An Innovation Competition is a Great Way to Influence Culture
In a 2017 Harvard Business Review article, Anna Steinhage, Dan Cable, and Duncan Wardley talk about the impact competition can have in a workplace. They described how hosting an internal challenge can generate creative results and inspire collaboration or it can create unethical behaviors and cutthroat rivalry.
The Six Pillars of Innovation Culture
Every year, IdeaScale asks our customers what their main priorities are for the coming year, and without fail one of the top two priorities is to create a culture of innovation. Every innovation thought leader, every organizational engagement specialist, every pundit or leader in transformation says that this is the secret to avoiding disruption.
Five Reasons Why You Should Think Like a Criminal
Have you seen the movie The Day of the Jackal? In this 1973 film directed by Fred Zinnemann, Edward Fox plays a professional assassin, the "Jackal," who is hired to assassinate French president Charles de [...]
Innovation Programs & Entrepreneurship: Busting Myths
A lot of companies aspire to implement successful innovation programs but the programs fail surrounded by certain myths. A seasoned entrepreneur has bust those myths in the article based on his personal experience.
Taking an Audience-Centric Approach During the Tech Adoption Lifecycle
Most marketing professionals understand that insight into the hearts and minds of your customers is central to successful product innovation. But which customers? Who is going to buy my product first? What happens after that? How can I eventually grow my customer base to one billion people?
The Gospel for the 2019 Agenda – Innovation
About ten years ago, four out of ten people in the world had a Nokia cell phone. We can only imagine how the CEO of Nokia ten years ago would have reacted if someone told him that in 2018 not one of us would have a Nokia.
Five Causes of Innovation Blues
The key to innovation success is simple---innovation is nothing without exploration and exploitation.
7 Lessons You Can Learn from Your Previous Business Mistakes
We’ve heard it time and time again – 90% of startups fail in the first five years of operating. Bad financial decisions, a poorly designed business model, a wrong product for the market, financial mismanagement, and bad timing are just some of the most commonly cited reasons why some businesses never manage to pass the five-year threshold.
3 Ways How DRaaS Can Help to Save Your Business
Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is a category of cloud computing designed to protect applications and data against natural and human disasters. It ensures that service disruption of a business is kept to a minimum by enabling a full recovery through the cloud. Most often it is handled by a third-party provider and managed by your internal IT personnel, removing some workload from your IT professionals and giving them peace of mind.
Small Businesses can Overcome Financial Woes Through Innovation
Starting up a small business can be rough. Even if you possess near-infinite entrepreneurial spirit, chances are that you’ll run into some roadblocks along the way. Whether these obstacles are based in logistics of strategy and implementation of your business model, or even issues with the very products and services you offer, most of these problems can be solved with financial influx.
5 Things that Are Slowing Most SMBs Down
On your path towards success, your business will encounter numerous bumps, however, some of these problems tend to hold your business more than others. Most of the time, the entrepreneurs behind these SMBs are first-timers, which means that they lack the necessary experience to recognize the gravity of the situation in the given moment.
Priorities for Building an Innovation Culture
The 97th Floor Mastermind Series recently interviewed IdeaScale about our company, our industry, our vision for the future and more, but we thought that one of their questions about what values we look out for when building a team are worth repeating here for those of you that are looking to build a culture of innovation at your company (whether it’s start-up sized like IdeaScale or not).
Using Failure to Spur Innovation
It hurts to fail. The feeling of defeat can make even the hardest of workers feel worthless. It’s hard to face the reality that your work or dreams won’t live up to your expectations, and giving up might seem like the next step. However, failure teaches important lessons, and though it seems contradictory, it can often lead to success. Failure gives you the necessary experience you need to improve, but more importantly, it teaches you to get back up.
Six Companies that Thrived after Bankruptcy
Retailers all over the United States are filing for bankruptcy at unprecedented levels. This is, in part, due to the ways the global economy has evolved. Now, more than ever, retailers are turning to the internet for sales, and consumer habits have adapted. Bankruptcy is an alarming and confusing process whether you’re a CEO of a large corporation or an individual who is worried about the implications it might have on your credit score.
Freedom to Fail, Freedom to Innovate
Everyone seems to agree that innovation is a risky business: it involves a lot of experimentation, which often ends up in failure. High tolerance for failure therefore can be considered as a major prerequisite for any successful innovation program.
Don’t “Fiddle” with the Crowd – Ask it Better Questions Instead
As the examples of successful use of crowdsourcing to address complex technical, business and social issues grow in numbers, so do the instances of failed crowdsourcing campaigns. To make crowdsourcing a widely recognized idea-generating and problem-solving tool, it’s imperative to understand the reasons of why this tool can fail or underperform.
7 Ways Startups can Foster Innovation through Sustainability
Here’s a spoiler: 90% of all startups fail. The 10% that make it have one thing in common - they all are bringing in innovation through sustainability. These startups are all about evolving by providing faster results with less wastage. It’s a never ending process of innovating for the present and future generations.
Seven Good Reasons Not to Innovate
Innovation is risky. Customers are not asking for it. We are already successful… Getting momentum behind significant innovation is difficult, and sometimes it’s easier for a business to stay in what they deem a safe spot. Let’s look at seven arguments that inhibit innovation as well as their counter arguments.
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.
The Innovator’s Dilemma: Lessons from Kodak
I guess everyone knows the tragic story of the EastmanKodak Company: founded in the 19th century, dominating the photographic film market during most of the 20th century and finally collapsing into bankruptcy in the early 21st century, shaken by a new technology they had once decisively initiated.
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.
Considering International Expansion? Get Ready To Think Outside Your Comfort Zone
Globalization is great for business: it opens up new markets and allows businesses to bring in revenue and talent from all over the world. However, the first steps into international expansion can be fraught with growing pains, forcing companies to waste time and money on efforts that don’t gain any traction in foreign markets. To avoid this, company leaders have to get ready to embrace change and innovation outside their normal comfort zone. Here’s why it’s important to get comfortable with discomfort when you’re considering international expansion.
What Do the Best Innovation Programs Have in Common?
An in-house innovation program is becoming a common fixture in the most competitive organizations. However, in a recessed economy, these research & development programs can sometimes get eliminated, because they struggle to prove or articulate value.
Intrapreneurial Success: Leading Disruption, Managing Change
Embracing an intrapreneurial mindset, which intentionally disrupts things from the inside out and often from the bottom up, is a radical concept for companies that thrive on stability and predictability. However, if an enterprise is committed to developing its innovation capability through intrapreneurship, three groups of people must be mobilized to make it happen: leadership, stakeholders, and innovation support.