6 Potential Roadblocks to Innovation

Does it feel like your efforts in innovation lately have been…lackluster? Are you finding that your team just isn’t coming up with the great ideas you know they can produce? If your business is feeling stale and stagnant, you obviously want to know why, so you can make changes. Innovation efforts aren’t always simple and easy—and there are definitely some roadblocks that can come up along the way. Don’t get discouraged if you run into any of these common problems—you just have to be determined to prevent and work through them whenever possible!

Leaders Should Listen More and Talk Less

Want to improve your leadership skills? Well, you can start by talking less and listening more. While your oratory skills may impress some, your ability to listen will impress even more. Great leaders understand the importance of surrendering the floor. Unfortunately, most leaders choose to dominate the conversation with rhetoric and fail to engage in proper communication, which requires listening.

Implementation is Your New Competitive Advantage

When it comes to implementation there are three things that companies ought to be thinking about in order to maintain a competitive advantage: process, feedback, and the importance of having multiple stakeholders from the beginning. Learn more in this Open Innovation Guide from IdeaScale.

The Right Time will Never Come: 5 Steps to Execute Your Idea

After two years of coming up with my idea, I finally launched the platform 'Scout Me Online.' All the reasons why we procrastinate, avoid or delay in making decisions committing to a specific task are because we believe we need to have something or be perfect. And when we don’t have those, or we doubt ourselves, which reinforces our current belief.

Systematic Idea Generation and Organizational Capabilities for Front-End Innovation Performance in SMEs

This study seeks to answer two key questions about the front-end innovation: when do idea generation activities involving internal and external partner’s payoff, and which organizational capabilities support idea generation activities for achieving high front-end performance?

6 Pitfalls to Avoid in Innovation Development

Before investing in your company’s innovation development, it’s important to develop a strategy for collecting and evaluating ideas. Having guidelines in place to thoroughly vet ideas, value diverse opinions, prioritize scalable and sustainable results, and other areas of innovation management can set you up for success over the long term.

Using Design Thinking to make your employees ready for the Internet-of-Things

Recent advances in technology put Internet-of-things (IoT)-innovation on top of the management agenda across industries. It is predicted to increase economic value by $11.1 trillion in 2025 (McKinsey 2015). The Service Science Factory and Noventum collaborated on this article to present a state-of-the art view on the Internet of Things and how to implement this vision within organizations.

Creativity is Key: Tips on Avoiding Groupthink

It’s awesome when everyone agrees, isn’t it? Yes—and no. Most of us have, at some point, fallen into the trap of groupthink to avoid conflict and promote harmony in a group, whether at school, work, or on a committee. Groupthink has its perks: everyone feels comfortable, and there’s no risk of tension among members. It’s safe. Easy. Unfortunately, it can also kills creativity and innovation.

Disruption Planning 2- Creating Options and Pathways

In this in-depth article Haydn Shaughnessy discusses why traditional ROI decision making is becoming irrelevant and how options planning is a key element of competitiveness. In these uncertain times firms need to recognise and analyse their options thoroughly in order to be ready for inevitable change.

7 Steps to Platform Transformation – Part I

Too many notes, Mozart was once told. Too many ideas, we might say today. The culture of innovation is awash with idea generation and its sidekick, fail-fast fail cheap innovation. Worse, we need a culture of transformation not just innovation. Accenture recently reported that 81% of executives they interviewed see platforms as central to their strategy over the next three years.

Don’t Fall in Love with your First Idea

In this interview, Dr. Alexander Osterwalder, Author and Co-Founder of Strategyzer, discusses what he believes to be the essential success factors of innovation and why his Business Model Canvas has become such a popular tool for organisations today.

How is Crowdsourcing Uniquely Beneficial to Technologists

Innovation proves vital for companies across industries, but carries key importance in the technology field. Mainstream perception of the tech industry conjures illustrations of cutting edge, never-before-seen products poised to disrupt and revolutionize daily lives.

15 Innovative Meeting Formats that Boost Creativity and Strengthen Engagement

How to organise a meeting in such a way that they result in creativity and energy? How to ensure that people are actively participating instead of being only passively attending meetings?

Product Innovation of a Trolley: A 3-step Journey

Consider the world’s most ingeniously designed products. Whether it’s your smartphone, your favorite racing bike or a nifty robotic lawn mower – they all have a one thing in common: rather than being conceived overnight, they were shaped by a series of consecutive, systematic innovations. But how does such a structured product innovation approach look? This CREAX project illustrates the ins and outs.

Launch a Four-Week Innovation Program

In-house innovation programs are an emerging phenomenon. Many businesses and government organizations are formalizing processes around the innovation practice in order to keep pace with competition and the rapidly changing expectations of the public.