The Innovation Diaries

As you may or may not know, TopDog is a real-time learning program for CEO types, where leaders learn from leaders by visiting some of the world’s most innovative companies. Last week new Top Dog Director, Michael O’Keeffe, and I flew out to San Francisco to explore Silicon Valley for the next generation of companies and speakers for bespoke projects and TopDog Tours.

The sunshine and blue skies obviously worked their magic - highlights included agreeing access to Google’s Headquarters at Mountain View for the next TopDog tour (Woohoo!) and visiting ambitious start ups, Oodle (the next generation of listing site) and Netvibes (pioneers of the personal homepage), who display an exciting entrepreneurial spirit that has already defined their massive following of unique users per month and their mark on the web. But proving that you don’t need to be a new company to be innovative Kip Knight, VP Marketing eBay, was impassioned for the cause.

It’s thirsty work visiting innovative companies so we popped in on some old friends - Delancey Street, EA Games and Four Seasons –for a proper cup of tea. We’re really looking forward to the new companies peppered throughout upcoming tours with our old favourites.

If that’s whet your TopDog appetite, have a gander at this.