Why Running After Perfection can Kill Your Projects
Running after perfection can hinder your project’s success, despite your best intentions and efforts. Generally speaking, your project scope must align with its time and budget - a rule that doesn’t play well with the pursuit of perfection from start to finish. In this article, we’ll look at why perfection shouldn’t be your ultimate goal - but how to still satisfy your inner perfectionist as a project manager.
Learning to Communicate With Difficult Co-Workers
No matter where you work, there's always some difficult co-workers you're going to have to deal with. Instead of wishing the situation away, which never works, it's time to learn how to perfect your skills for dealing with them.
A Look Back at Three Innovations that Have Changed Our Lives
Nowadays, the words “innovation” and “creativity” get thrown around a lot in the business and academic world. But the road to making successful innovations is filled with challenges, opportunities taken or missed, and plenty strikes of luck. Often, people invent machines to face a recurrent problem. These inventions, in turn, spawn other inventions and innovation. These types of inventions have the most impact on society. Here’s looking at three inventions that have changed our lives forever.
Citizen Science and Market Research: How the Public Can Help Prioritize
Regardless of whether the workplace is a public or private entity, departments often struggle to prioritize assigned projects, and align individual projects with overall objectives. In this case study, we’ll explore how the National Cancer Institute implemented crowdsourcing to enable the research community and the public to submit ideas on how best to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer - and how as a result, they were able to prioritize existing research and initiatives into areas where additional resources were needed the most.
Shapeshifting Companies of the Future with Dr. Bob Johansen of IFTF
This episode of the Innovation Ecosystem podcast features Bob Johansen, distinguished fellow at Institute for the Future, who has been helping organisations around the world prepare for and shape the future for nearly forty years.
The Right Time will Never Come: 5 Steps to Execute Your Idea
After two years of coming up with my idea, I finally launched the platform 'Scout Me Online.' All the reasons why we procrastinate, avoid or delay in making decisions committing to a specific task are because we believe we need to have something or be perfect. And when we don’t have those, or we doubt ourselves, which reinforces our current belief.
5 Industries with the Most Innovative Companies
Have you ever wondered where great ideas come from? If your company has ever stalled for the lack of innovation, then you’ve probably thought about it from time to time. Innovative ideas can come from nothing, or from a long process of brainstorming and debate, but it always seems like some industries are consistently coming out with the best new products and processes, while others lag far behind. This isn’t your imagination; some industries are moving much more quickly than others. But which industries are the most innovative, and what sets them apart?
Innovation Hot Spots – Countries vs. Cities
We increasingly see the world and much of its innovation through the lens of cities not countries, but there is little clarity around where the true innovation hotspots of today, let alone tomorrow, are to be found. While there is general agreement around which are the most innovative countries, the lack of consensus around the criteria used to identify an innovative city has produced multiple views and varied answers. If we want to understand more about the approaches that are the most effective in leading locations, we must decide on the best way to assess which cities are the most innovative.
Deciphering Innovator Archetypes with Tamara Kleinberg of LaunchStreet
In this episode we are joined by Tamara Kleinberg, serial innovator, keynote speaker, creator the Innovation Quotient Edge (IQE) Assessment and founder of LaunchStreet, a leading platform for individuals and organisations seeking to innovate. A few topics covered include lessons Tamara has learnt throughout her 20-year career advising companies such as Disney, General Mills, RICOH, P&G, J&J on how to create innovative cultures; why she so firmly believes that everyone has the possibility to be an innovator and the implications of this for leadership in large, established organisations; and walking through Tamara’s IQE Assessment the only tool designed to decipher a person’s natural innovative strengths and create the right environment for them to thrive.
‘Collaborative Synthesizim’ and Innovative Nations
In an increasingly interconnected world, those individuals, sectors, and nations who can master collaborative synthesis will emerge as alpha-innovators. Through "collaborative synthesizim", the use of highly-integrated, progressive technologies working in synchronization will drive innovative practices, encourage new ways of thinking, and present new challenges.
5 Ways to Use Technology to Improve Employee Engagement, Collaboration and Retention
In today’s workplace, technological innovation is key to retaining your best talent. From telecommuting, to growth and career development, to improved communication and collaboration, and beyond, there are myriad ways you can keep your employees happy and productive.
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.
How Does your Business Stand to Benefit from Big Data?
Big data is becoming increasingly vital to business scaling and competition. In this article, we’ll introduce you to the three V’s of big data - volume, velocity, and variety - and discuss the many ways your company can benefit from incorporating big data into decision making, product development, audience analysis, and much more.
A Modern Reading of Drucker’s Classic “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”
Peter Drucker wrote Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the 1980s as a book that for the first time put innovation as a regular management tool, side-by-side with strategy and operations in a managed business. It offers little mystification of the term "innovation" and there is much of a practical approach to where innovation is made---or might be made.
Innovators to Watch 2017
Alongside the annual Innovation Leaders analysis of large organizations’ performance, we also identify upcoming companies that are seen as potential future catalysts for change. While these are organizations that are yet to achieve global scale, they are already making significant impact. They are the companies that are inventing new technologies, applying new business models and creating value in new ways that may well have significant global influence in the years ahead. Some are new ventures; others have been around for a few years and are building momentum.
What Do the Best Innovation Programs Have in Common?
An in-house innovation program is becoming a common fixture in the most competitive organizations. However, in a recessed economy, these research & development programs can sometimes get eliminated, because they struggle to prove or articulate value.
Combining Startup and Corporate with Jenny Fielding of Techstars
In this episode of the Innovation Ecosystem podcast, we are joined by Jenny Fielding, Managing Director at Techstars, a global venture capital fund for innovative tech startups. Mark and Jenny discuss her extraordinary success scaling and exiting her first startup in three years, how she moved a legacy organization like BBC into the new digital era by founding BBC Labs, and why infusing corporate and startup culture is so powerful.
Systematic Idea Generation and Organizational Capabilities for Front-End Innovation Performance in SMEs
This study seeks to answer two key questions about the front-end innovation: when do idea generation activities involving internal and external partner’s payoff, and which organizational capabilities support idea generation activities for achieving high front-end performance?
Three Hurdles to Sustainable Innovation
Most people agree on the importance of sustainability in innovation, so why is it difficult to deliver? In this article, we’ll explore three hurdles to sustainable innovation: it’s often not considered by innovators themselves as they plan their projects; sustainability is not framed as an exciting and imaginative opportunity; and that sustainable innovation may not fit into a company’s ongoing processes.
Trends in Innovation Leaders: Greater Risk and Big Bets
The latest Innovation Leaders research shows that there is an increasing number of high-growth companies that are prepared to take greater risk and make big bets. Rather than focus just on incremental growth, they are being bolder and are seeking to develop more radical innovation opportunities. Despite requiring significant investment and offering no guarantee of success this approach has been transformational for some. Where and why is this happening and what has changed that has made this approach more common?
Explaining the Origin of Innovations with the Opportunity Vacuum Framework
In our society, it is still quite common to attribute the creation of new ideas to either genius or serendipity - a lucky moment finding a valuable insight without actually looking for it. In recent years, however, human creativity was demystified. Empirical research shows that the development of novel ideas has less to do with the inexplicable genius of some individuals, than with the circumstances in which they occur. No genius of any sort could have invented an iPhone in 1850, since the technological trajectory was not anywhere near this point at that time. If there is a 'natural limit' to innovation, then how can we describe the field of possible innovations?
Great Innovators as Great Mentors: Is This a Skill You’re Nurturing?
Companies that are looking to gain a competitive edge are also looking for the innovators among them. But what do innovators look like?
Vaccines, Scientific Breakthroughs and Mopping Floors with Jessica Flechtner
In this Innovation Ecosystem podcast, Dr. Jessica Flechtner of Genocea Biosciences discusses her journey progressing the company from startup to going public. Learn from Jessica’s journey and rationale for joining an innovative biosciences startup despite her illustrious research career; her key role in bringing a company from the acquisition of venture capital funding through to going public in year and how she and the Genocea team create a culture of discussing failure and celebrating success that helps them maintain their competitive edge in an ever-changing and demanding pharmaceutical industry.
The Engineering Behind Modern Superstructures
Human talent, drive and innovation can achieve incredible feats - and what more tangible example than modern superstructures? Let’s take a look at some of the drivers behind building bigger and better buildings worldwide, from improved materials, to cross-sector collaboration and beyond.