An Innovation Competition is a Great Way to Influence Culture
In a 2017 Harvard Business Review article, Anna Steinhage, Dan Cable, and Duncan Wardley talk about the impact competition can have in a workplace. They described how hosting an internal challenge can generate creative results and inspire collaboration or it can create unethical behaviors and cutthroat rivalry.
7 Essential Ingredients of a Crowdsourced Innovation Campaign
Many companies are introducing Innovation as a Service, which means an internal group acts as a consultancy that can solve problems for business owners. These innovation teams bring a number of skills to the table, including research, communications, project management, networking, and much more. Many have also adopted a “proudly found elsewhere” solution approach, which uses crowdsourcing to ask the entire workforce---or even beyond the walls of the organization---for solutions to existing problems.
The Six Pillars of Innovation Culture
Every year, IdeaScale asks our customers what their main priorities are for the coming year, and without fail one of the top two priorities is to create a culture of innovation. Every innovation thought leader, every organizational engagement specialist, every pundit or leader in transformation says that this is the secret to avoiding disruption.
What is a Virtual Innovation Lab?
The Virginia Department of Transportation created their own Virtual Innovation Lab, where they collaborate to solve problems related to remote work, engineering topics, safety, and more with the help of their entire distributed workforce. Learn more in this December 15th webinar!
How Does Diversity and Inclusion Impact Innovation?
Nearly all executives believe the long-term success of their business depends on the flow, testing, and development of new ideas. One of the problems is the old belief in the “creative genius” – that creativity and innovation belongs to a talented few and not to everyone.
Why Bother with User Innovation?
Users are a hidden ‘front end’ of innovation, highly motivated, prepared to experiment and tolerant of things not working right first time. So it makes sense to try and bring this perspective to bear.
Customer-Centric Innovation? Sure, But With Which Customers?
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.
When Discovering Customer Needs, How Do You Get Beyond Survey Bias?
When Yamaha conducts research to drive product development, they've found opportunities in previously unexplored areas of incremental change. Learn more in this podcast interview.
Digital Tools and the Future of Remote Work
Until about four months ago, remote work was somewhat of a rarity, and, at very least, something most people were unfamiliar with. One of the few COVID-19 silver linings, however, was that many companies were forced to have their employees work remotely due to stay-at-home orders. This meant more time with families, less time in transit, and, for a lot, a surprising sense of comfort at "the workplace."
Using Innovation to Improve Your McKinsey Organizational Health Index Score
2020 proved just how important our relationships to banks and credit unions are as they worked to rapidly respond to the changing financial needs of their customers.
Remote Innovation – A Method to use over Zoom
Paul Sloane discusses ways to collaborate remotely over Zoom, drawing on inspiration from the musical duo The Postal Service, in this new article.
Developing High Performance Leadership
Organizational knowledge cannot merely be described as the sum of individual knowledge, but as a systematic combination based on social interactions shared among organizational members.
Let Customers Help You Innovate During COVID
In this article, we'll look at three ways to engage customers and create products they want to buy right now.
Why Let Others Disrupt You? Take the Smart Self-Disruption Journey!
In a time when uncertainty reigns, the fear of being disrupted can brutally hurt any business. Responsible leaders who dare to anticipate disruption and take steps to self-inflict it to their organization in a smart and controlled way are best positioned for the future.
7 Incentives to Increase Participation in a Crowdsourced Innovation Program
Every year, one question tops all the others that our customers might bring to us: how do I increase engagement in my innovation community? We see this question even in the most robust and activated innovation programs.
The World has Changed: Is Your Organization Ready?
The COVID-19 epidemic has had a tremendous effect on many aspects of our lives and resulted in a significant change in the workforce, and on the very way that individuals and organizations work. Suddenly, without warning, it seems that the entire business world shifted to Zoom and its competitors in a day, since it offered a concrete solution to the challenges raised by the current crisis.
How to Build Knowledge-Based Companies?
Knowledge management improves organizational processes through a variety of different practices, and enhances learning, which can increase both follower engagement and personal development. This article presents the two key steps of successful knowledge management that can be implemented by company executives.
The Three Challenges of Crowdsourced Innovation
You have a problem to solve, and we have the crowd. IdeaScale has recently acquired Betterific, a crowdsourcing platform that engages a community of 18,000+ creative problem solvers, design thinkers, and ideators to help you come up with your next big idea. Learn more about how you can tap into this innovative community.
The Key Steps Innovation Professionals Should Take in a COVID-19 Environment
Obviously COVID-19 is having an enormous impact on all aspects of our lives, with the scope and scale of business disruption being immense and incredibly challenging. But disruption is what innovation people are generally excellent at responding to, so the question becomes - “how do you and your team support your organisations within this environment?”
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.