Is it possible that only a quarter of all companies are highly effective at the front end of innovation? If so, what kinds of companies are most successful at the ideation and conversion stages? Gijs van Wulfen describes three different kinds of companies and suggests the Need Seekers strategy offers the greatest potential for superior performance in the long term.
Today, almost any B2B firm claims to be “customer-oriented”. However, only few firms have a rigorous and stringent system that integrates the “best” (B2B) customers into its innovation process – where “best” in this context is measured not by volume of sales but by contribution to the firm’s innovation. A lot of insight has been generated on how to engage consumers in the innovation process. There is also a growing body of knowledge about how to innovate openly on the R&D side of the innovation process. But little has been written up so far about how to systematically integrate B2B customers in the firm’s Open Innovation system. innovation-3’s Frank Mattes closes this gap by sharing some insights.
Sometimes the most difficult part of innovation is how to survive your innovation project internally. Most organizations that really need to innovate have a risk adverse culture and managing innovation has everything to do with managing expectations and reducing risks. Gijs van Wulfen offers seven practical tips how to survive your innovation project.
The Front End of Innovation is that fuzzy bit where someone, or a group, conceives a new business concept. We say “fuzzy” because it’s the part of the innovation process that is the most purely creative. It’s a step into the unknown to create something new and calls for different tools and techniques. Because it’s fuzzy, we think it’s useful to break it down and look at it step-by-step.
Corporate innovation programs can’t fulfill their potential without the right foundations in place. Many organizations are taking their programs across the enterprise. In this article we consider three key foundations and how they can be boosted to improve corporate innovation: the linkage between every day innovation and corporate targets, the levels of openness, trust and acceptance of diverse opinions.
It's time for innovation leaders to get out of 'zombie mode' and claim a strategic position in their organizations.
The fact that innovation is a risky business is well-known. But what are those risks? After the identification and the assessment of the internal and hidden risks of innovation projects Altin Kadareja now delves deeper into an exploration of the external risks of innovation projects, those risks that the company can/does not fully control, mostly related to factors external to the company, meaning coming mainly from its environment.
“What cannot be measured cannot be managed”. The pressure to measure the results of innovation is gaining ground, but has been a challenge for many innovation managers. To get past this challenge, Caspar van Rijnbach suggests using the six W’s to define the right measurements for you.
Every innovation project starts from an idea or a problem and mostly, all innovation teams do jump immediately to the feasibility study and scenario analysis dedicating little or no time to the assessment of the risks of innovation projects. This series of article represents an extended dashboard of internal, external and hidden risks of such projects in aiding innovation teams throughout their risk management activities. The first article looks deeper into what drives a successful innovation eco-system.
The nature of problems in innovative work is that they are often ill defined, novel to the individual who engaged them, and complex in that often several solutions exist to the same problem. In this post we will see how expertise is an important factor in innovative problem solving, and how leaders and organizations can cultivate R&D team expertise.
Customers change. Competitors change. Technology changes. If you don’t do anything, new and competitive products catch up and overtake your products and services quickly. A study by A.D. Little has shown that the life cycle of products has decreased by factor 4 the last fifty years. So innovation is essential. But it is time consuming. It demands a lot of resources. And a positive outcome is very uncertain. In this blog Gijs van Wulfen offers a helping hand by identifying five common mistakes to avoid.
This question has baffled many executives for quite some time. Management tries to replicate the special event or circumstances that created a successful innovation project but often fails. Companies have created positions such as Chief Innovation officer, innovation teams, and organizational strategies that promote innovation through diversity, team dynamics, and social networking. However, failure rates of 90% are common when innovations occur due purely to chance. What distinguishes whether an innovation is hit or miss?
Gijs van Wulfen has developed a structured innovation approach connecting creativity and business reality in five steps: Full Steam Ahead, Observe and Learn, Raise Ideas, Test Ideas and Homecoming. Here he summarizes the benefits of his method in a 66-point innovation checklist.
A couple months ago I laid out the framework for the most common challenges companies face as they get started with their social product innovation initiatives. The most common challenges fall into five main buckets – strategy, people and culture, business processes, technology and sustainability. So let’s take a deeper look at typical sustainability challenges and some ideas for overcoming them.
Can companies sidestep or blunt the effects of disruptive innovation? It's possible, but not likely, explains Steve Denning in a recent Forbes column.
