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.
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."
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.
The Ultimate Corporate Innovation Playbook
Now, more than ever, the corporate innovation industry grows as quickly as the technology that drives it. Thus, corporate innovators must set up the right foundational framework to kickstart their efforts. This Ultimate Corporate Innovation Playbook provides that framework by examining:
A New Value of Business Relationships
Small companies developing new technologies strive to survive the process of technology development: they have scarce resources to engage in business relationships. Is there any value on which they are missing out?
How Technology Can Augment Human Collaboration
Innovation requires collaboration, but collaboration is stuck in a rut. Data science can help us climb out. It can increase the scale, the intentionality, and the nuance of how we collaborate. With the right data and algorithms, we can set our teams up to do something innovative.
Urban innovation labs, hubs, coworking spaces… Which one to choose to boost your innovation?
Innovation is the Holy Grail of business success that can supercharge any kind of organisations from corporates to start-ups and shift them towards growth. Nevertheless, many organisations on the creative edge are struggling how to make innovation happen due to the rise of new work processes, changing demographics and new technologies.
Don’t “Fiddle” with the Crowd – Ask it Better Questions Instead
As the examples of successful use of crowdsourcing to address complex technical, business and social issues grow in numbers, so do the instances of failed crowdsourcing campaigns. To make crowdsourcing a widely recognized idea-generating and problem-solving tool, it’s imperative to understand the reasons of why this tool can fail or underperform.
Sink or Swim: Nouveau Economical Survival Strategies
Special understanding is critically needed on how new cyclones of artificial intelligence-laced, blockchain technology-driven digital platforms with capabilities like LinkedIn and baby-Alibaba type models will dance on global trade. Alibaba just broke some records: USD 1 billion sales in 3 minutes, and the other day some 24 billion dollars in 24 hours. This is dancing with global trades and prosperity on world stage. What are these deployment programs and who is stopping such mobilization in other nations?
How Open Innovation Can Be Used in the Financial Sector
In a recent article, The Financial Brand discussed the biggest threats to the financial and banking industry. They included a long list of everything from profitability to making good hiring decisions. However, we thought that there were a few problems that could be particularly fruitful when applied to open innovation systems.
Implementation is Your New Competitive Advantage
When it comes to implementation there are three things that companies ought to be thinking about in order to maintain a competitive advantage: process, feedback, and the importance of having multiple stakeholders from the beginning. Learn more in this Open Innovation Guide from IdeaScale.
Organizational Revolutions through Idea Hacking
Businesses face the dilemma dividing resources between protecting the current value chain and developing new value propositions that in time replace the old ones. Not every organization has the luxury to have its own dedicated innovation unit and still then the ideas might not always be too innovative. Hackathons are an affordable and energizing way to generate innovative ideas that can revolutionize your organization.
Managing Fundraising Innovation: the Dangers of the ‘Echo-Chamber’
This case study explores the results of an innovation research process undertaken by Oxfam, which compared internal feedback vs. general public feedback to identical sets of ideas. In comparing responses between these two audiences, Oxfam discovered an immediate and obvious divide between their staff’s opinions about which fundraising ideas would perform the best, versus what the general public preferred - an important lesson about avoiding the bubble of the echo chamber.