Strategic Agility: The Leadership Survival Skill of the Year
Chaos might have defined the year that was 2020, but that turmoil helped business leaders learn a new skill that will serve them well in the years to come.
How NASA Leads Intrapreneurial Innovation
Not everyone knows that NASA has embedded crowdsourcing into their strategy and capabilities. But in fact, back in 2011 (after they ran a highly successful crowdsourcing pilot) NASA established the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI).
Quantum Computing, Zen Philosophy and Space-Time
The up-and-coming field of quantum computing, currently in a prototype phase, will probably be an innovation with exponential and wide-ranging impacts in the power and speed of information technology. There are some interesting parallels between the behavior of quantum computing particles, or qubits, and basic principles of Zen Buddhist philosophy. Like modern physics, this article employs a “space-time” concept of innovation, with implications for the process and intensity of new idea development within organizations.
Activities To Support Your Employee Intrapreneurs
In part two of this series looking at ways organizations can support intrapreneaurs, Anthony Ferrier suggests a list of strategies and approaches to improve the effectiveness of intrapreneurs in your organisation.
Scale and Impact: Supercharging The Success of Your Innovation Efforts
How do innovation leaders access additional resources to enhance the scale and impact of their efforts across complex, global organizations?
Only Engaged Innovation Teams Succeed
Engagement of teams is a must-have when addressing the key issues related to sustainable innovation programs. In the second of a series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, we are going to share our views about the way organizations should stimulate and encourage the creation of teams truly committed with innovation. Besides the more usual ad hoc requirements regarding team and individual creative performance, having a clear focus on team management is essential to achieve a more balanced and sound innovation program.
The One Word Answer to Why Innovation Fails
Innovation sounds easy, but it is not. The majority of enterprises report dissatisfaction with innovation performance. Three quarters of the CEOs of multinationals view external collaborative innovation as vitally important, but only half do it, and those only rate themselves as doing it ‘moderately well’. And remember - two thirds of organizational ‘change’ efforts fail. In case you are now asking yourself, why are these odds that low – we have a straightforward answer. It’s just one word.
It Works! The ‘Results Equation’
We are moved by goals. The resolve to reach the finish line pushes us forward: at work, in life. Why then do we keep idea management initiatives alive when it’s not clear what results they deliver (if any)? And how often have we yearned for a formula that definitely makes it all happen?
Fostering Collaboration for Innovative Excellence
Innovation can take on many forms. From ideas sourced from a single individual or event to massive projects that require the effort of an entire team, multiple departments and various thought leaders, excellence often stems from collaboration. As a business leader or manager, are you taking the steps today to foster this collaboration for best results?
4 Things to Think About When Launching Your Innovation Program
Launching an innovation program is challenging for a number of reasons. Most of the time, champions of innovation face two main problems: 1) the general challenge of coordinating the various aspects of the innovation department, but also 2) educating the rest of the community about the value of innovation and how it will impact them. Addressing some of the main questions or challenges right off the bat paves the way for innovation success later.
The Dirty Maple Flooring Company Enters the Digital Age: Part 08
Part eight of the series finds our protagonist Charlie Bangbang working on the internal communications for launching the first collaborative innovation challenge at The Dirty Maple Flooring Company. How might he weave the business goals for the challenge into the introductory language?
Crossed Signals: Things that Keep Us from Effective Collaborative Innovation
Sometimes we plan to go from point A to point B, but wind up at point C. What happens when point C turns out to be a dead end? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores the crossed signals that can occur when organizations attempt to advance their practice of collaborative innovation, but find themselves someplace less promising.
The Innovation Disconnect
CEOs talk enthusiastically about the need for innovation. Workers at the front line can see the needs and opportunities for fresh ideas. But somehow nothing happens. Ideas do not get implemented. Innovation grinds to a halt. This is the innovation disconnect and it has to be tackled head on.
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.
How to Build a Lean High Performance Innovation Team
The world we live in is changing at a dizzying rate and sectors including energy, technology, entertainment, communications, finance, sports, manufacturing and engineering are all experiencing shifts on a seismic scale. Many of the innovative advances of the past ten years, from smart phones to digital cameras have become commoditised and creativity has become the currency of success. In this article author Matthew Griffin shows how large and small organisations alike can build lean, agile, high performance innovations teams and bridge any shift successfully.
What is Innovation Governance? – Definition and Scope
Innovation governance can be thought of as a system of mechanisms to align goals, allocate resources and assign decision-making authority for innovation, across the company and with external parties. In this series of articles, professor Jean-Philippe Deschamps delves deeper into this topic; what is innovation governance, what different models are there and which ones seem to be the most effective?
The Secret of Innovative Companies: It Isn’t R&D
In rejecting the limiting belief that innovation is R&D’s job alone, leaders of highly innovative companies work hard to instill “innovation is everyone’s job” as a guiding organizational mission. In this article, co-creators of Innovator’s Accelerator, Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen share insights and examples to follow in order to ensure innovation starts at the top and reaches the bottom of your organization.
Using Communications to Drive Innovation – How to Develop an Engaging and Sustainable Program
Enterprise innovation has one main goal – developing business value. There are many different elements that support that goal, but one of the most crucial is communications. As mentioned in the previous article in this series, software has a key role to play, but it doesn’t guarantee employee participation or value to the business, we need to think more widely to address these needs.
Better Living through Collaborative Innovation
Organizations big and small have begun to explore the practice of collaborative innovation as a way to increase engagement and to foment a culture of innovation. Let’s say you work for such an organization. What’s the quid pro quo when you find yourself part of the crowd from which wisdom is sought? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins wrestles with questions that you may want to ask the practice sponsors and yourself.
Four of Five Social Innovators Recommend…
Gartner predicts that four of five large enterprises that pursue social innovation with their employees and the world at large will, over the next couple years, fail in their endeavors. Ouch. Meatloaf gave better odds. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores how you might increase the odds of gaining a coveted membership to the twenty percent club.
Packaging Innovation in the Digital Age: a Smarter User Interface?
Packaging is already a concentrated form of brand communication, expertly coded by designers using form, materials, colors and symbols to tell a brand story; or to make an innovation approachable and understandable. Now that packaging is becoming part of the digital revolution, how can we best enhance its communication potential?
The Supremacy of Innovation
Successful programs like TQM, Balance Scorecard and Six Sigma dramatically improve quality and performance. They are designed to rightfully calibrate the hard asset issues of production. There is a serious lack of three dimensional modeling for soft issues, like innovative thinking and the dimensions of the core vision itself enveloping all production issues. These image supremacy rules challenge current methods and offer checklists to assess the need of newer, softer and special agenda-centric approaches.
The Persuasive Innovator: Influencing People to Collaborate
When you introduce the practice of collaborative innovation to your organization, you make the case to your colleagues that the approach will benefit them more than the status quo. Why might they agree with you? Why might they change their beliefs and behaviors? Have you developed your campaign of persuasion? Innovation architect Doug Collins shares his thinking on how you might influence people to share your beliefs about the benefits of the practice.
How to Effectively Manage the Fuzzy Back End of Innovation
You have doubtless heard of the fuzzy front end of innovation. It is another name for idea generation. But Jeffrey Baumgartner believes that the back end of innovation, where implementation is supposed to take place, is just as fuzzy. Many companies lack clear, efficient processes for implementing the ideas they generate.
How R+D Can Build Marketing Support for its Ideas
Last week, we introduced the topic of R&D's frequent lack of marketing support for its ideas and some culturally ingrained attitudes that can contribute to this. This communication gap is frustrating, especially for those in R&D whose role it is to develop and sell-in new initiatives. This week, we continue this discussion and describe strategies to help overcome resistance.
PowerPoint Makes us Stupid: Never Mind the Slides, Here’s the World Café
People who work in the nuclear power industry track their lifetime exposure to radiation as a function of the maximum allowed by law. If only a benign regulatory agency would set limits for exposure to PowerPoint presentations. Lamentably, many would learn that they have exceeded the lethal dose. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores a better way: one that marries the best that the virtual form of collaborative innovation can offer with the long-standing, effective approach of hosting an in person World Café.
Why Marketing Doesn’t Want R+D’s Ideas – and what to do about it
One of the most common frustrations expressed by R+D professionals is that marketing lacks interest in their ideas. Why is this often the case, and what can be done about it?
Establishing the Foundations for a Balanced Innovation Portfolio
Corporate innovation programs can’t fulfill their potential without the right foundations in place. Many organizations are taking their programs across the enterprise. In this article we consider three key foundations and how they can be boosted to improve corporate innovation: the linkage between every day innovation and corporate targets, the levels of openness, trust and acceptance of diverse opinions.