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.

Most Companies Fail to Invest in Sustainable Innovation

You can’t go an entire commercial break during the World Cup or a State of the Union address without hearing the word innovation pop up at least once or twice. Companies have added innovation to their company values and mission statements in accelerating numbers.

What Is An Employee Innovation Network, And Why Should You Care?

As Innovation Program leaders look to expand their scope and influence across complex, global organizations, they are turning to the development of Employee Innovation Networks. This article examines what these networks can look like, and provides some high level overview of the value that they can generate.

Getting a Better Return on Your Innovation Investment

In its latest Global Innovation Excellence Study Arthur D. Little provides hard evidence on which innovation practices separate top innovators from others within and across a wide range of industries. The study zooms in on the relationship between innovation success - based on impact of innovation - and innovation performance - based on a comprehensive framework which breaks down innovation activity into different areas and looks at adoption of best practices in each – and is available as an online toolkit. The toolkit is readily accessible and provides valuable feedback on innovation performance as measured against peers, including opportunities for improvement.

The Secret of Innovative Companies: It Isn’t R&D

In rejecting the limiting belief that innovation is R&D’s job alone, leaders of highly innovative companies work hard to instill “innovation is everyone’s job” as a guiding organizational mission. In this article, co-creators of Innovator’s Accelerator, Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen share insights and examples to follow in order to ensure innovation starts at the top and reaches the bottom of your organization.

Financial Management for Innovation

Seldom spoken about, the capacity to capture, allocate, control and utilize financial resources is fundamental to innovation. Without strong financial management, innovation might come to a dead stop, might never happen or might just cost much more than it should. In this blog Caspar van Rijnbach asks the questions to take into consideration when managing finances for your innovation portfolio.

How Design Thinking Can Enrich Business and Marketing Innovation

Design empowered innovation combines the best of right and left brain thinking. It has the capacity to deliver better ideas, with more relevance, realized earlier. By focusing on individuals, moments and journeys in ethnography, insights become deeper. By embracing chaos and play in brainstorms, creative teams can explore further. By iterating and early prototyping, ideas become real and develop more rapidly.

Highly Innovative Low-Tech Companies?

When you think about low-tech industries, you will probably think about many aspects, except for innovation. Innovation is mostly associated with innovative products and technology, but hardly ever with anything beyond R&D activities. This “myth” can now be refuted through the results of a currently published study “Gaining Competitiveness with Innovations beyond Technology and Products: Insights from IMP3rove”.

The State of Open Innovation

How successful is Open Innovation as an innovation method? For leaders like Proctor and Gamble the answer is obvious but the same can't be said for the vast majority of enterprises taking this route. Doug Berger takes the soundings.

How to Harness the Value of Outsourcing-led Innovation

Companies who are engaged in developing innovation processes are also likely to be involved in outsourcing significant aspects of their operations. So how do you innovate when you've also outsourced? Sanjiv Gossain explores the issues.

The State of Innovation Investment

As western countries jump further into the embrace of open innovation, countries in Asia are forging ahead with innovation investments through R&D. R&D spending is up 27% in India and 40% in China, year on year but in decline globally. Georges Haour runs a rule over the numbers and what they mean for the outlook of the enterprise.

2021-12-02T07:54:40-08:00February 3rd, 2011|Categories: Blog Archive|Tags: , |