What is the New Model for Innovation Success?
In this series I’ve been critically examining the significant changes impacting the corporate innovation competency, which leads to how organisations drive future growth and impact.
3 Ways to Reduce Costs While Maintaining Business Integrity
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.
5 Tips to Create a Strong Product Vision
Every startup and growth-oriented business needs to focus on innovation in order to come up with compelling brand stories and messages, engaging products and services, and amazing marketing tactics that will put the company on the map and allow it to become an authority in its niche.
The Role of Top Management in Open Innovation
Implementing open innovation requires a shift in mindset and a change in culture. It requires individuals to be open for external ideas and to share knowledge. This is not the way innovation is managed traditionally. For individuals to behave in a way that fosters open innovation, support from the top management seems to be crucial. Is this really the case? Or are top executives too far away from the action when it comes to innovation and open innovation?
The Role of Top-Down Management in Enterprise Innovation
Running a successful enterprise innovation management program can be a challenging mission. Multiple factors have to be considered,each of which affect potential outcomes. One key aspect is the level of support an innovation program receives from an organization’s management. Connecting the needs of top-down management with the strategy and architecture of an innovation program will always lead to greater levels of success.
Two Ingredients for Pursuing Externally Focused Innovation
Organizations increasingly seek new forms of innovation—and, for themselves, transformation—by engaging in co-creation with the suppliers, clients, and consumers that comprise their value streams. What insights might be gained from organizations that have begun to realize their potential for leadership by embracing openness as a core element of their charter? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins reflects on the progress that the Beijing Genomics Institute (B.G.I.) has made on this front. What lessons does B.G.I. have to teach organizations that decide to paddle with the Digital Age currents as opposed to against them?
Measure the Maturity of Your Idea-to-Launch Process
We know that innovation capability is a critical driver of strategic growth targets. We also know that innovation success is not a one-time occurrence, but the result of an organization’s ability to conceive, develop and commercialize new products and services on a sustainable basis. In this article Dr. Scott J. Edgett discusses a model for measuring if your organization has a mature innovation process with well-internalized innovation capabilities.
The Value of De-Risking Lies In the Process
Mitigating the high failure rate associated with entrepreneurial endeavour is something that concerns investors as well as potential entrepreneurs - “do I risk myself?” is a lurking question many ask of themselves or the person putting money on the table.
Take Your Business Model to the Next Level
Your business model should answer two important questions: (1) What is your value proposition and (2) how are you organizing your company and your ecosystem to create this value. The 8 building blocks of the business model template help you to visualize your answers and think strategically about your business model.
A paradigm shift for SMEs: Leveraging Sustainability as a Driver for Innovation
SMEs have sustainability on their radar. Their main goal is economic sustainability. To achieve this goal, they can take ecological and social sustainability as an opportunity for innovation instead of just considering it as a mere cost driver. Thus innovation and sustainability become the two sides of the coin called profitable growth.
The Limits of Industry-Centered Strategic Thinking in an Era of Convergence
A decade ago, when purchasing a new cellphone,informed customers would likely choose between Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, or perhaps even Siemens. Today, youngsters, hipsters, techies and executives alike opt for Apple, Samsung and LG. What happened?
‘Borrow’ Business Models to Reinvent Your Industry
Most “new” business models are not really “new”. Very frequently they are based on replications or re-combinations of existing business model patterns. Consequently, learning from business models from other companies and industries is a very important source of inspiration for business model innovation.
Innovation and Culture – Two Halves of the Same Coin
There would be few organisations that did not cite innovation as a desirable quality in their workforce, whether as part of the whole organisational culture, or critical in one area. Over the past five years, with businesses being buffeted by economic storms, finding sources of innovation can be the difference between success and failure.
Enter the White Space – A Business Interpretation of Scott and Amundsen’s Race to the South Pole
The analyses and stories told about Amundsen and Scott’s fascinating and epic race to the South Pole are numerous. In this article I will try to make sense of the race in relation to the lessons derived in view of companies entering the white space[1] or aspiring to succeed with disruptive innovations. The lessons begin from using the holistic innovation management framework the Innovation Radar (IR) published in MIT Sloan Management Review in 2006[2].
Managing Innovation Portfolios – Operational Portfolio Management
This is the second of two articles, co-written by Ralph-Christian Ohr and Kevin McFarthing. In our previous post, we discussed how Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) ensures that the content of the portfolio is driven by innovation strategy and associated targets. We would now like to move on to Operational Portfolio Management (OPM), where the portfolio directs resource allocation, metrics and reporting on an operational and tactical level. The link between the two is shown in Figure 1 below.
Red One: a blue ocean in the cinematographic camera industry
In 2005, Jim Jannard (founder of Oakley) set up a company called RED Digital Cinema, with the specific aim of creating a ultra-high definition digital camera which would be as good as the 35 mm film cameras. This very successful strategic move that changed the 100 year-old cinematographic cameras industry is analyzed here through the logic of Blue Ocean Strategy - a theory grounded in the concept of value innovation.
Imperatives for an Effective Innovation Governance System
In this article, the final in a series of six, Professor Jean-Philippe Deschamps, discusses the imperatives for an effective innovation governance system. Innovation performance is often not directly dependent on the type of governance model used. Rather, innovation performance reflects the strength of top management’s commitment and engagement, and the credibility, skills and energy of the actors who under take the governance mission.
Innovation For International Markets – How Export Oriented Are Innovation Oriented SMEs In Europe?
The recent economic crisis has confronted companies across Europe with major challenges. Small and medium sized companies in particular seemed to have a customer base too reduced to maintain their business. In such a situation there are two options: invest in developing new customers or invest in developing new, more attractive, offerings.
PharmaX, the CEO’s Dilemma and Open Innovation – Part 2
In the first installment, Gordon the newly appointed CEO at Pharmax is confronted with an innovation gap of 5 years. Certainly, the potential of the portfolio is high, but the risks are even higher. With market pressure breathing down his neck, Gordon tries to make sense of the options that he has and make the right decisions.
Managing Innovation Portfolios – Strategic Portfolio Management
Facing increasingly dynamic and unpredictable environments, firms are required to develop convenient innovation strategies, constantly adapt them to changing conditions and properly implement strategically aligned initiatives throughout their organizations. Innovation portfolio management (IPM) can act as the pivotal tool to translate strategic objectives and priorities into project-based innovation activities. Furthermore, it provides a framework to convert raw ideas into real investment opportunities, based on their risk profile.
Mastering the Innovation Process
The innovation system described in The Innovation Master Plan provides a comprehensive approach to a difficult, challenging, and significant problem for organizations, the problem of how to manage innovation in the face of excruciating change.
PharmaX, the CEO’s Dilemma and Open Innovation – Part 1
We are on the executive floor of the imaginary pharmaceutical company PharmaX, it is Q3 and the top management is preparing for the annual innovation review. The year has been tough with revenue being hit by generic competition as their major products come off patent, but then it has been difficult for all the industry. This is the first article in a series of three. Parts 2 & 3 will be published in the next 2 weeks.
Open Innovation – An Integrated Tool in Siemens
“If Open Innovation is not seen as a long term capability building exercise then it will fail”. In this interview Thomas Lackner, Head of Open Innovation and Scouting at Siemens Corporate Technology, shares some of his experiences and how Siemens has evolved on the open innovation front. Thomas, who has been personally involved in many of Siemen’s innovation programs, also elaborates on some critical success factors that strongly influenced the outcome and quality of their programs.
Leading Innovation in Multinational Subsidiaries – Part 3
The changing global economy creates special challenges for leaders of multinational subsidiaries. History shows that innovation is key to survival. This series of articles explores this challenge and offers subsidiary leaders a way to identify and implement innovative strategies to sustain local operations and create added value for their parent corporation. It also looks at how corporate managers can help drive more innovation from global subsidiaries.
Does Open Innovation lead to Faster Growth?
A recent study from the UK Innovation Research centre set out to examine how companies were using open innovation. The report makes a thought-provoking comparison of the innovation styles of companies. It indicates that those companies that are active in open innovation in both giving and receiving ideas achieve higher rates of innovation and of revenue growth.
Your Consumer and the Innovation Equation – Why They May Not Be Involved Enough
Identifying (let alone creating) a new innovation that will dramatically grow your business is difficult. Line extensions and product / package refreshes will keep the business moving forward and engaged with consumers. But what about the breakthrough innovation that executives are expecting? Transformational innovation requires significant investment, risk taking, and preparation which can be a challenge to coordinate.
Stakeholder Co-Creation: The firm as an orchestrator in innovation projects
Nowadays, firms simultaneously include a higher variety of different stakeholders than ever before in their innovation process. Such a diverse collective brings in different perspectives and competences, yet, also poses new challenges for firms. This article presents insight into the capabilities required for a leading firm in a stakeholder co-creation project, acting as a conductor of an orchestra of stakeholders.
How to Get the Most from your Innovation Software: Key Process Considerations
The first article in this series focusing on collaborative enterprise innovation explains how software can help engage your enterprise in innovation and shares experiences from clients as to the other key activities required to make a ‘software-enabled’ program successful over many years.