A Myriad of Ways to Being Creative
Have you seen this equation: innovative = creative? Novelty always comes from “outside the box,” right? It’s a land of confusion to many, who then conclude they are just not the creative type. As a result, organizations lose out because being innovative is but one of a myriad of ways to being creative. All people can be creative—in their own way.
PMO is not a Dirty Word
Many product organizations have some type of Project Management Office (PMO), even if they refer to it by a different name. The PMO is a critical component to a successful product delivery, yet it often carries a reputation for being heavy-handed policy enforcers. When focused on the right things, the PMO plays a pivotal role in driving innovation process excellence and ensuring profitability.
Innovation Games: Going Beyond the Traditional Creativity and Analytical Tools and Methods
Innovation Games and its rapidly increasing applications are not anymore unknown concepts to innovation driven organizations. Either referred to software applications or other online and offline game methods, all its elements are powerful means for fostering workplace social intelligence and innovation practices. In the fifth of a series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, our attention is on the emerging business use of innovation games beating all the traditional creativity and analytical tools.
Creating the Optimal R&D Organization
Driven by the need to respond to global hyper-competition and the increasing clock speed of technological change, companies are relying heavily on their R&D functions to accelerate innovation while maintaining tight budgets. However, organizational structures for R&D in large international companies are often sub-optimal and act as a major barrier to performance improvement. In order to successfully optimize R&D’s contribution to business value, companies need to address the three key dimensions of structure, governance and process. From our extensive work with the R&D functions of leading global companies, we have identified eight imperatives to ensure a successful transformation across these dimensions.
Working the Crowd – Don’t Get Lost
Utilising crowd led approaches to create value is increasingly familiar in both the literature of business comment and reporting and through our own experience. Crowdassets, as we refer to them, represent a profound and enduring source of innovation and we must adapt and respond to this opportunity. In the fourth of a series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, we are going to provide a more holistic view of the concepts as well as the means to embrace the growing opportunities presented by the crowd empowered ecosystem.
Scale and Impact: Supercharging The Success of Your Innovation Efforts
How do innovation leaders access additional resources to enhance the scale and impact of their efforts across complex, global organizations?
Open Innovation Intermediaries: Are they valuable?
The success of Open Innovation hinges on many organizational aspects as we have discussed extensively on the MOOI forum in the past months and will continue to do so until the end of this year. From the beginning of next year, we will start co-creating our e-book on the Management and Organization of Open Innovation in a joint effort with the MOOI forum members.
New HR and Talent Partnerships to Drive Innovation Value
As the global economy improves, many progressive HR leaders are focusing attention on better leveraging innovative activities from across the organization. The resulting new level of partnership and support not only enhance existing employee focused metrics (such as employee engagement), but also align HR / Talent more closely with generating direct financial impact and growth to the organization. This whitepaper provides a high-level overview of how these new approaches can work and steps to consider before proceeding.
Fun and Games – Changing the World of Innovation Assessments
Innovation Assessment is one of the pillars of an innovation program. Evaluation should be done as an on-going activity and revised with the most valuable feedback gathered along the entire innovation journey. In the third of a series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, we are going to propose a different approach for Innovation Assessment that by offering a different user experience could increase awareness, engagement and elicit more valuable contributions from key stakeholders.
Beyond Tech and Elusive Geniuses – The Everyday Innovation Heroes
Apple, Google and General Electric success stories centre on groundbreaking characters and geniuses. But 99% of companies worldwide are unlike any of these. Most organisations are made up of people like you and me: reasonably proficient in innovation management but surrounded by innovation agnostics. People who can share with us the tough, yet stirring mission of pushing boundaries to shape a bit of future.
Only Engaged Innovation Teams Succeed
Engagement of teams is a must-have when addressing the key issues related to sustainable innovation programs. In the second of a series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, we are going to share our views about the way organizations should stimulate and encourage the creation of teams truly committed with innovation. Besides the more usual ad hoc requirements regarding team and individual creative performance, having a clear focus on team management is essential to achieve a more balanced and sound innovation program.
Five Ways to Boost Innovation Governance for Growth in 2015
Innovation governance translates corporate strategy into robust, results-driven portfolios. Who among the executive ranks would oppose that? With innovation governance, the short and the long-term innovation opportunities are balanced, resources are strategically allocated (especially people), and the organization acquires an improved ability to achieve both stretch growth goals and market differentiation.
Community Innovation is Led by Positive Deviants
Positive Deviance (PD) is an idea which is based on the observed principle that in any community there are people who adopt unusual and successful approaches to problems that beset the whole community. These people are the ‘positive deviants.’
New Report: The State of Innovation in Latin America
To understand the conditions around innovation in Latin America in detail, INSITUM conducted a qualitative and quantitative study with more than 300 of the biggest Latin American organizations. The study has brought to light many of the contexts, barriers, needs and outcomes around innovation in Latin American organizations. This article explores some of the results and offers a free download of the full report.
3 Reasons to Innovate Without Borders
You might have noticed that organizations don’t exist in a vacuum anymore. They don’t make decisions autonomously (if, indeed, they ever did) – handing down products or processes that they guess people want. Social media and digital engagement have changed all that – the expectation is now one of a dialogue, constant communication, and constant improvement.
Intrapreneurship: From Playing Hide and Seek to The Dismantling of Classic Hierarchy. Where are You At?
We bet you hear the word innovation at least a dozen times a day, if not more. Every single company seems to be thinking of, planning for, and somehow doing innovation in some way. With so many ideas, frameworks and success stories, how can you cut through the noise and capture what’s most relevant for your company?
Paving the Path for Innovation Purpose and Closing the Alignment Gap
Defining the organizational purpose and promoting organizational alignment are two key factors for creating a culture that supports innovation. In this series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, we are going to share insights and cases of organizations that implemented innovation programs (and less structured initiatives) with the involvement of a wide range of managers and employees.
What Happens When Leadership Focus Shifts Away From Innovation?
Corporations tend to focus on fads, often packaged into corporate initiatives or programs, that roll in and out of favor over time. Attention from leadership around any single initiative doesn’t last forever, and it will shift to the next bright and shiny object at some point. How do you prepare for when this happens?
Global Platforms for Co-creating Hyper-Local Solutions
The products and services we use are developing in two seemingly opposite directions: We want customized and localized solution – but they should fit into a global network of services and brands. A business model to meet this paradox is to create global platforms that enable a large number of actors to create very local and personalized solutions.
Where Your Next Great Idea Comes From: 3 Great Ideas from Surprising Places
Innovation without borders means that you’re no longer concerned about where your next great idea comes from – you’re only concerned with it being great. It means that there is no job title, mission parameter, or geography that curtails creativity or delivering on that creativity.
Is There a Silver Bullet For Intrapreneurship?
Intrapreneurship is vital for all organizations to thrive in the 21st century - equally important for large firms, SMEs, and family businesses. Is there a proven recipe, a one size fits all approach to promoting intrapreneurship?
Most Companies Fail to Invest in Sustainable Innovation
You can’t go an entire commercial break during the World Cup or a State of the Union address without hearing the word innovation pop up at least once or twice. Companies have added innovation to their company values and mission statements in accelerating numbers.
The One Word Answer to Why Innovation Fails
Innovation sounds easy, but it is not. The majority of enterprises report dissatisfaction with innovation performance. Three quarters of the CEOs of multinationals view external collaborative innovation as vitally important, but only half do it, and those only rate themselves as doing it ‘moderately well’. And remember - two thirds of organizational ‘change’ efforts fail. In case you are now asking yourself, why are these odds that low – we have a straightforward answer. It’s just one word.
Why You Should Embrace Creativity Within Your Culture
As a company grows, its creativity typically tends to decrease. What can be done to prevent a decrease in creativity within an organization?