Cross-Communication

Focused on communicating across departments, hierarchies, sectors, or industries (ex: R&D department working with Marketing department)

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.

Sarah Vandenberg2022-06-08T10:15:53-07:00June 8th, 2022|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Innovation Psychology|Tags: brainstorming, Collaboration, idea development, Ideation, intensity, interdependence, intuition, remote work, Teamwork, Zen, Zen philosophy|

Is Communication Sabotaging Your Ability to Innovate?

Avoid these four communications landmines as you navigate the stages of innovation.

Sarah Vandenberg2022-01-31T19:20:05-08:00February 1st, 2022|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Enabling Factors, Life Cycle Processes, Organization & Culture, Strategies|Tags: Communication, follow-through, inclusivity, innovation purpose, leadership, managing expectations, outcomes, purpose, stages of innovation|

3 Ways Real-Time Financial Data Drives Business Intelligence

Finance is no stranger to using data in predictive analysis, forecasting, and more, but what can real-time data bring to the table?

Sarah Vandenberg2021-12-02T17:49:27-08:00December 13th, 2021|Categories: Enabling Factors, Strategies|Tags: business intelligence, Competition, competitive intelligence, data, digital transformation, finance, financial data, forecasting, predictive analysis, real-time data|

7 Steps to Reconcile Co-Innovation and Confidentiality: How Secret Should Your Co-Innovation Transformation Be?

In an increasingly competitive, connected and globalized world, co-innovation and value co-creation have recently become the norm for all R&D projects from startups to large organizations. In fact, co-innovation is critical to the development and sustainability of organizations of all sizes and and all industries.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-12-02T17:22:51-08:00December 6th, 2021|Categories: Open Innovation|Tags: agile innovation, asset protection, co-creation, co-innovation, Collaboration, Competition, competitive edge, confidential co-innovation, confidential innovation, feedback loop, innovation governance, Open Innovation, outside-in approach, project team, R&D, risk, risk management, Stakeholders, strategic risk, sustainable innovation, value creation|

Top Five Challenges When Pitching a New Idea

Hardly an innovation event passes without mentioning how Kodak passed on the digital camera or how Blockbuster decided not to invest in streaming entertainment. But with the rapid rate of disruption, how do you ensure that great ideas can penetrate established organizations?

Sarah Vandenberg2021-10-31T15:14:59-07:00November 17th, 2021|Categories: Front End of Innovation, Strategies|Tags: idea evaluation, idea pitch, idea value, storytelling|

The Six Pillars of Innovation Culture

Every year, IdeaScale asks our customers what their main priorities are for the coming year, and without fail one of the top two priorities is to create a culture of innovation. Every innovation thought leader, every organizational engagement specialist, every pundit or leader in transformation says that this is the secret to avoiding disruption.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-09-28T16:38:53-07:00October 6th, 2021|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: benchmarks, Collaboration, collaborative innovation, diversity, empowerment, Failure, Innovation Culture, innovation metrics, innovation policy, innovation training, intrapreneurship, listening, measuring innovation, metrics, transformation, transformational innovation|

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.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-12-20T14:34:16-08:00August 2nd, 2021|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Enabling Factors, Front End of Innovation, In-Depth Article, Leadership, Life Cycle Processes, Open Innovation, Organization & Culture, Strategies, Support for SMEs, Training & Education|Tags: Business Model Innovation, case study, co-creation, Competition, competitive advantage, complex innovation, convergent thinking, creative industry, Creativity, cross innovation, Cross Innovation Hub, design thinking, divergent thinking, diversity, efficiency, fuzzy front end of innovation, impact assessment, innovation catalyst, Innovation Culture, innovation driver, innovation impact, innovation policy, innovation process, innovation scouting, innovation stakeholders, intellectual property, intermediaries, knowledge spillover, knowledge transfer, measurement framework, measuring innovation, non-technical innovation, Open Innovation, process innovation, product innovation, prototype, qualitative measurement, quantitative measurement, R&D, Science Scout, silos, social challenge, staircase of effects, survey, value chain, value creation, VUCA, white paper, whitepaper|

Unleashing Virtual Creative Collaboration at The Sonophilia Foundation: What Can a Nonprofit Teach Us About Virtual Creative Collaboration

Does creativity suffer in our virtual world, or could working virtually actually lead to more collaborative environments, better ideation and heightened interaction?

Sarah Vandenberg2021-07-15T21:06:08-07:00July 19th, 2021|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: accountability, adaptation, Collaboration, Communication, covid-19, creative collaboration, productivity, remote work, Teamwork, virtual meeting|

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.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-06-08T11:20:33-07:00June 23rd, 2021|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Enabling Factors, Idea Management, Open Innovation, Support for SMEs, Training & Education|Tags: adaptation, Communication, efficiency, idea data, idea sharing, Ideation, Innovation Culture, innovation management software, transparency|

SWICH – The Six Week Innovation Challenge

The Six Week Innovation Challenge is becoming the method of choice in corporates. And it's not only innovators who love the sprint - leaders embrace it just as much.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-06-08T07:43:50-07:00June 9th, 2021|Categories: Collaborative Innovation|Tags: agile sprint, continuous innovation framework, design sprint, feasibility hypothesis, hackathon, hypothesis, idea value, innovation resources, lean canvas, lean startup, market feedback, six week innovation challenge, stage gate, SWICH, time-to-market, value hypothesis, value proposition design|

The Secrets to Making Open Innovation Projects Work

Open innovation often requires global teams with national culture differences to work together, which presents some challenges. Here’s how to navigate them.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-05-24T07:29:15-07:00May 19th, 2021|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Open Innovation|Tags: agile innovation, Collaboration, Communication, competitive advantage, cross-cultural communication, cultural diversity, embeddedness, global innovation, Innovation Strategy, not-invented-here syndrome, open innovation strategy, R&D, risk assessment, risk tolerance, siloing|

6 Ways to Innovate Your Business Model

The pandemic has given us all an opportunity to build a new business future. Market disruption equals opportunity for those willing to look and work for it. This is the time to adjust and innovate your business model to market conditions.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-03-24T19:36:57-07:00February 25th, 2021|Categories: Strategies|Tags: Business Model Innovation, channel innovation, covid-19, customer acquisition, customer acquisition innovation, disruption, ease of use, friction, market contraction, market expansion, pricing innovation, profit model innovation, relationship building, sustainability, user experience, user experience innovation, value, value proposition, value proposition innovation|

What Can We Learn from NASA About Crowdsourcing in a Pandemic?

When COVID-19 shut down the United States in 2020, everyone wanted to be a part of the solution. At NASA, the entire NASA workforce expressed their desire to help the nation combat the virus – even though most of their employees were asked to work from home.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-03-24T19:37:06-07:00November 23rd, 2020|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Idea Management|Tags: case study, communication strategy, Crowdsourcing, NASA|

Agile Development for Manufacturers: The Emergent Gating Model

Agile is employed within Stage-Gate for new-product development by manufacturers with positive performance results; but must be adjusted from the software version of Agile – the result: the emergent Agile-Stage-Gate hybrid model.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-11-16T13:16:11-08:00November 10th, 2020|Categories: In-Depth Article|Tags: Agile, agile development, agile-scrum, Agile-Stage-Gate Hybrid Model, definition of done, feedback, gating system, hardware development, iteration plan, kanban, manufacturing, Problem Solving, product testing, protocept, retrospective meeting, scrum, Software Development, sprints, stage gate, upgates, voice of the customer|

What is a Virtual Innovation Lab?

The Virginia Department of Transportation created their own Virtual Innovation Lab, where they collaborate to solve problems related to remote work, engineering topics, safety, and more with the help of their entire distributed workforce. Learn more in this December 15th webinar!

Sarah Vandenberg2021-03-24T19:37:09-07:00November 9th, 2020|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: Collaboration, Employee Engagement, innovation lab, innovation management software, remote work, SaaS, virtual innovation lab, work from home|