How to Break the 5 Habits That Hurt Ideation
Many companies find it hard to prioritize ideation. Here are five ways to break the pattern and gather a wealth of ideas for your organization.
Where Did the Suggestion Box Come From?
And what’s changed along the way?
Online ideation and collaboration might be a fairly recent business practice, but the suggestion box concept has been around at least since the 18th century.
The Key Steps Innovation Professionals Should Take in a COVID-19 Environment
Obviously COVID-19 is having an enormous impact on all aspects of our lives, with the scope and scale of business disruption being immense and incredibly challenging. But disruption is what innovation people are generally excellent at responding to, so the question becomes - “how do you and your team support your organisations within this environment?”
Strengthening Your Intra- and Inter-Department Partnership – The Welcome Side Effect of Design Thinking
Imagine a world where customer service, procurement, marketing, finance, operations, human resources, and sales can truly help each other and work together, instead of stepping on each others’ toes and pointing fingers. A world where all parts of the organizations work together with a shared sense of purpose, no matter how different their cultures, processes, and systems, have been in the past.
Want to Drive Innovation? Talk to Your Customers
The customer is always right. The timeless aphorism holds truer now than it ever did before, as the customer truly drives the ever-changing trends and shapes the industry, with companies battling each other to stay relevant in the hearts and minds of their devoted audience.
The Key Challenges of Government Innovation
Last month, leaders in public sector innovation gathered to discuss ways of crowdsourcing new solutions to longstanding problems at IdeaScale’s Open Nation DC. Speakers from a range of agencies as diverse as the FDA and the US Coast Guard presented best practices on creating actionable change in government.
3 Reasons Crowdsourced Innovation Is Difficult
David Alan Grier wrote in Crowdsourcing for Dummies “the hardest part of crowdsourcing is raising the right crowd.” It is one of the realities of crowd ideation that continues to hold true – that if you can’t draw a crowd to help you generate innovative ideas, then you’re not evolving beyond the traditional closed approach to innovation.
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.
It Works! The ‘Results Equation’
We are moved by goals. The resolve to reach the finish line pushes us forward: at work, in life. Why then do we keep idea management initiatives alive when it’s not clear what results they deliver (if any)? And how often have we yearned for a formula that definitely makes it all happen?
To get Innovation…Try Stimulation
There is a saying, “horses for courses”. It means that certain character types (horses or people - or others) perform in different ways depending upon the circumstances. This holds true in collaborative engagements, whether they are crowdsourcing exercises, virtual focus groups, online research communities or a growing number of other online activities. A key success factor that we found over the last number of years -- and perhaps the key success factor-- is understanding what the best stimulative environment is for that activity, and your participants.
Changing Mental Models to Make Innovation Work
We see a lot of programs being run in companies in the name of innovation. Of course some of the large corporations need to run innovation programs for name sake. They need some window dressing for analysts and industry observers lambasting the same for not being innovative enough.
Collaboration and Co-creation: Incentives Are Important
Customer collaboration and co-creation rests on a few key assumptions; that customers are passionate about the collaboration objective(s), and are willing and able to offer their time and creativity. Notice the deliberate usage of the word “offer,” not donate or contribute. Why? Why should customers offer their time and creativity? And what do they get in return? We know how the company or organization inviting collaboration benefits. But how do the collaborators benefit; what’s in it for them?
Web-Enabled Open Innovation: From Hype to Reality
InnovationManagemenet is proud to present yet another experienced and knowledgeable columnist; Ehsan Ehsani, researcher and consultant in the area of innovation and product development. Ehsan is working with Accenture Product Innovation and PLM practice in New York City Office and has previous experience from a variety of firms both in Europe and the United States. This is the first in a series of columns starting off with a hot topic: Web-enabled open innovation.