How Does the Chief Information Officer Role Relate to Innovation?
Nearly 40% of IdeaScale’s customer base is run from a dedicated innovation department helmed by a Chief Innovation Officer, an innovation leader, an innovation manager or someone else. However, there is another emerging owner for innovation at a large organization. At IdeaScale, we often find that CIOs and their organization are driving innovation strategy for a company.
What Companies are Excelling at Innovation in 2021?
Every year, IdeaScale hosts the Innovation Management Awards to honor the work of organizations who are accessing the voice of the crowd and the power of digital innovation programs to generate extraordinary results. The competition has three categories: best innovation engagement strategy, best innovation process, and best innovation overall. Here’s what we can learn from this year’s winners.
What to Tell Your Boss When You Make the Case for Innovation Management
The term “innovation management" has been around for a long time (at least since the 1980s – if not before), but for many business leaders establishing a sustainable innovation management program is still a new concept. Executives aren’t sure what skills they need, who should be on their team, what activities are essential to success, and who they need to partner with.
How to Break the 5 Habits That Hurt Ideation
Many companies find it hard to prioritize ideation. Here are five ways to break the pattern and gather a wealth of ideas for your organization.
What Are The Six Traits of Highly Innovative Organizations?
I love meeting innovators. You meet all types: some of them are blue sky thinkers, some of them are feasibility buffs, some of them are incredible networkers and presenters, and some of them are shy and fascinatingly deep thinkers.
The Post-COVID Workplace: What to Expect Now and in the Future
As we start to think about a time when we can get back to the office and return to some sort of normalcy in the workplace, whether we are a startup or a well-established company, we will need to understand how we can best operate in a post-COVID workplace environment.
Is There Value in an Innovation Program for Your Company?
In my last article I wrote about the influences and themes that I see changing how large, mature and (often) incumbent organisations drive innovative growth and impact. In short, the innovation development professionals are (ironically) being disrupted.
How Does an Employee-Owned Fortune 500 Company Manage Their Innovation Lab?
Graybar is a Fortune 500 corporation and one of the largest employee-owned companies in North America. They are a leader in the distribution of communications and data networking products – even if you don’t know Graybar off the top of your head, you’ve probably been in contact with their products.
Why Your Employees Are the Key to Recovery
In this article, we will look at how to identify and understand employee contributions, and learn how to work with idea generators, evaluators, and activators.
What is a Virtual Innovation Lab?
The Virginia Department of Transportation created their own Virtual Innovation Lab, where they collaborate to solve problems related to remote work, engineering topics, safety, and more with the help of their entire distributed workforce. Learn more in this December 15th webinar!
What Do Leading Innovators Do Differently
Every year, IdeaScale hosts the global Innovation Management Awards and honors winners in three different categories: engagement, process, and implementation. We see these categories as the cornerstones of any successful innovation program, so the winners this year actually excel at each of these things.
Using Innovation to Improve Your McKinsey Organizational Health Index Score
2020 proved just how important our relationships to banks and credit unions are as they worked to rapidly respond to the changing financial needs of their customers.
Where Did the Suggestion Box Come From?
And what’s changed along the way?
Online ideation and collaboration might be a fairly recent business practice, but the suggestion box concept has been around at least since the 18th century.
The Essential Skills to Teach Intrapreneurs
At JR Simplot, a new cross-functional innovation initiative recently formed looking for ideas that would help optimize company efficiency, improve training programs, and more. And when they built this team, they realized that a big part of launching an innovation initiative was education. Learn more in this podcast.
How Remote Working Jumped the Queue in the Future of Work
The COVID-19 situation isn’t just affecting the way businesses work, it’s shaping discussions about how they will in future, too. Recent global events have affected businesses in unimaginable ways, testing them in a manner not seen in several generations. However, present circumstances have also fast-forwarded several conversations surrounding the future of work.
How Frontline Employees Drive the Change Management Process
Organizational change can be met with resistance, especially if it excludes employee input.
Five Innovation Practices for Building & Managing an Innovation Program
There is no “one size fits all” formula for innovation management success. Demystifying innovation takes experiments and practices. In this article, we'll explore five tactics to use in order to develop and manage a successful innovation program.
What Innovation Funnel Should I Use?
After a decade working in innovation, I think many of us are sick and tired of seeing a funnel on another slide at an innovation conference. Lots of ideas at the top, just a few implemented ideas at the bottom… we get the idea.
Positive Ways to Handle Employee Resignations
All good things come to an end. As an employer, this can ring true when your favorite employee springs up without warning, and tables a resignation letter. No matter the work environment you provide, there are things beyond your control that can see your employee of the year want to leave.
Innovative Ways for Your Employees to “Always Be Learning”
One of the most significant investments any business can make is in its staff. This goes beyond the simple fact of paying for salaries and benefits, however — in order to be a truly valuable element of a company, employees must be genuinely nurtured.
What’s the Best Idea Criteria for Innovation Programs?
One of the most popular webinars that IdeaScale has ever hosted is our webinar on how to select the best ideas. We are constantly being asked by our customers and prospects, “how do I know a good idea when I see one?” Some people are looking for financial predictions, some people want to know how an idea measures up to their organizational objectives, but everyone is looking for the perfect set of criteria so that they can evaluate ideas at some point during the innovation process and validate them.
Spotless: An Innovation Roadmap
Bridie Scott is an Innovation Manager at Spotless and she’s taken the business on a journey from a large-scale company with big goals to a company that is listening to and empowering all of their frontline employees in the innovation process.
How Idea Management can Help Advance Workplace Neurodiversity
Awareness of neurodiversity has certainly increased over the past few years and workplaces are gradually becoming more accommodating and accepting of neurodiverse employees. But after years of neglect and of neurodiverse candidates being overlooked for roles for which they are inherently suited, there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made.
Psychology Tips to Get Honest Feedback from Your Employees
Learn four essential tips that employers and HR departments should consider when trying to get honest input from their employees.
Why Every Business Needs Female Marketers to Steer an Inclusive Strategy
Decision-makers can create a more equitable – and profitable – work environment by promoting gender equality – starting with the marketing business unit.
Tips for Established Businesses to Survive the Startup Surge
So much has already been said about what smaller, fresh companies need to do in order to gain a competitive edge in a well-developed market, but how often do you think about what those well-established businesses should do to achieve the same?
7 Modern Trends That Are Innovating Traditional Workplaces
The workplace of today little resembles the cubicles of yesteryear. More people telecommute and enjoy flextime options. Rather than a traditional top-down structure, many companies embrace a more democratic arrangement.
Why Coworking Is A Solution For Increased Productivity
Coworking is the newest trend in both freelance and mainstream working. It is a form of office setting that allows people to work together within a common space, but not necessarily on the same project. The workers are primarily independent of each other, but they can always consult, inspire, and motivate each other when the need arises. But does this have any positive impact on productivity?