Ideation in Times of Crisis
If you’re thinking about launching a crowdsourcing campaign to respond to some of these challenges brought about by COVID-19, now is a good time. We are all learning so much right now and so quickly. And everyone wants to help, so let them.
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.
Coronavirus Crisis Only Heightens the Need for Innovation and Co-Creation
Those of us that work in the innovation management sector need no convincing of the benefits that it can bring to businesses and government departments all over the world. Adopting an innovative culture and approach allows an organisation to survive and thrive in the highly competitive modern business world and helps prevent them from becoming irrelevant or even obsolete.
8 Tips for Startup Entrepreneurs During COVID-19 Crisis
The coronavirus pandemic is turning out to be an international economic crisis, with ramifications for all industries and markets, similar to the crisis of 2008. A cross-border economic crisis affects companies large and small, challenging an organization's management and its employees.
Open Source Respirator and Low Cost Ventilator Efforts to Fight Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Calling all doctors, nurses, designers, engineers and designers: join one of the amazing Open Source Ventilator Projects to contribute your passion, creativity, time and expertise to help develop low-cost ventilators to fight the Coronavirus (COVID-19).
Open Innovation Helps in the Fight Against COVID-19
The Coronavirus is having an equal impact on companies, giant conglomerates, and startups. Companies are dealing with the crisis in various ways - let's look at how in this article.
How NASA Leads Intrapreneurial Innovation
Not everyone knows that NASA has embedded crowdsourcing into their strategy and capabilities. But in fact, back in 2011 (after they ran a highly successful crowdsourcing pilot) NASA established the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI).
Landscape Monitor for Startups
Entrepreneurs deal with high levels of uncertainty; probably more than any other business. The more disruptive the startup, the higher the level of uncertainty. Will the customers buy? How do we reach them? Will we be able to sell at a profit? Will our partners do their part? Who is out there that we can learn from? Are there threats that we are unaware of?
What Innovation Funnel Should I Use?
After a decade working in innovation, I think many of us are sick and tired of seeing a funnel on another slide at an innovation conference. Lots of ideas at the top, just a few implemented ideas at the bottom… we get the idea.
Five Principles of Innovation Measurement
What gets measured gets managed. Innovation is not serendipity; it’s a managed process of transforming novel ideas to achieve their business value. You can only manage what you measure.
Improving Safety in Extreme Work Environments through IoT
Sustainability is a widely known concept. However, finding a balance for its three main pillars (society, economy, and environment) is not easy. Society demands that companies respect and protect the environment while generating benefit, improving the country’s economy and respecting every member of society.
The Four Forms of Crowdsourcing
There are four ways to crowdsource answers to your innovation challenges: garden variety crowdsourcing, distant expert sourcing, expert targeting, and force multiplying.
Four Innovation Themes from Open Nation 2019
Every year, IdeaScale hosts innovation leaders and creative thinkers from around the world in a global summit that shares innovation best practices. These leaders share success stories, failures, challenges, and solutions as they get to know each other so that they can call on one another throughout the year (long after the event is over).
What’s the Best Idea Criteria for Innovation Programs?
One of the most popular webinars that IdeaScale has ever hosted is our webinar on how to select the best ideas. We are constantly being asked by our customers and prospects, “how do I know a good idea when I see one?” Some people are looking for financial predictions, some people want to know how an idea measures up to their organizational objectives, but everyone is looking for the perfect set of criteria so that they can evaluate ideas at some point during the innovation process and validate them.
Five Perspectives of Innovation Management Maturity
The success of innovation management is never an accident; it’s a holistic management process with an iterative thought-out planning and execution continuum.
Spotless: An Innovation Roadmap
Bridie Scott is an Innovation Manager at Spotless and she’s taken the business on a journey from a large-scale company with big goals to a company that is listening to and empowering all of their frontline employees in the innovation process.
How Can You Use Gamification to Boost Innovation?
A serious game based on innovation methodologies can be an extremely useful tool at different phrases of implementing innovation in a company. Let's take a look at how to implement gamification into your innovation strategy.
Five Takeaways from Our Innovation Conversation with Clorox
IdeaScale hosts a monthly podcast with innovation leaders, intrapreneurs, and other game changers out there. This past month our interviewee was Dr. Navin Kunde who currently leads the Open Innovation group at The Clorox Company, a US-based consumer goods company in the Fortune 500.
How Many Types of Innovation Are There?
Innovation thought leader Nick Skillicorn recently did a pretty good job summarizing all of the innovation theories. And we noticed that there are a few key similarities between most (or all) of these theories that we think are interesting! Download this infographic to learn more about the 15 Theories of Innovation.
What NASA Can Teach Us About the Intrinsic Value of Connecting to Other Innovators
Numerous organizations run crowdsourced innovation programs, because companies can find better new ideas and take action on those ideas faster. This process allows companies to set a challenge and gather ideas from hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of participants.
Do You Know Your Company’s Implementation Rate?
With the rise of the innovation department, numerous organizations are focusing their attention on their company’s ideation rate. A good ideation rate generally predicts other positive company health indicators: profitability, higher employee retention rates, reported customer success, but there’s another innovation health indicator that we think organizations should pay attention to: their implementation rate.
Drive Innovation by Disrupting the Existing Management Norms
Before being acquired by Facebook for US$1 billion, Instagram was just another photo-sharing app operating with insignificant infrastructure and a dozen employees. With the ever-increasing potential of modern technology, the next billion-dollar business could start from the comfort of someone’s home. To stay on top, established organisations need to stimulate innovation... and that’s our topic today.
Start Here for Creative Leadership
How can leaders fight apathy or indifference in the workplace and create an environment where creativity and innovation can naturally flourish?
The Regulator Requires a Director of Innovation
Regulation has a critical role to play to protect customers and businesses operating in industries that are sensitive to various threats. In complex industries such as the financial industry, regulation is often perceived as a barrier and a burden.
How to Build YOUR Best Innovation Process
How might we build a more efficient or effective innovation process?
The Four Essentials For Engaging the Crowd With Your Innovation Program
Each strategic consultation with an IdeaScale Innovation Strategist starts with you. What outcomes would you like to see in 6 months time?...in 1 year?
Innovating in a Hierarchical Environment
Announcing the IdeaScale Nation podcast, where you'll be able to hear stories from innovators in government, the enterprise and beyond.
About Digital and Innovation – and What’s in Between
Digital and innovation - two big words that one defines, but are not always clear and precise. Many organizations of different sizes understand today that it is necessary to play in the Digital and Innovation fields in order to remain relevant, but it is not always clear how and how much.
Partnering with U.S. Universities in the Era of Open Innovation
Today’s University is a rich resource for companies seeking game-changing technological breakthroughs. In this in-depth article Melba Kurman looks at the benefits of open innovation partnerships between companies and American university researchers.
The Perils and Possibilities of of Crowdfunding
Just because you can create a crowdfunding campaign for your next Big Idea doesn't mean you should, as book author Glenn Fleishman recently discovered.
The Missing Ingredient of Crowd-based Idea Generation
With the growing popularity of open innovation, crowdsourcing and web-based suggestion schemes where the best ideas are decided by popular votes, many of us tend to forget a very simply truism: creative people do not follow the crowd. At minimum, they do their own thing. At best, they lead the crowd.
Designing the Perfect Ideas Competition
What's the most effective way to design an idea competition that doesn't just result in a huge pile of ideas, but enables teams to implement ideas that will help to make your organization more creative? Jeffrey Baumgartner shares one practical framework for making this happen.
Open Innovation: Beiersdorf’s Intimate Approach to External Partnerships
Michael Fruhling rececently spoke with Dr. Horst Wenck, Beiersdorf's Corporate VP of R+D, about his company's approach to open innovation. One key is its OI web portal, which carefully cultivates a qualified set of external partners. Once a relationship is established, Beiersdorf forms a 'project house,' where qualified partners are deeply immersed in its current technical needs and challenges and the corporate intelligence it has gathered to support its OI priorities.
Open Innovation: Colgate’s Sensible External Partnership Approach
Ken Klimpel, Colgate Palmolive's Worldwide Director of External Innovation and Outreach shares his perspective on some aspects of the approach he and his company take to drive their open innovation successes.