A New Approach to a Longstanding Team Building Tool
After dedicating his professional career to teaching team building in companies followed by fifteen years of travelling the world to teach people about the DISC model, author and keynote speaker Merrick Rosenberg continues his mission in a new book that takes a more playful approach to personal assessment and learning behavioral differences.
Getting Connected Products Right
Why do so many companies seem to be sitting on the sidelines when it comes to creating connected products and designing services that tie into them? The cost of adding wireless connectivity to a device is plummeting toward $1. Projections about how many Internet of Things (IoT) objects will be part of our lives, at work or at home, range from 12 billion by 2020 (Cisco) to 50 billion (Ericsson and Intel).
A Closer Look at the Three Skill Sets that Enable Innovation
In our previous posts, we’ve made two major points. One: innovation is vital for the long-term survival of any business. And two: a handful of crazy ideas won’t cut the mustard. Successful innovation is a complex process that requires a whole lot more than just riotous creativity. Based on academic research, and in close collaboration with professor Frederik Anseel (Ghent University), we’ve defined three innovation profiles: ideators, champions and implementers. Each of these personas has a crucial part to play in what we like to call ‘innovation dream teams’. What makes them unique and why do you need all three? Let’s take a closer look.
Disrupting Finance From Within a Leading Swiss Bank with Dave Bruno
David Bruno is Head of Innovation for a large Swiss Bank, and the co-founder of YNOME, a transparent marketplace that rates your financial management providers and helps you assemble your own private bank. David is innovating the fintech industry and discusses how he builds trust and transparency in an industry that’s notoriously very hush-hush and filled with regulations. He also provides insights into how he builds a diverse, multifaceted team to successfully innovate for the millennial market.
Innovation Management in Emerging Markets
When it comes to innovation management, I see a growing number of companies in emerging countries like Turkey, Mexico and Brazil doing a better job than their counterparts in developed (primarily Western) countries. There are many reasons for this and here you get some of my observations.
What your Definition of Innovation Says about Your Company
In a field centered around fresh, outside-the-box thinking, it is no wonder that there is such a broad range of definitions for the term innovation. Creating a clear-cut definition for the term is critical in shaping the culture of innovation at your organization and will help you determine which resources to allocate to your program.
The Science of Innovation with Amantha Imber
Amantha Imber is the Founder of Inventium, a company that uses science-based innovation to help organizations unlock their growth. Amantha has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry such as Coca-Cola and Disney, and is the author of The Creativity Formula: 50 Scientifically-proven Creativity Boosters for Work and for Life. On this episode, Amantha discusses how to encourage a risk-taking company culture that isn’t afraid to fail in the name of innovation, as well as what she personally looks for in a new hire.
Metrics and Measurements for Open Innovation and Ecosystems
Given the difficulties in developing and working with metrics and measures for open innovation and ecosystems, I have pulled together some inspiration and insights from several articles.
Product Innovation of a Trolley: A 3-step Journey
Consider the world’s most ingeniously designed products. Whether it’s your smartphone, your favorite racing bike or a nifty robotic lawn mower – they all have a one thing in common: rather than being conceived overnight, they were shaped by a series of consecutive, systematic innovations. But how does such a structured product innovation approach look? This CREAX project illustrates the ins and outs.
The Changing Face of Corporate Intrapreneurship
In early September 85 smart people gathered for two days at the Pfizer conference center in New York City to talk about their practical experience in identifying, engaging, driving value from and (at times) failing with the most innovative employees in their respective businesses. The 2016 Corporate Intrapreneur Summit was 100% on point in targeting key areas of interest around how intrapreneurs in a corporate setting.
The Untold Story Behind Switzerland’s Success with James Breiding
Switzerland – a tiny country with few natural advantages – has become incredibly successful in the world of banking, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and more. James Breiding, author of the bestselling book, Swiss Made, explores the enabling factors for innovation in Switzerland. He makes the point that when an entrepreneur comes up with a new and innovative method or product, there will be resistance from those who have accepted the status quo. Entrepreneurs as well as intrapreneurs need to have thick skin if they wish to disrupt the market.
A Roadmap for Building Corporate Innovation Capabilities
What should a roadmap that helps you develop corporate innovation capabilities look like? How do you bring new thoughts and approaches together with current and past initiatives (both successes and failures) and turn this into a single framework? How do you keep pushing and developing your organization to become more flexible and agile without losing out on the current overall efforts and expected results?
5 Counterintuitive Management and Innovation Tips From Rising Leaders
Business these days might as well require us to be tactical geniuses because it’s like navigating a field of landmines. One wrong step can completely blow you out of the water. The risks obviously aren't keeping everyone at bay, as new leaders are rising to face the challenges during these fast-paced, turbulent times. To help them on this quest, great leaders and managers of today share their most valuable management and innovation tips.
What are the Key Innovation Challenges?
Innovation has become a business mantra and a word that threatens to lose all meaning every time it’s uttered at another conference or thrown into another book title. But in spite of its omnipresence it continues to be essential – a growing field – and one of the only practices that might save businesses from extinction.
Riding the S-Curve with Whitney Johnson
“Companies don’t disrupt, people do,” says Whitney Johnson, who is best known for her work on driving corporate innovation through personal disruption. She discusses the four things that help you know whether you’re on the right or wrong S-curve and shares examples of how to disrupt a constraint in a company environment. Tune in for more insightful advice.
The Next Level of Open Innovation: Is Your Organization Ready?
Getting started with open innovation and developing the right foundation for open innovation has been a key challenge at many companies in the last three to five years. Now, internal as well as external forces are moving these companies towards the next level of open innovation in which we go beyond just products and technology and start to explore how a more open and collaborative mindset can be applied to all more business units and functions. Think procurement and engineering as examples.
40 Design and Innovation Leaders in Social
Design Thinking Leaders discover innovative ideas by working through challenging, and often chaotic, situations where disruptive opportunities are typically hidden. These creativity-minded professionals embrace the consumer’s perspective and balance that with the brand’s needs and aspirations. The result? Simple, yet radical solutions that seem so obvious in hindsight.
Innovation Powered by Mind and Machine
Research and analytics have changed tremendously in recent years. With new technologies, advanced software and a global marketplace, the solutions are becoming much more complex. In this Innovation Ecosystem podcast Mark Bidwell speaks with Marc Vollenweider, CEO of Evalueserve, a company that offers innovative and disruptive solutions to their clients’ problems. Marc has a genuinely unique perspective on the changes taking place in various industries and offers a lot of advice, for leaders as well as those working for more traditional and regulated firms, on how they can successfully navigate through these disruptive waters.
Launch a Four-Week Innovation Program
In-house innovation programs are an emerging phenomenon. Many businesses and government organizations are formalizing processes around the innovation practice in order to keep pace with competition and the rapidly changing expectations of the public.
Innovate on the Edges: How to Integrate a Startup into the Core Business
Using focused lean and agile startup methodologies, today’s Exponential Organizations (ExOs) are changing the way we do business forever. In this clip of the Innoview webinar series, Yuri van Geest and Anthony Ferrier discuss how corporate enterprises can use ExOs to disrupt an adjacent market and how to incorporate them back into the core business without destroying their entrepreneurial spirit.
How to Innovate Efficiently: Six Ways to ‘Unfuzzy’ the Front-end
Kittens are ‘fuzzy’ because they’re soft and fluffy. But if someone uses the same word to describe the early stages – or ‘front-end’ – of an innovation process, the meaning is less cute. In that case, ‘fuzzy’ means ‘blurry’, ‘unclear’ or even ‘incoherent’. In many cases, innovation projects start off as chaotic and seemingly aimless ventures. In fact, this happens so often, that organizations tend to accept the ‘fuzzy front-end of innovation’ as a necessary evil. At CREAX, we believe front-end fuzziness can and should be drastically reduced in order to innovate efficiently.
Creating an Innovation Network with Rob Wolcott
As Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN) and a Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Rob Wolcott knows a bit about networking and the politics of innovation. In this episode of Innovation Ecosystem Rob shares practical advice for intrapreneurs who are looking to get stuff done from within the middle of the organization. And for growth leaders of businesses, he also has some great tips about where to get your inspiration!
The Role of Innovation Professionals in Exponential vs. Incumbent Organizations
More than ever, mature organizations are being disrupted by competitors that seem to appear out of nowhere, and rapidly grab massive amounts of marketshare in a short amount of time. In this clip, Yuri van Geest and Anthony Ferrier talk about the role of innovation professionals in this changing business environment—how the exponential organizations (ExO) engage intrapreneurs to develop disruptive innovations on the edges of the core business, while incumbent organizations employ innovation professionals as ambassadors to implement standards and processes to involve employees in innovative thinking.
Mad Scientists and Creativity Labs
Managing solitary and collaborative innovation: All innovation is based on creative ideas which are generated and developed by passionate people working alone and with others. Both solitary and collaborative work are important to the effective development of innovation in organizations. The key for leaders is to effectively promote both.