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.
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.
5 Ways to Improve Your Small Office Culture
Employers often seek cost effective, informal ways to enhance office culture. These strategies usually involve improving channels of communication in very basic, informal ways. But every company is not the same. Small companies have the advantage of creating a unique culture with no visible boundaries. So how can these organizations take advantage of this?
The Ticking Talent Time Bomb and Its Impact on Established Corporations
When I meet with corporate leaders we invariably get onto the topic of their business challenges. Some reoccurring themes that are increased competition, cost / margin pressures, regulatory hassles, globalization, etc. However, the more recent discussions have centered around one theme. Talent.
How Do You Measure Innovation Fitness?
The human body serves as the perfect metaphor for understanding the innovation challenge facing today's organizations. The body is built to adapt and respond to demands that are placed upon it. The greater the demand, the stronger the response. If you and your organization are going to thrive in this world you must build and keep your innovation muscles strong. We know that only the fittest survive.
Taking the Guesswork Out of Innovation
Innovation has become a bit of a business buzzword. Every CEO and CIO worth their salt wants to be seen to be on the forefront, bringing new products and services to a market. However, it doesn’t always go to plan, and rushing in to things head first without the proper due diligence can land a company in hot water.
25 Steps to Jump-Start your Innovation Journey
We’ve covered some essential ground to help you prepare your innovation journey, and now it’s time to put these concepts into action. The innovation formula addresses the very specific tasks that have to be accomplished for innovation to emerge from your organization not only as a matter of luck or at random, but through a concentrated effort that results in sustained innovation performance. Here you will find the Taking Action steps along with 25 additional suggestions that we hope will help you to think and plan creatively and productively about how to make innovation a reality in your organization.
Do You Really Want Disruptive Innovation?
What company wouldn’t want to come out with the next iPhone, online bookstore or Swiffer mop? In the right circumstances disruptive innovation can be a valid path to drive the long-term survival and growth of a mature organization. But Anthony Ferrier argues that most companies are not in that environment. They talk (a lot) about pursuing disruptive innovation, but the reality is that they don’t really want, or are able, to support it.
Strong Businesses Need Strong Recognition Programs
It is the duty of management to ensure that the human capital they are responsible for are working productively. Appropriate recognition of excellent work by employees is a huge part of having a happy and productive workforce with less turnover. If employees are starting to work less efficiently, it may be time to reinvent management practices to rejuvenate your company culture.
The Battle Between Innovation and Managers
Innovation initiatives have a habit of causing excitement and expectation; the organisation is trying something different and wanting to do new things. Senior management are anticipating the brand new shiny ideas, and front-line employees can’t wait to be rid of their daily frustrations. So what could go wrong? However, in all this excitement, there’s a group that is usually neglected in the engagement strategy – the middle managers. Often it’s assumed that these managers will support all the company initiatives. It’s their role to toe the line and make sure others do. They’ll buy in surely? Actually, they don’t.
Emergence: The Next Efficient Evolution of Crowd-Sourced Innovation
Surfing the crowd has hit the mainstream…Young, agile firms have always been known for their disruptive ideas. Increasingly, enterprises are keen to foster a similar innovation culture so that great concepts can surface even in a company with thousands of employees. The challenge comes when there are many layers of management and frontline workers are struggling to navigate the corporate hierarchy so their ideas are heard by the leadership team. In a bid to transform its business, Microsoft recently announced it would cut thousands of middle management jobs to ease the flow of information and decision making, ‘no longer respecting tradition but only innovation’.
4 Ways To Encourage Innovation In Your Startup Business
As the market becomes saturated, it becomes difficult for many businesses, especially startup enterprises, to stay on top of their competitions. Technology has paved a way for firms to revolutionize their marketing and management strategies. Another tried and tested way to infiltrate their specific markets successfully is to inspire innovation within their offices, from employees to their brand.
How a Safe Workplace Can Lead to More Innovation
Maintaining a safe workplace is obviously very important if you want to avoid costly accidents and injuries on the job, but it has several other benefits as well. In this article, Tom Reddon highlights a few reasons why keeping a safe workplace makes good business sense.
An Innovation Portal…I Can Do That Myself
Innovation portals have taken an important place in the open innovation landscape. Expectations are great in portal performance but often, for purely budgetary reasons, these portals are launched and managed internally by corporates themselves, to discover that they generate a number of community management issues that they are not used to coping with. Prior to launching a corporate portal it is a good idea to ask a few specific questions on whether to do this internally or through experienced third party innovation providers. Using external resources can often avoid pitfalls and align the portal success rate to corporate expectations, objectives and ambitions. Here six questions are asked that can help you take the decision whether to launch a managed portal internally or externally.
3 Ways To Scale Up Your Business In 2015
In 2014, you did all the right things and your business began to take off like a Harrier Jump Jet. However, now that you’ve been cruising at a high altitude for awhile, you can either choose to stay on course or go to a new level of elite performance.
7-Tips To Consider Around Your Innovation Training Efforts
As more companies examine employee-focused innovation training efforts, this article offers some crucial tips to ensure the long-term success associated with this important task.
Intrapreneurs, Catalysts, Champions, etc: The Changing Needs Within Innovation Development
In part three of this series Anthony Ferrier considers why organizations are seeking ways to identify, engage and drive their employees towards innovative activities, with titles such as Intrapreneaurs, Innovation Catalysts, Innovation Champions, etc.
A Myriad of Ways to Being Creative
Have you seen this equation: innovative = creative? Novelty always comes from “outside the box,” right? It’s a land of confusion to many, who then conclude they are just not the creative type. As a result, organizations lose out because being innovative is but one of a myriad of ways to being creative. All people can be creative—in their own way.
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.
Fueling Your Employees’ Entrepreneurial Spirit: A New Approach to Intrapreneurs and the Value They Create
Cast your mind back, to pre-2008 times, when bright and bushy tailed graduates would come out of business school looking for roles in the relevant employers of choice. Generally those organizations were large businesses, providing incentives such as expensive dinners, a career advancement path and generous financial packages.
New HR and Talent Partnerships to Drive Innovation Value
As the global economy improves, many progressive HR leaders are focusing attention on better leveraging innovative activities from across the organization. The resulting new level of partnership and support not only enhance existing employee focused metrics (such as employee engagement), but also align HR / Talent more closely with generating direct financial impact and growth to the organization. This whitepaper provides a high-level overview of how these new approaches can work and steps to consider before proceeding.
Fun and Games – Changing the World of Innovation Assessments
Innovation Assessment is one of the pillars of an innovation program. Evaluation should be done as an on-going activity and revised with the most valuable feedback gathered along the entire innovation journey. In the third of a series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, we are going to propose a different approach for Innovation Assessment that by offering a different user experience could increase awareness, engagement and elicit more valuable contributions from key stakeholders.
Beyond Tech and Elusive Geniuses – The Everyday Innovation Heroes
Apple, Google and General Electric success stories centre on groundbreaking characters and geniuses. But 99% of companies worldwide are unlike any of these. Most organisations are made up of people like you and me: reasonably proficient in innovation management but surrounded by innovation agnostics. People who can share with us the tough, yet stirring mission of pushing boundaries to shape a bit of future.
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.
Intrapreneurship: From Playing Hide and Seek to The Dismantling of Classic Hierarchy. Where are You At?
We bet you hear the word innovation at least a dozen times a day, if not more. Every single company seems to be thinking of, planning for, and somehow doing innovation in some way. With so many ideas, frameworks and success stories, how can you cut through the noise and capture what’s most relevant for your company?
Paving the Path for Innovation Purpose and Closing the Alignment Gap
Defining the organizational purpose and promoting organizational alignment are two key factors for creating a culture that supports innovation. In this series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, we are going to share insights and cases of organizations that implemented innovation programs (and less structured initiatives) with the involvement of a wide range of managers and employees.
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.