How to Assess your Organization’s Capability to Innovate
In today’s rapidly evolving world the ability to create new value and the ability to be innovative is now more important to an organisations survival than at any other time in our history and the ability of organisations to assign the right level of resources in the right manner is a critical to creating a successful innovation practise.
Why Product Lifecycle Management Should Be On Every Executive’s Agenda!
Product lifecycle management (PLM) initiatives often miss their true potential and make projects unnecessarily costly. Not understanding how to optimize these investments can have long-term effects on both the top and bottom line, while companies that realize how to use PLM as a competitive weapon can capture significant market advantages. In this article we give you insights into how to take an approach that addresses the true potential of a PLM investment.
The Innovation Disconnect
CEOs talk enthusiastically about the need for innovation. Workers at the front line can see the needs and opportunities for fresh ideas. But somehow nothing happens. Ideas do not get implemented. Innovation grinds to a halt. This is the innovation disconnect and it has to be tackled head on.
5 Key Points to Consider when Developing an Innovation Strategy
From our talks with innovation management practitioners and business executives it seems that not many organizations have a well-defined and integrated innovation strategy. To find out more about how to go about creating and executing such a strategy, we spoke to Wouter Koetzier and Christopher Schorling at Acceture who encourage a very pragmatic and execution-oriented approach.
Mapeo del Espacio en Blanco – Viendo el futuro más allá del núcleo
En el mundo de híper-innovación cada empresa tiene que hacerle frente a lo desconocido. Idris Mootee de Idea Couture echa un vistazo al mapeo del espacio en blanco, una herramienta para superar tus miedos.
Cascading Change Versus Viral Change
“Everything has changed, even change has changed” is a proverb that is increasingly true. In this article Bengt Järrehult will describe the good old top-down or cascading approach compared to a more bottom-up or viral way.
What Visionary Companies Do Differently
Visionary companies do not only try to see into the future – they create the future. The history of innovation is scattered with examples of misjudgments regarding the dynamics of new technology. Less than two years before Polaroid’s bankruptcy, Morgan Stanley made the following statement: “We are upgrading Polaroid to Outperform from Neutral based on the company’s new product performance…
Leading Innovation in Multinational Subsidiaries – Part 2
The changing global economy creates special challenges for leaders of multinational subsidiaries. History shows that innovation is key to survival. This series of articles explores this challenge and offers subsidiary leaders a way to identify and implement innovative strategies to sustain local operations and create added value for their parent corporation. It also looks at how corporate managers can help drive more innovation from global subsidiaries.
You Can’t Innovate Alone
You can invent on your own, but in an organization you can never innovate alone! You need an awful lot of colleagues and bosses to share your vision before a big change can truly take place.
Collaborative Innovation Inside & Beyond the Firm – Two Worlds Become One
This year, a very interesting trend in collaborative innovation can be observed in Central Europe: The once distinct concepts of “Enterprise 2.0” and “Open Innovation” are merging. Firms are taking a holistic view on collaborative innovation and put the question about whether collaborative innovation should happen primarily within the firm’s walls or with externals out of the focus.
Sustainability: Realizing Supply Chain Leadership through Collaborative Innovation
The Digital Age, like a hoochie mama navigating a Saturday night in heels, bares all. Citizens, regulators, employees, and investors see in real time how well organizations manage their supply chains. Transparency by nature raises the bar.
Silence the Voice of the Customer
Innovation is successful when it targets customers’ needs, but how sure can we be that this is something we can predict effectively? In this article Tony Ulwick argues that the traditional voice of the customer methodology is the wrong tool to determine customer needs. Tony presents an alternative methodology that makes it possible to determine all the needs of a given customer group.
7 Tips for Outcome-Driven Innovation
While many people believe that process and structure stifle creativity - the center of gravity for sourcing and inspiring innovation – this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, planning ahead streamlines the process and surfaces any potential bottlenecks ahead of time, resulting in a program that is more apt to produce meaningful outcomes and return on investment for organizations.
Leading Innovation in Multinational Subsidiaries – Part 1
The changing global economy creates special challenges for leaders of multinational subsidiaries. History shows that innovation is key to survival. This series of articles explores this challenge and offers subsidiary leaders a way to identify and implement innovative strategies to sustain local operations and create added value for the corporation. It also looks at how corporate managers can help drive more innovation from global subsidiaries.
How to Create Products that Your Customers Will Love
How to create innovations that customers do not expect, but that they eventually love? How to create products and services, which are so distinct from those that dominate the market and so inevitable that make people passionate? A major finding has characterized management literature in the past decades: that radical innovation, albeit risky, is one of the major sources of long-term competitive advantage. But is that really the case? Read more in this article by Roberto Verganti, Professor of Management of Innovation and author of the book “Design-Driven Innovation.
The Case of Vestas Wind Systems and Peter Drucker’s Five Deadly Sins of Business
The Nordic countries have a high number of start-up companies but are struggling with scaling their entrepreneurs, start-ups and innovations to global large-scale operations and companies. Yet, one Nordic company namely Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems managed to become world-beater within the global wind turbine industry. But but after 2008 Vestas has experienced a near death experience and is struggling for survival. Vestas’ story holds important lessons for other Nordic companies, not only within the renewable energy industry. It will here be argued that had Vestas paid more attention to what the management guru Peter Drucker labeled the five deadly business sins Vestas might have avoided getting into dire straits.
Making the Right Idea Investment Choices- Idea Evaluation at Scale
Previous articles in this series focusing on collaborative enterprise innovation have covered topics such as the benefits of software platforms in enterprise innovation, internal communications, increasing engagement and driving collaboration. In this article we share insights on evaluating large numbers of ideas generated as part of enterprise programs.
Measuring Open Innovation – 3 Key Principles to Improve Your Innovation Measurement Practices– Part 1
Thanks to loads of compelling research studies and best practice cases in open innovation (OI) carried out over the last decade, several companies nowadays begin to embrace and partially apply the new principles and methods OI offers. However, when managing open innovation at the project level, even experienced managers still go blank at the question: how to assess, control, and measure the performance of these activities? In this series of articles, we will address the above issue by discussing a general framework for an open innovation performance measurement system (Part 1). Given this framework, a metricsbased management toolkit will be presented that provides a suite of key performance indicators (KPIs) for a specific set of OI methods that demonstrates the key results of our Open Innovation KPI 2012 Study (Part 2).
White Space Mapping – Seeing the Future Beyond the Core
In the world of hyper-innovation every company needs to address the unknown. Idris Mootee of Idea Couture takes a look at white space mapping, a tool for overcoming your fears.
How to Assess an Innovation Training Program
As innovation becomes an important skill set, large organizations will seek to obtain training for their employees. We stand on the brink of an innovation training “land rush” with few rules and little information to identify the best programs. Evaluating an innovation training program is critical. Assess programs based on their depth, the experience of the trainers, the referenced body of knowledge and the inclusion of practical examples and hands-on exercises. Ignore certifications, because no standard exists.
Back End Commitment: Now You Have the Idea
People who sponsor collaborative innovation challenges establish a quid pro quo with the contributors and collaborators who comprise their communities. They agree to “do something” with the ideas that resonate with the community. What might “do something” entail, exactly? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins speaks to sponsor commitment on the back end of innovation, where ideas morph into tests, prototypes, and concepts.
How To Innovate The Expedition Way
Innovation is essential. But it is difficult and risky. Inspired by great explorers like Columbus, Magellan, Amundsen, Hillary and Armstrong a method for ideating new concepts was developed, designed as an expedition.
Expanding Immersive Experiences
Virtual reality is back with better graphics, better hardware, and more applications. Several technologies will soon be released to the general market to further immerse mainstream users in their digital experiences while expanding the applications of virtual reality.
Governing Innovation in Practice – The Role of Top Management
What role does the C-Suite have in exercising the company’s innovation governance responsibilities? In this article, the last in a series of five, professor Jean-Philippe Deschamps, defines six domains that are essential to organize and mobilize for innovation. They will condition the way innovation will be carried out and sustained by the organization and hence belong to the prime innovation governance duties of the top management team.