Crowdsourcing 2.0: user-centred innovation meets social media
President Obama ‘crowdsourced’ a part of his political agenda with his change.gov initiative, which embraced the conversation and allowed users to identify topics that were important to them and vote on their relative importance. The addition of social media tools and philosophy to the mix resulted in a perfectly ordered list of the political issues that mattered most to US citizens.
Fundamental Principles for Innovation – What’s Your Opinion?
In this article, Heinz Essman, contributing editor from South Africa, introduces a set of proposed fundamental principles for innovation. It is indeed a proposal and we are very interested in hearing your views on this. Welcome to read and then visit the InnovationManagementForum.com to share your views and discuss with like-minded.
Making Innovation a Systemic Capability
For innovation to become a core competence and a tangible cultural value, there has to be a substantial degree of internal consistency between processes, metrics, reward structures, rhetoric, and top management behavior. But it is precisely this synchronicity that is lacking inside most companies, says Rowan Gibson.
Web-Enabled Open Innovation: From Hype to Reality
InnovationManagemenet is proud to present yet another experienced and knowledgeable columnist; Ehsan Ehsani, researcher and consultant in the area of innovation and product development. Ehsan is working with Accenture Product Innovation and PLM practice in New York City Office and has previous experience from a variety of firms both in Europe and the United States. This is the first in a series of columns starting off with a hot topic: Web-enabled open innovation.
Whether more R&D Investments brings more Innovation Output
Common sense says that if one wants to improve the innovation output, one needs to either (a) increase the size of the opportunity set that goes in the so called 'Innovation Funnel' ; (b) Speed up the throughput of the 'Innovation Funnel' and/or (c) improve the variety of the opportunity set passing through the 'Innovation Funnel'.
Zappos Insights executive says execution of ideas is key
Robert Richman, Product Manager of Zappos Insights, says the most successful companies will be those that have people with the best ideas, and who can execute them most effectively.
Respect: A key ingredient for innovation
Respect is a key ingredient for building a long-term, sustainable innovation competence within any organization.
How Philips’ Open Campus Breeds Innovation
As Business Development Manager at Philips Research, Gerjan van de Walle was instrumental in opening up the electronics giant’s development facility in The Netherlands to competing companies, and making open innovation the ‘buzzwords of the day’. InnovationManagement.se asked him about the process, the difficulties he had to overcome and the advantages are of cramming thousands of engineers and researchers into one square kilometre.
The Significance of Images for Innovation
Good images can be of particular significance for innovative projects and ventures. They can play a key role when seeking support for a new concept, during the development and implementation phases of innovations, as well as in cooperation between and within organisations. Images can be of huge benefit for several reasons.
Challenges for Innovation in Network Markets
Markets can be quite hostile to new products launched, and in fact they refuse most new products. This hostility to new products can even be stronger in network markets, where all players are interconnected. Read more about the challenges to be addressed when you enter into network markets in this third article in a series of five by Gunjan Bhardwaj, head of Ernst & Young´s Global Business Performance Think-tank.
How to Align Innovation with Your Corporate Strategy
For any corporate innovation initiative to succeed, it is important that it is aligned with corporate strategy. Jeffrey Baumgartner shares a simple three step approach to help ensure that this happens and to avoid common pitfalls.
When no one wants to change: 6 questions that lower the defenses to improving innovation
Why is change so hard? Most people will tell you that it’s because people naturally resist change. I really like Eli Goldratt’s response to this argument: If a very wealthy person that you knew and [...]
Collaborate to innovate: How leading firms use open innovation
Paul Sloane highlights how some of the world's biggest companies are utilizing open innovation and collaboration strategies in creative ways to create highly successful new products and services.
Open Innovation: Why Mindset Matters Most
I have long argued that companies should look more at the people side of innovation rather than concentrating all their efforts on processes and concepts. The necessity of building trust as a basis for successful open innovation makes this even more relevant, and it also brings more power to the people who really drive innovation within a company.
3 key issues that can kill your innovation initiatives
Culture, Communication and Collaboration are the 3 C's that form the "soft-side" foundation of successful innovation. Without understanding your personnel "raw material" for innovation, the process may be difficult if not impossible to execute successfully.
Connecting the dots between innovation and marketing
By understanding from the beginning that your marketing message to prospective customers must be just as innovative from their perspective as your products, services and business processes, you will be on the road to connecting innovation and marketing effectively.
Innovation strategy: How to Ask Effective Questions
As someone with an interest in innovation, you know the importance of asking questions and listening to answers. However, when it comes to innovation, some kinds of questions are better than others. Jeffrey Baumgartner looks at various types of questions and why they are good - or why they stink.
Articulating the value of your innovation
Now that you've created that next great thing, how do you convince your customers that it really is as great as you think it is?
Six ways to make top executives understand innovation
It is a major challenge for an innovation leader to operate in an environment where the top executives don
Ask Questions: The Single Most Important Habit for Innovative Thinkers
Questions are the best way to gain deeper insights and develop more innovative solutions. So why do so few people utilize them, asks Paul Sloane?
Managing change in an innovative world
Natalie Jenkins explains how adopting a set of creative thinking methods can help to prepare you for today's world of constant change and upheaval.
To Spur Innovation, Break Down Internal Barriers
Within larger organizations one of the biggest obstacles to innovation is poor internal communication. Every organization has to find ways to promote internal communication and collaboration and to fight internal division and competition. Here are some ideas from Paul Sloane for breaking down barriers to communication.
Eight Critical Ingredients for Successful Corporate Innovation
Jeffrey Baumgartner shares eight ingredients that are critical to the success of any innovation program.
10 Rules for Creative Teams
Under the right circumstances, a team can be significantly more creative than any individual team member and is often better able to push creative ideas through the implementation process so that they may become innovations. Here are ten quick rules for ensuring your teams are effective creative teams from Jeffrey Baumgartner.