What is the Process for an Employee Innovation Challenge?

A growing trend over the past several years has been to host internal innovation challenges. Companies do this because they find it’s an excellent way to find solutions to long-standing problems, positively create culture (particularly in a remote workplace), and also to nurture the budding intrapreneurs who want to find career growth and new opportunities.

Innovator Dilemma vs. Innovator Phenomena: The Theory of the Firm’s Phenomena

Established firms’ strategies remain characterized by the inability to master---some will say even comprehend---the economics of choosing. It is particularly surfacing unresolved relationships between [1] technical-technological, [2] economic and [3] social combinations taking place within established firms e.g. manufactured product.

Unlocking “Pipeline Gridlock:” Effective Portfolio Management is the Key

Too many projects in the development pipeline is a common but serious complaint in new-product development departments. Pipeline gridlock leads to under-resourced development projects, which end up taking too long to get to market, and then often under-perform. Solutions are offered—Gates with Teeth, Red Flags, and the Productivity Index—to achieve a more balanced development pipeline with fewer projects but better projects.

Calculating the ROI of an Idea: Ideas That Saved Time

Crowdsourcing and open innovation initiatives are vital by bringing vast stakeholders together to share ideas on complex problems and opportunities. Much of the focus is set on engaging the crowd yet deciding which ideas to take a risk on requires data on the likely impacts and costs. 

Whitepaper: Stimulating and Measuring Open and Cross Innovation 

As two intermediaries from Hamburg that foster open and cross innovation processes, Science Scout (an initiative of Hamburg Innovation) and Cross Innovation Hub (Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft) joined forces to start a discussion around the stimulation and measurement of open and cross innovation processes.

Five Questions to Answer Before Crowdsourcing

As the director of the IdeaScale Crowd community, I recently had the opportunity to share some insights and best practices for innovators who are new to crowdsourcing, and may not have conducted their first campaign yet. We discussed five questions to ask as you prepare for your first campaign, why those questions are important, and some examples of good and bad answers to those questions.

Why People Buy Innovation Management Software

Every year, IdeaScale analyzes our system and customer data and releases a report on crowdsourced innovation trends and benchmarks. You can find this year’s report here, but one of the questions that we pay a lot of attention to is why people are looking to purchase an innovation management platform in the first place.

How to Ensure Crowdsourcing Works for Product Innovation

Many enterprise organizations use crowdsourcing to find ideas in their blind spots - but how do you launch your first crowdsourcing challenge, and what sorts of questions do you ask? IdeaScale Crowd is hosting a webinar for first-time crowdsourcing innovators who want to engage a large group of collaborators in solving their problems.

What Do Innovation Maturity Assessments Have in Common?

Building a repeatable model for innovation is a journey, not a trophy. An innovation department builds services and competencies across multiple disciplines – from research to communications and culture. And even with a dedicated innovation department, they must cooperate seamlessly with other parts of the business in order to deliver meaningful results on an ongoing basis.

Introduction to Game Theory

Game theory is a theoretical framework for conceiving social situations among competing players. In some respects, game theory is the science of strategy, or at least the optimal decision-making of independent and competing actors in a strategic setting. Let's have a look at a few examples.

What are the Differences and Advantages between a Specialist and a Generalist? 

In building your career, you're likely asked to choose one of two tracks: to become a specialist or to pursue the path of a generalist. This article takes a look at advantages and disadvantages of choosing either of these two paths, and discusses some grey area in between.