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.
The Role of Innovators at Large Organizations
In-house innovation programs continue to proliferate and our concept of the innovator has evolved alongside them. Now we no longer think of a creative genius sitting alone in their tower coming up with creative ideas. Now, innovators can play a number of different roles within an innovation program beyond idea author. A lot of interest and attention is being paid to this concept, because organizations that are looking to sponsor and train innovation skills at their organization need to understand what skills matter most when it comes to creating meaningful change. After all, it’s an important part of professional development nowadays. Every employee at any organization needs to be able to keep up with the rapid pace of change. So here are a few of the roles that innovators play at large organizations.
Musings of an Apprentice: Business Thinking Meets Design Thinking to Create a Design-led company
Abstract: A perspective of a redesigned, reformed and transformed business design professional. The author shares her journey, experience, progress, and point of view on today's often discussed "design thinking or building a design-led innovation culture."
How to Do Business Model Innovation for the Established Firm
This article provides a systematic framework for helping executives of large, established organizations identify opportunities for business model innovation and organize themselves to pursue these opportunities. While also applicable to start-ups, this article focuses primarily on how to define, challenge, and revamp the business model of an existing business or organization.
The Industrial Menopause and What to Do About It
It seems to be more or less a fact that the more mature a company is, the harder it is to produce something totally new that deviates substantially to what has been done earlier. In order to understand this phenomenon better Bengt Järrehult makes a comparison between human and industrial life, trying to elucidate the similarities and differences between the 2 worlds.
To Approach Change Differently, Change Your Approach
Why do so many corporations operate under the assumption that change initiatives must come from the top down? Mandated change is often out of touch with the everyday work of employees, so it’s met with resistance as they immediately anticipate the additional work these programs entail.
Mastering the Innovation Process
The innovation system described in The Innovation Master Plan provides a comprehensive approach to a difficult, challenging, and significant problem for organizations, the problem of how to manage innovation in the face of excruciating change.
Disappointed By Innovation Results? It’s The Culture!
Though companies invest into innovation they like results less and less. There seems to be a glass ceiling for driving innovation, which neither new tools and processes nor innovation consultants seem to crack. It is time to face the elephant in the room: company culture and its impact on innovation performance. Top management needs to learn deal with it. Then company culture will become a driver of innovation rather than getting in the way.
The Driving Forces of Change
Six major forces are driving change in today’s world. Developing a successful innovation program requires that your organization understand and master all of them.
5 Key Points to Consider when Developing an Innovation Strategy
From our talks with innovation management practitioners and business executives it seems that not many organizations have a well-defined and integrated innovation strategy. To find out more about how to go about creating and executing such a strategy, we spoke to Wouter Koetzier and Christopher Schorling at Acceture who encourage a very pragmatic and execution-oriented approach.
Cascading Change Versus Viral Change
“Everything has changed, even change has changed” is a proverb that is increasingly true. In this article Bengt Järrehult will describe the good old top-down or cascading approach compared to a more bottom-up or viral way.
Collaborative Innovation Inside & Beyond the Firm – Two Worlds Become One
This year, a very interesting trend in collaborative innovation can be observed in Central Europe: The once distinct concepts of “Enterprise 2.0” and “Open Innovation” are merging. Firms are taking a holistic view on collaborative innovation and put the question about whether collaborative innovation should happen primarily within the firm’s walls or with externals out of the focus.
How to Shock Management into Rethinking the Business Model – Prove They can be Blindsided by a Fingerprint
Despite a detailed process with countless hours of work, and sincere efforts to take a longer-term, strategic look at where to play and how to win, many businesses fail to anticipate fundamental shifts that should cause them to rethink their entire business model. The results are often disastrous - too many businesses end up on life support. This article presents a new concept called “Competitive Fingerprints” that will allow readers to anticipate shifts and adapt their business model to capitalize on future market realities.
What SMEs can Expect from Value-Creating Innovation Management Consulting
Owners and managers of small and medium sized companies (SMEs) are reluctant to hire consultants and even more so when it comes to innovation management consulting. And they often have good reasons to do so. They don’t see an appropriate value for the money and time they invest on innovation management consulting - especially since the quality and range of such services varies dramatically.
How Status Quo Bias Can Kill Innovation
Status quo bias is a proven cognitive bias that exists in all normal people. Innovation, especially breakthrough innovation, requires veering from the status quo. As a result, the average managers is all too likely not to approve a highly innovative idea, not because of any intrinsic flaw in the idea, but because the idea would require change. You need to work around this bias if you truly want your company to innovate.
Big Data- About You
Normal, routine activities from daily life generate large amounts of data. Who owns this data, has access to it, and what they can do with it is largely unregulated and undisclosed. Little-by-little more and more aspects of daily life are recorded and stored meaning very little of what you do, where you go, and who you see is not being watched and recorded.
Introducing New Ideas Using Analogies
Analogies can help people make sense of technological change and other innovations. Using them effectively relies on recognizing both their benefits and pitfalls.
Financial Innovation and its Undeniable Role in Society
Innovation in the area of financial services has undergone increased criticism since the start of the difficulties in international banking. This has fueled a general negative perception of innovation in financial services. In this article Dr. Anne-Laure Mention argues that innovation is not something to be feared as such, actually it is a driver of competitiveness and that the full benefits for society might not yet be visible.
How to Change Innovation Culture the Fast & Viral Way
There are different approaches to facilitating cultural change within an organization in order to promote innovation. Bengt Järrehult argues that the viral change, whereby successful changes are achieved through experimentation and then spread by different groups copying or adopting the change leads to faster and more long-lasting culture change.
Global Paradigm Change
The world is changing rapidly and fundamentally. Among other things, this means that business as usual is no longer an option. Far-sighted leaders know this, and are already adopting new purposes for their organisations that reflect the need to be kinder to society and the planet. Although this shift builds on concepts such as the triple bottom line, it goes far beyond this: first, it is about transformation, i.e. deep systemic change, rather than reformation, trying to make current outdated systems work better; and second, it will involve significant changes in our own personal beliefs, mindsets and behaviours.
Finding Time, a Scarce and Necessary Resource
Browsing through these paragraphs will take you approximately two minutes. If you read them more carefully, four perhaps. Not a lot of time or investment. In this blog Susanna Bill reminds us why time is key for innovation and organizational change.
Social Product Innovation Challenges: Sustaining Processes
A couple months ago I laid out the framework for the most common challenges companies face as they get started with their social product innovation initiatives. The most common challenges fall into five main buckets – strategy, people and culture, business processes, technology and sustainability. So let’s take a deeper look at typical sustainability challenges and some ideas for overcoming them.
6 steps on How to Achieve Innovation in Outsourcing
There has been a huge amount of growth in the outsourcing industry over recent years, so much so that it has become engrained in the way many large enterprises run their business. As the industry matures and the range of outsourcing services extends to higher value activities, client firms raise the bar regarding their expectations, seeking the delivery of high impact innovation from their vendors.
Engaging Collaborative Innovation’s Losers
Change benefits some more than others. The practice of collaborative innovation, which by design offers transformative change, is no different. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins advises campaign teams on engaging people who find themselves on the losing end of the practice. Ignoring their concerns jeopardizes the initiative.
Learning from Asian Innovation
Asian companies are different from Western companies in their approach to innovation. A recent study has identified four generic elements of the Asian approach that might help any Western company think differently and to be more effective in their business creation. In this article Peter Hesseldahl gives a brief overview of the conclusions.
Is it Time to Rewrite the Innovation Playbook: Ten New Requirements in the Age of Hyperinnovation
In the world of hyperinnovation innovation itself is changing. In place of a monolithic R&D based innovation culture we suddenly have a proliferation of innovation approaches and new pressures on enterprises to innovate. Haydn Shaughnessy and Nick Vitalari argue the innovation playbook needs to be rewritten, and relabelled.
Structuring Companies for Innovation and Operations
The appropriate structuring of companies is becoming more and more relevant as a mechanism for managing and enhancing their innovation capability. This article explores the concept of the Viable Systems Model (VSM) of Stafford Beer as a tool to better structure organisations for effective innovation and efficient operation.
Complexity Science and Innovation
What has complexity science to do with innovation management? Quite a few things if you ask Dr. Curt Lindberg of Plexus Institute, NJ, the States. Complexity science is the scientific study of complex systems, systems with many parts that interact to produce patterns of behavior that cannot easily be explained by the behavior of the individual constituent elements. From a business perspective you can use it to better understand the importance of relationships and interactions to your innovation efforts.
Harnessing the energy of change champions
The most successful change and innovation efforts are often accomplished by a change champion, a 'mono-maniac with a mission,' according to Jim Clemmer. Here are some strategies that will help you to support your organization's change champions.
Why does innovation feel uncomfortable?
Helping people to deal with change is one of the most challenging tasks that leaders of innovation face. GoInnovate!, an excellent new book by Andrew Papageorge, contains a wealth of advice that can help your organization to overcome resistance to change and to successfully implement a culture of innovation.
Innovation Vanguard Firms Show the Way to Beating the Downturn
Could the current economic downturn actually be sparking an upturn in innovation? I see subtle signs of that happening. Anemic corporate growth, the bursting of the bubble economy, and the merger hangover are creating a unique, one-time opportunity for those of us who are advocates for and practitioners of systematic innovation.