Why Business Model Innovation is Critically Important Today
One of the few ways left for companies to protect their margins is through business model differentiation. According to Kay Plantes, business models have become the new basis of competition, replacing product features and benefits as the playing field on which companies emerge as dominant or laggards.
Large Firms and the Growth of Start-up Culture: a Key Dependency in the Age of Innovation
Steven Klepper, the recipient of the 2011 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, has spent all of his professional career looking at how innovation and the fate of large firms are so closely intertwined. His conclusions on how large firms, start-ups and clusters interact should be required reading for innovation managers and strategists everywhere.
The Critical Importance of Competitive Scenario Creation
Does your company currently consider alternative future states which anticipate your competitors' likely new product introductions? Or, new competitors, not yet known in the market? If not, it should.
How to Combine Innovation with Lean and Six Sigma
Innovation never takes place in a vacuum cut off from other initiatives to improve performance. Doug Collins takes a look at how to team up with people in the Lean and Six Sigma processes.
Make Yourself Obsolete or Your Competitors Will
As history teaches us, maintaining the status quo may keep you in the money in the short term, but long term it can hurt your company and your industry. You have two choices: Make yourself obsolete, or your competitors will, warns Patrick Lefler.
Flavors of Competition
In 1795, Napoleon Bonaparte instituted a prize for an invention that would help always provide his troops with food. The eventual result came to be canning. So while we might believe that competition in the market place is a force for innovation, competition for some prize may also work.
Stand Out from the Competition by Stepping Back
Now that you have successfully developed an innovative new product or service, how do you stimulate market demand? Your customers are overwhelmed with the number of product and service choices that exist in the market today and the volume of marketing messages that bombard them. It is estimated that the average American is exposed to hundreds of advertisements a day and this number is only growing. The only way to stand out from the competition is to step back and establish a clear and credible point of distinction.
To Focus Employees on Innovation, Align Their Goals and Compensation
The ability to deliver new value requires systemic evolution in business strategy, culture, organizational design, and customer awareness. Employees can and will deliver new customer value, but the way they are paid and directed must change first and then the results will follow.
Defining an Innovative Firm – It is Much More Than Technology
Innovation is very much the word of the moment. We hear it used in science, the arts, in politics, in society, and often for good reason. For example, the creation and building of the European Union, is one of the most innovative – and indeed frustrating – processes in history. So what actually is innovation? Read more in this article by IMD professor Georges Haour, IMD, one of the world's top business schools.
Predicting the future of innovation
A number of emerging trends, if extrapolated into the future, provide hints on the future of innovation.
Immunize your team against the spoilers of creative thinking
Research has shown that people solve problems in a more creative way and turn out work with more creative surprises if they are able to focus their attention on their daily enjoyment and fun that comes from the challenge, and their total immersion in the work.
Unleashing Innovations for Sustainability: An Indian Perspective
In this article, Professor Archana Patankar takes an overview of innovations for environment in India, with specific focus on innovative ideas, technologies and programmes in the water and energy sector. It also brings forth the fact that environmental/green innovations are absolutely necessary to move towards the sustainable development pathways.
How to Manage in the Age of Turbulence
In times of global turbulence the role of innovation is more important than ever. InnovationManagement spoke to global strategist John Caslione who, together with marketing guru Philip Kotler, recently published their new book CHAOTICS: The Business of Managing and Marketing in The Age of Turbulence.
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.
Three levels of open innovation maturity
There are three levels of open innovation maturity: externally aware, fully integrated and ecosystem orchestration. Innovation and growth performance improve as maturity increases.
Is open innovation over-hyped?
Open innovation has been hyped in the media and by some consulting firms over the past few years as the next new thing and is just giving a term to an activity that has been underway in business for a long time. Simply put, open innovation is partnering to gain leverage and build barriers to competition.
The New Nature of Innovation Revealed
The paradigm of innovation as driven primarily by technology and science is passé. A new paradigm is emerging, with the publication of success stories of companies innovating through other ways. The Danish and Finnish governments jointly funded a study into the new nature of innovation, as a contribution to the OECD’s work on innovation strategy. Innovationmanagement.se asked the FORA team behind the report to present the highlights. FORA is a research and analysis division under the Danish Authority for Enterprise and Construction
Are Your Innovation Efforts Working Against Your Business?
The ability to develop breakthrough products and services has become the holy grail of innovation. However, many companies struggle to develop breakthroughs even though they may be very innovative in other ways. Could it be that a different organizational barrier exists that is specific to breakthrough innovation? Examining the purpose of innovation relative to the purpose of your business may provide the answer, suggests Ellen Di Resta, Founder of Synaptics Group, Inc.
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.
The critical connection between trust, collaboration and innovation
Trust is fundamental to the highest levels of collaboration, but how do you know if that level of trust exists?
Focus on Business Model Innovation and Increase Growth
There are many different types of innovation, but business model innovation shows the strongest correlation with increased operating margin. Focus on Business Model Innovation is the first in a series of five articles by Gunjan Bhardwaj, head of Ernst & Young´s Global Business Performance Think-tank. The topics of the other articles are: Disruptive Innovation; Innovation in Networks; Social Innovation; and the Impact of Location on Innovation.
How to Increase Your ROI by Measuring and Managing Your Innovation
Studies have shown that companies’ return on innovation (ROI) or hit rate is somewhere between 2-10%. That is another way of saying that around 90% of all innovation efforts are never commercialised or used in general. Jørn Bang Andersen, senior advisor to the Nordic Innovation Centre (NICe), presents a NICe case study on possible ways to dramatically change that.
Does your Firm Have an Innovation Czar?
It never ceases to amaze me. I’m meeting with the executive committee of a major global company. I’ve just asked if innovation is one of their top strategic priorities. Their unanimous answer is “yes”. I then ask about their individual responsibilities. “Which one of you is the CFO?” “Who is head of HR?” “Where’s the CIO?” One by one their hands go up. Yet when I ask to see their global director of innovation, nobody raises a hand. Everyone just looks at me with a blank expression. So, sure, this company understands the innovation imperative. But nobody in its leadership team is directly responsible – or accountable – for making innovation happen across the organization. And they don’t even seem to be aware of the paradox.
The customer pyramid of innovation
Customer input to the innovation process can range from non-existent or reactive up to proactive. The level depends on the company culture and its history/success with past innovations. Proactive customer involvement provides the best atmosphere for successful innovation.