Tony Ulwick on Innovation Management
InnovationManagement spoke to Tony Ulwick, founder and CEO of Strategyn, Inc., and publisher of numerous articles on innovation management in the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review. What are his views on innovation management, what does he like about his job and what should the newly appointed innovation manager who is having a hard time getting the much needed support and buy-in from the top management do?
Stephen Shapiro explains why open innovation is the new paradigm of work
Stephen Shapiro explains the thinking behind open creativity and why he wrote a book and created a card deck called Personality Poker.
Keeping a Constant Flow of Innovations at BASF
InnovationManagement recently spoke to Dr Thomas Weber, Managing Director of BASF’s Future Business, about what it takes for a large company to maintain a constant flow of innovation ideas and a spirit of enthusiasm to feed the pipeline.
Recruiting Tomorrow’s Innovative Minds
Amid news headlines of financial crisis and unemployment rates, China is moving ahead, steadily bouncing back from any dips in the country’s growth during the last two years. Multinational companies in China are bracing for a renewed talent war of job-hopping and poaching, as economic growth accelerates. Although the talent war will likely emerge first in the East, it will spread to become global as demographic shifts become more pronounced. InnovationManagement interviewed Sam Kondo Steffensen, CEO of MillionBrains, to get his perspective on how talent should be recruited and managed.
Creativity is a core value for leaders navigating uncharted waters, says Seth Kahan
According to leadership author Seth Kahan, navigating uncharted waters which often gives rise to anxiety and uncertainty. Visionary leaders learn to work with that energy and transform it inside themselves into creative progress.
Creative communication is critical to success today, urges Sam Horn
Creative communication is critical to making your product or service stand out in the minds of your customers. Sam Horn explains how in this fascinating interview.
Complexity Science and Innovation
What has complexity science to do with innovation management? Quite a few things if you ask Dr. Curt Lindberg of Plexus Institute, NJ, the States. Complexity science is the scientific study of complex systems, systems with many parts that interact to produce patterns of behavior that cannot easily be explained by the behavior of the individual constituent elements. From a business perspective you can use it to better understand the importance of relationships and interactions to your innovation efforts.
Improvisation is key to building a culture of innovation, says Doug Stevenson
By adopting the behaviors and principles of improvisation, organizations can achieve significant and robust cultural change in the direction of innovation, says creativity and improv expert Doug Stevenson.
How to Manage in the Age of Turbulence
In times of global turbulence the role of innovation is more important than ever. InnovationManagement spoke to global strategist John Caslione who, together with marketing guru Philip Kotler, recently published their new book CHAOTICS: The Business of Managing and Marketing in The Age of Turbulence.
Innovation is everyone’s job, says author Gregg Fraley
Everyone needs to be responsible for innovation. It doesn't matter what your job is. It's still part of your work to improve things and even invent things, says author and creativity expert Gregg Fraley in the latest Creativity in Business interview.
Innovating by combining existing things in new ways at Deutsche Post DHL
Petra Kiwitt is Executive Vice President of DHL Solutions & Innovations at Deutsche Post DHL. The Group with nearly 500.000 employees in 220 countries provides package and mail services as well as comprehensive logistics solutions for customers all around the world. Petra Kiwitt’s biggest challenge is to stimulate and coordinate innovations which ultimately will lead to even more efficient logistic solutions for the customers. A new built Innovation Community brings people together, lets them share ideas and sometimes encourages them to do ‘old’ things in new ways.
Now is the time to realize our creative potential, says Julie Ann Turner
Creativity in Business: Interview with Julie Ann Turner
New paradigm of work requires a more whole-brained approach, says Michael Gelb
Accelerating change and complexity has resulted in ever greater demands on the individual's time and energy. To succeed today requires a balance of creative and pragmatic skills, explains creativity expert and author Michael Gelb.
True Innovation – The Key to Success
“There are no quick fixes and no easy answers for succeeding at innovation” says Dr Robert Cooper, senior consultant to Fortune 500 firms and top scholar in the field of innovation management (PDMA) in an interview with InnovationManagement. “It’s back to basics – an aggressive innovation strategy that focuses your businesses’ R&D efforts; effective portfolio manage to pick tomorrow’s growth engines; a climate and culture that fosters innovation in your business; and a robust idea-to-launch system.”
Achieving Competitive Advantage by Observing First Movers
‘Early adopters’, ‘trendsetters’, ‘opinion leaders’, ‘first movers’ - are the labels describing those who are ahead of the mainstream, who are keen to try out new things. But do these terms describe the same attributes – or are there subtle differences? If so, what is the difference and how can companies proactively incorporate using these groups and their insight into their innovation management process.
Measurement is Critical to Increase Return on Innovation
Innovation is so important that most senior executives say that it’s integral to their company’s success. Because companies invest so much in it, getting a return is critical. Poor measurement practices result in bad or incomplete information, wasted resources, and a lower return on innovation investments. InnovationManagemenet asked James Andrew, senior partner of BCG and coauthor of the senior management survey Measuring Innovation 2009 a few questions about the importance of measuring your innovation efforts.
Improvisation is an essential element of the new paradigm of work, says Jay Rhoderick
What does improvisation have to do with the needs of business today? Plenty, says improv expert Jay Rhoderick, who shares some practical strategies for using it to break out of our rutted thinking and generate new insights.
Successful Approach for Improving Innovation Management for SMEs
It's a well known fact that Europe's competitive potential is dependent on the capacity to be truly innovative and creative in launching new successful products and services. This can be a daunting challenge for many organizations, not the least for small and medium sized enterprises that often lack proficiency in innovation management. IMP³rove is an approach developed especially to meet the needs of SMEs to help them develop innovation management performance with sustainable impact.
Creativity is an essential change management tool for effective leaders, says Marci Segal
Creativity is more important than ever, considering today's accelerating rate of change in business, says author and expert Marci Segal in this latest Creativity in Business interview. In fact, it's an essential change management tool for effective leaders.
Creativity is at the heart of 21st century work, says Dan Pink
NYT best-selling author Dan Pink shares some valuable insights into the new paradigm of creative work in this Business Thought Leader interview.
Zappos Insights executive says execution of ideas is key
Robert Richman, Product Manager of Zappos Insights, says the most successful companies will be those that have people with the best ideas, and who can execute them most effectively.
The New Nature of Innovation Revealed
The paradigm of innovation as driven primarily by technology and science is passé. A new paradigm is emerging, with the publication of success stories of companies innovating through other ways. The Danish and Finnish governments jointly funded a study into the new nature of innovation, as a contribution to the OECD’s work on innovation strategy. Innovationmanagement.se asked the FORA team behind the report to present the highlights. FORA is a research and analysis division under the Danish Authority for Enterprise and Construction
Preparing for Tomorrow’s Innovations today
Being the General Manager of TomorrowLab, Steven Peleman knows what is important for the creation of innovation in companies and organizations. Bringing people together outside their companies and helping them to develop new views of their existing innovation organization make a good start. Getting them to take more chances is even better.
Standards for Innovation Management – a Helpful Tool?
To promote innovation is a key issue at political, economical and professional levels and has become a critical effort across Europe. That´s why 13 European countries are currently collaborating to create a European standard that will provide guidance and good practices to beginners as well as a systematic method to strongly innovative companies. InnovationManagement.se asked Fernando J. Utrilla, Secretary of the committee about the work in progress.