Influencing Leadership

Focused on communicating to and influencing leadership (ex: “How do I get funding for this project?”)

How Does the Chief Information Officer Role Relate to Innovation?

Nearly 40% of IdeaScale’s customer base is run from a dedicated innovation department helmed by a Chief Innovation Officer, an innovation leader, an innovation manager or someone else. However, there is another emerging owner for innovation at a large organization. At IdeaScale, we often find that CIOs and their organization are driving innovation strategy for a company.

Sarah Vandenberg2022-01-31T16:07:35-08:00February 2nd, 2022|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Leadership|Tags: chief information officer, Employee Engagement, Innovation Leadership, innovation manager, Innovation Strategy, it department|

10 Tips for Dealing with Employee Recruitment and Retention

In September, McKinsey released a report describing the “Great Attrition,” a recent wave of cross-sector resignations we have witnessed throughout the world, primarily based on the exhaustion of employees due to the pandemic.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-11-15T14:15:20-08:00November 17th, 2021|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: automation, benefits, company culture, competitive advantage, decentralization, digital transformation, employee feedback, employee retention, great attrition, Open Innovation, personnel mapping, profit sharing, remote work, resignation, team building, work-life balance|

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|

What to Tell Your Boss When You Make the Case for Innovation Management

The term “innovation management" has been around for a long time (at least since the 1980s – if not before), but for many business leaders establishing a sustainable innovation management program is still a new concept. Executives aren’t sure what skills they need, who should be on their team, what activities are essential to success, and who they need to partner with.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-08-31T08:28:34-07:00September 8th, 2021|Categories: Strategies|Tags: collaborative innovation, competitive advantage, Employee Engagement, Innovation Strategy, transformative ideas|

How to Break the 5 Habits That Hurt Ideation

Many companies find it hard to prioritize ideation. Here are five ways to break the pattern and gather a wealth of ideas for your organization.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-08-24T18:17:04-07:00August 24th, 2021|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Idea Management|Tags: brainstorming, chaos, creative thinking, Employee Engagement, employee recognition, idea evaluation, idea generation, idea management, Ideation, incentives, motivation, proactive, structure, value creation, variety|

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|

What Are The Six Traits of Highly Innovative Organizations?

I love meeting innovators. You meet all types: some of them are blue sky thinkers, some of them are feasibility buffs, some of them are incredible networkers and presenters, and some of them are shy and fascinatingly deep thinkers.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-04-04T21:31:50-07:00April 20th, 2021|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: Employee Engagement, Innovation Leadership, innovation process, kms, knowledge management|

Increase Your Innovation Reputation and Velocity with an Innovation Evangelist

Building upon my popular article Rise of the Evangelist, I wanted to create an article for the global innovation community focused specifically on the importance of the innovation evangelist role.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-03-31T09:24:09-07:00March 31st, 2021|Categories: Leadership, Open Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: chief digital officer, chief evangelist, innovation evangelist, product evangelist, service evangelist, talent strategy|

Strategies that Promote Workplace Diversity and Make Your Business More Innovative

At IdeaScale, we’ve learned that diversity combined with equity and inclusion leads to more innovative thinking: businesses that are run by culturally diverse teams are more likely to develop new products, 45% more likely to grow market share, and more likely to have a 2X innovation revenue.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-12-20T14:23:43-08:00February 9th, 2021|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: diversity, diversity & inclusion|

How Does Diversity and Inclusion Impact Innovation?

Nearly all executives believe the long-term success of their business depends on the flow, testing, and development of new ideas. One of the problems is the old belief in the “creative genius” – that creativity and innovation belongs to a talented few and not to everyone.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-12-20T12:22:51-08:00October 19th, 2020|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: diversity, equity, groupthink, inclusion|

Using Innovation to Improve Your McKinsey Organizational Health Index Score

2020 proved just how important our relationships to banks and credit unions are as they worked to rapidly respond to the changing financial needs of their customers.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-12-20T12:14:09-08:00August 17th, 2020|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Open Innovation, Organization & Culture, Podcast, Support for SMEs|Tags: bank, bottom-up innovation, credit union, Crowdsourcing, customer experience, diversity, diversity and inclusion, Employee Engagement, employee innovation, inclusion, mckinsey organizational health index, Open Innovation, optimism, podcast, technology adoption|

Where Did the Suggestion Box Come From?

And what’s changed along the way?

Online ideation and collaboration might be a fairly recent business practice, but the suggestion box concept has been around at least since the 18th century.

Ideascale2021-12-22T17:13:12-08:00August 3rd, 2020|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: Collaboration, Employee Engagement, employee feedback, incentives, professional development, suggestion box|

5 Reasons Why Middle Management Slows Down Innovation

Innovative ideas and processes will stagnate without support from middle management. Let's explore why that is, with an emphasis on larger companies, in this article.

Sarah Vandenberg2021-12-20T11:31:06-08:00February 26th, 2020|Categories: Leadership, Organization & Culture|Tags: loss aversion, middle management, risk management, stagnation|