Innovation isn’t a one-time project. It’s a continuous activity. Which is why we are seeing numerous organizations adding an innovation department to their company infrastructure. In fact, in a recent survey of our client base, we were surprised to learn that almost 40% of our customers operate out of a dedicated innovation group.
Lots of industries care about intellectual property and proprietary information, but perhaps none more so than the automotive industry where product development is seen as the competitive edge.
In the past 12 months, there has been a concerted push to foster a more experimental and autonomous workforce within mature, corporate organizations. This is impacting how innovation professionals operate, drive value, and ultimately succeed in their own careers.
When the Commission for Environmental Cooperation launched a challenge to the youth of North America, they received hundreds of unique, green business proposals. The young entrepreneurs competed for seed funding and came up with some truly disruptive ideas.
When I say “innovator,” what image comes to mind? A brilliant, but misunderstood figure hunched over a drawing board by the light of a single lamp in the middle of the night – cup of coffee dwindling slowly, pages of crumpled notes on the floor?
In November, the United States Coast Guard presented at Open Nation on their Coast Guard ideas program. They talked about how lessons learned from previous extreme weather occurrences (Sandy, etc.) still hadn’t become institutional knowledge by the 2017 hurricane season when they were so desperately needed. The reason that this hadn’t happened was that all of the methods for collecting new ideas were slow and opaque.
In an Innovation Point article, Founder Soren Kaplan notes that only one third of Fortune 1000 companies have defined innovation metrics. And yet 77% of business leaders see innovation as a priority. How is it possible that something that is so important to business leaders doesn’t have a defined set of KPIs?
Even if your organization doesn’t yet have an embedded innovation program, I can guarantee that your organization cares about finding opportunities for savings. That’s why programs like LEAN and Six Sigma continue to do so well. There are always new ways to improve efficiency and time saved almost always means money saved.
If you want to win, you need to be smart. As a pitch presenter, you’re ought to not just capture the attention of your prospects but also win their hearts. In today’s marketplace, innovation is highly appreciated and wanted. Coming up with a brilliant new product idea is the first aspect. The second is about how you present it to those who might be interested to get involved.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have participated in several conferences / events, to better understand key trends in corporate innovation. Each event was excellent, but also very different in scope, audience and approach.
In a recent audit of site content on InnovationManagement.se, site publishers noticed that although there is a great deal of information about how to architect and run idea management programs, there isn’t a whole lot of information about how to implement ideas.
We live in an increasingly multicultural and networked world where innovation has the potential to transform lives from Austria to Zimbabwe. Leaders and teams are facing changing customer needs across cultures and geographies. If you’re responsible for international products, services, projects, or programs, how are you facilitating innovation and collaboration around the world?
Innovation is an integral part of many organizations today, and for good reason: it helps companies stay agile, relevant, and evolving. However, innovation is often difficult to achieve—or is even met with resistance.
The more you allow disparate ideas to mingle and collide, the more you maximize your chances for true innovative thought to emerge. Learn all of this and more in a complimentary white paper about why innovators want to nurture workforce diversity.
Innovative and forward-thinking companies are successful because they have new, exciting, and useful products or services before others and consumers take notice of companies regularly producing the next big thing. These companies are more effective and they can grow more rapidly because their company culture encourages innovation among their employees. A company of “intrapreneurs” can quickly become a successful and noteworthy company.
