Having blogged about innovation, here’s another article on innovation — an interview with Pixar’s Brad Bird. It pretty much explains what’s needed to develop new products and fostering innovation.

Involved people make for better innovation… Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.

The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. … “You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

In BlackBerry: Innovation Behind the Icon,

If you really want to build something sustainable and innovative you have to invest in R&D. If you build the right culture and invest in the right facilities and you encourage and motivate and inspire both young and seasoned people and put them all in the right environment—then it really performs for you. It’s what I call sustainable innovation.

Amen. If your competitors build cheaper products that’s in the same market as you, innovation is the only thing will keep you alive…in the long run.

When the CIO of Google, Dr. Douglas Merrill, speaks, you listen…

BEIJING, July 14 (Reuters) — A controversial Starbucks coffee shop in the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace at the heart of Beijing, has closed its doors after years of opposition.

A campaign for its closure has been brewing since early this year, when a television anchor complained that the American chain’s presence in the symbol of the Chinese nation was trampling on Chinese culture.

“Starbucks shouldn’t be here. Why bring something so Western to an ancient place like this?”

Good times, I say!… a little david defeats an economic power goliath…

Source: Starbucks out of China’s Forbidden City