What Is Innovation Strategy?
Innovating doesn’t just happen when inspiration strikes. In order to ensure forward progress, a business has to create a structure that stimulates innovation regularly. This structure will determine the rate and efficacy of overall innovation and is commonly known as an innovation strategy. This article will define innovation strategy, discuss how to create one, and outline the main types of innovation. What Is Innovation Strategy? An innovation strategy is a plan that organizes future growth milestones in an effort to fill unmet customer needs. It will detail the value added to the product/service in the coming months and should evolve your business to better target an improved customer experience. An innovation plan will consist of the policies, research methods, [...]
Zen vs. Zoom: Is Person-to-Person Interaction Better for Innovation?
The author draws upon the theory of “emptiness” and other principles of Zen Buddhism to evaluate the desirability of remote vs. person-to-person interaction during the course of innovation, especially new idea development. This evaluation is pursued within the context of three related idea process parameters: interdependence, intuition and intensity. An in-person work environment is recommended for the intense phases of new idea processing.
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.
Five Reasons Why You Should Think Like a Criminal
Have you seen the movie The Day of the Jackal? In this 1973 film directed by Fred Zinnemann, Edward Fox plays a professional assassin, the "Jackal," who is hired to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle. It is a compelling thriller in which it is hard not to admire the cunning and guile of the ruthless killer. In the end you feel disappointed that he did not succeed with his audacious plan. It is an example of a genre of storytelling in which the main protagonist is a clever criminal. We seem to find them fascinating. Breaking Bad is about a chemistry teacher who becomes a master drugs dealer. The Sopranos is about a Mafia family. Ozark concerns a money [...]
Who Are the Creators Among Us?
For a long time, the prevailing theory was that the creators, ideators, or innovators among us were a special type of person that had an innate gift for inspiration. The idea that creativity could be taught was much debated, but it is also one of the most commonly debunked myths in the innovation space.
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.
Human Creativity: The Critical Survival Skill of the 4th Industrial Revolution that Cannot be Automated
While 4th Industrial Revolution technologies are fast becoming the way to go in the world of the "new normal," they are driven by something far superior to robots: human creativity. Let's have a look at the importance of creativity in this article.
Knowledge Creation and Management within Organisations
This article discusses the types of knowledge within a case organisation and mechanisms to abstract this knowledge to therefore drive innovation within an account management team.
7 Psychological Facts That Help Understand Customers Better
Psychology is not only about human emotions. Understanding their behavior, nature, and finding out the behavioral patterns is the ultimate goal of psychological studies. And the best practices of psychology can drive sales for business too.
How to See Change Before Everyone Else
Market and social forces are challenging long held beliefs about management. For more than a century, the focus of management has been execution. We have become excellent at being increasingly efficient.
Running = Innovation (Learning from Personal Record in Berlin Marathon)
Prof. dr. Stefan Stremersch had an epiphany while running his personal record time in the Berlin Marathon. Running is innovation. Running needs innovation, for example when it comes to new solutions for improving endurance running equipment. In this article he talks about big brands such as Nike and Asics and why are they are (un)successful. But innovation also needs running: running teaches you characteristics that are needed to make innovation into a success. Read prof. dr. Stefan Stremersch his view on this below.
Five Strengths of Innovation Leaders
Highly innovative leaders need to share a clear vision, practice effective communication, and make a commitment to roll imagination into reality.
The Limits of Positive Thinking
The magical potency of positive thinking has been a common theme among motivational speakers for a long time. In 1952 Norman Vincent Peale published his seminal book, The Power of Positive Thinking. He advocated that you should always be optimistic. You should build a mental picture of yourself succeeding.
How Cultural Norms Affect Innovation
The world is seemingly getting smaller. With the rise of social media in the last decade, everyone has constant access to what's happening all over the world. Countless stories circulate on the internet every day highlighting entrepreneurs---young and old---who are at the cusp of innovation with their new products and ideas. Some stories go viral, catching the eye of millions of people who are in awe at the individuals' innovative solutions to solve problems.
Startup Ideas are NOT Inspired on the Spur of the Moment!
Based on research in the market and in many countries, I tried to figure out the exact mechanism by which startup ideas are created. Aim is to facilitate and expedite this process for would-be entrepreneurs. Is it mainly a matter of brainstorming effort or are external factors at play?
Digital Factory of the Incumbent: Software of the Mind
This paper was originally published on smartinsights.com, the 11th of September, 2018. Republished here with permission from the author.
Technological changes are one of the leading advocators to shape customer value. They are characterized by a process of social technological variations, rooted in different disciplines e.g., economics, sociology, and psychology.
Five Visible and Invisible Forces Behind Digital Innovation
Innovation is what leads to differentiation. There need to be both “hard” and “soft,” visible and invisible forces to drive the success of innovation management.
How to Become a Business Linchpin: The Desirable Skills and Tools of Successful Workers
Some years ago, I had read Seth Godin’s book, Linchpin, which detailed the importance of becoming a critical component of the workplace environment. I’ll spare you the details, but the idea was to learn and apply as much as you could so the business was reliant on your efforts.
5 Innovative Careers for Individuals Looking to Help the World
Are you innovative or creative? Are you looking for an ingenious career field for yourself? If the answer to these questions is a yes, then get ready because you’re about to discover 5 innovative careers for individuals looking to help the world.
What Job-Hunting Teaches Us about the Value of Innovation
Anyone who has ever been on the hunt for a new corporate job knows that it can be one of the most difficult and frustrating processes in the world. The Internet has given us the tools to apply for thousands of different jobs every day, but it has also presented its own problems: application systems with no easy answers, automation, and stiff competition make the ease of online applications less attractive.
The Coming of the Age of Tolerance
How did we arrive here, so suddenly? When for the first time was the original idea of the ‘age of curiosity, scarcity and abundance” published? It was right here in a syndicated column in 2005 and it was a very scarce notion. Today Age of Abundance is a useless notion; the term is widely used by dozens of big time leaders as their prime umbrellas hovering over their own crafts; while in reality, the term ‘age of abundance’ has now become a precursor to the “age of decadence” while we have started advancing towards a new “age of tolerance”. Let’s go deeper: During the age of curiosity; mankind struggled with its primal senses of touching, feeling and sniffing out whatever [...]
Are Legacy Approaches to Talent Inhibiting Your Innovation Efforts?
The legacy approach to talent selection involves matching education, length of experience and functional skills to the role. All of this makes sense as a baseline, and for well-established professions. But, we argue, selecting talent for innovation requires a whole new approach. Companies must recognize specific innovation skills that drive business outcomes. Yet today, most lack the tools to do so.
6 Reasons Some People Are Uncomfortable with Innovation
When we talk about innovation, we sometimes forget that not everyone is on board with the new and revolutionary. Some people would rather stick to their same schedule and do the same thing, day after day: a predictable and comforting routine. For champions of innovation, this mindset is difficult to understand. However, you’re likely to meet many people over the course of your career who are simply uncomfortable with innovation, and you will have to learn to work with them. The first step to compromise is understanding, so let’s take a look at some of the reasons people are sometimes uncomfortable with innovation.
Hold Innovation & Mobilize National Entrepreneurialism
We are over flooded with massive innovation lacking commercialization; we have qualifications, certifications and degrees but seriously lacking directions; we have incubators and accelerators exhausted like real estate projects…we have make-believe economical development games but the real progress is not there. So what else we need?
How to Foster an Organizational Culture that Encourages Innovation
Innovative and forward-thinking companies are successful because they have new, exciting, and useful products or services before others and consumers take notice of companies regularly producing the next big thing. These companies are more effective and they can grow more rapidly because their company culture encourages innovation among their employees. A company of “intrapreneurs” can quickly become a successful and noteworthy company.
6 Potential Roadblocks to Innovation
Does it feel like your efforts in innovation lately have been…lackluster? Are you finding that your team just isn’t coming up with the great ideas you know they can produce? If your business is feeling stale and stagnant, you obviously want to know why, so you can make changes. Innovation efforts aren’t always simple and easy—and there are definitely some roadblocks that can come up along the way. Don’t get discouraged if you run into any of these common problems—you just have to be determined to prevent and work through them whenever possible!
Seven Good Reasons Not to Innovate
Innovation is risky. Customers are not asking for it. We are already successful… Getting momentum behind significant innovation is difficult, and sometimes it’s easier for a business to stay in what they deem a safe spot. Let’s look at seven arguments that inhibit innovation as well as their counter arguments.