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 [...]
The US Coast Guard and Rapid Adaptation: “There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Textbook Hurricane’ or a ‘Standard Oil Spill'”
From recognizing innovators, to empowering your team at every level, to developing innovation outposts, the US Coast Guard are experts in innovation and idea management. Learn more in this podcast interview.
How COVID Impacted 2020’s Innovation Trends
Every year, IdeaScale undertakes a comprehensive audit of our system data, our customer conversations and survey data in order to develop report on the state of crowdsourced innovation.
The Top Practices That Separate Great Leaders From The Rest
How do great leaders separate themselves from the rest? This article will examine how several excellent leaders, including Rich Teerlink and Steve Jobs, were able to inspire their teams, develop incredible products, and transform their companies.
The Essential Skills to Teach Intrapreneurs
At JR Simplot, a new cross-functional innovation initiative recently formed looking for ideas that would help optimize company efficiency, improve training programs, and more. And when they built this team, they realized that a big part of launching an innovation initiative was education. Learn more in this podcast.
8 Tips for Startup Entrepreneurs During COVID-19 Crisis
The coronavirus pandemic is turning out to be an international economic crisis, with ramifications for all industries and markets, similar to the crisis of 2008. A cross-border economic crisis affects companies large and small, challenging an organization's management and its employees.
Six Questions Every Leader Must Answer – If They Want to Lead Change
If you want to lead a transformation in the business, then you have to sell the idea over and over again to people throughout the organisation. In particular, the leader has to answer these questions which are present in people’s minds even if they are unspoken.
15 Things Leaders Should Not Do – if They Want Innovation
We hear plenty of advice for leaders on what they should do to drive entrepreneurship and innovation in their organizations. It might be smarter to just stop making some of the common mistakes which inhibit innovation.
The Boring Parts of Digital Innovation, or 3 Reasons Why Testing Matters
When it comes to innovation in an enterprise setting, the majority of attention usually goes to all the exciting things. The bold ideas, the grand technological possibilities, the potential benefits of digital and structural transformation, the trailblazing.
What NASA Can Teach Us About the Intrinsic Value of Connecting to Other Innovators
Numerous organizations run crowdsourced innovation programs, because companies can find better new ideas and take action on those ideas faster. This process allows companies to set a challenge and gather ideas from hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of participants.
Taking an Audience-Centric Approach During the Tech Adoption Lifecycle
Most marketing professionals understand that insight into the hearts and minds of your customers is central to successful product innovation. But which customers? Who is going to buy my product first? What happens after that? How can I eventually grow my customer base to one billion people?
Innovating in a Hierarchical Environment
Announcing the IdeaScale Nation podcast, where you'll be able to hear stories from innovators in government, the enterprise and beyond.
Leading Innovation within Government Agencies: What to Drive and What to Avoid
As innovation professionals, we too often look for inspiration from organizations such as Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Spotify, Google, etc. Cultures within these businesses are encourage transparency, experimentation and autonomy resulting in engaged workforce of the best and brightest minds, pumping out game changing products on-schedule, on-budget and on-point. We want that for the organizations that we support. We want to drive those behaviors.
The Future of Manufacturing and Energy is Crowdsourced Innovation
The industries of manufacturing and energy are poised for more disruptive change perhaps than any other industry. These companies are impacted by sustainability issues, consumer attitudes and behaviors, digitization, 3D printing, emerging automation and technology, and so much more.
The 7 Fundamentals for Succeeding in Innovation
It isn’t exactly easy to succeed in innovation. The vast majority of innovation attempts seem to fail and a mere 6% of executives are satisfied in their innovation performance, despite innovation generally being considered as very important for the future of their organization.
Innovation Leaders Are Good at These Three Things
IdeaScale has honored innovation leaders in their annual Innovation Management Awards for six years now. Award recipients have come from almost every industry with a variety of goals (from eradicating cancer to identifying new university technology best practices), but this year’s winners share a few key characteristics that all innovation leaders need to embody.
How To Effectively Deal With Unhappy Clients
No matter what the nature of your business is, you will inevitably encounter unhappy clients. Whether this is because it’s the fault of the company or something that couldn’t have been prevented – your first priority needs to be solving the problem.
Increasing R&D Spending Will Not Lead to Innovation, But This Will
In an analysis of high performance innovators (called in this article the “Global Innovation 1000”), researchers made a surprising discovery: “spending more money does not open the doors to innovation.”
What Do Leading Innovators Need to Learn for 2019
Every year, IdeaScale convenes a gathering of innovators from all over the world who share their best practices in managing and delivering on new ideas.
Five Causes of Innovation Blues
The key to innovation success is simple---innovation is nothing without exploration and exploitation.
The Importance of Senior Management Involvement for Innovation
Senior management is without a doubt a tough job. If you’re one of the few executives at the top of a large organization, there are likely hundreds of people; customers, employees, partners, and the list goes on; who are all looking for your attention regarding an endless sea of different topics and initiatives.
7 Mistakes to Avoid when Measuring Innovation
Measuring innovation is one of the most ambiguous tasks when engaging in innovation management. Because of the complex nature of innovation, finding the right metrics is far from being simple.
What’s the Difference Between Innovation and Knowledge Transfer
The internet was revolutionary in that it democratized the spread of information and ideas at a much faster rate than any other channel in. With the increased adoption of computing, we’ve also tracked the rise of “distributed knowledge” databases like Quora or Wikipedia. What is interesting is how powerful these specialized knowledge bases can prove to be in the context of innovation.
The Doom of Multitasking: Don’t Force Your Employees into It
Did you know that you’re multitasking at least several times a day? That’s right! It’s enough if you cook, listen to music, and check your Facebook at the same time. Fortunately, it’s not fatal.
Remote Workers and Data Security: 5 Tips for Employers
With the increased mobility of modern networks and the explosion in mobile device use, more companies are finding benefits in allowing employees to work remotely. At the same time, maintaining security across multiple devices and public networks presents a challenge.
How to Present a Perfect Innovative Pitch
If you want to win, you need to be smart. As a pitch presenter, you’re ought to not just capture the attention of your prospects but also win their hearts. In today’s marketplace, innovation is highly appreciated and wanted. Coming up with a brilliant new product idea is the first aspect. The second is about how you present it to those who might be interested to get involved.
As Corporate Innovation Evolves, Past Lessons Are Being Ignored
This article provides a personal perspective to the ongoing evolution of corporate innovation efforts, along with an overview of how some past mistakes are being repeated.
Seven Good Reasons Not to Innovate
Innovation is risky. Customers are not asking for it. We are already successful… Getting momentum behind significant innovation is difficult, and sometimes it’s easier for a business to stay in what they deem a safe spot. Let’s look at seven arguments that inhibit innovation as well as their counter arguments.