Innovation Culture

Organizational Processes and Structures Supporting Open Innovation

Open innovation cannot be implemented in companies without the right organizational structure and processes supporting it. What are these organizational structures and processes that facilitate open innovation in companies? They determine the success of open innovation practices and, therefore, this theme clearly deserves more attention from managers. It is surprising that very few academic and professional articles have been written about this topic.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:17:35-07:00April 4th, 2014|Categories: Open Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: Collaboration, Henry Chesbrough, horizontal integration, Innovation Culture, innovation networks, MOOI, Open Innovation, organizational structure, processes, structure, vertical integration|

Ten Ways to Motivate Employees to be More Innovative

You love your employees, and, obviously, you think they do awesome work, or else you probably wouldn’t have hired them. Yet, do you ever find yourself wishing they could become a little bit more innovative? After all, the companies that are thriving in today’s competitive marketplace are also some of the most creative.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:17:36-07:00April 4th, 2014|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: Creativity, Employee Engagement, enterprise innovation, feedback, HR, Innovation Culture, inspiration, motivation, team building|

Why Bother? The Value of Training Your Employees Around Innovation

Many successful innovation programs are extending their offerings to include training efforts for employees around the skills of innovation. This whitepaper (the first in a series of four) examines the benefits of such an approach for companies, innovation program leaders, and the employees who participate.

Ideascale2022-01-24T16:52:17-08:00March 31st, 2014|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: culture, education, Employee Engagement, employee training, HR, Innovation Culture, innovation team, learning program, network, ROI, training, whitepaper|

The Role of Top Management in Open Innovation

Implementing open innovation requires a shift in mindset and a change in culture. It requires individuals to be open for external ideas and to share knowledge. This is not the way innovation is managed traditionally. For individuals to behave in a way that fosters open innovation, support from the top management seems to be crucial. Is this really the case? Or are top executives too far away from the action when it comes to innovation and open innovation?

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:17:42-07:00February 19th, 2014|Categories: Open Innovation, Organization & Culture, Strategies|Tags: enabling factors, Henry Chesbrough, innovation champions, Innovation Culture, management, MOOI, Open Innovation, strategy|

Seven Steps to Creating a Successful Innovation Framework

Heidi Hattendorf, director of Innovation Development, Motorola Solutions takes a deep dive into how you can create an innovation framework at your company that will positively impact your business results and culture. The article describes seven steps that will help you implement an “inside out” approach to innovation at your company.

Ideascale2021-11-16T13:22:14-08:00January 27th, 2014|Categories: Idea Management, Organization & Culture|Tags: back end of innovation, Best Practices, case study, company culture, Employee Engagement, framework, innovation, Innovation Culture, innovation framework, Innovation Management, innovation platform, innovation success, inside out innovation, outside in innovation, results, strategy, targeted innovation, top-down innovation|

Bold Innovation in Mature Markets: The Five Vectors

Doing more of the same old product improvements, extensions and modifications – product renovation – won’t deliver the sales and profit impact needed to grow the business. To the great majority of businesses, product development means line extensions, improvements and product modifications and only serves to maintain market share. Firms increasingly compete for a piece of a shrinking pie by introducing one insignificant new product after another. The launch of a truly differentiated new product in mature markets is rare these days.

Ideascale2020-03-30T12:11:07-07:00January 9th, 2014|Categories: Blog Archive|Tags: breakthrough innovation, business growth, growth goals, Innovation Culture, innovation portfolio, Innovation Strategy, innovation vectors, product portfolio|

Implementing Open Innovation – Making It Stick

Open Innovation is becoming an essential part of an enterprise innovation strategy. Yet, so often, companies focus on getting a narrow set of tactical activities going without thinking through the strategic and organizational issues necessary to enable those activities to have the intended impact. This brief article covers a few of the implementation challenges faced by companies seeking to establish successful Open Innovation programs.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:16:19-07:00January 6th, 2014|Categories: Open Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: Best Practices, implementation, in-depth article, Innovation Culture, Innovation Strategy, Open Innovation, Organization, strategic plan, strategy, vision|

Brag about Your Failures

Many organizations in both the public and private sectors suffer from a corporate culture which is risk averse and fearful of failure. People are reluctant to try new things or even to suggest innovations. They remember old stories about colleagues being punished for experiments that failed. They have learnt that it is safest to keep a low profile and focus on standard operating procedures. Mean while the executive committee is desperately trying to think of ways to make the outfit more agile and innovative.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:16:25-07:00December 3rd, 2013|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: corporate venture, culture, Failure, Innovation Culture, risk aversion, risk management|

Increasing Innovation Impact in the Enterprise

You would be hard-pressed to find a business leader who would question the importance of innovation not only to promote growth within their organization, but also to ensure its very survival. These business leaders have invested significantly in their innovation initiatives to support this importance. Yet a 2012 Accenture study found that more than half of corporate executives were disappointed by their innovation results and returns from their innovation investments.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:16:31-07:00November 7th, 2013|Categories: Open Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: Best Practices, corporate strategy, empowerment, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, growth, Innovation Culture, innovation impact, innovation value, innovative people, innovative teams, Open Innovation, ROI|

Innovation and Culture – Two Halves of the Same Coin

There would be few organisations that did not cite innovation as a desirable quality in their workforce, whether as part of the whole organisational culture, or critical in one area. Over the past five years, with businesses being buffeted by economic storms, finding sources of innovation can be the difference between success and failure.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:16:33-07:00October 31st, 2013|Categories: Leadership, Organization & Culture, Strategies|Tags: Creativity, culture, innovation, Innovation Culture, innovative companies, invention, strategy|

The Innovation Management Maturity Model: How Do You Stack Up?

You might talk the talk of innovation. But do you walk the walk? Or, more realistically, are you doing some herky-jerky semblance of a walk that’s not getting you very far?

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:16:34-07:00October 28th, 2013|Categories: Life Cycle Processes|Tags: Business Model Innovation, innovation, Innovation Culture, innovation management maturity model, innovation maturity, innovative companies, project portfolio management|

Top Innovation Secrets

Being successful at innovation is a skill. One that takes time, patience, strategic intelligence and amongst other things, funding. Many organisations succeed only after they have experienced embarrassing failures and learnt some tough lessons in the process. How do others succeed with their innovation efforts? What is the secret? In this article we use the inspiring philosophy of Steve Jobs as stimulus and ask innovation managers about their “secret sauce for innovation success”. Learning from others reduce risk because resurrecting the organisational “innovation corpse” is not an action anyone should be tasked with.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:16:36-07:00October 21st, 2013|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: Failure, Innovation Culture, Innovation Management, innovation success, Success Factors, sustainability, top innovation secrets|

The Intensity Factor in Innovation: Principles from Zen Philosophy

This paper is a follow-up to my previous article, “The Eastern Way: How Chinese Philosophy can Power Innovation in Business Today” (June 18, 2012). The present article defines the concept of intensity in innovation, using Eastern Zen philosophy, in a way that can be useful for business while avoiding too much focus on personality traits. Zen intensity in innovation stresses intuition, sensory and physical experience/re-experience, artistry, the integration of conflicting ideas, and the avoidance of premature choices. Examples are cited from the career of the late Zen enthusiast, Steve Jobs. Regarding the use of time, the Zen approach to intensity implies a full and sustained engagement of all creative processes, not simply a rapid time to project completion.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:16:37-07:00October 16th, 2013|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: apple, china, culture, Innovation Culture, innovation philosophy, innovation psychology, intensity, philosophy, steve jobs, Zen, Zen philosophy|

Imperatives for an Effective Innovation Governance System

In this article, the final in a series of six, Professor Jean-Philippe Deschamps, discusses the imperatives for an effective innovation governance system. Innovation performance is often not directly dependent on the type of governance model used. Rather, innovation performance reflects the strength of top management’s commitment and engagement, and the credibility, skills and energy of the actors who under take the governance mission.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:16:43-07:00September 30th, 2013|Categories: Leadership, Strategies|Tags: Best Practices, company-wide innovation, decision making, goal setting, in-depth article, innovation champion, Innovation Culture, innovation governance, Innovation Leadership, Innovation Management, Innovation Strategy, strategy|

The Great Wide Open

“Open innovation” is a technique that is gaining greater consideration these days. For many companies, this practice has the potential to help them quickly and efficiently harness the new ideas they need in a volatile and uncertain business environment. It also may accelerate and de-risk progress from idea to launch. To realize the power of open innovation, businesses first should come to terms with how “open” they are willing to be.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:14:42-07:00September 26th, 2013|Categories: Life Cycle Processes, Open Innovation|Tags: Collaboration, Crowdsourcing, Innovation Culture, innovation lifecycle, Innovation Management, Innovation Strategy, Open Innovation, R&D|