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.
Asking the Important Questions: A Guide to Design Thinking And a Better Way to Serve Customers
Design thinking should be a way of life for senior managers. Melba Kurman spoke to Sara Beckman, design and innovation expert at Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, about how to apply design thinking to the innovation process.
How to Do Intelligent Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is popular but it causes problems – too many ideas, not enough solutions being one of them. How do you do crowdsourcing properly? Klaus-Peter Speidel talks you through your options
Innovation Acromegali: How to Diagnose It & How to Cure It
This is the first piece in a blog series written by Ehsan Ehsani on innovation management leading practices.
How Partners React to an Open Innovation Strategy
I have cited Psion Teklogix, provider of rugged mobile computers, several times on my blog for their promising approach to open innovation. Last month, the company took a big step forward with its strategic interpretation of open innovation – called Open Source Mobility (OSM) – when it brought its global partners together for a series of conferences at which they unveiled a new platform designed to give resellers and developer partners the opportunity to co-create with Psion.
Innovate to Thrive – No Risk …No Innovation
Part two in a series of articles by Robert Brands discusses the need and importance of taking risks to achieve successful innovations. Since the high failure rate, organizations pursuing the practice of Innovation must have a tolerance for failure. The material is based on 25 years of hands on experience in the innovation space and the recently published book “Robert's Rules of innovation”.
10 ways to expand your creative possibilities: The Free Thinking Method
Free Thinking Mode is a collection of best practices shared by the most creative companies and people Michelle Conrad and her team have come in contact with.
Innovation: Is there such a thing as ‘best practice?’
Best practices transferred and applied without contextual knowledge can be dangerous, and is as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Reinventing Knowledge Management to Innovate
There has been a shift from the emphasis on what people called the “information value chain” to “knowledge value chain” for quite some time. The environments are shrewd and unpredictable in this world of growing competition and rapid technological progress. The information value chain just served as a database of “best practices” whereas “knowledge value chain” emphasizes on the active sense making of human beings handling business.
Successful Approach for Improving Innovation Management for SMEs
It's a well known fact that Europe's competitive potential is dependent on the capacity to be truly innovative and creative in launching new successful products and services. This can be a daunting challenge for many organizations, not the least for small and medium sized enterprises that often lack proficiency in innovation management. IMP³rove is an approach developed especially to meet the needs of SMEs to help them develop innovation management performance with sustainable impact.
In Search of Failure – Designing for Failure?
Who would be searching for failure? Failures just happen, though we always hope to avoid them. A vile thing, a vile word, no? Read more in this weeks' column by Bengt-Arne Vedin, PhD and Professor emeritus in innovation management. And why not joining in helping Bengt-Arne improving the article by joining the discussion?
Market Orientation Supports Innovativeness Over Time
We know that clusters of co-located firms play an important role in supporting innovation and wealth creation. Spatial proximity can allow firms to take advantage of scale and positive externalities such as access to skilled labour, specialized subcontractors and rapid flows of information. Shared history, trust, and common understanding of phenomena may also enhance cluster members’ ability to interpret, and learn from, each other’s strategies. Yet location in regional clusters in and of itself does not guarantee success.
Learning to Trade and to Innovate at the Base of the Pyramid
Is sustainable business the missing link in alleviating poverty and boosting global trade and prosperity? If so, how should companies exploit this opportunity in practice? Louise Koch, Danish Anthropologist and Business Innovator, talks about best practice, mindsets and resources for sustainable, people-centred innovation in developing countries.
Preparing for Tomorrow’s Innovations today
Being the General Manager of TomorrowLab, Steven Peleman knows what is important for the creation of innovation in companies and organizations. Bringing people together outside their companies and helping them to develop new views of their existing innovation organization make a good start. Getting them to take more chances is even better.
Standards for Innovation Management – a Helpful Tool?
To promote innovation is a key issue at political, economical and professional levels and has become a critical effort across Europe. That´s why 13 European countries are currently collaborating to create a European standard that will provide guidance and good practices to beginners as well as a systematic method to strongly innovative companies. InnovationManagement.se asked Fernando J. Utrilla, Secretary of the committee about the work in progress.
Lean Innovation Management for SMEs
The use of innovation management increases your operational margins. This was one of the key findings of a European study on Innovation Management performance within SMEs. The growth champions were reaching approximately 12% operational margins, an exceptional performance compared to the 5% operational margin of the average SME. In this article Dr. Dirk Balfanz and Dr. Bernhard Kölmel describe a lean and efficient approach to Innovation Management specifically targeted to the needs of SMEs.
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.
Asking the Important Questions: A Guide to Design Thinking And a Better Way to Serve Customers
Design thinking should be a way of life for senior managers. Melba Kurman spoke to Sara Beckman, design and innovation expert at Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, about how to apply design thinking to the innovation process.
How to Do Intelligent Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is popular but it causes problems – too many ideas, not enough solutions being one of them. How do you do crowdsourcing properly? Klaus-Peter Speidel talks you through your options
Innovation Acromegali: How to Diagnose It & How to Cure It
This is the first piece in a blog series written by Ehsan Ehsani on innovation management leading practices.
How Partners React to an Open Innovation Strategy
I have cited Psion Teklogix, provider of rugged mobile computers, several times on my blog for their promising approach to open innovation. Last month, the company took a big step forward with its strategic interpretation of open innovation – called Open Source Mobility (OSM) – when it brought its global partners together for a series of conferences at which they unveiled a new platform designed to give resellers and developer partners the opportunity to co-create with Psion.
Innovate to Thrive – No Risk …No Innovation
Part two in a series of articles by Robert Brands discusses the need and importance of taking risks to achieve successful innovations. Since the high failure rate, organizations pursuing the practice of Innovation must have a tolerance for failure. The material is based on 25 years of hands on experience in the innovation space and the recently published book “Robert's Rules of innovation”.
10 ways to expand your creative possibilities: The Free Thinking Method
Free Thinking Mode is a collection of best practices shared by the most creative companies and people Michelle Conrad and her team have come in contact with.
Innovation: Is there such a thing as ‘best practice?’
Best practices transferred and applied without contextual knowledge can be dangerous, and is as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Reinventing Knowledge Management to Innovate
There has been a shift from the emphasis on what people called the “information value chain” to “knowledge value chain” for quite some time. The environments are shrewd and unpredictable in this world of growing competition and rapid technological progress. The information value chain just served as a database of “best practices” whereas “knowledge value chain” emphasizes on the active sense making of human beings handling business.
Successful Approach for Improving Innovation Management for SMEs
It's a well known fact that Europe's competitive potential is dependent on the capacity to be truly innovative and creative in launching new successful products and services. This can be a daunting challenge for many organizations, not the least for small and medium sized enterprises that often lack proficiency in innovation management. IMP³rove is an approach developed especially to meet the needs of SMEs to help them develop innovation management performance with sustainable impact.
In Search of Failure – Designing for Failure?
Who would be searching for failure? Failures just happen, though we always hope to avoid them. A vile thing, a vile word, no? Read more in this weeks' column by Bengt-Arne Vedin, PhD and Professor emeritus in innovation management. And why not joining in helping Bengt-Arne improving the article by joining the discussion?
Market Orientation Supports Innovativeness Over Time
We know that clusters of co-located firms play an important role in supporting innovation and wealth creation. Spatial proximity can allow firms to take advantage of scale and positive externalities such as access to skilled labour, specialized subcontractors and rapid flows of information. Shared history, trust, and common understanding of phenomena may also enhance cluster members’ ability to interpret, and learn from, each other’s strategies. Yet location in regional clusters in and of itself does not guarantee success.
Learning to Trade and to Innovate at the Base of the Pyramid
Is sustainable business the missing link in alleviating poverty and boosting global trade and prosperity? If so, how should companies exploit this opportunity in practice? Louise Koch, Danish Anthropologist and Business Innovator, talks about best practice, mindsets and resources for sustainable, people-centred innovation in developing countries.
Preparing for Tomorrow’s Innovations today
Being the General Manager of TomorrowLab, Steven Peleman knows what is important for the creation of innovation in companies and organizations. Bringing people together outside their companies and helping them to develop new views of their existing innovation organization make a good start. Getting them to take more chances is even better.
Standards for Innovation Management – a Helpful Tool?
To promote innovation is a key issue at political, economical and professional levels and has become a critical effort across Europe. That´s why 13 European countries are currently collaborating to create a European standard that will provide guidance and good practices to beginners as well as a systematic method to strongly innovative companies. InnovationManagement.se asked Fernando J. Utrilla, Secretary of the committee about the work in progress.
Lean Innovation Management for SMEs
The use of innovation management increases your operational margins. This was one of the key findings of a European study on Innovation Management performance within SMEs. The growth champions were reaching approximately 12% operational margins, an exceptional performance compared to the 5% operational margin of the average SME. In this article Dr. Dirk Balfanz and Dr. Bernhard Kölmel describe a lean and efficient approach to Innovation Management specifically targeted to the needs of SMEs.
The Cave Model of Innovation
It is time to rethink the main drivers of innovation. The key activities for successful innovation are not just company research and participating in innovation systems. One activity that is just as important is skilful information search directed towards opportunities in the world outside the organizaton or innovation system. To understand this line of thinking, we introduce the cave model of innovation.
Taking Swedish Technology Transfer to a Higher Level
Throughout Europe, the number of individuals working professionally with knowledge and technology transfer is growing. However, in Sweden tech transfer professionals are not yet recognized as a profession. This is something that the new Swedish Network for Innovation and Technology Transfer Support, SNITTS, intends to change. SNITTS, a nonprofit organization, offers a platform for technology transfer professionals to share experiences and improve competence.
Creating actionable knowledge through close ties with industry
Sofia Börjesson is Director of the Center for Business Innovation (CBI) at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. She is Associate Professor in Technology Management and has extensive experience in leading university-company research projects. Professor Börjesson’s university office is frequently unoccupied – she spends a great deal of time visiting companies and organizations in order to see at first hand and to understand how they are working with innovation. She brings with her the latest academic trends based on the work of her group at CBI and their research in the field, in order to help firms to become more innovative and more efficient. InnovationManagement.se asked her a few questions.
Understanding the value of a strategic innovation approach
For companies desiring organic growth and whose innovation efforts are not yielding the results demanded, using a Strategic Innovation approach using structured tools and methods will produce higher value products, services, systems, and environments that will resonate deeper with people to encourage them to become loyal customers. This approach delivers better solutions that are feasible to build, viable for profit, and desirable to the user.
Tips for finding success on open innovation websites
Putting yourself in the role of the supplier or customer is a key to clarity when posting your needs on an open innovation website.
Innovation partnerships: How to avoid Dante’s Inferno
Over the years, I have seen unsuccessful innovation partnerships that seemed to have come straight from Dante's Inferno.
Why management by consensus is killing innovation
One management issue that could be killing innovation efforts is an obsession by many managers that a decision can