Eight Critical Ingredients for Successful Corporate Innovation
Jeffrey Baumgartner shares eight ingredients that are critical to the success of any innovation program.
The chaos theory of innovation
In their new book, The Innovator's Guide to Growth, authors Scott Anthony, Mark Johnson, Joseph Sinfield and Elizabeth Altman explain how many companies believe the way to unleash innovation is to let chaos reign. But this may not be a good idea, for a number of reasons.
Predicting the future and focusing your innovation program
Derek Cheshire offers some advice on how to identify the drivers of future trends and develop new product and service ideas to drive your innovation program and your business.
Why Social Networking is not Innovation
As innovators, my firm and I are often called on to watch for and synthesize trends, so we can help our clients predict the future and create new products and services. One new trend we've been watching for a while is the concept of innovation using social networking and wisdom of crowds.
To Achieve Radical Innovation, Break the Unwritten
Every business operates in an environment of written and unwritten rules. Many of these boundaries and restrictions are self-imposed and accepted without questioning. Here are some examples from Paul Sloane of contrarians who broke "the rules" and uncovered breakthrough innovations.
What are the Most Effective Approaches to Drive an Innovation Pipeline?
The fourth major issue to be tackled by our distinguished panel of innovation practitioners is innovation processes: How do you implement them and integrate them into your day-to-day operations to drive sustainable innovation, and what are the best strategies and tools to support these efforts?
The personal innovation imperative
In their new book, The Game Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation, authors A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan warn that if middle managers don't make a commitment to support and practice innovation, they will soon be left behind by a world that is steadily moving in the direction of becoming much more innovative.
How to Evaluate Ideas
Many organizations make mistakes in their idea review processes that result in rejecting the most potentially innovative ideas in favor of less innovative ones, warns Jeffrey Baumgartner. Here are some ways to avoid this unfortunate fate.
Robert B. Tucker reflects on the evolution, current challenges and future of innovation
Author Robert B. Tucker shares some thought-provoking insights into the state of innovation, including its surprising growth to date, what's challenging organizations today and its future outlook.
To Encourage the Flow of Ideas, Remember the Three Cs
While many companies give lip service to innovation, the fact is that your organization's managers may be unwittingly killing new ideas, along with the enthusiasm of the creative thinkers who developed them. Jeffrey Baumgartner provides some advice on how to ensure that managers are more supportive of new ideas.
To Innovate, Force Yourself to Take a Different Point of View
We have to deliberately take a different point of view and come at the problem from a new direction before we have a chance of creating a radical solution, advises Paul Sloane.
Why Statistics Kill Innovation
Which will help your business to be more successful: statistics or probability? Underwriters at insurance companies use statistics to assess future risks. This is based on years of collected data. Probability is what card counters in Vegas use to increase their odds of success. This is based on real-time, real-life experience. If you want to play it safe, use statistics. If you want to win big, use probability.
What is business model innovation?
Chances are, you've heard of business model innovation. But what is it, really? Peter Skarczynski and Rowan Gibson, in their new book, Innovation to the Core: A Blueprint for Transforming How Your Company Innovates, provide a very clear and understandable explanation of this concept.
How do you Connect Innovation to Business Strategy?
The third major issue to be tackled by our distinguished panel of innovation practitioners is connecting innovation to business strategy. Specifically, how do you connect innovation to business strategy, and get the funding and senior management commitment to follow through on both short- and long-term innovation initiatives?
10 Rules for Creative Teams
Under the right circumstances, a team can be significantly more creative than any individual team member and is often better able to push creative ideas through the implementation process so that they may become innovations. Here are ten quick rules for ensuring your teams are effective creative teams from Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Ten Top Tips for the Innovative Leader
If you want to drive innovation in your organization, then Paul Sloane has some suggestions to help you succeed.
Intuition and Emotion in Creative Thinking
Great ideas arise in the strangest ways and are blended from the oddest ingredients, such as gut feelings, intuitions and emotions, explains author David Jiles Ph.D.
A process for continuous innovation and controlled chaos
Continuous innovation stream comes from controlled chaos. According to Jim Clemmer, it's a tricky process that has four main stages.
Eight ways to generate more ideas in a group
Group brainstorming is common in organizations around the world. But more often than not, it delivers a disappointing quantity of so-so ideas. Here are eight ways to generate more and better ideas in these ideation sessions.
How do you Source and Manage Ideas to Come up with the Best Innovation Opportunities for your Company?
The second major issue to be tackled by our distinguished panel of innovation practitioners is sourcing and managing ideas. This roundtable discussion contains a wealth of ideas for identifying and capitalizing on the best innovation opportunities.
Adapting the venture capital model to corporate innovation
One of the recurring themes in Gary Hamel's excellent new book, The Future of Management, is the idea that companies tend to overinvest in the past at the expense of the future. Often, promising new ideas are starved for funding, or are unfairly held to the same metrics as well-established billion-dollar business units. Isn't there some way to set resources free within larger organizations, Hamel asks?
Overcoming Customer Resistance to Innovation
Sometimes the biggest resistance to innovation comes from the person who should benefit most from it – the customer. Customers can be very conservative. When you come along with an unorthodox new product or service they are often initially unimpressed. Why should the buyer take a risk with your unproven new gizmo? He knows that new products often have bugs and he does not want to be the guinea pig on which you experiment. He is familiar with the current method – why should he change?
How Do You Define Innovation and Make It Practical and Saleable to Senior Management?
The first major issue to be tackled by our distinguished panel of innovation practitioners is innovation itself. How do you define innovation? And how can you make it understandable and saleable to your organization’s senior management team? As expected, our panelists shared some keen insights and practical strategies that you can benefit from.
New book from Curt Rosengren explores creative strategies for revitalizing your work and life
I've long been a fan of Curt Rosengren's Occupational Adventure weblog, and its focus on injecting a healthy dose of entrepreneurial passion into your work. So I was very glad to hear that he is planning to publish a book in the next few weeks. Entitled "101 Ways to Get Wild About Work: Ideas for Turning Dreams into Reality," it is packed with thought-provoking insights and exercises that you can put into action today to revolutionize how you approach your talents, dreams, aspirations and ideas.