What Is Innovation Strategy?
Innovating doesn’t just happen when inspiration strikes. In order to ensure forward progress, a business has to create a structure that stimulates innovation regularly. This structure will determine the rate and efficacy of overall innovation and is commonly known as an innovation strategy. This article will define innovation strategy, discuss how to create one, and outline the main types of innovation. What Is Innovation Strategy? An innovation strategy is a plan that organizes future growth milestones in an effort to fill unmet customer needs. It will detail the value added to the product/service in the coming months and should evolve your business to better target an improved customer experience. An innovation plan will consist of the policies, research methods, [...]
What Is Idea Management?
Traditional innovation can only take your business so far, and without an evolution of processes, you might find it harder than ever to move new ideas forward. Introducing structures and systems to formulate, organize, and act upon new ideas is one of the best ways to optimize internal innovation. This practice is better known as idea management, and in this article we will define and discuss idea management in full.
Zen vs. Zoom: Is Person-to-Person Interaction Better for Innovation?
The author draws upon the theory of “emptiness” and other principles of Zen Buddhism to evaluate the desirability of remote vs. person-to-person interaction during the course of innovation, especially new idea development. This evaluation is pursued within the context of three related idea process parameters: interdependence, intuition and intensity. An in-person work environment is recommended for the intense phases of new idea processing.
What are the Challenges to Government Intrapreneurship?
Government innovators face specific challenges: regulations, compliance issues, cooperation with numerous other branches of government...but they also access some of the most technical and influential trends of our time.
Unleashing Virtual Creative Collaboration at The Sonophilia Foundation: What Can a Nonprofit Teach Us About Virtual Creative Collaboration
Does creativity suffer in our virtual world, or could working virtually actually lead to more collaborative environments, better ideation and heightened interaction?
Is South Africa the Next Silicon Valley?
When you think of the most innovative places in the world, what do you picture? Silicon Valley and its array of tech startups? Tokyo, because it has the highest number of patents filed worldwide? London, where over 15% of the workforce is employed in the tech sector? Or are you imagining somewhere else?
Trending Questions
What is a trend, and other questions answered by Sébastien Van Laere, Co-founder of Superframe, an agency using insight and foresight to develop brand-, innovation- and business strategy for some of the biggest global brands.
Five Questions to Answer Before Crowdsourcing
As the director of the IdeaScale Crowd community, I recently had the opportunity to share some insights and best practices for innovators who are new to crowdsourcing, and may not have conducted their first campaign yet. We discussed five questions to ask as you prepare for your first campaign, why those questions are important, and some examples of good and bad answers to those questions.
Why People Buy Innovation Management Software
Every year, IdeaScale analyzes our system and customer data and releases a report on crowdsourced innovation trends and benchmarks. You can find this year’s report here, but one of the questions that we pay a lot of attention to is why people are looking to purchase an innovation management platform in the first place.
Who Are the Creators Among Us?
For a long time, the prevailing theory was that the creators, ideators, or innovators among us were a special type of person that had an innate gift for inspiration. The idea that creativity could be taught was much debated, but it is also one of the most commonly debunked myths in the innovation space.
Building an Imagination Machine: Exclusive Interview with Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller
Imagination is one of the least understood but most crucial ingredients of success. It’s what makes the difference between an incremental change and the kinds of pivots and paradigm shifts that are essential to transformation — especially during a crisis.
SWICH – The Six Week Innovation Challenge
The Six Week Innovation Challenge is becoming the method of choice in corporates. And it's not only innovators who love the sprint - leaders embrace it just as much.
Leveraging Alien Thinking: Exclusive Interview with Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade
For the past decade, Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade, professors of innovation and strategy at IMD Business School, have studied inventors, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, and artists. These people, or “aliens,” as the authors call them, are able to make leaps of creativity, and use five patterns of thinking that distinguish them from the rest of us.
Let’s Settle the Debate – Innovation Both Is & Is Not Everyone’s Job
Is ‘innovation’ everyone’s job – as so many claim it is? Or is it not everyone’s job – as the counterargument goes? The reality is not quite so simple. Dive in as we examine the three cases of significance here – two in which innovation is everyone’s job, and one in which it isn’t.
DNA of an Innovative Business: Is It Yours?
With the acceleration of modern economic, societal and environmental changes, new opportunities are created everywhere, and often where we least expect them.
Breaking the Innovation Stereotypes: The Case of Curry Express
We often hear about the concept of innovation and its importance in enhancing the competitiveness of an organization---however, the excessive use of this term has distorted its true meaning and content.
The Secrets to Making Open Innovation Projects Work
Open innovation often requires global teams with national culture differences to work together, which presents some challenges. Here’s how to navigate them.
How to Ensure Crowdsourcing Works for Product Innovation
Many enterprise organizations use crowdsourcing to find ideas in their blind spots - but how do you launch your first crowdsourcing challenge, and what sorts of questions do you ask? IdeaScale Crowd is hosting a webinar for first-time crowdsourcing innovators who want to engage a large group of collaborators in solving their problems.
The Three Horizons of Innovation Training
What if everyone in your organization came to work believing they could shape the destiny of your company? Learn more in this new post, and find out how it's possible with a 30-minute consult.
How to Select Your Best Value Innovation Project – The Secret is in a Well-Managed Product Project Portfolio!
Innovation is on everyone's lips as a solution to post-COVID economic recovery. The world of innovation has a very broad definition: It’s often referred to as an information technology innovation... but our worldwide economy is still very reliant on manufacturing. How you select your best innovation project is undoubtedly a starting point!
How To Make Sure Your SMB Is Being Energy Efficient
Making your business environmentally sustainable does not mean reducing total material demand. Still, it does require more effective use of energy and resources and the mitigation of current waste streams.
What Are The Six Traits of Highly Innovative Organizations?
I love meeting innovators. You meet all types: some of them are blue sky thinkers, some of them are feasibility buffs, some of them are incredible networkers and presenters, and some of them are shy and fascinatingly deep thinkers.
Leadership Matters In More Ways Than One
No one is disputing the fact that leadership matters. In fact, there has never been a more critical time where leadership matters more than it does today.
The Post-COVID Workplace: What to Expect Now and in the Future
As we start to think about a time when we can get back to the office and return to some sort of normalcy in the workplace, whether we are a startup or a well-established company, we will need to understand how we can best operate in a post-COVID workplace environment.
Try Double-Handed Innovation
Most new products and services are developments or combinations of existing offerings. But just adding features can lead to a product overloaded with ‘feature bloat’. Instead try giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Add something different and take away something of little value. Start by focussing on the market leading product (or products). List its top features and identify the benefit which customers get from each of the features. What problems are solved and how important are they? Then prioritise the list. From a customer perspective which are the most valuable and least valuable features? You may need input from a survey or focus group to help at this stage. Ask what features could we add [...]
The Art Of Innovation | 10 Things To Learn From Guy Kawasaki
The agenda of our first management meeting in 2021 was ‘How can we innovate to thrive this year?’ We were clear that if we continue to do the same thing we did last year, there is no way we can bring any change in our growth.
Is There Value in an Innovation Program for Your Company?
In my last article I wrote about the influences and themes that I see changing how large, mature and (often) incumbent organisations drive innovative growth and impact. In short, the innovation development professionals are (ironically) being disrupted.
Strategic Agility: The Leadership Survival Skill of the Year
Chaos might have defined the year that was 2020, but that turmoil helped business leaders learn a new skill that will serve them well in the years to come.