How to Build a Lean High Performance Innovation Team
The world we live in is changing at a dizzying rate and sectors including energy, technology, entertainment, communications, finance, sports, manufacturing and engineering are all experiencing shifts on a seismic scale. Many of the innovative advances of the past ten years, from smart phones to digital cameras have become commoditised and creativity has become the currency of success. In this article author Matthew Griffin shows how large and small organisations alike can build lean, agile, high performance innovations teams and bridge any shift successfully.
Four of Five Social Innovators Recommend…
Gartner predicts that four of five large enterprises that pursue social innovation with their employees and the world at large will, over the next couple years, fail in their endeavors. Ouch. Meatloaf gave better odds. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores how you might increase the odds of gaining a coveted membership to the twenty percent club.
Why Managers Fear Innovation
Innovation is a paradox for management. On the one hand you are well aware that you have to take new roads before you reach the end of the present dead end street. On the other hand it is risky. It takes a lot of time. And it takes a lot of resources. Research shows that only one out of seven innovation projects is successful. So saying yes to innovation is a step into the unknown. It creates fear of failure, which causes fear to innovate. It's like sailing to the South Pole like Shackleton, where the surrounding ice can stop you any moment.
The Seven Essential Characteristics of Innovative Companies
What makes a company innovative? Innovation is nothing more than a tool that enables companies to achieve unique, strategic goals. It should not simply be a slogan, nor an end unto itself, argues Jeffrey Baumgartner. To be truly innovative, an organization should have seven essential characteristics.
Foment Your Culture of Innovation
Many seek a culture of innovation for their organization. What characterizes such a culture? How would you know if you have one? Would your colleagues agree? In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins reflects on the characteristics that comprise a culture of innovation. He explores, too, how people might assess the state of their organization as a first step in fomenting a culture of innovation.
How to Effectively Manage the Fuzzy Back End of Innovation
You have doubtless heard of the fuzzy front end of innovation. It is another name for idea generation. But Jeffrey Baumgartner believes that the back end of innovation, where implementation is supposed to take place, is just as fuzzy. Many companies lack clear, efficient processes for implementing the ideas they generate.
Are you Called to be an Innovation Leader?
If you want to be innovative, you need to be a leader. No individual or organization has become an innovative one by copying the actions of their competitors or peers. That may seem obvious, but evidence shows that most people fail to realize this critical fact.
The Innovation F-word
Fail fast. Fail cheap. Fail early. Go out to fail. We have all heard these words numerous times in connection to innovation and how to create radical innovation, the ultimate dream for all of us involved in the field. In fact the f-word is used so frequently in connection to innovation that it is about to become yet another meaningless slogan. Why is failure so hard? In this blog post Susanna Bill takes failure out of slogans and into a human orientated perspective.
Five Ways to Commit Innovation Suicide
Customers change. Competitors change. Technology changes. If you don’t do anything, new and competitive products catch up and overtake your products and services quickly. A study by A.D. Little has shown that the life cycle of products has decreased by factor 4 the last fifty years. So innovation is essential. But it is time consuming. It demands a lot of resources. And a positive outcome is very uncertain. In this blog Gijs van Wulfen offers a helping hand by identifying five common mistakes to avoid.
A Lesson in Innovation – Why did the Segway Fail?
The Segway PT is a two-wheeled, self-balancing battery electric vehicle invented by Dean Kamen. It was launched in 2001 in a blizzard of publicity. Yet it has failed to gain significant market acceptance and is now something of a curiosity. In this article Paul Sloane takes a look at what lessons to be learned from the failure.
10 Tips for Successful Innovation Teams
Innovation projects are said to fail 90% of the time. Why is this? Part of the answer lies in the special “innovation teams” who are mandated with finding breakthrough growth in large corporations. Setting these teams up for success is vital, yet corporations often fail when doing this. This article provides a collection of ten tips that serve as a talent management roadmap for growth companies in search of high-performance teams that deliver.
Innovation: Should you Roll the Dice?
Paul Sloane uses a gambling analogy to show how uncertain innovation is and why senior management isn't likely to approve a new idea after several failures in a row.
A New Approach to Manage Disruptive Innovation in an Environment of High Uncertainty
Existing methods for the management of innovation projects have a low probability of success in the development of radical or disruptive innovations. A new spiral approach has been developed that provides the balance of flexibility and control needed for a repeatable and successful approach to disruptive innovation.
Resilience Rules
Western societies and the systems we depend on to make them function are becoming ever more complex. As a result, they are also becoming more vulnerable to catastrophic, systemic failure. As individuals, communities and societies we may, at the same time, be becoming less able to cope with such events as we lose basic skills, families are more scattered and communities less connected.
Why do Most Products Fail? 3 Techniques to Leverage Hidden Needs
Many managers want their organizations to develop breakthrough products and ask their R&D departments to come up with the equivalent of the iPod or iPhone. Unfortunately, the reality is that product failure is more common than success. So what are the reasons for product failure and what steps can companies take to avoid it?
35 Ways to Cultivate Innovation and Organizational Learning
Innovation and organizational learning are inextricably connected. A company must learn from its mistakes and cultivate multiple pathways for recognizing and leveraging the best ideas effectively, whether those ideas come from inside or outside of the organization, says Jim Clemmer. Here are 35 ways to sharpen your organizational "innovation radar," to accelerate learning cycles and recognize and capitalize on opportunities faster.
4 Key Success Factors That Can Enable a Higher Return on Innovation
In a slow or no-growth environment, we know successful innovation is absolutely essential for companies to establish and maintain a competitive advantage. While that may be yesterday’s news, achieving it is hard work. How can you achieve high value from your innovation initiatives? In this article Adi Alon discusses four key success factors that can help you get a higher return on innovation.
What Artists can Teach Creative Thinkers
Artists are innately creative, of course. That's why the rest of us, who are seeking to expand our creative powers, can learn much from them. Danielle Feliciano highlights three characteristics that we can borrow from artists to spur our own creative muse.
Can we Dent the Universe, Too? 6 tips for Innovation Inspired by Steve Jobs
Jobs had a spectacular innovation compass; some of its directions can guide our inner innovators too, according to Andrew Sherman.
In Praise of Bad Ideas
We’ve all been there; a brainstorming session, presentation, meeting or other group event when somebody blurts out what is clearly the worst idea in the world. But bad ideas can be good. Harvey Briggs explores why.
How Improvisational Techniques can Benefit Innovators
The techniques of improvisational performance can be applied in helpful ways to any situation where people are collaborating to innovate or build something, says improv expert Kat Koppett.
The Top 6 Predictors of Creative Performance in the Workplace
Is it possible to accurately predict if a person will be an effective creative thinker at work? After conducting rigorous tests, one Australian innovation firm says definitely yes.
Asking the Important Questions: A Guide to Design Thinking And a Better Way to Serve Customers
Design thinking should be a way of life for senior managers. Melba Kurman spoke to Sara Beckman, design and innovation expert at Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, about how to apply design thinking to the innovation process.
Managing Innovation Through the Stress Points
Building innovation management as a discipline requires us to take a closer look at the hurdles innovative firms face as they develop new products, services and partnerships but also at how those firms integrate the learnings from making tough choices. Andrew Gaule takes a look at building innovation culture as we manage through the stress points.