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.
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.
Increasing Experimentation and Autonomy Capability: The New Corporate Innovation Imperative
In the past 12 months, there has been a concerted push to foster a more experimental and autonomous workforce within mature, corporate organizations. This is impacting how innovation professionals operate, drive value, and ultimately succeed in their own careers.
How Great Managers Can Drive Employee Engagement
Are your employees underperforming? This happens even to star employees when they don’t feel motivated to do their job anymore. Luckily, great managers can drive employee engagement by reconnecting with their workers. To boost engagement, you must find out what drives the people to do their best job every day.
5 Reasons Employers Should Provide Good Health Benefits
Good health benefits are one of the main make-or-break factors for a lot of people searching for companies to develop their careers in. The idea is that any reputable company will care enough about their employees to offer competitive health benefits, which is why this benefit is listed on job descriptions along with 401K plans and PTO.
5 Ways to Create a Culture That Embraces and Adapts to Change
As part of today’s changing technological landscape, it is vital to create a workplace culture that adapts to those changes. Doing so starts with having a comfortable workplace culture to begin with. Making your employees feel at ease in their current working conditions is the basis of creating a workplace that can adapt to changes.
Why Your Best Innovators Leave Your Company – at the Worst Possible Moment
Meet John. He worked in a company with a corporate strategy office but no innovation department. When our firm ran an innovation workshop at John’s company, he took to innovation like a duck to water. Unfortunately, the company’s innovation culture didn’t evolve quickly enough for John, which left him feeling stifled. He ended up leaving the company to pursue innovation full-time.
Use These 7 Hacks to Become a More Successful Entrepreneur
Why do most small businesses fail within their first year? The answers you'll get will vary depending on who you ask. I think it comes down to one thing - habits. Successful entrepreneurs engage in the right behaviors on a consistent basis, while struggling entrepreneurs practice limiting behaviors on a consistent basis. Here are 7 things to incorporate into your routine to make you a better entrepreneur.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Successful High-Level Talent Acquisition
In today’s competitive job market, acquiring the best talent can involve a long and drawn-out process often resulting in the employer settling for someone who may not be the best fit, or not finding the right candidate at all.
6 Benefits of Ongoing Employee Development
In many organizations, work is pretty consistent and predictable: go into the office, perform your tasks, and go home. Many people spend years doing their jobs without much advancement or ongoing career development.
What’s Keeping CInO’s Awake at Night: The Latest Corporate Innovation Trends From a Range Of Recent Conferences
Over the past couple of weeks, I have participated in several conferences / events, to better understand key trends in corporate innovation. Each event was excellent, but also very different in scope, audience and approach.
7 Ways to Keep Your Employees Engaged All Year Round
When your employees are directly and fully engaged, you will notice that their morale and overall level of job satisfaction are high. They are motivated to work harder and smarter for your company, and the result is high productivity and perhaps less employee turnover.
Do Open-Concept Offices Promote Innovation?
Do open-concept offices live up to their hype when it comes to encouraging innovation and collaboration? Or do they hinder productivity by sacrificing privacy - and in some cases, comfort? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons.
How do We Nurture Innovators?
More and more companies are looking to understand and identify innovation talent. Why? Because if companies understand how to encourage original thought and reward innovation efforts, they’re more likely to stay relevant and at the top of their game. Not to mention that they’re far more likely to attract and retain top talent that is interested in working for a company that is forward-thinking and rewards creative effort.
Mastering Global Innovation through Multicultural Collaboration
We live in an increasingly multicultural and networked world where innovation has the potential to transform lives from Austria to Zimbabwe. Leaders and teams are facing changing customer needs across cultures and geographies. If you’re responsible for international products, services, projects, or programs, how are you facilitating innovation and collaboration around the world?
Can Everyone Be Innovative?
Innovation is an integral part of many organizations today, and for good reason: it helps companies stay agile, relevant, and evolving. However, innovation is often difficult to achieve—or is even met with resistance.
A Commitment to Diversity is a Commitment to Innovation
The more you allow disparate ideas to mingle and collide, the more you maximize your chances for true innovative thought to emerge. Learn all of this and more in a complimentary white paper about why innovators want to nurture workforce diversity.
Do Your Employees Need Passion?
If you’ve ever written a job description that calls for passionate, hard-working candidates, did you ever stop to think about what that means? Sure, having engaged and loyal employees is the ultimate goal of any company, but the word “passion” is loaded.
Are Legacy Approaches to Talent Inhibiting Your Innovation Efforts?
The legacy approach to talent selection involves matching education, length of experience and functional skills to the role. All of this makes sense as a baseline, and for well-established professions. But, we argue, selecting talent for innovation requires a whole new approach. Companies must recognize specific innovation skills that drive business outcomes. Yet today, most lack the tools to do so.
How Innovation Fuels a Sense of Purpose in the Workplace
Drawing a connection between innovation and workplace purpose often eludes companies looking to hire the best people for their teams. Let’s take a look at what needs to happen to make this possible.
You’re Stifling Innovation, And You Don’t Even Know It
It is a common belief that encouraging creativity will lead to higher levels of innovation. In actuality, most organizations already have the creative ideas they need. But they are missing or outright rejecting them, and they don’t even realize they’re doing it.
How to Foster an Organizational Culture that Encourages Innovation
Innovative and forward-thinking companies are successful because they have new, exciting, and useful products or services before others and consumers take notice of companies regularly producing the next big thing. These companies are more effective and they can grow more rapidly because their company culture encourages innovation among their employees. A company of “intrapreneurs” can quickly become a successful and noteworthy company.
6 Potential Roadblocks to Innovation
Does it feel like your efforts in innovation lately have been…lackluster? Are you finding that your team just isn’t coming up with the great ideas you know they can produce? If your business is feeling stale and stagnant, you obviously want to know why, so you can make changes. Innovation efforts aren’t always simple and easy—and there are definitely some roadblocks that can come up along the way. Don’t get discouraged if you run into any of these common problems—you just have to be determined to prevent and work through them whenever possible!
9 Ways to Convert Employees into Intrapreneurs
Companies that encourage and reward intrapreneurship have a great advantage when it comes to retaining the best talents - especially important in today’s creative climate. Here are a few ways that your company can turn your employees into highly-engaged intrepreneurs.
HR Improvements that Can Build a Better Company
The role of HR has evolved significantly over the years. In the past, HR was focused only on hiring and making sure paychecks were sent to the right employees. Today, HR plays a much broader role in the strategic goals of a company. These following improvements can help your HR department meet your company goals.
The Part of the Innovation Process that Everyone Forgets
One of the biggest challenges to innovation is the middle part of the process - where most of the work is happening behind the scenes. As your innovation campaign progresses, you must continue to instill excitement across all team members, and find ways to reengage them as advocates. In this case study, we’ll examine how Dick’s Sporting Goods engaged their employees in product development and effectively encouraged them to participate in their innovation community.
Optimizing Meetings to Maximize Individual Brainstorming Time
Are you overwhelmed by unnecessary meetings? We’ve all been there: one more meeting, and you feel like you’re going to scream. You’ve been trying to make some real progress on your creative project, but the constant meetings have really been cutting into your individual brainstorming time. If you feel like the number of meetings you’ve been attending is cutting into your productivity, you’re not imagining it.