Interdisciplinary Innovation: Being Innovative is a Way of Imagining, Perceiving, Expressing, Inventing & Inspiring
Innovators present creatively disruptive traits, disrupt old ways, and inspire better ways to do things. They are passionate to connect, to learn, and to explore by understanding commonalities and appreciating uniqueness. Being innovative is a growth mindset and a proactive attitude. You cannot wait for something to happen---keep curious, always think profoundly, learn fresh knowledge, and acquire new capabilities.
Why Let Others Disrupt You? Take the Smart Self-Disruption Journey!
In a time when uncertainty reigns, the fear of being disrupted can brutally hurt any business. Responsible leaders who dare to anticipate disruption and take steps to self-inflict it to their organization in a smart and controlled way are best positioned for the future.
Meaningful Work in the Age of Automation
As we look ahead and reimagine the future of work, augmentation of humans and technology will enable employees to create more meaningful work.
Getting Out of the Commodity Trap – Part II
The basics of Prospect Theory by Daniel Kahneman tell us that we hate to lose 3 times more than we love to win. This mindset, probably deeply engraved in our DNA, has implications on the way we develop and brand our products as we are more prone to reduce the drawbacks we have relative to our competitors rather than to improve our advantages. According to Bengt Järrehult this leads to commoditization.
Look Beyond Given Truths to Find Innovative Thinking
Are you in a “more of the same mode” in your innovation work? In this article Susanna Bill uses two real-life examples to remind us of the need to see beyond given truths. We need to keep our eyes and ears open for the triggers presented by others. She also returns to a “golden-oldie” exercise to put ourselves off balance and open up our thinking for new opportunities.
Getting Out of the Commodity Trap – Part 1
Has your product lost competitive advantage? If your customers cannot differentiate your product from those of your competitors, most likely you have fallen into the “commodity trap”. The following article explores how this harmful phenomenon can be better understood and ultimately avoided by studying the dynamics within flocks of birds.
Measuring Innovation part 1: Frequently Used Indicators
One of the most common questions people ask me is how I measure innovation when conducting my research. The question echoes an underlying concern about how innovation can be captured and adequately measured. In this article I delineate the most frequently used innovation indicators, their strengths, and their drawbacks.
Ever Heard of the Groan Zone?
The switch from divergent to convergent thinking in innovation workshops is smooth in literature but extremely tough in reality. In this article Susanna Bill explains how she was on the verge of making a huge mistake until she learned about the middle component between divergence and convergence: the groan zone.
Two Cultural Values that May Shape Personal Innovativeness
How do cultural values influence innovative thinking and behaviors? There has been some research but the field is still young. In this article I attempt to summarize the current thinking regarding two cultural values and their implications for personal innovativeness.
7 Ways to be Creative
When faced with the question “Are you creative?” I have found that only the half of the audiences I speak to consider themselves creative. This is true even when you talk to people that are supposed to be creative in developing products or market plans. As innovation is partly depending on guts to dare, something that comes from self-confidence, I think it is time that we stretch our old opinion on what creativity is all about – here are 7 different ways to be creative. I am sure you can find yourself described at least in a couple of them.
Can Catering for Creativity Make Innovation Happen?
Many firms tend to mix the terms and concepts of creativity and innovation. There is a view that catering for creativity automatically makes innovation happen. In this post Susanna Bill compares the works from three different authors about the factors influencing a creative and innovative climate. What can be learned?
Role Modeling Creativity: “They don’t do what you say, they do what you do”
The maxim quoted in the title is famous for Swedish parents and essentially means that words can only take your teachings that far. But does this maxim extend to the work context? In this article, aimed at managers and leaders in organizations, we will examine the concept of creative role models and see how leaders can use themselves to leverage creativity in their teams.
The Best Motivation for Innovation is ‘Being in Flow’
An important topic in Innovation Management is that of motivation. What kind of incentives can an organization provide to stimulate innovation? Bengt Järrehult argues that there is no such thing as extrinsic motivation and we should really concern ourselves with working in Flow.
Intrinsic or Extrinsic Motivation? That is the Question
The power of motivation for innovation has been in focus for research for the last decades. In this post Susanna Bill shares a personal experience of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation to explain why communities of practice need to be managed carefully.
Playing to Win Means Being Willing to Lose
Inspired by Susanna Bill’s post regarding the importance of vulnerability for innovation, I was reminded of an eye-opening story from the book Sway by the Brafman brothers. This story may explain why we retrospectively look at what we have done and ask ourselves “how could I be trapped like that?” It also applies to companies that have an ambidextrous innovation strategy that incorporates both the “play-to-win” approach and the far more common “play-not-to-lose” approach.
Believing is Seeing: The Pygmalion Effect and Creativity
In this post we will look at something that all leaders who are students of creativity should know: how to harness the self-fulfilling prophecy as a tool to facilitate creativity. The Pygmalion effect is a phenomenon which effectiveness in stimulating creativity is only surpassed by its simplicity.
The Innovation F-word
Fail fast. Fail cheap. Fail early. Go out to fail. We have all heard these words numerous times in connection to innovation and how to create radical innovation, the ultimate dream for all of us involved in the field. In fact the f-word is used so frequently in connection to innovation that it is about to become yet another meaningless slogan. Why is failure so hard? In this blog post Susanna Bill takes failure out of slogans and into a human orientated perspective.
Threat vs. Opportunity – The Art of Pitching your Ideas
Why is your boss neglecting the fantastic idea you came up with even though it looks promising (in your eyes at least)? And why is your boss so intent on avoiding negative situations? This is an irritating behavior many of us have experienced and one that Bengt Järrehult examines more closely in today’s blog.
Conflict in Teams – Does it Stimulate Creativity & Innovation?
Conflict is a dreaded word. Most people associate conflict with interpersonal clashes ranging from inelegant avoidance tactics in the breakroom to fierce and open hostility. Surely, it is obvious that conflict in teams is detrimental to creativity and innovation. But is it? In this post we will explore this matter further and see when conflict sometimes can enhance the creative thinking skills of teams.
Happiness, Meaning & Innovation
Can an organization be too customer oriented? What are the consequences of letting short term requirements of existing customers cannibalize the exploration of your own an agenda? How can a sense of meaning be reinstalled in disillusioned development organizations? Read Susanna's latest blog post to find out.
Can Multi-tasking Result in More than 60% Longer Project Time?
You want to be perceived as a good innovation project member, to be appreciated for your achievements – and just to safeguard that notion some of what you do leads to a success in time – you do multiple projects in parallel. But is this really efficient and effective? Check out Bengt Järrehult’s somewhat mathematical look at multi-tasking, where the exercise of putting numbers in leads to a result that may surprise you.
Cognitive Biases Inhibiting Innovation in Top Management Teams
The top management team of an organization is arguably the most important team for deciding and implementing innovation strategies. They typically decide which markets to be entered, which markets to be exited, and which new technologies to pursue. But decision making is fraught with biases – errors in judgment that affect the quality of decisions. Sometimes with devastating results. In this post we will see how basic human psychology affects the decision making of top management teams.
How to Change Innovation Culture the Fast & Viral Way
There are different approaches to facilitating cultural change within an organization in order to promote innovation. Bengt Järrehult argues that the viral change, whereby successful changes are achieved through experimentation and then spread by different groups copying or adopting the change leads to faster and more long-lasting culture change.
Expertise and its Role in Innovative Problem Solving
The nature of problems in innovative work is that they are often ill defined, novel to the individual who engaged them, and complex in that often several solutions exist to the same problem. In this post we will see how expertise is an important factor in innovative problem solving, and how leaders and organizations can cultivate R&D team expertise.
Innovation and the Art of Riding an Elephant
In trying to understand why we act in a predictably irrational ways, for example choosing short-term instead of long-term rewards, Bengt Järrehult uses the metaphor of the mahout and elephant to depict the different parts of the human brain and it's processes. In an innovation effort, how can you direct the mahout and motivate the elephant?
The Team Diversity Sweet Spot
Team diversity is conducive to innovation. When R&D project teams are composed of people with different skills, competencies and knowledge, the likelihood for new thinking and innovative solutions increase. However, too much diversity may lead to breakdown in communication and ensuing conflict. There is a sweet spot in how much diversity R&D teams should have.
Rewarding Creativity: 3 Lessons on When it Works
It is well known that intrinsic motivation–the kind that comes from working with a task because it's interesting, involving and challenging–has the strongest relationship with individual creativity. Extrinsic motivation–especially based on monetary rewards–has a detrimental effect on creativity. But is this really true? In this article, we'll explore how to reward creativity and realize that everything may not be as it seems.
Finding Time, a Scarce and Necessary Resource
Browsing through these paragraphs will take you approximately two minutes. If you read them more carefully, four perhaps. Not a lot of time or investment. In this blog Susanna Bill reminds us why time is key for innovation and organizational change.