Types of Innovation
Innovation is an important part of staying competitive in any market, and most businesses would say it’s a high priority for their organization. When thought about abstractly, however, it’s hard to imagine how innovation can impact current and future opportunities. In order to better understand how innovation can have a tangible impact, we created this guide to the main types of innovation and how they are commonly implemented. What Defines Innovation? Innovation is a process that questions the status quo, locates new solutions, and solves problems for people in a unique way that adds value to their experience. As defined by Ideascale, “Innovation is the process of creating or improving products, services, and processes. Regardless of size, these changes [...]
What Is an Innovation Manager?
Innovation is a sector in which companies are putting an increasing amount of effort into optimizing, and with this growth comes new opportunities. Some of the roles that have sprung out of an increased focus on innovation are Chief Innovation Officer, Innovation Consultant, and, notably, Innovation Manager. Without context, it might be challenging to understand exactly what an innovation manager does and how they can be successful. In this article, we’ll define the innovation manager position and walk through the essential information to understand their responsibilities. What Is an Innovation Manager? An innovation manager is a person who is responsible for managing innovative strategies, activities, and opportunities for an organization. This innovation is meant to impact the company's [...]
What Is Innovation Strategy?
Innovating doesn’t just happen when inspiration strikes. In order to ensure forward progress, a business has to create a structure that stimulates innovation regularly. This structure will determine the rate and efficacy of overall innovation and is commonly known as an innovation strategy. This article will define innovation strategy, discuss how to create one, and outline the main types of innovation. What Is Innovation Strategy? An innovation strategy is a plan that organizes future growth milestones in an effort to fill unmet customer needs. It will detail the value added to the product/service in the coming months and should evolve your business to better target an improved customer experience. An innovation plan will consist of the policies, research methods, [...]
Ambition Matrix: What It Is and How To Use It
Creating an innovation strategy means improving what you currently offer and finding ways to differentiate from your competition in the future. This is easy in principle, but applying this practice to your business can be very difficult.
5 Elements to Consider when Commercializing Your Ideas
In this article, we look at five tips to launch your next innovation, using a proven framework for successful launch and scale.
What Is Idea Management?
Traditional innovation can only take your business so far, and without an evolution of processes, you might find it harder than ever to move new ideas forward. Introducing structures and systems to formulate, organize, and act upon new ideas is one of the best ways to optimize internal innovation. This practice is better known as idea management, and in this article we will define and discuss idea management in full.
Zen vs. Zoom: Is Person-to-Person Interaction Better for Innovation?
The author draws upon the theory of “emptiness” and other principles of Zen Buddhism to evaluate the desirability of remote vs. person-to-person interaction during the course of innovation, especially new idea development. This evaluation is pursued within the context of three related idea process parameters: interdependence, intuition and intensity. An in-person work environment is recommended for the intense phases of new idea processing.
6 Innovation Exercises to Try With Your Team
Creative thinking and innovation don’t come naturally to everyone, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good at them. Sometimes, teams need practice and routine to improve their creativity skills. This article will highlight some popular innovation exercises you can conduct with your team to get your creative juices flowing. These will be a combination of workplace exercises and ice-breakers. Let’s get started.
How Online Whiteboards Create Actionable Results for Businesses
To run a successful business, you must be able to complete individual and shared tasks regularly and reliably. One of the most significant components to achieving this is making sure you create actionable results in your meetings, conversations, and workflow.
How to Improve Return on Investment With a New Project Management Approach
Too often, leaders label projects as successes or failures based on budget and schedule expectations. Although time and cost are critical factors, they ignore whether the project delivered the expected benefits.
The Inverted Funnel: How Blockchains Will Shake Up the Traditional Consumer Funnel
The use of blockchains will become mainstream in a few years from now, so say consultancies and pundits, who look at penetration curves across the globe1. Crypto is on the rise and powerhouses like Starbucks and Nike are merging blockchain into the fabric of business, reinventing the dialogue with their fans. In this short piece, we double click on how the efficiencies, tracking and reconciliation capabilities of blockchains will revolutionize the famous 4 P model2. We will do that with a slightly activist tone. The future scenarios are, indeed and on purpose, exaggerated, to highlight the disruption vs. today’s status quo. How is the world of marketing looking like five to ten years from now? We will go from product [...]
How to Create a Competitive Advantage Through Innovation
In the modern world of business, innovation is both an equalizer and a differentiator. It can give tiny startups an edge over global conglomerates and enable industry leaders to develop competitive advantages.
How to Innovate Your Business to Make It Climate Efficient
Climate efficiency is key for the future of everyone on this planet. With an issue of such magnitude, you may feel that individual actions cannot make a large impact. While your business by itself cannot solve global warming, the actions you take can inspire others and can have a much bigger impact than you may realize.
How to Create Innovation Confidence During the Great Resignation
Do your employees feel confident at work right now? Or are you worried that the Great Resignation may impact your company? Take these steps to make sure that your focus on innovation is the reason employees stay, and not the reason they leave.
How the Pandemic Created the Virtual Innovation Lab
COVID reshaped every department—including your innovation department. Find out how some organizations adapted to the remote work age by creating the virtual innovation lab, and how you can create your own by downloading this complimentary infographic.
The 4 Golden Rules of Brainstorming
When innovating with your team, there are a few rules that are important regardless of the ideation session you’re conducting. In this article, we’ll outline the four golden rules of brainstorming and talk about how following them can improve your team’s innovative capabilities.
Crowdsourcing vs. Traditional Granting: Which Method Most Benefits Social Entrepreneurs
Open innovation can be organized into a more inclusive granting mechanism. In the past, nonprofits and other organizations would fund social enterprises by asking for a written proposal—but combining mentorship and crowdsourcing creates new opportunities and community solutions. Find out how it worked for Pact and the US Department of State in this case study.
Innovation Management Data Trends from 2021: What Can We Learn About 2022?
Many people have said that 2021 was 2020 Part II, but IdeaScale looked at some of our system data (as we do every year) to see what we could learn, and there are a few key trends we think are different from 2020, and that we think bode well for a creative 2022.
How Does the Chief Information Officer Role Relate to Innovation?
Nearly 40% of IdeaScale’s customer base is run from a dedicated innovation department helmed by a Chief Innovation Officer, an innovation leader, an innovation manager or someone else. However, there is another emerging owner for innovation at a large organization. At IdeaScale, we often find that CIOs and their organization are driving innovation strategy for a company.
Is Communication Sabotaging Your Ability to Innovate?
Avoid these four communications landmines as you navigate the stages of innovation.
Reflections on the Evolving Role of Innovation Professionals, Based on a Recent Panel Session
I recently participated in a panel session as part of a great conference organised by the Innov8rs group (thanks Hans!), with an amazing set of innovation leaders, including Gina O’Connor, John Metselaar, and Andrea Kates.
What is the Process for an Employee Innovation Challenge?
A growing trend over the past several years has been to host internal innovation challenges. Companies do this because they find it’s an excellent way to find solutions to long-standing problems, positively create culture (particularly in a remote workplace), and also to nurture the budding intrapreneurs who want to find career growth and new opportunities.
Is Innovation the Secret to Adapting to the Regenerative Future?
The inevitable changes ahead for our industries and for our way of life are just as profound as they were in previous shifts in eras. The Climate Action Sweepstakes is committed to supporting efforts that help companies step into the early days of the Regenerative Era with clarity, courage and maximum positive impact by leveraging the power of their employee network.
Interdisciplinary Innovation: Being Innovative is a Way of Imagining, Perceiving, Expressing, Inventing & Inspiring
Innovators present creatively disruptive traits, disrupt old ways, and inspire better ways to do things. They are passionate to connect, to learn, and to explore by understanding commonalities and appreciating uniqueness. Being innovative is a growth mindset and a proactive attitude. You cannot wait for something to happen---keep curious, always think profoundly, learn fresh knowledge, and acquire new capabilities.
How Can Nonprofits Develop a Pilot Innovation Process that Works for Volunteers?
The innovation process (as variable as it can be) has a seemingly basic format no matter what your goal is: once you understand the problem, you identify some solutions to test. Those tests often occur in some limited, proof-of-concept format and are then rolled out for large-scale adoption. However, while testing out some sort of pilot scenario seems like a logical next step, many organizations aren’t sure how to do this, and it’s especially true for nonprofits where resources can be limited and every dollar must be accounted for.
3 Ways Real-Time Financial Data Drives Business Intelligence
Finance is no stranger to using data in predictive analysis, forecasting, and more, but what can real-time data bring to the table?
An Innovation Competition is a Great Way to Influence Culture
In a 2017 Harvard Business Review article, Anna Steinhage, Dan Cable, and Duncan Wardley talk about the impact competition can have in a workplace. They described how hosting an internal challenge can generate creative results and inspire collaboration or it can create unethical behaviors and cutthroat rivalry.
Innovator Dilemma vs. Innovator Phenomena: The Theory of the Firm’s Phenomena
Established firms’ strategies remain characterized by the inability to master---some will say even comprehend---the economics of choosing. It is particularly surfacing unresolved relationships between [1] technical-technological, [2] economic and [3] social combinations taking place within established firms e.g. manufactured product.