Leveraging Alien Thinking: Exclusive Interview with Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade

For the past decade, Cyril BouquetJean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade, professors of innovation and strategy at IMD Business School, have studied inventors, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, and artists. These people, or “aliens,” as the authors call them, are able to make leaps of creativity, and use five patterns of thinking that distinguish them from the rest of us.

Employee Innovation Training – What Approach Works Best?

As organizations increasingly focus on building corporate cultures that are more open to new ideas, they are examining ways that they can engage a range of employees in innovative thinking and actions. In the past, the answer to this kind of effort was to run a challenge and pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.

Toward a Coherent and Self-Sustaining Innovation Framework

Innovation leaders today don’t have an easy job. Tasked with bringing Innovation to their organization, they often face a variety of interpretations of innovation throughout the organization, a lack of comprehensive understanding of what innovation really entails, and what it requires to truly embed innovation in a way that it sustains itself.

Five Ways to Make Your Innovation Culture Smell Better

When it comes to fostering continuous innovation, most organizational cultures stink at it. Industry research provides some interesting statistics which highlight that innovation is not easily obtainable and that companies are not innovating fast enough to repel the unrelenting threat posed by new market entrants with declining barriers to entry.

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.

Mastering the Art of Innovation

You can hardly scan the Internet or pick up a business magazine without seeing references to innovation. Companies everywhere are emerging from decades of cost reductions and are now focusing on efficiency, while looking for the next breakthrough idea… the next Post-It Note, the Frappucino or even the new Internet.

Creating Innovation Value: Four Key Drivers to Success

The ability to increase business value through innovation is a critical success driver for most organizations. The markets that we operate in provide both opportunity and risk from an innovation perspective as they are rapidly changing. This article takes a look at a useful framework; The Innovation Diamond™, that examines the complexity and addresses some of the challenges in product innovation.

Measuring the Practice of Collaborative Innovation

Developing and supporting the practice of collaborative innovation takes time and money. What do we assess to weigh its value? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins proposes focusing on strategic alignment of the program, relative advantage of the ideas, and engagement of the community members.

An Open Innovation Reference Framework – Reducing Innovation’s Mysteries

Can we bring an open collaborative spirit to understanding, describing and prescribing innovation methods? Paul Hobcraft and Jeffrey Philips believe we can and that it will greatly simplify the innovation process. Here's the beta version of a collaborative open innovation framework.

An Open Innovation Reference Framework: Reducing Innovation

Can we bring an open collaborative spirit to understanding, describing and prescribing innovation methods? Paul Hobcraft and Jeffrey Philips believe we can and that it will greatly simplify the innovation process.

Why open innovation alliances fail

One of the reasons why open innovation is so hard to implement is because you must open up your internal innovation processes to another organization. According to one innovation expert, you actually need to manage three sets of relationships in any potential partnership, which explains why it's so hard to create a successful open innovation alliance.

Building an Effective Framework for Innovation

How do you turn innovation from a marketing concept into something tangible with an impact on the bottom line? There is of course no simple answer, and to succeed a different way of thinking and working is required

Framework Innovation and Detail Innovation

A combination of detail and framework innovation is a potent recipe for business success, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner. What are framework and detail innovation? Read on to find out.