Innovation Strategy2021-06-18T07:55:04-07:00
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What Is Innovation Strategy?

September 30th, 2022|

Innovating doesn’t just happen when inspiration strikes. In order to ensure forward progress, a business has to create a structure that stimulates innovation regularly. This structure will determine the rate and efficacy of overall innovation and is commonly known as an innovation strategy. This article will define innovation strategy, discuss how to create one, and outline the main types of innovation. What Is Innovation Strategy? An innovation strategy is a plan that organizes future growth milestones in an effort to fill unmet customer needs. It will detail the value added to the product/service in the coming months and should evolve your business to better target an improved customer experience. An innovation plan will consist of the policies, research methods, [...]

What is the Process for an Employee Innovation Challenge?

January 19th, 2022|

A growing trend over the past several years has been to host internal innovation challenges. Companies do this because they find it’s an excellent way to find solutions to long-standing problems, positively create culture (particularly in a remote workplace), and also to nurture the budding intrapreneurs who want to find career growth and new opportunities.

Top Five Challenges When Pitching a New Idea

November 17th, 2021|

Hardly an innovation event passes without mentioning how Kodak passed on the digital camera or how Blockbuster decided not to invest in streaming entertainment. But with the rapid rate of disruption, how do you ensure that great ideas can penetrate established organizations?

Calculating the ROI of an Idea: Ideas That Saved Time

September 29th, 2021|

Crowdsourcing and open innovation initiatives are vital by bringing vast stakeholders together to share ideas on complex problems and opportunities. Much of the focus is set on engaging the crowd yet deciding which ideas to take a risk on requires data on the likely impacts and costs. 

What to Tell Your Boss When You Make the Case for Innovation Management

September 8th, 2021|

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.

Five Questions to Answer Before Crowdsourcing

June 24th, 2021|

As the director of the IdeaScale Crowd community, I recently had the opportunity to share some insights and best practices for innovators who are new to crowdsourcing, and may not have conducted their first campaign yet. We discussed five questions to ask as you prepare for your first campaign, why those questions are important, and some examples of good and bad answers to those questions.

Try Double-Handed Innovation

April 13th, 2021|

Most new products and services are developments or combinations of existing offerings. But just adding features can lead to a product overloaded with ‘feature bloat’. Instead try giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Add something different and take away something of little value. Start by focussing on the market leading product (or products). List its top features and identify the benefit which customers get from each of the features. What problems are solved and how important are they? Then prioritise the list. From a customer perspective which are the most valuable and least valuable features? You may need input from a survey or focus group to help at this stage. Ask what features could we add [...]

6 Ways to Innovate Your Business Model 

February 25th, 2021|

The pandemic has given us all an opportunity to build a new business future. Market disruption equals opportunity for those willing to look and work for it. This is the time to adjust and innovate your business model to market conditions. 

What Do Innovation Maturity Assessments Have in Common?

January 18th, 2021|

Building a repeatable model for innovation is a journey, not a trophy. An innovation department builds services and competencies across multiple disciplines – from research to communications and culture. And even with a dedicated innovation department, they must cooperate seamlessly with other parts of the business in order to deliver meaningful results on an ongoing basis.

Customer-Centric Innovation? Sure, But With Which Customers?

September 29th, 2020|

Today, putting customers at the heart of innovation is a no-brainer for most business managers. However, should the innovation process involve all customers or only specific segments? In this article we explore the hurdles of these initiatives and propose a method to select the most relevant customers with whom to innovate.

Four Ways to Innovate Right Now

July 2nd, 2020|

While the pandemic has been difficult for all us economically, as business owners, we never run out of opportunities. No matter the business climate, there is always a chance to do something new and something better—you just have to find it.

Five Aspects of Innovation Governance

June 5th, 2020|

The leverage point is to let innovation shine via effective governance discipline, but not adding too much complexity. In this article, we'll look at what innovation governance is, and practices to help you manage a successful innovation program.

Recession, Innovation and Survival – A Lesson from Kellogg’s

March 31st, 2020|

In times of severe recession should you cut costs and focus on survival or take the opportunity to invest in innovation so that you can benefit from the eventual recovery? Let's have a look at a case study of Kellogg's, which took a leap to invest in a new type of cereal - and that paid off even in the face of extreme adversity.

Digital Transformation and Its Impact on New-Product Management for Manufacturers

March 11th, 2020|

For the manufacturer undertaking new-product development, Digital Transformation means smart new products with embedded software. Digital products in turn require software and hardware development teams to work together – a hybrid project – which ultimately leads to combining software development methods with the more traditional gating process that manufacturers use.

3 Ways to Reduce Costs While Maintaining Business Integrity

January 31st, 2020|

Integrity is regularly considered one of the top characteristics that a business leader can have — whether you're asking employees or CFOs. Sometimes, however, business integrity is considered a cost or burden — a commitment that is almost guaranteed to make a business harder to run over time.