Knowing who your company or entity is communicating to, understanding who is impacted by your idea, finding out best practices in sourcing ideas and process improvements from your audience
Gijs van Wulfen shares 25 of his favorite motivational quotes to jump start innovation. Do you have more?
When does innovation begin? Is it at the moment of inception, or at the moment of adoption, or at the moment when the new innovation really displaces the old? An interesting question, especially as the implications of each milestone are fundamentally different, yet each is a profound accomplishment in their own right. British historian David Edgerton has argued in his book The Shock of the Old for a focus on something between adoption and dominance; and reliance upon what he calls “use-centered history” to mark the real impact of new innovations.
Engaging in collaborative innovation by participating in activities such as ideation challenges can put community members at odds with the carrot-n-stick incentive and power structures that exist in every organization, including those that ostensibly support a culture of innovation. As the sponsor of your organization’s program for collaborative innovation, you can structure rewards in ways that give your community members the space and resources they need to pursue ideas to fruition. In this article, community architect Doug Collins helps you think through the process of defining a rewards structure for a basic ideation challenge that respects the innovators and collaborators who contribute.
Many organizations have committed to developing deeper intimacy with their most important clients by establishing customer advisory boards. The most compelling, worthwhile forms of engagement within this structure occur when board members and stakeholders from the sponsoring organization explore possibilities for helping one another realize their respective visions. In other words, they collaborate and innovate on what a shared future might offer. In this article community architect Doug Collins makes the case for supplementing the board meetings with a virtual community focused on collaborative innovation to improve the continuity of the dialogue and formation of the ideas that arise.
Innovation management has become one of the most critical factors contributing to sustained business growth. Co-creation is an extremely powerful driver of innovation provided that you manage the process and harness social technology. In this article Catherine Constantinides takes a closer look at the different tools you need to consider to be successful.
Good ideas are most successful when they're not just a modern novelty, but fulfill an unmet customer need. Gis van Wulfen describes how to find innovation opportunities by identifying customer frictions.
Crafting design strategies that result in truly compelling brand experiences, products and services demands a change from traditional methods. It requires a more creative and iterative design approach, which is optimized towards identifying real human needs and addressing them with meaningful experiences. Paul Noble-Campbell delves deeper into five critical keys to uncovering those true success drivers.
The success of an organization's idea management program is at the mercy of its supporters - the employees. The innovation team and top management must effectively communicate their goals to employees so they understand what's expected of them and feel confident that their ideas will be taken seriously. Enno Scholz walks us through this communication process.
How do you go about incorporating end-user viewpoints into innovation? Indeed should you? There's a debate around both questions but whichever side of the fence you are on, social science has a role to play in understanding how end-users can and should influence product development. Emma Pivetta I Contreras describes the techniques.
Recently, Bruce Nussbaum declared "design thinking is dead." Tim Ogilvie, CEO of innovation strategy consultancy and co-author of a new book on design thinking, disagrees.
Getting fresh insights is a crucial step in the ideation process. Gijs Van Wulfen shares his suggestions on sourcing inspiration.
Open innovation may seem to be the preserve of big business. After all, it is often associated with long established monstrosities like Proctor and Gamble and IBM. But it is an approach that can be used by all companies, especially start-ups and small businesses, explains Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Companies that invest in developing strong innovation teams in their core product areas can extend that skill to other parts of the organization – Doug Collins looks at the skills your innovators are now developing and how they can be repurposed and extended.
How successful is Open Innovation as an innovation method? For leaders like Proctor and Gamble the answer is obvious but the same can't be said for the vast majority of enterprises taking this route. Doug Berger takes the soundings.
Customers are people. Users, choosers, and influencers are people. Channel partners are people. People create things for other people to use in exchange for money. Understanding what motivates people can help us to overcome hurdles to effective creativity and innovation.
