Please, not another business imperative! Every time I open a journal or glance at a blog it seems as though the panacea to all business ills has just been discovered and is waiting for me to embrace it! One minute I’m being told to hire for cultural fit, the next to increase diversity. It’s no wonder that employee engagement is falling because if I’m being pushed from pillar to post then it’s not surprising that my people are confused……
Advanced manufacturers—people who make “things”—face the same challenges in the Digital Age as their counterparts that traffic wholly in bits and bytes. Relentless immediacy. Increased transparency. In this article, the innovation architect Doug Collins reflects on the results from a survey that the analyst firm Frost & Sullivan conducted as part of the Manufacturing Leadership Council. What are the more advanced of the advanced manufacturing thinking these days about the practice of collaborative innovation? Are they on track?
People cannot appreciate the value your idea offers if you fail to convey its relative advantage. In this article, the innovation architect Doug Collins shares a simple, good example of telling the right story at the right time to the right audience. Save this one for your clip file.
I see no value in waiting until New Year’s Day to resolve to improve myself. “Now is as good as time as any,” makes more sense to me. Last month I resolved to make two changes which, if I succeed in maintaining the alterations, promise to benefit me. In this article, I share my view on these changes, the immediate effect they have had on me, and their relation to the practice of collaborative innovation.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, research and development was a highly guarded and elite practice. Imagine laboratories peopled by white-coated scientists who had passwords to protect the doors to their office. This kind of research and innovation was highly successful for a long time – it gave us electrocardiography, DNA fingerprinting, and many Apple products.
Innovation is a word that’s been heard on the lips of more CEOs, read in more broadsheet papers, and detailed in more business magazines in the last ten months than ever before. It’s well regarded that those businesses that fail to innovate risk death; consider the sad fates of longstanding companies like Woolworths, Polaroid, Blockbuster, and Borders over the last ten years. But how, as an individual, can you incorporate innovation and creative thinking into your everyday working life, all while keeping up with the already manic pace of modern business?
The human body serves as the perfect metaphor for understanding the innovation challenge facing today's organizations. The body is built to adapt and respond to demands that are placed upon it. The greater the demand, the stronger the response. If you and your organization are going to thrive in this world you must build and keep your innovation muscles strong. We know that only the fittest survive.
This article relates selected multidirectional patterns of change—“force fields”—in the business environment to innovation strategy within the context of Zen philosophical principles. Three force fields are selected for brief evaluation: 1) domestic vs. global markets, 2) economic growth vs. environmental quality, and 3) entrepreneurs vs. customer base. Given the omnipresence of force fields in the 21st century, businesses should maintain flexible structures for innovating both incrementally and radically. They also need to engage in collaboration at all institutional levels. Collaboration can facilitate the Zen objective of integrating conflicting ideas, a key feature of innovation over the long run.
Innovation portals have taken an important place in the open innovation landscape. Expectations are great in portal performance but often, for purely budgetary reasons, these portals are launched and managed internally by corporates themselves, to discover that they generate a number of community management issues that they are not used to coping with. Prior to launching a corporate portal it is a good idea to ask a few specific questions on whether to do this internally or through experienced third party innovation providers. Using external resources can often avoid pitfalls and align the portal success rate to corporate expectations, objectives and ambitions. Here six questions are asked that can help you take the decision whether to launch a managed portal internally or externally.
As business leaders seek additional impact from Innovation Programs, new ways to leverage and scale existing resources are being explored. One approach is to link externally sourced ideas with networks of innovation-minded employees, to generate additional business impact.
It is always a great achievement when we can affirm that something has been done according to one strategic plan, goal or thought. Sound strategic planning capabilities depend on industry/sector specific understanding and full perception of the external competitive environment. In the sixth and last of a series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, the focus is on a process called Market Intelligence (MI). This process can be affirmed as a cyclic, continuous organizational process that deals with dispersed data, information and knowledge in a competitive sector, to produce knowledge to be applied by companies in their strategic marketing planning.
You might have noticed that organizations don’t exist in a vacuum anymore. They don’t make decisions autonomously (if, indeed, they ever did) – handing down products or processes that they guess people want. Social media and digital engagement have changed all that – the expectation is now one of a dialogue, constant communication, and constant improvement.
Innovation can take on many forms. From ideas sourced from a single individual or event to massive projects that require the effort of an entire team, multiple departments and various thought leaders, excellence often stems from collaboration. As a business leader or manager, are you taking the steps today to foster this collaboration for best results?
Organizations that pursue the inquiry-led form of collaborative innovation often have an outcome in mind. They may seek the “low-hanging fruit” of immediately actionable ideas. They may seek ideas that help to re-envision the business. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins reflects on how the savvy practitioner manages the challenge question formation process to help the sponsor achieve their desired goals. The key? Knowing how to dial up and dial back the level of transformation incumbent within each question.
Time represents the persistent, substantive constraint to being effective within an organization. Can you have a moment of a sponsor’s time to share the benefits of collaborative innovation? Does the sponsor and challenge team perceive you as respecting their time once you persuade them to pursue the practice with you?
