How Big Data is Sure to Give Your Business a Competitive Edge

Just like oil became a valuable commodity in the 20th century, data is also proving to be priceless to companies and business organizations in the 21st century. Data analysis specialists have projected that by the end of 2020, business enterprises will have data amounts equivalent to 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Successful High-Level Talent Acquisition

In today’s competitive job market, acquiring the best talent can involve a long and drawn-out process often resulting in the employer settling for someone who may not be the best fit, or not finding the right candidate at all.

6 Benefits of Ongoing Employee Development

In many organizations, work is pretty consistent and predictable: go into the office, perform your tasks, and go home. Many people spend years doing their jobs without much advancement or ongoing career development.

How to Know Who Has the Right Skills for the Job

Hiring is a deeply imperfect process that probably has as many misses as hits. You’ve probably seen it in action: a new hire looks perfect on the paper and interviews well but has mediocre performance or clashes with co-workers constantly. Finding the person with the right skills is hard, but there are ways to pick more of the right candidates for a job.

What Job-Hunting Teaches Us about the Value of Innovation

Anyone who has ever been on the hunt for a new corporate job knows that it can be one of the most difficult and frustrating processes in the world. The Internet has given us the tools to apply for thousands of different jobs every day, but it has also presented its own problems: application systems with no easy answers, automation, and stiff competition make the ease of online applications less attractive.

Are Legacy Approaches to Talent Inhibiting Your Innovation Efforts?

The legacy approach to talent selection involves matching education, length of experience and functional skills to the role. All of this makes sense as a baseline, and for well-established professions. But, we argue, selecting talent for innovation requires a whole new approach. Companies must recognize specific innovation skills that drive business outcomes. Yet today, most lack the tools to do so.

How Innovation Fuels a Sense of Purpose in the Workplace

Drawing a connection between innovation and workplace purpose often eludes companies looking to hire the best people for their teams. Let’s take a look at what needs to happen to make this possible.

5 Strategies for More Effective Employee Onboarding

Over 69 percent of employees are still employed by a company three years after they start if they receive great onboarding. While training for job-specific skills should be part of an onboarding program, it is important that the program helps create connections between new employees and mentors, communicates the company's mission and core values and allows managers to make wise use of their time when bringing a new employee onboard.

HR Improvements that Can Build a Better Company

The role of HR has evolved significantly over the years. In the past, HR was focused only on hiring and making sure paychecks were sent to the right employees. Today, HR plays a much broader role in the strategic goals of a company. These following improvements can help your HR department meet your company goals.

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.

How Employee Diversity Promotes Business Innovation

Lack of diversity among employees hurts a company’s ability to innovate and remain competitive. Diversity - both inherent and acquired - naturally drives innovation through team members’ different abilities to spot gaps, solutions, and opportunities; to avoid groupthink; and to reach clients and customers who were inaccessible before.

Talking 100% Entrepreneurship & 0% Bureaucracy with Heiko Fischer of Resourceful Humans

What do Europe’s most innovative video games company, a US Navy Submarine Captain and Hewlett-Packard have in common? The answer – autonomy, transparency, simplicity and entrepreneurship. Oh and Heiko Fischer! In this episode, sponsored by a-connect, Heiko and Mark discuss how the RH way came into being through Heiko’s time at Crytek, how the core principles behind the RH philosophy “100% entrepreneurship, 0% bureaucracy” work in practice, and how gamification in the workplace can help us solve the problem of unproductive meetings (among other things).

The Frustrated Innovation Team: What Should They Do?

Many executives talk a lot about innovation, but they don't really know how to make it happen. A corporate innovation team asks themselves: How do we "educate" our executives on innovation management and develop stronger corporate innovation capabilities together?

Supporting Innovation with Autonomy and Accountability

Innovation tends to thrive in an environment where there are less bureaucratic restraints and an appetite for calculated risk. However, without a structured management system in place, experimentation can go awry and great ideas risk falling by the wayside. This is where accountability and autonomy can provide the essential framework to support the innovation process to its full potential.