Google has released an awesome new Labs feature called Google Short Links that allows you to easily create descriptive shortcuts to web URLs. The service (powered by App Engine!!) integrates with your Google Apps Control Panel and also the Firefox 3 “awesome bar”.

For example, I created a short link to the book that Kyle and I are writing on Java App Engine: http://links.jeffdouglas.com/book

You can have both public and private shortlinks. So you might create the following short links:

• http://work.jeffdouglas.com
• http://family.jeffdouglas.com

Then you could make a bookmarklet to your private Flickr photos (http://family.jeffdouglas.com/myphotos) that only you can access. You might make a series of work related bookmarklets (e.g., http://work.jeffdouglas.com/myproducts, http://work.jeffdouglas.com/linkedin) that you can give out to the general public and leave scattered around the interwebs.

You can sign up for the service here.

For more info you can checkout the Chromium blog or download the latest build. TechCrunch also has a pretty good article with a number of screenshots.

“Skimmer℠ is an Adobe AIR desktop application designed to streamline, beautify, and enhance the experience of participating in your most frequently used social networking activities. It improves upon day-to-day interaction with multiple social networks, removing distractions and providing a rich content experience from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Blogger and YouTube. Skimmer’s spare, modern aesthetic sets it apart, creating a welcome, handsome social networking hub on your desktop that is particularly suited to multimedia content.”

See our Press Release and our Profile at CIO Magazine.

The main thrust of the document seems to be how can the U.S.?and U.S. business?remain competitive? The Commerce department is looking for comments on this initiative as there are many nebulous concepts that they are looking for feedback on.

It was really interesting to see how they defined innovation: “The design, invention, development, and/or implementation of new or altered products, services, processes, systems, organizational structures, or business models for the purpose of creating new value for customers and financial returns for the firm.” This statement shows that they are looking beyond simpe new product development towards a more systematic view of innovation.

The article is essentially a high level overview of my TIM 730 class, “Leading Innovators”. The article focuses on how mature businesses can compete, innovate and spin off high growth companies to compete against nimble startups. The article (and the course itself) focuses on a number of case studies such as The New York Times Interactive, OnStar, Microsoft .NET, The Fate of the Vasa and Hasbro Interactive. It attempts to point out how companies can use assets like brands, customer relationships, expertise, manufacturing capacity, etc to compete against and even beat these startups.

The major focus of the article is that when established companies form a new business unit or organization, these new entities must:

1. Forget the parent company’s success formula
2. Borrow the parent’s resources
3. Learn how to succeed in a new environment

Dr. Govindarajan states that the difference between innovation and strategic innovation is:

“An innovation is strategic when there is a substantial change to one or more of the fundamental questions that define a business: Who are the customers, what value do we provide, and by what processes, and through what areas of expertise do we provide that value?”

• “The creation of new products and/or services.”
• “The conversion of knowledge and ideas into a benefit”
• “PEOPLE implementing new ideas to create value.”

Innovation is the act of introducing something new or the process of making improvements by introducing something new. The term refers to both radical and incremental changes to products, processes or services.

Radical or “disruptive” innovation changes the market landscape and creates new opportunities and segments. Some examples of radical innovation include DVDs, iPods, flash memory, and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Most innovations are incremental in nature. The represent a new product, service, or technology that modifies an existing one. Examples of incremental innovations include the ability of phone to play MP3s, cars that parallel park themselves and vacuum cleaners that emit less dust particles.

A number of companies intermix new product development with innovation and the terms are often used synonymously. However, innovation does not always entail new product development. Many companies are innovative in the way that the manage their relationships with customers, process internal orders or manage their IT processes. These innovations may not lead to earth shattering new products or services but they may reduce costs and deliver better business value.

A critical flaw in this literature is to believe that a company can achieve lasting succes if it follows a prescribed blueprint. The simple fact is that no blueprint can guarantee a company?s success, at least not in a fluid business environment. The author calls this “the delusion of absolute performance.”

“Following a given formula can?t ensure high performance, and for a simple reason: in a competitive market economy, performance is fundamentally relative, not absolute. Success and failure depend not only on a company?s actions but also on those of its rivals. A company can improve its operations in many ways?better quality, lower cost, faster throughput time, superior asset management, and more?but if rivals improve at a faster rate, its performance may suffer… High performance comes from doing things better than rivals can, which means that managers have to take risks. This uncomfortable truth recognizes that some elements of business performance are beyond our control, yet it is an essential concept that clear-thinking executives must grasp.”

Beware the halo effect

The halo effect describes the tendency to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression. For example, say that a company is doing well with a rising stock price, increased sales and high customer satisfication. The tendency is to infer that the company has good leadership, high employee morale and a sound strategy. However, when the company’s stock price declines, people are quick to conclude that it suffers from mismanagement, employee churn and an ineffectual strategy. Many of these factors may not have changed at all but rather the company’s overall performance, good or bad, has created a “halo” or overall impression that determines how others perceive their strategy, culture, employees or other attributes. Managers should be keenly aware of the halo effect and look for independent evidence of a company’s situation instead of relying on current performance to shape their opinions.

The delusion of absolute performance

This “delusion” arrives from authors that look at a group of successful companies and develop generalizations as to their success.

“What the authors claim to be the causes of long-term performance are more accurately understood as attributions made about companies that had been selected precisely for their long-term performance… In fact, lasting success is largely a delusion, a statistical anomaly… Corporate longevity is neither very likely nor, when we find it, generally associated with high performance. On the whole, if we look at the full population of companies over time, there?s a strong tendency for extreme performance in one time period to be followed by less extreme performance in the next. Suggesting that companies can follow a blueprint to achieve lasting success may be appealing, but it?s not supported by the evidence.”

The article has some really good points that are well worth the read.