How to Boost the EU’s Innovation Performance
This year's Innovation Union Scoreboard shows that most Member States have improved their innovation performance. This allows the European Union to maintain a clear lead over the emerging economies of China, Brazil, India, Russia, and South Africa, but not to close the existing gap with innovation leaders such as the United States, Japan and South Korea. More efforts are therefore needed so as to address the EU's weaknesses. One area in the spotlight is related to firms' innovation activities.
Steal Like an Artist: A concise, inspiring guide for creators
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon is a wonderful little book that is designed for anyone who is ever has had a desire to create something amazing, but doesn't know where to start.
Wicked Problems Demand Various Viewpoints
All organizations face wicked problems – highly complex issues demanding multiple viewpoints to be solved. In this blog Susanna Bill argues why innovation needs to leave the single product dominant perspective behind and take social aspects into consideration.
Resilience Rules
Western societies and the systems we depend on to make them function are becoming ever more complex. As a result, they are also becoming more vulnerable to catastrophic, systemic failure. As individuals, communities and societies we may, at the same time, be becoming less able to cope with such events as we lose basic skills, families are more scattered and communities less connected.
Opening the Practice of Collaborative Innovation to the End User
Engaging end users in co-creation deepens the bonds between the organization and them. The activity can deliver economic value to all parties involved. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins highlights the critical questions that campaign teams will want to address when they pursue externally focused collaboration.
Pulp Innovation Chapter L: Breaking the Innovation Log Jam
After a successful innovation presentation and strong encouragement to move forward with their plans, Marlowe and Susan are elated. The question remains why some senior executives had been holding them back when it was clear to the CEO that innovation was the only option to move forward?
The Role of Social in Innovation Strategy
In a recent SAP Community Network post Harun Asad mentioned innovation as one social strategy. In this article he explores the role of social in innovation strategy more broadly, and cites several real-world examples as well as shares some predictions for the future.
Redefining Local Stores
Demand for food grown locally has become a major trend. But local food also includes rising concern about ‘food deserts’, areas where residents have no easy access to fresh fruit and vegetables; the closure of local shops; health inequalities and the obesity. Add in convenience, new technology, and a few entrepreneurs and the result is an emerging redefinition of local stores.
Measuring the Practice of Collaborative Innovation
Developing and supporting the practice of collaborative innovation takes time and money. What do we assess to weigh its value? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins proposes focusing on strategic alignment of the program, relative advantage of the ideas, and engagement of the community members.
Growing B2B Services: 3 Trends to Act Upon Now
What does it take for companies to market new, innovative capabilities as a service? The challenge to expand beyond products is daunting, but as market exemplars show, the returns on the investment can be worth it. The case studies explored in this article illustrate the extent to which services demand a premium in the market, drive differentiation from the competition, and build loyalty.
Pulp Innovation Chapter XLIX: Building Innovation Momentum
Marlowe and Susan present their strategic innovation plan to the senior executives at Accipiter, recommending incremental innovation for organic growth, and disruptive innovation in new products. The question is, have they created enough innovation momentum to convince management to take on two simultaneous innovation projects?
The Elastic Enterprise: The first must-read innovation book of 2012
The Elastic Enterprise, a new book from Haydn Shaughnessy and Nicholas Vitalari, describes and decodes an inflection point in organizational strategy and innovation that you must understand if you expect to be able to compete effectively in the years ahead.
How to Understand the Notoriously Irrational Consumer
Companies put in lots of Market Research efforts to nail down the needs, wants, wishes and whims of the elusive consumers. But, how reliable are the results? Are there logical – or illogical – reasons why consumers sometimes say one thing and still do the other? In this blog, Bengt Järrehult uses the findings of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Laureate in Economy 2002 to understand more of this in the area of innovation.
Jugaad: Lessons in Frugal Innovation
Resourcefulness amid serious constraints is known in India as ‘Jugaad.’ In this article, Accenture’s Mitali Sharma suggests this simple concept — which gave birth to a $2,500 car, a $12 solar lamp, and a life-saving incubator made from car parts — might be the antidote to the complexity plaguing your innovation process.
Pulp Innovation Chapter XLVIII: Innovation Presentation Day
After six months of uncertainty and misdirection, headfakes and management gibberish, Marlowe and Susan are finally going to bring their innovation community at Accipiter to a head.
We Need to Innovate. Now What?
If you are not one of the lucky few to work in one of the most innovative companies in the world, you've probably thought at some point "we really need to innovate." Gijs van Wulfen provides practical advice on where to begin.
How to Design a Provocative Creative Challenge
If you want creative ideas, you need to invest your creative energy not in ideas, but in understanding the problem and formulating provocative challenges, instructs Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Stem Cells Set to Deliver Medically and Financially?
Stem cells hold out enormous revolutionary promise in regenerative medicine. The array of potential applications continues to grow as research overcomes ever more hurdles from the sourcing of cells to the actual application processes. The teen years of the 21st century could be the decade that stem cells deliver on their promise.
Forensic Innovation: Telling the Orphaned Ideas’ Tale
People who lead their organization’s practice of collaborative innovation find themselves on the receiving end of ideas that exist outside of their original context or charter. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins advocates that leaders embrace these orphans as a catalyst for deep, creative ideation. He lays out a way to do so by way of hosting an Ideation Scene Investigation.
Entrepreneurs of the World, Unite in Eco-systems!
Clientelism, Wintelism and innovation eco-systems: moments of truth within the global semiconductor industry. Europe and Japan tried for years to challenge Intel by building national seminconductor champions, yet wihout success. Today, a small British company named ARM has qua its eco-system strategy managed to launch a more serious go at Intel.
Social Media Hardly Utilized For Insights: Competitive Advantages Diminish
The figures are clear, Emailvision’s survey shows that just 6,2% of the marketers are using social media to gain insights into customer preferences. According to a study by the Chartered Institute of Marketing only 20% of marketers use Facebook for market research. This means not fully utilizing the opportunities of social media and their data. Social media can provide an unparalled scale of real-time data, help identify unmediated consumer opinion and competitor perceptions or offer the ability to connect with those 'creative consumers' to co-create the solution with and strategically embed the outside-in perspective in the organization.
Open Innovation and Public Policy in Europe
Industrial innovation processes are becoming more open. The large, vertically integrated R&D laboratory systems of the 20th century are giving way to more vertically disintegrated networks of innovation that connect numerous companies into ecosystems. Since innovation policy ultimately rests on the activities and initiatives of the private sector, it is vital that policy follows this evolution. Read more in the report from ESADE Business School in Barcelona and the Science|Business Innovation Board AISBL.
Innovation Lessons Learned from Students
Here are some lessons I've learned about innovation from working with high school and college students. If their passion and enthusiasm is any indication, we have a bright future ahead!
Product Innovation: Unifying People, Processes and Tools
Product innovation is not simply about generating new ideas. It is a complex process, and many organizations struggle with the design and implementation of an effective innovation strategy that yields measurable results over the long-term. Sustained growth and profitability can be achieved through the integration of three critical levels: People, processes and tools.