The Future of Innovation Management: 5 Key Steps for Future Success

Looking back is a natural as we look to learn lessons from past activity. But perhaps more interesting is to look forwards. In this article Rick Eagar draws on the results from recent research that surveyed the opinions of global Chief Technology Officers and Chief Information Officers and identifies key changes in five distinct but interrelated innovation management concepts as being important for the years ahead.

Understanding and Exploiting Innovation Ecosystems

Do we have too static and rigid a view of innovation? It should be all about dynamic connections, imagination, experience and the interconnection of people and machines. In short it should be about identifying, understanding and exploiting innovation ecosystems, says Eunika Mercier-Laurent, author of The Innovation Ecosystem.

IP Funds- a Potential Driver of Breaking the Radical Jinx?

Can non-industry specific IP funds help to push the innovation envelope? Can we bridge the gap between industries and geographies to provide a systematic breeding place for forward-thinking inventions? Gunjan Bhardwaj explores.

Why Business Model Innovation is Critically Important Today

One of the few ways left for companies to protect their margins is through business model differentiation. According to Kay Plantes, business models have become the new basis of competition, replacing product features and benefits as the playing field on which companies emerge as dominant or laggards.

How to Harness the Value of Outsourcing-led Innovation

Companies who are engaged in developing innovation processes are also likely to be involved in outsourcing significant aspects of their operations. So how do you innovate when you've also outsourced? Sanjiv Gossain explores the issues.

Is it Time to Rewrite the Innovation Playbook: Ten New Requirements in the Age of Hyperinnovation

In the world of hyperinnovation innovation itself is changing. In place of a monolithic R&D based innovation culture we suddenly have a proliferation of innovation approaches and new pressures on enterprises to innovate. Haydn Shaughnessy and Nick Vitalari argue the innovation playbook needs to be rewritten, and relabelled.

Clusters Are Obsolete

Are Clusters or cluster initiatives really adding any tangible value to firms? Are they obsolete? Maybe not yet, but I believe if the present policy tools and institutional frameworks are not reformed they may very well soon become so. In the following blog I would like to focus on three areas that have not been given enough importance by policy makers: focus beyond geographies, new clusters and cluster performance.

The New Dutch Economy: Innovative, International and Involving

The Dutch Innovation Platform, a think-tank established by the Dutch Government, recently released a report Nederland 2020, Back in the top 5 outlining the steps the Netherlands needs to take to regain its former position in the top 5 of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). In this article Rob Blaaboer, contributing editor from the Netherlands, suggests a way to reach the New Dutch economy, i.e. innovative, international and involving, and how to get back in the top 5.

Collaborating Downstream in Emerging Markets

Not so long ago, internal R&D activities were considered one of the most valuable assets a company could have. The rather “outmoded” concept of closed innovation, in contrast to open innovation, was built on self-reliance and on the principle that successful innovation required control and secrecy.

Saving the Climate is Saving the Business – Aligning Sustainable and Open Innovation

''Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen. The evidence on the seriousness of the risks from inaction or delayed action is now overwhelming. We risk damage on a scale larger than the two world wars of the last century. The problem is global and the response must be a collaboration on a global scale.'' (Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, London School of Economics, at Royal Economic Society Manchester, November 2007, guardian.co.uk)

Innovating with CSR

I happened to learn about a new book by the legendary Charles Handy when I visited him a couple of months back at his home in Norfolk England ' the new philanthropists'. True to the title of the Book of probably Britain's most prolific management thinker (together written with his wife Elizabeth who is a portrait photographer), Charles talks about a new trend of successful young businessmen who don't only believe in giving money for just causes but by working on the spot with the needy so as to create a sustainable impact. He offers examples from entrepreneurs from South Africa, Ireland and Australia among others.

Learning to Trade and to Innovate at the Base of the Pyramid

Is sustainable business the missing link in alleviating poverty and boosting global trade and prosperity? If so, how should companies exploit this opportunity in practice? Louise Koch, Danish Anthropologist and Business Innovator, talks about best practice, mindsets and resources for sustainable, people-centred innovation in developing countries.

The New Nature of Innovation Revealed

The paradigm of innovation as driven primarily by technology and science is passé. A new paradigm is emerging, with the publication of success stories of companies innovating through other ways. The Danish and Finnish governments jointly funded a study into the new nature of innovation, as a contribution to the OECD’s work on innovation strategy. Innovationmanagement.se asked the FORA team behind the report to present the highlights. FORA is a research and analysis division under the Danish Authority for Enterprise and Construction

Collaboration is the New Hot Thing

Collaboration is the new hot thing. The idea is not new and one can trace its origins from the Silk route, to the old Italian Shipping cluster, to the Medicis, to the evolution of different industries, to the new age of globalisation to the new age we see today. However, we live in a business age with hype cycles and buzzwords serving as adrenalins. Everybody is talking collaboration. The new impetus has come because of three main reasons.