Five Innovation Practices for Building & Managing an Innovation Program
There is no “one size fits all” formula for innovation management success. Demystifying innovation takes experiments and practices. In this article, we'll explore five tactics to use in order to develop and manage a successful innovation program.
Three Steps to Becoming a Data Leader
In the aftermath of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), businesses aren’t crying out for data superheroes; but for a complete, well-drilled data army. According to Gartner's Research Vice President, Mario Faria, 90% of businesses will employ a Chief Data Officer (CDO) by the end of this year. However, in a world increasingly governed by data, it is no longer the sole responsibility of a c-suite to ensure compliance – every individual is equally accountable for protecting consumers’ privacy.
A Strategic Approach to Starting a Successful Innovation Program
I’ve recently been advising a range of leaders in how to start successful innovation programs. A couple are relaunches of efforts that were abandoned in the past, and others are starting from scratch in organizations (and sectors) that are more comfortable with the status quo.
Six ways to make top executives understand innovation
It is a major challenge for an innovation leader to operate in an environment where the top executives don
Be Careful: Downsizing your Workforce Downsizes Innovation, Too
There are two key reasons why downsizing is bad for innovation. Neither is immediately obvious, explains Jeffrey Baumgartner in this must-read article.
Innovation strategy: What business are we in?
What is it that your business really sells? What is the true value that customers get from your products or services? When you know the answers to these questions you can start to conceive new ways to provide that value. It is the starting point for real innovation, according to Paul Sloane.
The innovation ‘war room’
The key to surviving the global downturn is to focus on strategic renewal - adapting your company and its business models and strategies to the new market conditions - according to author Rowan Gibson.
Managing change in an innovative world
Natalie Jenkins explains how adopting a set of creative thinking methods can help to prepare you for today's world of constant change and upheaval.
Effective Idea Selection is Critical to Systematic Innovation
In many companies there is no obvious strategy for selecting or even evaluating ideas. According to author Robert B. Tucker, a clear set of criteria for screening ideas and having properly-trained people on the selection team is critical to systematic innovation.
The Best Strategies for Dealing with Disruptive Innovation
What lessons can you learn about handling disruptive innovation? Author Jeffrey Baumgartner uses several examples from the photography market to highlight successful strategies for dealing with this increasingly common phenomenon.
How do you Connect Innovation to Business Strategy?
The third major issue to be tackled by our distinguished panel of innovation practitioners is connecting innovation to business strategy. Specifically, how do you connect innovation to business strategy, and get the funding and senior management commitment to follow through on both short- and long-term innovation initiatives?
Creating a Culture of Innovation
Years of cost-cutting and focus on process excellence have created in many firms a culture that is focused on operational excellence and risk avoidance. For innovation to succeed as a corporate objective, the culture must change to accommodate the risk and uncertainty that accompanies an innovation focus. Luckily, several important levers can help you change the culture, as Jeffrey Phillips explains.
Questioning: An Underutilized Innovation Strategy
One of the most powerful innovation tools available to every member of a group - be it a team, a company division or an organization - is a tool that those individuals are often reluctant to use. The tool I am talking about, of course, is: questioning.
Innovation strategy: Leveraging the power of being an outsider
Why is it that, in industry after industry, it's almost always the outsider that develops the breakthrough innovations? Paul Graham, in a ChangeThis essay entitled The Power of the Marginal, tackles this issue and comes up with some really intriguing insights. He deconstructs the power of the outsider, and offers some helpful strategies for thinking like one.
The Great Innovation Lie
Often, organizations have a tendency to turn innovation into a highly complex system involving numerous processes, approaches and models. Here's a little secret: It doesn't need to be complex to be effective.
How to connect corporate objectives and investment in innovation
Innovation may be the watchword of the executive team, but desire does not necessarily lead to the right level of real, sustained commitment. Now, a recent study by Imaginatik Research, building on previous work on the financial impact of innovation, has uncovered a simple, compelling connection between corporate objectives, and the generation and management of ideas and business opportunities.
Quality and Creativity: Enemies or Allies?
Can quality and creativity cohabit in the same house or are they natural enemies? Can a quality process be applied to innovation? Paul Sloane shares the answer in this insightful article.
A Process for Innovation Planning
All too often, hastily planned brainstorming sessions bring up a lot of good ideas that somehow never get used, while the boring kinds of ideas you are trying to get away from seem to be used again and again. One reason for this is the lack of an innovation plan, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Brainstorming Techniques for New Product Development
There are several ways to incorporate brainstorming into a new product development session. Here are two of the most productive techniques.
Innovation: A Leadership Issue
Creating a sustainable innovative environment is a leadership task. In order to succeed at this task, leaders must develop innovative abilities and develop them in their constituents. Here's how.
Need a great idea? Feed your brain
To increase the odds of coming up with a great idea, you need to feed your brain. Michele Pariza Wacek offers three strategies for keeping your creative muse well fed.
The power of principles in innovation
Imagine what you could accomplish in your organization if you were able to learn and understand the foundational principles of innovation. Andrew Papageorge has formulated three such guiding principles that can help you to innovate more swiftly and effectively.
Cultivating the habit of innovation
By cultivating the habit of innovation, you can use your unique abilities to make a difference. This article by change management expert Jim Canterucci explains how.
How to use TRIZ to bring clarity to the ‘fuzzy front end’ of innovation
Instead of conducting wide-ranging brainstorming sessions so generate hundreds of ideas in search of the one "big one," author Jack Hipple recommends a TRIZ-based approach that focuses instead on clear problem definition and looking at past patterns of invention for potential solutions.
Imagination: The Number One Tool for Innovation and Creativity
Imagination is not a word you hear much about in business. Few companies, outside electronic game producers, would describe themselves as imaginative. That is a shame and a mistake. Imagination is the number one tool for creativity and innovation.
Failure is the Mother of Innovation
The organization that implements lots of ideas will most likely have many failures but the chances are, it will reap some mighty successes too. By trying numerous initiatives we improve our chances that one of them will be a star, according to author Paul Sloane.
Innovation strategy: Does your new product idea really solve a customer problem?
Whether you're inventing teabags or nail polish, innovations that solve actual problems make more common sense to consumers than "bright ideas" that "assume" a problem.
Project Management vs. Managing Innovation Projects
What's are the differences between managing an ordinary business project and managing an innovation project? Joyce Wycoff, in a recent issue of the InnovationNetwork's Heads Up! e-newsletter, provides some important insights: