Zen vs. Zoom: Is Person-to-Person Interaction Better for Innovation?

The author draws upon the theory of “emptiness” and other principles of Zen Buddhism to evaluate the desirability of remote vs. person-to-person interaction during the course of innovation, especially new idea development. This evaluation is pursued within the context of three related idea process parameters: interdependence, intuition and intensity. An in-person work environment is recommended for the intense phases of new idea processing.

Is There Value in an Innovation Program for Your Company?

In my last article I wrote about the influences and themes that I see changing how large, mature and (often) incumbent organisations drive innovative growth and impact. In short, the innovation development professionals are (ironically) being disrupted.

Where Do Good Ideas Go to Die?: The Problem with Your Old Idea Program

Our team found an example of one of the earliest workplace suggestion boxes the other day from 1721 when a shogun, Yoshimuni Tokugawa, wrote to his citizens “Make your idea known . . . Rewards are given for ideas that are accepted.’” This means that the concept of crowdsourcing ideas that can improve a city, workplace, or world has been around for quite some time.

Intrapreneurs, Catalysts, Champions, etc: The Changing Needs Within Innovation Development

In part three of this series Anthony Ferrier considers why organizations are seeking ways to identify, engage and drive their employees towards innovative activities, with titles such as Intrapreneaurs, Innovation Catalysts, Innovation Champions, etc.

Activities To Support Your Employee Intrapreneurs

In part two of this series looking at ways organizations can support intrapreneaurs, Anthony Ferrier suggests a list of strategies and approaches to improve the effectiveness of intrapreneurs in your organisation.

Driving Collaboration – Diverse Opinion is the Key to Innovation

We know the value of collaboration in traditional innovation activities, but systemizing the process helps to increase the diversity of opinion available early on in the process. In this article we share insights on driving collaboration between your employees.

How To Make Your Ideas Actually Happen

Over the past three years companies have invested heavily in generating new ideas. So how do you make new ideas happen? Scott Belsky shares some of the secretes of successful rainmakers.

A Death Match of Ideas- Why Don’t Managers Place the Right Bets in Successful Companies?

How do managers of large and prosperous companies decide which ideas to embrace and why do they produce so few innovations? Gunjan Bardwaj explains how psychological decision making theories can shed some light on these common and complex questions.

Notes on Discernment – New Practice for the C-Suite

Executives and management leaders need to adopt a new style of engagement with their people and ideas if they are to produce the change their organisations need. Kevin McDermott of Collective Intelligence believes this new ‘discernment' mindset could alter our expectation of what senior managers do in the 21st Century corporation.

Managing Innovation Through the Stress Points

Building innovation management as a discipline requires us to take a closer look at the hurdles innovative firms face as they develop new products, services and partnerships but also at how those firms integrate the learnings from making tough choices. Andrew Gaule takes a look at building innovation culture as we manage through the stress points.

Clinic of Innovation – Where Ideas are Born, Nurtured, and Grown

Health clinics are a common feature of most urban health care landscapes treating ailments and illnesses not serious enough to be treated by hospitals. But when was the last time you ran into a “clinic of innovation” – a clinic that treats ideas rather than patients? Chances are pretty low, unless you happened to be in Norway recently.

Ideas management: What if there are no ideas?

‘Innovation starts from the top’ is a frequently used phrase; but there are many steps involved in a successful innovation strategy. What unfortunately I too often see, and in many organizations, is a huge gap between top management thinking and the understanding in the rest of the organization about innovation. Everybody might agree that innovation is important in principle. They might even be in agreement about the particular process that could bring new ideas to fruition, and implement new thinking in an innovation. This is all fine – but what if there are no new ideas?

How Philips’ Open Campus Breeds Innovation

As Business Development Manager at Philips Research, Gerjan van de Walle was instrumental in opening up the electronics giant’s development facility in The Netherlands to competing companies, and making open innovation the ‘buzzwords of the day’. InnovationManagement.se asked him about the process, the difficulties he had to overcome and the advantages are of cramming thousands of engineers and researchers into one square kilometre.