Creative Strength Training
Creativity: a highly sought-after skill which can be illusive in times of need. The big question is what can we do about it? Whether you’re a professional artist, dancer, comedian, scientist, inventor or entrepreneur, you will experience the highs and lows, inspiration, frustration, self-criticism, doubt, and problem solving within your personal creative process. In the end, we’re all bringing something new into the world and hoping it will find its place and be well-received by others.
5 Most Influential Innovators of the 21st Century
Ever since the beginning of mankind, there has always been someone who pushes the human race forward, such as the cavemen who learn how to make fire or the Native American Indians who sharpened stones to create weapons. With the advancement of technology in the 21st century these innovators: Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheila Lirio Marcelo are creating new ways to travel, interact with others and access professionals for help.
Supporting Innovation with Autonomy and Accountability
Innovation tends to thrive in an environment where there are less bureaucratic restraints and an appetite for calculated risk. However, without a structured management system in place, experimentation can go awry and great ideas risk falling by the wayside. This is where accountability and autonomy can provide the essential framework to support the innovation process to its full potential.
Organizing within Networks of Collaborators
Our existing organization needs to envisage a changing world full of disruption that calls for radical change. To meet different challenges, to be highly adaptive it needs to begin to organize around ecosystems to deliver on a vision that recognizes it has to be part of a greater collaborating network to thrive in this highly connected world.
The Digital Tsunami
These days, when migrants arrive at a refugee camp, one of the first things they ask for is access to WiFi and electricity to recharge their cell phones. Their smartphone is as basic a resource for survival as food and water. This is a vivid reminder of the fact that we are fully immersed in a digital world.
What Do Innovators Look Like?
Crowdsourced innovation is a tactic used more and more often by government organizations as well as enterprise corporations. This means that innovation teams need to add a new skill set to their resumé: communications.
Innovators: Are You Smart Enough For 2017?
We can all see that global commerce has evolved, innovative excellence has advanced and entrepreneurialism has accelerated. Just to make things more interesting, all of this change happened extremely rapidly. But how about our own intelligence? Are we really smart enough for 2017 and beyond? Ambition encourages us to reach for success, so let’s test our own entrepreneurial intelligence to see if we’re up to the challenges of 2017.
Picking the Right Stakeholders for Open Innovation
What external stakeholder groups can you tap into to build value for your innovation initiatives? Are your relationships with these external stakeholder groups solid or do you need to do additional work to build good, mutually beneficial working relationships? Are there potential stakeholder groups that you have not yet tapped at all? If so, what is your plan for reaching out to organizations within these pools so that you can further expand your innovation ecosystem? Are your channels for communicating with your external stakeholders strong or do they need further work?
Innovation Through Cross-Industry Learning: How is it Changing the World?
Cross industry learning, the transfer of technologies across industry boundaries, can revolutionize technology landscapes. We will illustrate the advantages of cross industry learning with a case study.
3 Advantages to Collaborating on Innovation as a Global Community
The list of problems that need to be solved is growing almost as fast as our solutions are. Some are concerned about the lack of food and water security, others worry about access to education and a whopping 45.2% of millennials think today’s most pressing problem is the destruction of natural resources. But with the proliferation of problems, organizations and enterprises are broadening their search for innovative solutions and many of them are looking to the crowd for ideas.
Top 20 Most Influential Innovation Blogs from 2016
Over the past few weeks we have done the analysis of all of the big innovation bloggers to find evidence of who really are the best innovation bloggers of 2016, and who you should look out for in 2017, ranked into the official Top 20 list.
Unlocking the One Trillion-Dollar Sustainable Innovation Opportunity
Last week Unilever announced research showing that one-third of consumers now purchase its brands based on their good social and environmental performance, but went on to suggest that brands are missing an opportunity from not promoting sustainability effectively. Getting this right could unlock a further $1trn market opportunity for sustainability innovators.
Creativity is Key: Tips on Avoiding Groupthink
It’s awesome when everyone agrees, isn’t it? Yes—and no. Most of us have, at some point, fallen into the trap of groupthink to avoid conflict and promote harmony in a group, whether at school, work, or on a committee. Groupthink has its perks: everyone feels comfortable, and there’s no risk of tension among members. It’s safe. Easy. Unfortunately, it can also kills creativity and innovation.
4 Things to Think About When Creating Your Innovation Roadmap
This time of year is full of meetings with leadership and teams in order to help them prepare for the year ahead. People discuss financial goals, sustainability goals, profitability targets, customer success metrics, and more, but there are also numerous research & development teams out there who are coordinating their annual innovation strategy who struggle in their process to create a cohesive innovation strategy.
A Quick Guide to External Collaboration
Working with external partners to bring better products and services to market faster and/or develop better intellectual property has never been more popular in the world of business than what we see today.
Rebuild Personas According to Your Next Product Innovation
Using personas in your design thinking framework is important, but are the results satisfying and clear? In this article, Product Innovation Manager Alex Igor Sanghikian discusses the Adjacent Possibilities framework for product management. By exclusively focusing on your persona’s one main need and trying hard to fulfill that need with your product, you can build the next feature with a more focused vision.
Digital or Dead – An Expert Study
Nearly all executives have acknowledged the relevance of digitization and related trends, such as the Internet of Things, connectivity, and industry 4.0. However, the full impact of digitization has usually not been understood in detail. Moreover, most firms struggle to implement digitization initiatives successfully.
The Four Essential Steps Towards Open Innovation Success
Although ‘open innovation’ is the talk of the town in R&D circles, leveraging external sources of innovation remains challenging for most companies. In 2013, researchers Dr. Joel West (Keck Graduate, Institute of Applied Life Sciences) and Dr. Marcel Bogers (University of Southern Denmark) suggested a four-phase model for inbound innovation projects. They emphasized that open innovation needs to go further than just obtaining external ideas. Integration, commercialization and the interaction between the firm and its collaborators are just as important. This post explores the four essential steps towards open innovation success.
Reviving the Swiss Watch Industry: The Remarkable Story of Swatch with Elmar Mock
Elmar Mock is the Founder of Creaholic, but he began his career as an engineer in a deteriorating watch industry. Elmar approached top-level management within his company with an insane idea, a new way to completely innovate the industry and improve sales. Everyone thought he was crazy and his co-workers distanced themselves from him, but that turned out to be a good thing.
Industry 4.0 and the Internet-of-Things (IoT): Learning from the German Chemical Industry
The keyword “Industry 4.0” is no longer an empty cliché or a black box; it is currently probably the most important topic within the German economy. Not only will existing processes be revolutionized – but also new businesses and business models will arise. More and more companies have already started to tap into its potential.
Why it Takes Time to be an Overnight Success
When it comes to transformation programs, internal alignment forms the foundation for strategic success. Naturally, aligning an organisation to its strategic priorities requires serious upfront investment in terms of time. But without this time, it’s a case of ‘fail to prepare – prepare to fail’.
Hacking Reality to Have a Great Day with Caroline Webb
Caroline is the CEO of Sevenshift, a firm that shows people how to leverage behavioral science to improve their working life. Caroline is also the author of How To Have A Good Day, which has been published in 16 different languages, in more than 60 countries. Some of the topics Mark and Caroline cover on this week’s show are: The secret manifesto Caroline has hidden in the book, which is shared by the Innovation Ecosystem, the 100-plus tools Caroline uses, all of which are scientifically proven, and operate independent of context, culture, or industry, and what you can do to hack reality in service of having a good day.
As Self-Driving Cars Hit the Road; Innovation Is Outpacing Insurance
The revolution in self-driving vehicles has advanced faster than insurance companies can react to it. These cars introduce unique factors that must be integrated into the models that are used to set insurance premiums. At this time, coverage for self-driving cars is set using the same formulas as for traditional cars. Not long ago, there was a fatality involving the Tesla Model S. This occurred while the vehicle's Autopilot mode was active. The case brought new attention to the risks of using self-driving cars on the road, and insurance companies noticed.
How Improvisation can Boost Innovation
If you have an innovative culture already in place (meaning you’re working with stuff like agile project management, design thinking, lean, etc.) perhaps it’s time you consider Applied Improvisation Training. If instead you are a static and uncommunicative company, Applied Improvisation may even work against your innovation efforts. Edoardo Binda Zane explains more.