What is the Process for an Employee Innovation Challenge?

A growing trend over the past several years has been to host internal innovation challenges. Companies do this because they find it’s an excellent way to find solutions to long-standing problems, positively create culture (particularly in a remote workplace), and also to nurture the budding intrapreneurs who want to find career growth and new opportunities.

How NASA Leads Intrapreneurial Innovation

Not everyone knows that NASA has embedded crowdsourcing into their strategy and capabilities. But in fact, back in 2011 (after they ran a highly successful crowdsourcing pilot) NASA established the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI).

Improving Safety in Extreme Work Environments through IoT

Sustainability is a widely known concept. However, finding a balance for its three main pillars (society, economy, and environment) is not easy. Society demands that companies respect and protect the environment while generating benefit, improving the country’s economy and respecting every member of society. 

2021-12-20T11:23:34-08:00January 17th, 2020|Categories: News, Open Innovation|Tags: , , |

Why is Crowdsourced Innovation Perfect for Nonprofits?

When the United Way told the story of their crowdsourcing program, Edwin Goutier, Innovation Lead at Unitd Way, said that one of the things that he hears a lot is that people don’t think of the United Way (or nonprofits in general) as innovative.

Three Hurdles to Sustainable Innovation

Most people agree on the importance of sustainability in innovation, so why is it difficult to deliver? In this article, we’ll explore three hurdles to sustainable innovation: it’s often not considered by innovators themselves as they plan their projects; sustainability is not framed as an exciting and imaginative opportunity; and that sustainable innovation may not fit into a company’s ongoing processes.

Unlocking the One Trillion-Dollar Sustainable Innovation Opportunity

Last week Unilever announced research showing that one-third of consumers now purchase its brands based on their good social and environmental performance, but went on to suggest that brands are missing an opportunity from not promoting sustainability effectively. Getting this right could unlock a further $1trn market opportunity for sustainability innovators.

How To Measure Event ROI (Return On Innovation)

Everyone knows about ROI, as in “return on investment.” But for evaluating the success of an experiential brand event or marketing campaign, businesses should take an equally close look at ROI, as in “return on innovation.”

What are the Key Innovation Challenges?

Innovation has become a business mantra and a word that threatens to lose all meaning every time it’s uttered at another conference or thrown into another book title. But in spite of its omnipresence it continues to be essential – a growing field – and one of the only practices that might save businesses from extinction.

Six Levers For Solving The Corporate Innovation Problem – Part 3

This is the third part of a three-part article series. We are investigating why – despite all the investments made into the early phase of innovation – innovation results remain disappointing. We call this the “corporate innovation problem”. In the first part we illustrated that companies are investing heavily into the early phase of innovation. In the second part, we provided some metrics on the corporate innovation problem and found that the corporate innovation problem actually consists of a “complexity” problem” and a “system problem”. In this article, we show six levers to change the “system problem” and think this is the way to solve the corporate innovation problem – and ultimately to increase innovation performance.

Six Levers for Solving The Corporate Innovation Problem – Part 2

This is the second part of a three-part article series. In the first part we illustrated that firms are investing heavily into the early phase of innovation. In this second part we show that despite of all these investments, innovation results remain disappointing. We call this the “corporate innovation problem”. We provide some metrics and find that there are two root causes. In the upcoming third part we will suggest that six levers can be used to address one of the root causes. We believe that moving these levers can provide a solution to the corporate innovation problem – and ultimately lead to increased innovation performance.

Six Levers for Solving the Corporate Innovation Problem – Part 1

Innovation is at the top of the Management Agenda for many companies. For excellence in innovation, companies have to master the chain of activities from discovering valuable insight into unmet customer needs to successful market adoption. However, despite large and growing investments into innovation, results remain disappointing. We call this the “corporate innovation problem”. In this 3-part article series we dig deeper into this problem and find that there are actually two root causes for it. We focus on one of the root causes – the “system problem” – and work out six levers of improvement. Acting on these levers offers a solution to the corporate innovation problem and ultimately increases innovation performance.

How Do You Measure Innovation Fitness?

The human body serves as the perfect metaphor for understanding the innovation challenge facing today's organizations. The body is built to adapt and respond to demands that are placed upon it. The greater the demand, the stronger the response. If you and your organization are going to thrive in this world you must build and keep your innovation muscles strong. We know that only the fittest survive.

The Value of Incremental Innovation

In my first article in this series, I talked about the continued, and often misplaced, focus of corporate innovation leaders on developing disruptive innovation efforts. My basic argument within the article was the while “Big I” innovation can be a valid driver of growth. However, few companies are in the right position or have laid the appropriate groundwork to support and develop new, groundbreaking ideas, especially in the context of the existing organizational culture.

Overcoming the Challenges to Successful Open Innovation

Before any organization can reap the economic benefits of open innovation, it must overcome a number of legal, operational and cultural challenges. In this article Peter von Dyck addresses the top three obstacles to open innovation: managing intellectual property issues and other legal risks, processing ideas quickly and establishing an efficient internal structure.

The Death of Innovation Crowdsourcing (As We Know It)!

Ideation focused crowdsourcing has been around for some time, but the approach is often not producing the desired business results in order to justify continued investments. How does the model need to change in order to drive real business value?