Anything relating to basic project management, including the triangle of constraints (scope, budget, time)
When it comes to creative problem solving, which is more effective? Focusing on the problem at hand, or on setting goals for what we'd like to accomplish? Jeffrey Baumgartner explores this perplexing question and comes to a very clear conclusion.
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.
“Core competences” are a major concept in managing innovations and technologies. In the era of Open Innovation, the established concept of core competence management needs to be updated. innovation-3’s Frank Mattes recently met with a group of 20 innovation / technology managers from leading firms to work out how this could be done – with the practitioner’s perspective in mind. In this article you will find the key results of the discussion.
What's the most effective way to design an idea competition that doesn't just result in a huge pile of ideas, but enables teams to implement ideas that will help to make your organization more creative? Jeffrey Baumgartner shares one practical framework for making this happen.
Customers change. Competitors change. Technology changes. If you don’t do anything, new and competitive products catch up and overtake your products and services quickly. A study by A.D. Little has shown that the life cycle of products has decreased by factor 4 the last fifty years. So innovation is essential. But it is time consuming. It demands a lot of resources. And a positive outcome is very uncertain. In this blog Gijs van Wulfen offers a helping hand by identifying five common mistakes to avoid.
In any supplier/customer relationship, both sides (but quite often the supplier) desire clarity regarding the certainty of the relationship. When there is uncertainty, there is angst. Some of this is natural and necessary. However, Michael Fruhling believes that in open innovation it is needlessly excessive. How can it be reduced?
Leaders need to develop a ‘habit of knowledgeability,’ according to Haydn Shaughnessy, who has written extensively on change and innovation for Forbes, WSJ, InnovationManagement and HBR, among other noteworthy publications. In this article, Harun Asad expands on this notion and suggests how to build and implement a strategic intelligence platform that facilitates advancing innovation.
The agile model for coding software rewards developers with more satisfying work and clients with more useful applications, sooner. Software developers who embrace agile principles face two challenges, however. We work globally: people cannot collocate. We source work by fiat: teams cannot gel to pursue challenges that engage them. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores how people can apply the practice of collaborative innovation as a means to realize the promise that agile development offers.
In business and in life, clear and accurate problem definition is an essential prerequisite for effective problem solving. This may sound obvious, or even trite, but this simple truth can be overlooked by those with pressing needs and a bias for action.
Innovation projects are said to fail 90% of the time. Why is this? Part of the answer lies in the special “innovation teams” who are mandated with finding breakthrough growth in large corporations. Setting these teams up for success is vital, yet corporations often fail when doing this. This article provides a collection of ten tips that serve as a talent management roadmap for growth companies in search of high-performance teams that deliver.
Can companies sidestep or blunt the effects of disruptive innovation? It's possible, but not likely, explains Steve Denning in a recent Forbes column.
People who lead their organization’s practice of collaborative innovation find themselves on the receiving end of ideas that exist outside of their original context or charter. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins advocates that leaders embrace these orphans as a catalyst for deep, creative ideation. He lays out a way to do so by way of hosting an Ideation Scene Investigation.
“Innovate or die” becomes the order of the day. People in response seek ways to innovate. Of late, many have embraced the practice of collaborative innovation, with its application of social media to sourcing crowds and ideas, and design thinking, with its structured approach to vetting hypotheses about new business opportunities. Having arrived in the organization by different routes, they exist as potential complements. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores ways to combine the practices to their mutual benefit.
People who practice collaborative innovation learn how to craft a series of engagements where participants can see the whole—the whole problem and the whole set of potential solutions—in order to reach a shared understanding of the way forward. In articulating the way forward, idea by idea, the group commits to a larger strategic intent. In this article, I describe a way in which practitioners can craft an engagement in which participants can reach a shared understanding of which ideas to pursue from the front to the back end of innovation.
In a slow or no-growth environment, we know successful innovation is absolutely essential for companies to establish and maintain a competitive advantage. While that may be yesterday’s news, achieving it is hard work. How can you achieve high value from your innovation initiatives? In this article Adi Alon discusses four key success factors that can help you get a higher return on innovation.
