How to Innovate Like an Insurance Carrier
Insurance providers aren't particularly well known for their fast-paced innovation. In truth however, the insurance industry is on the cutting edge of corporate environmental awareness and has been for some time. Insurance providers also manage their innovations: They introduce new ideas but don't adopt them at a faster pace than they can support.
Increasing Innovation Impact in the Enterprise
You would be hard-pressed to find a business leader who would question the importance of innovation not only to promote growth within their organization, but also to ensure its very survival. These business leaders have invested significantly in their innovation initiatives to support this importance. Yet a 2012 Accenture study found that more than half of corporate executives were disappointed by their innovation results and returns from their innovation investments.
Innovation and Culture – Two Halves of the Same Coin
There would be few organisations that did not cite innovation as a desirable quality in their workforce, whether as part of the whole organisational culture, or critical in one area. Over the past five years, with businesses being buffeted by economic storms, finding sources of innovation can be the difference between success and failure.
Enter the White Space – A Business Interpretation of Scott and Amundsen’s Race to the South Pole
The analyses and stories told about Amundsen and Scott’s fascinating and epic race to the South Pole are numerous. In this article I will try to make sense of the race in relation to the lessons derived in view of companies entering the white space[1] or aspiring to succeed with disruptive innovations. The lessons begin from using the holistic innovation management framework the Innovation Radar (IR) published in MIT Sloan Management Review in 2006[2].
Innovation: An Outside-In Approach
Every organization wants to be thought of as “innovative” and although cliché, there is something said about thinking outside of the box to help you get there. However, simply asking your employees to think outside of the box at your next internal planning session or brainstorm meeting may not be enough to get to those game-changing ideas. To get unique solutions, you need to look at things in new light. The following seven strategies are tactics that will help you take an outside-in approach to innovation, to help you come up with unexpected, richer solutions.
Top Innovation Secrets
Being successful at innovation is a skill. One that takes time, patience, strategic intelligence and amongst other things, funding. Many organisations succeed only after they have experienced embarrassing failures and learnt some tough lessons in the process. How do others succeed with their innovation efforts? What is the secret? In this article we use the inspiring philosophy of Steve Jobs as stimulus and ask innovation managers about their “secret sauce for innovation success”. Learning from others reduce risk because resurrecting the organisational “innovation corpse” is not an action anyone should be tasked with.
The Intensity Factor in Innovation: Principles from Zen Philosophy
This paper is a follow-up to my previous article, “The Eastern Way: How Chinese Philosophy can Power Innovation in Business Today” (June 18, 2012). The present article defines the concept of intensity in innovation, using Eastern Zen philosophy, in a way that can be useful for business while avoiding too much focus on personality traits. Zen intensity in innovation stresses intuition, sensory and physical experience/re-experience, artistry, the integration of conflicting ideas, and the avoidance of premature choices. Examples are cited from the career of the late Zen enthusiast, Steve Jobs. Regarding the use of time, the Zen approach to intensity implies a full and sustained engagement of all creative processes, not simply a rapid time to project completion.
Mastering the Art of Innovation
You can hardly scan the Internet or pick up a business magazine without seeing references to innovation. Companies everywhere are emerging from decades of cost reductions and are now focusing on efficiency, while looking for the next breakthrough idea… the next Post-It Note, the Frappucino or even the new Internet.
Innovator’s Accelerator: Imparting the Skills of the Innovator
Is it possible for companies to teach the skills of innovation to leaders and teams to help secure a marketplace advantage? The six-week Innovator’s Accelerator™online program is designed to do just that: impart the skills of the innovator–as taught by industry leaders and demonstrated through case studies–in as little as one hour per day.
An Industrial Process for Driving Innovation and Start-Ups
Y Combinator is a remarkably successful start-up fund and seed accelerator. Since it was founded in 2005, Y Combinator has funded over 550 start-ups with a total estimated current value of over $11 billion. It has become the world’s most successful model for mass producing digital start-up companies. It is an industrial process for driving innovation and creating millionaires.
Who Are My Best Innovators?
Is it possible to identify the best innovators in an organization? Most companies know who their best performers are and this is true for almost every critical initiative except innovation. A current research initiative from Jeffery Phillips is delving deeper into the possibilities to identify the potential of an individual to be a good innovator based on shared traits. The goal is to develop a simple assessment tool that any corporation can use to identify the most talented potential innovators on its team, or to use to identify and hire new people with innovation capabilities.
Leaders’ Dual Roles When Managing Innovation
Leaders have dual roles when managing innovation. In a bottom-up role, they stimulate innovative results as they facilitate ideas and initiative coming from individuals and teams. In a top-down role, leaders are the primary means for the organization to realize its innovation goals and strategies. A fundamental challenge is to balance these two roles.
Disappointed By Innovation Results? It’s The Culture!
Though companies invest into innovation they like results less and less. There seems to be a glass ceiling for driving innovation, which neither new tools and processes nor innovation consultants seem to crack. It is time to face the elephant in the room: company culture and its impact on innovation performance. Top management needs to learn deal with it. Then company culture will become a driver of innovation rather than getting in the way.
The Importance of Stupid, Irrational Decisions
Summer is for relaxing, but also for reading books in more depth. During his vacation Bengt Järrehult read Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow for the second time and more thoroughly. Here are Bengt’s thoughts on how Prospect Theory applies to innovation related decisions - the decisions that may seem stupid and irrational – but are they really?
How to Find Customer Frictions
An innovation is a simple new solution for a relevant problem. That’s why at the start of innovation you should look out for relevant problems instead of ideas. But how do you find them?
How to Get the Most from your Innovation Software: Key Process Considerations
The first article in this series focusing on collaborative enterprise innovation explains how software can help engage your enterprise in innovation and shares experiences from clients as to the other key activities required to make a ‘software-enabled’ program successful over many years.
Balancing Innovation via Organizational Ambidexterity – Part 2
In the first part of a 3-part article series innovation-3’s Frank Mattes and Integrative Innovation’s Ralph-Christian Ohr worked out why successful firms need to balance radical and incremental innovation. They introduced the concept of organizational ambidexterity as an appropriate way for simultaneously conducting exploration and exploitation, the two paradigms behind radical and incremental innovation.This second part shows some best practice examples of how the most innovative firms are setting up organizational ambidexterity.
Risks of Incremental, Differential, Radical, and Breakthrough Innovation Projects
From incremental to breakthrough innovation projects, managers need to handle different activities and with them dissimilar venues of risks. In this article the internal, external and hidden risks of incremental, differential, radical, and breakthrough innovation projects are identified and ranked accordingly. In addition, for every category a general innovation eco-system has been analyzed.
Thinking Like a Designer
Thinking like a designer can transform the way you approach the world when imagining and creating new solutions for the future. It’s about being aware of the world around you, believing that you play a role in shaping that world, and taking action toward a more desirable future. In my new book ‘The Innovation Expedition’ I describe the five characteristics necessary to think like a designer.
Are you Really Innovating? Five Signs You Might Be Faking It
This article challenges companies to take an honest look in the innovation mirror to determine whether they’re truly making it or perhaps faking it when it comes to bringing innovative products and services to market. Consider this a simple litmus test to self-diagnose.
The Perfect Innovation Team
In my new book ‘The Innovation Expedition’ I love to refer in discussions on innovation teams to The Mayo Clinic's Center for Innovation. The Mayo Clinic is a best-practice organization, which was researched in APQC's Innovation: Putting Ideas into Action 2009 study. It favors a specific combination of personalities when it builds innovation teams.
The Innovation Disconnect
CEOs talk enthusiastically about the need for innovation. Workers at the front line can see the needs and opportunities for fresh ideas. But somehow nothing happens. Ideas do not get implemented. Innovation grinds to a halt. This is the innovation disconnect and it has to be tackled head on.
Cascading Change Versus Viral Change
“Everything has changed, even change has changed” is a proverb that is increasingly true. In this article Bengt Järrehult will describe the good old top-down or cascading approach compared to a more bottom-up or viral way.
You Can’t Innovate Alone
You can invent on your own, but in an organization you can never innovate alone! You need an awful lot of colleagues and bosses to share your vision before a big change can truly take place.