What are the Differences and Advantages between a Specialist and a Generalist? 

In building your career, you're likely asked to choose one of two tracks: to become a specialist or to pursue the path of a generalist. This article takes a look at advantages and disadvantages of choosing either of these two paths, and discusses some grey area in between.

Strategies for Innovative Resource & Liability Management

Organizations maintain and manage many different kinds of resources. Managing them can get complicated, considering all of their components and the potential risks that they bring. Not only do they have to be allocated properly, but there need to be safety nets set in place for potential mistakes and legal consequences.

Why Your Best Innovators Leave Your Company – at the Worst Possible Moment

Meet John. He worked in a company with a corporate strategy office but no innovation department. When our firm ran an innovation workshop at John’s company, he took to innovation like a duck to water. Unfortunately, the company’s innovation culture didn’t evolve quickly enough for John, which left him feeling stifled. He ended up leaving the company to pursue innovation full-time.

The FDA’s Digital Health Innovation Action Plan and Cybersecurity for Digital Healthcare

The number one issue for aging consumers is the lack of privacy related to sensitive medical information and other data that wearables like Fitbits and heart monitors bring without proper oversight. This is part of the reason for the FDA’s Digital Health Innovation Action Plan (DHIAP), which is meant to speed up the evaluation process for digital health technologies and allow the FDA to better focus on high-risk products.

Don’t “Fiddle” with the Crowd – Ask it Better Questions Instead

As the examples of successful use of crowdsourcing to address complex technical, business and social issues grow in numbers, so do the instances of failed crowdsourcing campaigns. To make crowdsourcing a widely recognized idea-generating and problem-solving tool, it’s imperative to understand the reasons of why this tool can fail or underperform.

Transferring Innovation Skills to Newbies: Fact or Fiction?

Expert innovators know from experience how to innovate while minimizing hassle, needless tasks and wasted effort – they’ve been successful (and unsuccessful) countless times through trial and error. Using flight simulators and surgical learning tools as examples, it’s been proven that teaching veteran skills to ‘newbies’ isn’t science-fiction, especially in more ‘exact’ disciplines such as medicine and math. But is it possible to design a crash-course that teaches young and inexperienced innovators the less-definable skills, attitudes and insights necessary to ideate, champion and implement without having to go through all the awkwardness of being a rookie? We think so, and here’s why.

Three Types of Networkers and the Roadblocks for Corporate Networking

As you determine how to build a networking culture within your organization, it’s important to understand how networking actually works. One of the most knowledgeable people on organizational networking and—how this supports innovation—is Rob Cross, a professor in the management department of University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.

How to Innovate Efficiently: Six Ways to ‘Unfuzzy’ the Front-end

Kittens are ‘fuzzy’ because they’re soft and fluffy. But if someone uses the same word to describe the early stages – or ‘front-end’ – of an innovation process, the meaning is less cute. In that case, ‘fuzzy’ means ‘blurry’, ‘unclear’ or even ‘incoherent’. In many cases, innovation projects start off as chaotic and seemingly aimless ventures. In fact, this happens so often, that organizations tend to accept the ‘fuzzy front-end of innovation’ as a necessary evil. At CREAX, we believe front-end fuzziness can and should be drastically reduced in order to innovate efficiently.

Untapping Hidden Value: A New Partnership Model for Corporate Knowledge Management and Innovation Functions

In the current business environment, defined by some as the ‘Knowledge Age’, leadership interest is increasingly focused on Innovation and Knowledge Management development efforts. To date, these functions often operate along parallel, yet discrete, paths. As organizations seek new areas of growth, while further cutting costs there is an increasing need to build more effective partnerships in order to ensure ongoing success and drive additional business value.

The Creative Destruction of Your Job

The rise of crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowdtransporting, crowdletting, etc., has transformed our economy. It has also ushered in the era of the shared economy. Previously marginalized people can now contribute, no matter how small, to all walks of life. It seems to be a fantastic opportunity for the world to access the untapped skill of the crowd. But what about the people whose jobs this makes redundant? Whither the expert?

Collaborative Innovation Inside & Beyond the Firm – Two Worlds Become One

This year, a very interesting trend in collaborative innovation can be observed in Central Europe: The once distinct concepts of “Enterprise 2.0” and “Open Innovation” are merging. Firms are taking a holistic view on collaborative innovation and put the question about whether collaborative innovation should happen primarily within the firm’s walls or with externals out of the focus.

Expertise and its Role in Innovative Problem Solving

The nature of problems in innovative work is that they are often ill defined, novel to the individual who engaged them, and complex in that often several solutions exist to the same problem. In this post we will see how expertise is an important factor in innovative problem solving, and how leaders and organizations can cultivate R&D team expertise.