of the world. Our current episode explains a bit about how all this has come to pass, along with some interesting predictions of what other countries may be emerging soon that will join this list as some of the fastest-growing and technology-savvy in the world.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 10, Published June 19, 2006. The problem of identity theft, where criminals and hackers gain access to your personal credit information and grossly abuse it, is growing rapidly, to the point that an estimated 10 million Americans have been victimized by this in some way. This episode of Stranova Strategic Edge points to some of the “whys” behind this as well as what kinds of businesses are emerging – and thriving – because of this growing “information age” crime.

Stranova Vol. 20, published June 5, 2006. One of the most profound strategic innovations in business in the last quarter century has been the invention and deployment of microfinancing organizations, such as Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank. In our current installment of Stranova, we talk with entrepreneur Betsy Brill about her plan to implement such a venture in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the challenges in making her vision a reality, and the powerful transformation of the entire business – and human – ecosystems in that country that they could make possible.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 9, Published May 22, 2006. The recent dramatic rise in global oil prices, with echoes of a similar crisis some 25 years ago, brings with it an important opportunity to understand why we get into these situations, as well as to consider some new approaches to at least mitigating the problem for the near-term. Adding to the dilemma is that the overall world oil supply is slowly, but surely, being literally “tapped out”, and significant actions must be taken soon, or our children’s children, at the least, will be dealing with an enormous problem for civilization as a whole. This episode explores how business and government are already responding, and suggests some new categories of solutions and opportunities emerging in this sector.

Stranova Vol. 19, published May 8, 2006. Our guest this week is Craig Neal, Co-Founder of the Heartland Circle. Even more important than mentoring in helping one develop as a future leader is the opportunity for intense interactive learning experiences with other experienced leaders. With the goal of working simultaneously on both personal and professional development on a deep level, the Heartland Circle has met this challenge by creating a business with the aim of helping leaders develop their own long-term vision and find ways to put that “vision into action”, through a core process of interaction with highly-experienced ‘Thought Leaders’ via a combination of in-person, teleconference, and online experiences. Listen and learn why one or more of these opportunities might help jump-start your own leadership development, and how to get involved no matter where you live in the world.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 8, Published April 24, 2006. For most of the modern era, business innovation has been a closely-guarded trust, conducted by an elite group of innovators within the corporation. In the past thirty years, we’ve seen this expand to include cross-company product or service development teams, incorporating individuals from sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and service as active participants in the design process. Even that, however, is a fairly narrow focus, and in the past few years a major trend has evolved where customers are now actively engaged not just in providing feedback on product strategy – but also contributing both to the strategy and to the actual design elements themselves. This week’s episode illustrates how this trend has come about, provides real-world examples of how it works from industries as diverse as video games, healthcare, and the automotive industries, and suggests what you can do to turn your customers (and others in your business universe) into active participants in the strategic innovation process.

Stranova Vol. 18, published April 10, 2006. Our guest this week is Steve Benitez, founder and CEO of Bo’s Coffee Club, the first ever Philippine specialty coffee shop chain. In this episode, you’ll hear how it isn’t always as simple as you’d think to transfer a successful business idea from the U.S. to an entirely different world, and the challenges this inventive entrepreneur faced in making his “passion for coffee” a success in his homeland. Listen and learn why this gifted innovator was a finalist for Ernst & Young’s 2004 “Entrepreneur of the Year” in the Philippines, and how what he discovered might make a difference in how you approach your startup.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 7, Published April 3, 2006. "The 20 Year Syndrome: Why Some Initially-Successful Companies Don't Survive Past their 20th Anniversary". Back in the 1970s, a major study of modern business concluded that most corporations can’t survive past twenty years of existence. It also concluded further that – even if the corporate name were to live on – the only way a corporation could survive is by drastically changing the nature of its business, so much so that you’d never recognize it if you were part of the original founding group. In this episode of Stranova Strategic Edge, we explore some of the factors that may contribute to the early demise of corporations, even when they initially achieve significant success. Listen to learn what some critical pitfalls are, with examples of three of the most prominent companies today in the computer industry, and what you can do to make it past your 20 year anniversary.

Stranova Vol. 17, published March 27, 2006. "The Global Earth Observation System of Systems", with NOAA Administrator Retired Vice-Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, Jr. In this episode, we talk about the “Global Earth Observation System of Systems”, a massive project linking together over 60 countries and 40 international agencies to link together both ground-based and airborne environmental monitoring systems to keep track of the world’s vital signs on a real-time basis. It is potentially the single most ambitious strategic innovation ever, linking sensors, computers and people together in an attempt to help guide global environmental policy, enhance worldwide environmental predictive capabilities, and prevent the major loss of life catastrophies such as the massive Indian Ocean tsunami unleashed on the world in December of 2004.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 6, Published March 20, 2006. Computers have for many years been designed with a “brute force” approach to handling more and more complex problems, leveraging the ready availability of faster and more complex microprocessors without making any fundamental change in the way they go about their computing tasks. In this episode, we explore how new theories in how the mind functions may change the future face of computing in a fundamental new way, and may even change forever the way you think...about the way you think.

Stranova Vol. 16, published March 13, 2006. “Stikipad & the New Wave of Internet Businesses", with Stikipad founders Jonathan George and Matthew DeWaal. The “Dot Com” bubble may have exploded in the face of some investors, but the Internet business boom is only just getting started. This week our guests talk about their new web business, Stikipad, based around the concept of the wiki, an online tool that allows groups to collaborate in ways they never thought of before. Listen in and learn how the new generation of internet businesses are being formed, from two of its newest and creative leaders.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 5, Published March 6, 2006. The deadly Avian Flu strain H5N1 has spread rapidly since its first major appearance back in 2003. Some estimates suggest that over 200 million birds worldwide may have the virus, and the disease is beginning to make small leaps to infect people as well. In this episode of Stranova Strategic Edge, we provide insight as to where and how the virus is spreading, plus its implications on the worldwide poultry industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and us as a human species as well.

Stranova Vol. 15, published February 27, 2006. “Cross-Company Mentoring for Women Executives”, with Menttium CEO Lynn Sontag. Having a strong mentor consistently comes up as one of the most important factors in any business individual achieving long-term success. Menttium’s programs help rising women executives connect with outstanding mentors from across company lines, while helping develop both mentors and “mentee” in the process. Listen and learn how this unusual program works, and why you might want to get involved – in your business, as a mentor, or as a “mentee”.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 4, Published February 20, 2006. The estimated $50 billion computer animation industry is changing rapidly from being a predominantly U.S.-dominated business to one growing successfully all over the world. In this episode, we examine the forces that have made this possible, through a consideration of history and an examination of the strategic dependencies which have enabled overseas computer graphics businesses to grow and take significant market share in this now truly international business.

Stranova Vol. 14, February 13, 2006. Our guest this episode is Mr. Joel Hodroff, CEO and Founder of DualCurrency Systems, an innovative venture that allows people to "trade” items like frequent flyer miles and health care benefits in a new kind of business network. Through the concept of Universal Reward Systems, with Mr. Hodroff’s concepts in place, consumers will soon be easily able to trade “non-cash” currencies like unused tuition credits offered to university employees, credit card “rewards” points, and “frequent stay” points at hotels, in a unique program that links together the consumers and vendors in a unique cooperative network. Listen to this week’s podcast and learn why Mr. Hodroff was selected as a 2005 “Innovator of the Year” by Finance and Commerce magazine.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 3, Published February 6, 2006. Now that the first complete documentation of the Human Genome structure is in place, the pharmaceutical and medical industries are rushing to leverage this incredible database to cure previously incurable diseases and enhance our overall way of life. This episode explores some of the roots of and forward-looking implications of this work, both for the medical industry and for the benefit of all of mankind as well. As part of our "global dialog" on business strategy, we also invite you to comment on this episode on our blog at blog.stranova.com.

Stranova Vol. 13, January 30, 2006. This week our guest is Peter Goldsbury, coordinator of the Tipu Ake team, from New Zealand. In this episode, we explore the concept of Tipu Ake ki te Ora: "growing from within ever upwards towards wellbeing", the basis for an "organic" leadership model for innovative organizations that itself derives from the Maori concept of "wellbeing": "a high state of balance with the earth and all its richness". Listen and learn how this more wholistic "organic" approach to innovation works, and what it could mean for you.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 2, Published January 23, 2006. As broadband and wireless internet services become more widely available, the related "WiFi" wireless antennae covering much larger distances, cities across the world setting up large-scale "free" wireless computer networks, and bandwidths of these connections dramatically increasing, the telecommunications industry is feeling the impacts as well. Through what is known as "Voice Over Internet Protocol", consumers now have many new and significantly less expensive alternatives to more traditional voice communications services such as cellular and "landline" telephone systems. That this is a "hot topic" is no question. From January 24th to January 27th, 2006, in fact, possibly as many as 18,000 people may be attending this year's Internet Telephony Conference & Expo East, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And radical shifts in the industry from one direction or another, whether from new technologies to support the industry or new distributors of that technology, are announced literally every few days around the world. This episode of Stranova Strategic Edge explores this new world of telecommunications, and what this may mean to consumers, businesses using the services, and the opportunities for further innovation in the near future.

Stranova Vol. 12, January 16, 2006. This episode of Stranova features guest Jenny Ward, CEO of Playward, on how her company brings “play” … and creativity… back into our Corporate Lives. There's two ways to explore this episode of Stranova: as an insight into how one unique entrepreneur has found a way to bring “play” back into what we normally think of as “work”, and as a key to how something we all do -- and is “right in front of our face” -- just might be the path to your next new business.

Stranova Strategic Edge, Vol. 1, Published January 8, 2006. It’s been tried with limited degrees of success before, but 2006 looks to be the year when a very “tight” integration of home entertainment media and the internet will indeed come to pass. Our Mini Podcast explores the strategic innovations that prepared the foundations for what is beginning to emerge, and points to where this may lead in the future.