Needless to say, employees in Eagan rose to the challenge. In all, 940 meals will be donated.

“Not only is there an increased need with individuals suffering these tough economic times, but nonprofit agencies – and food shelves in particular – have seen an incredible increase in demand as more people need help and fewer are able to donate,” said Martha Field, manager, Community Relations.

The topic was innovation and the challenges facing information companies in the digital age and amid the rise of social media.

Jackson, who is on the NetGain Steering Committee, discussed some of what Thomson Reuters has been working on, including the Reuters Insider multimedia project. Jackson’s team is involved in finding new ways to index video online and make it searchable, providing more insight and context to the end-user.

According to Jackson, the project is in beta and close to official release. He says it required new ways of thinking by his teams, and new uses for existing patented technology that’s already fueling many customer applications within the legal business.

In this video interview after the session, Jackson talked about the conference, the innovative work at Thomson Reuters and also provides more specifics on his team’s work on Reuters Insider:

The “gap” of her title derives from the fact that we are today living off the fat of the 1950s and 60s, when government and commercial spending on genuine R&D was way higher than it is today. She argues that we have an “innovation deficit”, whereby current gains are really incremental and based on past achievements. Meanwhile, management philosophies such as “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” have hurt our ability to fund exploratory work that does not meet immediate business goals.

Her concept of “sustainable innovation” goes beyond any single idea to encompass an environment, or ecosystem, that supports novel approaches to problems. “Innovation doesn’t just happen,” says Estrin, “you have to nurture it.” The ecosystem she identifies consists of a nutrient environment of funding, policy, education, culture and leadership that supports the activities of research, development and applications building.

She identifies the following as core values – questioning, risk, openness, patience and trust – and states that these values need to be in balance. For example, too much trust leads to blind faith, while too much risk leads to recklessness, as we have seen with innovations on Wall Street. She also stresses the need to move beyond silos and false dichotomies, e.g., science versus arts, research versus development, and recognize the value of people who have some breadth and function as connectors in organizations.

Estrin distinguishes between three types of innovation: breakthrough (totally new idea, e.g., light bulb), incremental (tuning a new idea to generate a product, e.g., flashlight), and orthogonal (combining existing ideas into something new, e.g., sneakers with lights). She points out that only the second is customer-driven; customers are not going to do real innovation for you. I think this is certainly true of the Internet publishing space.

Speaking for Corporate R&D, I like to think that we practice what I call “serial innovation”, producing a steady stream of incremental and orthogonal improvements that satisfy customers while waiting for the “big bang” of a breakthrough. Genuine breakthroughs are few and far between, and you can’t plan for them. But staying as close as you can to the research literature and being conversant with the latest methods are good ways to improve your chances.

Peter Jackson
Chief Scientist and Vice President
Thomson Reuters

United States Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s decision to retire is not a great shock, but it is a big moment in the new administration.

It is a fairly recent notion that justices are selected from among sitting judges. Justices Harlan, White, Warren, Black and Douglas are among the many justices who were not from judicial ranks.

If a judge is selected, Sonia Sotomayor adds a second woman and a first Hispanic to the Court. She also has the odd honor of having been appointed to one court by George H.W. Bush and to another by Bill Clinton (though there is more to that story).

If any academic, then Elena Kagan or Cass Sunstein would seem logical choices. They both have distinguished records and close relations to President Obama.

But what if it were a politician or practicing lawyer as the president once suggested?

Any ideas?

Denis Hauptly
Vice President, Technology Strategy
Thomson Reuters Global Resources

Kushner will be a panelist at the CLE titled Love, Law and Litigation: A Dialog of Bias in American Sexual and Gender Identity on June 9 at the Guthrie in Minneapolis. He is best-known for his two-part epic Angels in America, and has won the Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy Award and two Tony Awards.

The event aims to explore polarized social attitudes related to sexual orientation and gender identity and their effect on law throughout the United States, and will feature live stage performances by Guthrie actors, along with discussions of excerpts from Kushner’s plays by a panel of legal professionals.

Attorneys around the world also can access the event online at West LegalEdcenter as a live webcast from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Central on June 9, and later as an on-demand video.

To enroll in either the live event at the Guthrie or the live webcast on June 9, visit West LegalEdcenter.com, search by program name and continue through the checkout process.

The course, which costs $200, provides 2.0 credits toward the Elimination of Bias requirements in Minnesota, California and Oregon. It provides 2.0 or greater CLE credits toward the Ethics requirements of most other jurisdictions. CPD credit has also been applied for in the United Kingdom.

Erin Carlyle conducted interviews with several leaders within the legal businesses of Thomson Reuters, including President & CEO Peter Warwick.

City Pages is a weekly newspaper in Minneapolis/St. Paul, covering news and entertainment in the Twin Cities and Minnesota.

Sometimes innovation starts with a trip to a bar.

Literally.

While winding down at the end of a day of recruiting new talent for West at Michigan State University last October, Dan Bennett and Jay Peyer started talking about the kinds of iPhone and iPod touch applications they could create.

Little did they know that conversation would put them on a path to develop the first Thomson Reuters app for the popular Apple mobile devices.

Today their creation, a Black’s Law Dictionary app, is officially for sale on iTunes.

The app features the 8th edition of the relied-upon and respected dictionary, edited by Bryan A. Garner. Black’s is considered by many attorneys, legal professionals and law students to be the most citable and credible legal dictionary. And a mobile version just made sense, to provide easy access to its legal terms and phrases and embedded audio of that information which does not require an Internet connection.

The process to create the Black’s Law Dictionary app allowed Bennett, a senior director in New Product Technology at West, and Peyer, a senior software engineer in Application Technology, to break new ground.

In this video interview, they explain how they made it happen:

The Black’s Law Dictionary app from Thomson Reuters is available for purchase on the App Store in Apple’s iTunes for $49.99.

Even Garner, himself very much a fan of books, is excited to see Black’s Law on the iPhone.

“The idea that you can have a very full, elaborate, complex and richly textured book like Black’s available at your fingertips is fantastic,” Garner says. “I myself am stubbornly in favor of print sources, but I like to watch my daughters use their iPhones. And I know that there’s another generation of people who really prefer the electronic medium at their fingertips.”

While Black’s Law Dictionary is the first iPhone application from Thomson Reuters, there’s more in the queue. We’ll keep you posted as more apps are launched.

More coverage:
ABAJournal.com

Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites

iPhone J.D.

China, now the world’s third-largest economy and the recipient of more foreign investment each year than any other country, can be a bit intimidating. Its business laws and the practice of deal-making have long been a source of confusion or mystery.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I recently talked with Owen D. Nee Jr., of counsel with Jones Day, for a Westcast podcast (Listen to the audio).

Nee told me the failure of many joint ventures is linked to basic misunderstandings of the deal-making process, which too often occur because the investor or its counsel fail to study the applicable legal ground rules.

Nee wrote the new Shareholder Agreements and Joint Ventures in China from West, and co-authored Mergers and Acquisitions in China with Jingzhou Tao, partner at Jones Day.

Today we’re marking the anniversary of Thomson’s acquisition of Reuters, and the launch of the Thomson Reuters brand across the company.

In this video, Peter Warwick, president and CEO, Thomson Reuters, Legal and members of his executive team talk about what we’ve achieved in the business in the last year, and what opportunities lie ahead:

We want to point you again to the Hubbard One Blog for some great insight we gathered at last week’s Legal Marketing Association (LMA) Conference through some video interviews:

Jonathan Fitzgarrald, chief marketing officer at Greenberg Glusker, talks about how the tough economic times can be beneficial for legal marketers.

Maureen Leuenberger, senior director, Consulting & Services for Hubbard One, discusses the benefits of the company’s client support services to help firms be more efficient and effective in their marketing efforts.

Adam Severson, director of business development, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, told us how his firm gains greater insight into its relationships with clients and people within the firm.