Innovation Strategy

Involving the Crowd in Product Development

Even before the term was coined in Wired Magazine in 2006, crowdsourcing was utilized as a way to accomplish goals. The strategy had been used for several hundred years before it was officially given a name, but since being named, crowdsourcing has grown into a huge field, spawning subdivisions of the strategy and being used for a multitude of purposes. Wikipedia is one of the most recognizable and mainstream instances of crowdsourcing, designed to elicit and compile knowledge from the masses. Crowdsourcing has been used in real time to track public transportation and traffic updates with various apps.

Rob Hoehn2021-12-07T15:58:00-08:00July 18th, 2016|Categories: Strategies|Tags: business strategy, crowdfunding, Crowdsourcing, goal setting, idea management, IdeaScale, Ideation, Innovation Strategy, LEGO, Open Innovation, Product Development, veronica mars, Wired|

Avoid Innovation Paralysis – Why all Companies Can and Must Embrace Change

Someone once told me this: “Innovation is like an apparition of the Virgin Mary: one person saw her, but everyone talks about it.” Although funny, the quote aptly captures an attitude towards innovation that exists in many companies today. Innovation – and the skills that enable it – are sometimes considered as mystical gifts, preserved for the chosen few. In other cases, innovation is feared, because it involves unregulated processes, risk taking and investments with unpredictable outcomes. In this blog post, I’d like to make a case against this kind of innovation paralysis. Every company must innovate, and with the right understanding of the word ‘innovation’, every company can.

Ideascale2021-12-07T15:54:16-08:00July 4th, 2016|Categories: Enabling Factors, Life Cycle Processes, Strategies|Tags: Change Management, Failure, innovation paralysis, Innovation Strategy, innovation success, market research, operational process, Problem Solving, Product Development, solutions|

Creativity is not Enough: How to Turn Ideas into Revenue

“Eureka!’, Archimedes famously howled, while running butt naked through the streets of Syracuse. Soaking in his bath tub, the bearded Greek inventor had just discovered a new method of determining an object’s volume. Funnily enough, this well-known story captures two myths about innovation. One: it’s the work of a sole – and usually slightly eccentric – inventor. Two: chance has a part to play. For businesses, the reality is vastly different. Indeed, turning ideas into revenue requires quite a bit more than just ideation and luck.

Ideascale2021-12-07T15:54:13-08:00June 28th, 2016|Categories: Strategies|Tags: Best Practices, Creativity, front end of innovation, fuzzy front end of innovation, idea management, Ideation, innovation champion, Innovation Strategy, innovation success|

Do You Know the Seven Stages of Innovation?

At IdeaScale, we define prolific innovators as organizations that have moved more than half of their ideas to the final stage. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every suggested idea became a value-generating, implemented reality. This means that the completed ideas had each been investigated, responded to, and a decision was made to move forward or not. But of course, at least a portion of those completed ideas generate measurable constructive outcomes.

Rob Hoehn2019-10-15T15:22:07-07:00May 3rd, 2016|Categories: Life Cycle Processes, Open Innovation|Tags: Crowdsourcing, estimation, idea management, IdeaScale, Ideation, innovation, innovation lifecycle, Innovation Management, innovation stages, Innovation Strategy, innovation team, measuring innovation, refinement, review, team building, Teamwork|

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.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:07-07:00May 2nd, 2016|Categories: Leadership, Life Cycle Processes|Tags: back end of innovation, benchmarking, Change Management, customer engagement, data, evaluating ideas, front end of innovation, fuzzy front end of innovation, goal setting, in-depth article, innovation challenge, innovation investment, Innovation Management, Innovation Strategy, innovation success, management, Open Innovation, Problem Solving, system problem, vision|

Innovation Tautogram — A Simple and Powerful Innovation Tool

The human vocabulary with millions of words is adequate to explain all of our expectations and experiences, even those which are imagined. Why not harness the power of language to discover new products and services? Author Shanta R Yapa shares the Innovation Tautogram technique, which can be used as an individual or a group exercise.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:08-07:00April 28th, 2016|Categories: Strategies|Tags: brainstorm, Creativity, Ideation, in-depth article, innovation, Innovation Strategy, innovation tool, innovation toolbox, innovation tools, Product Development, tautogram|

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.

Ideascale2021-12-07T15:50:09-08:00April 25th, 2016|Categories: Leadership, Life Cycle Processes|Tags: analytics, back end of innovation, benchmarking, Change Management, customer engagement, data, evaluating ideas, front end of innovation, fuzzy front end of innovation, goal setting, in-depth article, innovation challenge, innovation investment, Innovation Management, innovation metrics, Innovation Strategy, innovation success, management, metrics, Open Innovation, Problem Solving, system problem, vision|

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.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:10-07:00April 18th, 2016|Categories: Leadership, Life Cycle Processes|Tags: back end of innovation, benchmarking, Change Management, customer engagement, data, evaluating ideas, front end of innovation, fuzzy front end of innovation, goal setting, in-depth article, innovation challenge, innovation investment, Innovation Management, Innovation Strategy, innovation success, investment, management, Open Innovation, Problem Solving, system problem, vision|

Innovation: Knowing Where to Begin

Let me see if this situation sounds familiar: you’ve promised your boss that you’ll generate at least one percent growth over last year. You’ve been racking your brain with ideas about how to improve your product or develop a new offering or finding new efficiencies which will help your margins, but the few ideas that you’ve come up with haven’t had legs and pages keep coming off the calendar.

Rob Hoehn2019-10-15T15:22:10-07:00April 12th, 2016|Categories: Idea Management, Open Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: Communication, Creativity, Crowdsourcing, front end of innovation, IdeaScale, Innovation Strategy, leadership, objectives, Open Innovation, planning, project planning|

A Strategy that Requires Innovation

Every executive knows that their teams should be more nimble, should be operating at a higher speed, and should be innovating. But these are all discrete capabilities, not necessarily in service to any greater strategy, and in fact much of what passes for strategy doesn’t understand how to take advantage of these capabilities. In this article, the authors describe the Maneuver Strategy from the new book, Outmaneuver. This strategy relies on innovation to achieve its goals, rather than accommodating innovation when it must.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:12-07:00March 30th, 2016|Categories: Strategies|Tags: Agile, business development, business strategy, Competition, Innovation Strategy, innovation success, maneuver strategy, speed of innovation, strategy|

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.

Ideascale2022-01-24T16:43:16-08:00February 29th, 2016|Categories: Enabling Factors, Leadership, Organization & Culture|Tags: Communication, Employee Engagement, employee training, enterprise innovation, HR, Innovation Culture, innovation framework, Innovation Strategy, innovation team, innovation training, learning program, Problem Solving, training program|

Getting From Ideas to Products

In a time when innovation and new product development are vital to remain competitive, large organizations are looking for ways to generate and execute new product ideas while mitigating risk. Increasingly, these companies seek to create a startup culture as a means to generate innovation.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:22-07:00December 21st, 2015|Categories: Idea Management, Life Cycle Processes|Tags: evaluation of ideas, Innovation Strategy, Open Innovation, Product Development, product launch, prototyping, time to launch|

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.

Ideascale2020-09-14T08:53:40-07:00December 7th, 2015|Categories: Leadership, Organization & Culture|Tags: Communication, continuous innovation, ecosystem, framework, Ideation, in-depth article, Innovation Culture, innovation framework, innovation leader, innovation metrics, innovation process, Innovation Strategy, innovation value, measuring innovation, project management, self-sustaining innovation, strategy, sustainable growth, vision|

10 Ways to Reduce the Innovation Failure Rate

You are not able to stand still in this fast paced business environment, but most of the time innovation fails. Innovation process-expert Robert Cooper shows that of every seven new product/service projects, about four enter development, 1.5 are launched, and only one succeeds. Innovation is so difficult to master, indeed. I love to share with you five reasons why innovation goes wrong and give you ten ways to reduce your failure rate of innovation.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:25-07:00December 4th, 2015|Categories: Enabling Factors, Idea Management, Leadership, Strategies|Tags: back end of innovation, Best Practices, Business Model Innovation, customer engagement, Failure, fuzzy front end of innovation, goal setting, habits, Ideation, innovation, innovation process, Innovation Strategy, innovation success, invention, lessons learned, mindset, motivation|

Unlocking Innovation in Business

85% of UK workers believe the strategic objectives of their employers could more easily be met through innovative approaches. Fortunately, the innovation discussion in business is progressing. Yet although most organisations acknowledge the desperate need for change, they are still at a loss when it comes to taking action. Workforces are a goldmine for the insight needed to drive change in an increasingly competitive business environment - but this knowledge must be captured to unlock innovation.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:27-07:00November 23rd, 2015|Categories: Idea Management, Organization & Culture|Tags: business innovation, company culture, Competition, Employee Engagement, idea management, Ideation, Innovation Culture, innovation metrics, innovation software, Innovation Strategy, innovation value, measuring innovation|