How strong is your idea capital?
In this world of hyperchange in virtually every industry, it’s time to think about ideas as a new form of capital available to your organization: Idea Capital. What is idea capital? Idea capital, referring to [...]
Spontaneous Versus Solution-Oriented Creativity
Creativity can come in two forms: spontaneous creativity and solution oriented creativity. Here are some tips on how your organization can benefit from both types, from Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Take the brainstorming quiz
Do you know how to maximize the success of a group brainstorming session? Take Paul Sloane's quiz to test your knowledge and learn more about brainstorming best practices.Do you know how to maximize the success of a group brainstorming session? Take Paul Sloane's quiz to test your knowledge and learn more about brainstorming best practices.
Intriguing new book: Goal-Free Living
Stephen Shapiro, author of the excellent book, 24/7 Innovation, has just published his latest work: Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW!
The manager as idea coach
In today's highly competitive business environment, managers must make the shift from manipulators to manifesters. They must learn how to coach their people into increasingly higher states of creative thinking and creative doing, according to Mitchell Ditkoff.
Unleashing Employee Creativity with Quick and Easy Kaizen
Like its name implies, Quick and Easy Kaizen is one of the easiest ways to get started in having all of your employees implement continuous incremental improvement. It's also a key to unleashing the creativity of your employees.
The Great Innovation Lie
Often, organizations have a tendency to turn innovation into a highly complex system involving numerous processes, approaches and models. Here's a little secret: It doesn't need to be complex to be effective.
Kaizen and Innovation
During this week, the Gang of Seven will be exploring the topic of kaizen – continuous improvement – and how it can be applied to project settings, where teams of people may only be working together for the duration of a project. Today's topic is "the case for kaizen on projects." As a first step, I’d like to clarify what the similarities and differences are between kaizen and innovation.
Need breakthrough innovation? Resist the temptation to ‘build a better mousetrap’
product development in many industries. Moreover, the percentage of ideas that make it from lab to consumer is low. One factor that affects the probability of success is how innovators look at a given development challenge or problem.
Interview with Mark Turrell: How metrics are driving innovation today
Mark Turrell is CEO of Imaginatik, a developer of enterprise idea management applications. He has spent a lot of time researching innovation, investigating new business processes, new product development methods, and innovation metrics. He is truly one of the "deep thinkers" of business innovation. In this interview with InnovationTools founder Chuck Frey, Mark shares his insights on trends in the world of innovation.
Interview with Joyce Wycoff: Making space for innovation
As the cofounder of InnovationNetwork, the visionary behind the annual Innovation Convergence conference and tireless author and supporter of organizational innovation, Joyce Wycoff is in a unique position to comment on its current state and future possibilities. This first Innovation Thought Leader interview contains some great insights from this leading thinker in the world of innovation.
QREATIVITY: Revolutionary ideas come from ridiculous questions
Question-based creativity is a concept that most people are familiar with. But businesspeople need to ask bigger questions - questions that push ideas to their very limits. Read Scott Ginsberg's article to find out how...
Who is crushing creativity?
In many organizations, leaders complain that their employees aren't creative. But employees complain that they are micromanaged and not empowered to try out new ideas. Who's really at fault here?
Metrics: A balanced scorecard for innovation
In their excellent book, Making Innovation Work, authors Tony Davila, Marc Epstein and Robert Shelton present an approach to metrics that they call "the balanced scorecard for innovation." Here's how it works.
How to connect corporate objectives and investment in innovation
Innovation may be the watchword of the executive team, but desire does not necessarily lead to the right level of real, sustained commitment. Now, a recent study by Imaginatik Research, building on previous work on the financial impact of innovation, has uncovered a simple, compelling connection between corporate objectives, and the generation and management of ideas and business opportunities.
Strategies for Evaluating Radical Innovations
A rigid idea evaluation process can prematurely kill radical innovations. Here are some strategies to prevent this from happening from Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Strategies for outsourcing innovation
In this age of outsourcing and partnering, the leaders of many companies have been asking themselves, "Should we outsource our innovation?" According to Tony Davila, Marc Epstein and Robert Shelton, writing in their excellent book, Making Innovation Work, that's the wrong question.
A new model of strategic innovation
In their great new book, Making Innovation Work: How to Manage It, Measure It and Profit From It, co-authors Tony Davila, Marc Epstein and Robert Shelton outline an innovation framework that is based on a portfolio model. Like a personal investment portfolio, in which you mitigate risk and increase ROI through a combination of conservative, middle ground and aggressive investments, they believe that organizations need to focus not only on breakthrough innovations, but also incremental ones.
Quality and Creativity: Enemies or Allies?
Can quality and creativity cohabit in the same house or are they natural enemies? Can a quality process be applied to innovation? Paul Sloane shares the answer in this insightful article.
Lights, cameras, action: Innovation ‘reality TV’ style at Quill Corporation
The accepted notion is that sparking a culture of innovation would require hard work and a long time to produce results. Author Stephen Shapiro has found that sometimes the opposite is true; motivated organizations that know where they are going can move from bureaucracy to creativity with remarkable speed. One such company is Quill Corporation.
A Process for Innovation Planning
All too often, hastily planned brainstorming sessions bring up a lot of good ideas that somehow never get used, while the boring kinds of ideas you are trying to get away from seem to be used again and again. One reason for this is the lack of an innovation plan, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Putting the customer first in innovation
Asking customers for feedback is good, but observing them is often a much more productive source of breakthrough product ideas, according to Paul Sloane.
Four ways to sidestep your creative blocks and motivate your muse
It was 8:00 PM and I’d hit a creative wall – hard. But there was so much work to be done! And I just had to get out of the office or else my article [...]
Brainstorming Techniques for New Product Development
There are several ways to incorporate brainstorming into a new product development session. Here are two of the most productive techniques.