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.
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.
5 Key Success Principles – the Cure for Innovation Envy
Experience and research tell us five key success principles are seen across the cultures of ‘serial innovators.’ The good news: These characteristics can be adapted for any company, regardless of industry.
Reimagining Media & Entertainment through Collaborative Innovation
Established firms in the media & entertainment space struggle to prosper in the Digital Age. New business models, enlivened by technology, erode traditional sources of profit. What possibilities for reimagining the business exist? In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins suggests one avenue to pursue: consider the benefits that come from learning how to convene a community on the critical question by embracing the practice of collaborative innovation. Apply the practice to help people work to their potential.
How to Create an Innovation Mission Statement
Often individuals and organizations tend to get stuck in the mode of talking about innovation and/or trying to understand innovation. The only way to really know innovation is to do innovation, and learn from your mistakes along the way. In this article Harun Asad suggests preparing an Innovation Mission Statement as an initial, action-oriented way to get out of the rhetoric trap.
21 Situations When you Should Not Innovate
With an abundance of innovation success stories circulating the net and popular business publications, when do we hear about the other side of the coin – when is innovation not the answer to our organization's problems? Gijs van Wulfen provides 21 examples of when we should avoid innovating. What are your experiences?
A Blueprint for Effective Collaborative Innovation
Blueprints help people envision the future in a clear, practical way. What will the finished work look like? How will we create it? What possibilities does the new creation hold? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins introduces a blueprint for the practice of collaborative innovation. The blueprint helps people envision their organization as they transform it through the practice.
Observation Grounds Collaborative Innovation
The practice of collaborative innovation starts with observation: the discipline to see and grasp the nature of the work, the end user’s environment, or the world at large. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores how people who lead their organization’s collaborative innovation practice can reinforce community members’ observational skills.
12 Innovator Trademarks
Today we're adding a breath of inspiration to the whirlwind of information about how innovation should be managed in the organization. Caspar van Rijnbach provides twelve suggestions of what an innovative leader should be. Do you have more to contribute?
The Innovation Knowing-Doing Gap
If you scrutinize the theories on innovation they seem to conclude for example, that ambidextrous organizations are best at handling incremental innovations rather than radical, and if we would focus more on learning, experimental organizations we would be better off… So why don’t we act accordingly? Bengt Järrehult takes a closer look at the reasons why we act against better knowing regarding innovation.
5 Ways Small Businesses can Innovate Like the Big Guys
In traditional thinking, being competitive in the global marketplace requires a significant investment in time and resources. But the reality is that any organization today can take advantage of open innovation to innovate faster and cheaper than ever before, positioning them as true competition in the industry. This article will explore the top five ways SMEs can leverage open innovation.
Best Practices and Common Pitfalls Associated with Suppliers Involvement in NPD
Involving suppliers in new product development provides organizations with a range of benefits, including shorter development time, better quality products, and lower cost of development. In this new in-depth article Dr Sanda Berar delves deeper into some of the best practices and the most common pitfalls associated with suppliers’ involvement in NPD.
How to Avoid the Innovation Death Spiral
Consider this all too familiar scenario: Company X’s new products developed and launched with great expectations, yield disappointing results. Yet, these products continue to languish in the market, draining management attention, advertising budgets, manufacturing capacity, warehouse space and back office systems. Wouter Koetzier explores how to avoid the innovation death spiral.
How to Solve 7 Challenges in Employee Driven Innovation
The collective wisdom of your co-workers is a huge asset in the fuzzy front end. But which challenges do you need to address and solve in order to create a structured and effective employee driven innovation process? Read more about a method using idea markets as a powerful incentive. And it has already proven its worth in a number of large Scandinavian companies.
Copycat Innovation: A Practical Route to Profitable Innovation
Copycat innovation, the act of adapting a solution that has been used successful in another industry or profession, is a more reliable, affordable route to innovation, suggests Dr. Yew Kam Keong, Ph.D.
In Praise of Bad Ideas
We’ve all been there; a brainstorming session, presentation, meeting or other group event when somebody blurts out what is clearly the worst idea in the world. But bad ideas can be good. Harvey Briggs explores why.
An Open Innovation Story from Turkey: VESTEL Magneto
Success of Vestel Electronics is directly related to its dedication to innovation, to the high-quality research carried on in its large R&D centers and to its connections to national and international research organizations. In this article Mr. Reha S. Senturk, Project Manager at Ege University Science and Technology Centre (EBILTEM) describes an open innovation initiative resulting in a successful innovation.
Highly Innovative Low-Tech Companies?
When you think about low-tech industries, you will probably think about many aspects, except for innovation. Innovation is mostly associated with innovative products and technology, but hardly ever with anything beyond R&D activities. This “myth” can now be refuted through the results of a currently published study “Gaining Competitiveness with Innovations beyond Technology and Products: Insights from IMP3rove”.
Four Ways to Dip Your Toes into the Open Innovation Waters
In view of the changing economic and competitive conditions, award-winning creative director Harvey Briggs encourages all companies to explore the different possibilities and opportunities available through open innovation.
Seven Managers Struggling with Innovation
Managers may come in all shapes and sizes, but almost all of them struggle with innovation or the lack there of in their organization. Gis van Wulfen introduces us to seven different managers who explain their views on innovation. Do you recognize any of them?
Social Product Innovation – Real Challenges and Real Solutions
As companies start looking at ways to incorporate social media models and technologies into the innovation and product development process, there seem to be two very defined – and very vocal – arguments for and against. One side seems to have the opinion that social media will save the world. If everyone can just happily and openly share and co-create, life will be better and easier. The other side believes that social media is a waste of time and has no place in business, much less embedded in the sacred innovation and product development processes that many companies hope will help them stay afloat and even grow during the recession and recovery.
Framing the Critical Question: Insights from Survey Research
Campaign teams cover a lot of ground as they work with the sponsor of a collaborative innovation challenge. In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins makes the case that campaign teams should focus their energies on helping the sponsor develop the critical question that serves as the basis for convening the community. Forming the powerful question—the question that accurately reflects the sponsor’s intent and that resonates with the community—yields the greatest return on time spent in developing the campaign, relative to its ultimate success.
Five Lessons to Boost Your Innovation Practices
Innovation ain’t what it was. It was once the province of a department, with a clear remit: new product development. Today, it’s everywhere. It concerns not only products and services, but also processes, technologies, business models, pricing plans, and routes to market, even performance management practices – the whole value chain in fact.
25 Inspiring Innovation Quotes
Gijs van Wulfen shares 25 of his favorite motivational quotes to jump start innovation. Do you have more?
Educating Innovators
When does innovation begin? Is it at the moment of inception, or at the moment of adoption, or at the moment when the new innovation really displaces the old? An interesting question, especially as the implications of each milestone are fundamentally different, yet each is a profound accomplishment in their own right. British historian David Edgerton has argued in his book The Shock of the Old for a focus on something between adoption and dominance; and reliance upon what he calls “use-centered history” to mark the real impact of new innovations.
Solve Customer Frictions
Good ideas are most successful when they're not just a modern novelty, but fulfill an unmet customer need. Gis van Wulfen describes how to find innovation opportunities by identifying customer frictions.
Four Points to Consider as the Business Sponsor of an Ideation Challenge
Your organization holds you accountable for the profit or loss of one of its brands, channels, or regions. Maybe you oversee the business as a whole. You have an opportunity to apply collaborative innovation as a means to engage a wide swath of colleagues on resolving a critical business question with you. Should you proceed? If you do proceed, what points should you keep in mind to ensure you make productive use of your time and the time of your community members? In this article, community architect Doug Collins covers the four critical points to consider as the potential business sponsor of an ideation challenge.