How the Next Wave of Innovators Can Rebuild the Economy After a Crisis
Innovation takes many forms, and it will likely come from unexpected places in the next normal. Here are 3 ways business leaders can drive innovation regardless of what happens in the world.
Peace through Entrepreneurship: How Businesses Can Be a Force for Unity
Cyprus is politically divided, movement is restricted, and there are two different authorities and sets of laws. How can innovation and entrepreneurship thrive in such a polarized environment - and alternatively, how does that polarization drive innovation?
Four lessons from M-Pesa on Innovation Adoption
M-Pesa, a mobile-based financial service, did not follow a linear, step-by-step innovation process. In this article, Eivor Oborn follows M-Pesa's rapid trajectory to unearth how people who used it in Kenya, and how that helped the company adapt its product development.
A More Innovative Europe? Think Different About Innovation!
In Brussels, the Research & Innovation Program Horizon Europe (FP9) is the talk of ‘EU town’. Horizon Europe is hoped to be the great leap forward of Europe to close the innovation gap to the US and stay ahead of the emerging innovation giant China in the coming years.
How Education Can Advance and Innovate Your Business
Education is a powerful vehicle for professional growth. It’s now more affordable, and recent technological innovations have made it easier for employees to acquire and advance their skillsets.
Changes to Drive More Value from Your Innovation / Ideation Platform
In our previous article we focused on some of the serious issues being faced by clients and vendors who are working with innovation / ideation platforms.
7 Mistakes to Avoid when Measuring Innovation
Measuring innovation is one of the most ambiguous tasks when engaging in innovation management. Because of the complex nature of innovation, finding the right metrics is far from being simple.
How Technology Can Augment Human Collaboration
Innovation requires collaboration, but collaboration is stuck in a rut. Data science can help us climb out. It can increase the scale, the intentionality, and the nuance of how we collaborate. With the right data and algorithms, we can set our teams up to do something innovative.
The i-Word
Is there any word more fundamental to the modern business lexicon than ‘innovation’? To say that it forms an important part of enterprise is probably an understatement.
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.
Is Your Team Proficient in the 3 Cs of Innovation?
When leaders foster a culture of innovation, they enable their teams to be creative, flexible problem-solvers who thrive in the face of change. But what is a culture of innovation? And how does a leader begin to foster one? Building a culture of innovation originates with embracing The 3 Cs: critical thinking, curiosity, and customer-centric design.
Lessons from Apple on Why Aesthetic Innovation is Important
It’s pretty much impossible to argue with Apple’s success. It’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, and has maintained dominance for its reputation as an innovative company that produces top-of-the-line hardware. Because of its products and brand reputation, Apple has gained a cult following that will buy nearly every new product that emerges, year after year. So why, even with the high price tag, are so many consumers willing to shell out for every new gadget that comes along?
Why Your Business Transformations Fail
Ambitious and impractical business schemes can often lack the fundamental elements needed to make them a reality, leaving huge expense and casualties of the blame game in their wake. The business world is littered with the remnants of unrealised programs and unsuccessful plans for development, several of them so high profile as to have attracted national notoriety.
How the Innovation Principle Supplements and Balances the Precautionary Principle
The aim of the precautionary principle seems laudable: lacking scientific consensus, the burden of proof for an action or policy not being harmful to the public or to the environment lies on those taking that action. In practice, however, this principle has proven a deterrent for innovation - particularly within the EU. How can the innovation principle - that is, examining new policies or plans for a negative impact they have on innovation - help to supplement and balance out the precautionary principle?
Where to Start with Innovation? Begin by removing the Barriers
Surveys show that the large majority of senior executives see innovation as critical for their businesses but what if you want to make your organization more agile and innovative where should you start? You could launch a big initiative with grand statements, training classes and an ideas scheme but you tried all those last year and they fizzled out. It is better to begin with a brutally honest assessment of what is preventing innovation from happening today.
Five Ways Sustainable Innovation is Different from Normal Innovation
Today's innovation rules were forged in a world that paid little attention to sustainability, where profit was separate from this higher purpose. Yet the disruptive nature of sustainability must surely change the way we innovate too. We must continue to reinvent our innovation processes to ensure it is fit for a changing world, in the five ways highlighted here.
A Look Back at Three Innovations that Have Changed Our Lives
Nowadays, the words “innovation” and “creativity” get thrown around a lot in the business and academic world. But the road to making successful innovations is filled with challenges, opportunities taken or missed, and plenty strikes of luck. Often, people invent machines to face a recurrent problem. These inventions, in turn, spawn other inventions and innovation. These types of inventions have the most impact on society. Here’s looking at three inventions that have changed our lives forever.
Three Hurdles to Sustainable Innovation
Most people agree on the importance of sustainability in innovation, so why is it difficult to deliver? In this article, we’ll explore three hurdles to sustainable innovation: it’s often not considered by innovators themselves as they plan their projects; sustainability is not framed as an exciting and imaginative opportunity; and that sustainable innovation may not fit into a company’s ongoing processes.
The Engineering Behind Modern Superstructures
Human talent, drive and innovation can achieve incredible feats - and what more tangible example than modern superstructures? Let’s take a look at some of the drivers behind building bigger and better buildings worldwide, from improved materials, to cross-sector collaboration and beyond.
Are Corporate Innovation Centers The Last Hope for Companies Too Big To Fail?
Companies once deemed “too big to fail” are increasingly exposed to failure. The threat of disruption is everywhere. Startups are taking on the Goliaths in every market. Scores of malls across the United States are in collapse. Many household brand names are losing ground or even shutting completely. Regardless of industry, businesses face digital Darwinism, the evolution of technology and markets. Disruption is just a matter of when, where and why. To compete, executives must make tough decisions but more so, they must look to new horizons for new insight and direction. Whether companies thrive or cower in the face of digital Darwinism is a choice.
What Do Innovators Look Like?
Crowdsourced innovation is a tactic used more and more often by government organizations as well as enterprise corporations. This means that innovation teams need to add a new skill set to their resumé: communications.
Innovation Through Cross-Industry Learning: How is it Changing the World?
Cross industry learning, the transfer of technologies across industry boundaries, can revolutionize technology landscapes. We will illustrate the advantages of cross industry learning with a case study.
3 Advantages to Collaborating on Innovation as a Global Community
The list of problems that need to be solved is growing almost as fast as our solutions are. Some are concerned about the lack of food and water security, others worry about access to education and a whopping 45.2% of millennials think today’s most pressing problem is the destruction of natural resources. But with the proliferation of problems, organizations and enterprises are broadening their search for innovative solutions and many of them are looking to the crowd for ideas.
Rebuild Personas According to Your Next Product Innovation
Using personas in your design thinking framework is important, but are the results satisfying and clear? In this article, Product Innovation Manager Alex Igor Sanghikian discusses the Adjacent Possibilities framework for product management. By exclusively focusing on your persona’s one main need and trying hard to fulfill that need with your product, you can build the next feature with a more focused vision.
The Four Essential Steps Towards Open Innovation Success
Although ‘open innovation’ is the talk of the town in R&D circles, leveraging external sources of innovation remains challenging for most companies. In 2013, researchers Dr. Joel West (Keck Graduate, Institute of Applied Life Sciences) and Dr. Marcel Bogers (University of Southern Denmark) suggested a four-phase model for inbound innovation projects. They emphasized that open innovation needs to go further than just obtaining external ideas. Integration, commercialization and the interaction between the firm and its collaborators are just as important. This post explores the four essential steps towards open innovation success.
How Improvisation can Boost Innovation
If you have an innovative culture already in place (meaning you’re working with stuff like agile project management, design thinking, lean, etc.) perhaps it’s time you consider Applied Improvisation Training. If instead you are a static and uncommunicative company, Applied Improvisation may even work against your innovation efforts. Edoardo Binda Zane explains more.
Executing on Innovation – The Required Key Ingredients
Innovation: We all have seen the biggest, most successful companies talk about it and share their success stories. We have read about it in the latest business journals and magazines. We all want it in our organization but the right recipe with the right ingredients is often elusive. In this article we will share different views and discuss key ingredients required to create, execute, and innovate in your organization.
Involving Citizens in Government Product Development
The election of 2016 will certainly be one for the history books. Regardless of your political leanings, there was one sure thing to celebrate during this election cycle. The Innovate Your State Fix California Challenge—a crowdsourcing campaign aimed at promoting public participation in order to determine ways to improve government—had an initiative on the ballot in California!