Developing an Innovation Toolbox

InnovationManagement spoke to Alexander Osterwalder, sought-after author, speaker, workshop facilitator and adviser on the topic of business model design and innovation. Find out more about his views on innovation management, what projects he is currently working on, and why big organizations should enable their creative innovators.

Technology Scouting: Rethinking the Innovation Toolbox

Companies should reconsider their technology scouting strategies to proactively seek, identify and access external knowledge, skills, capabilities and intellectual assets. These may or may not be applicable to their current needs. However, these resources could quickly be activated to help address new challenges as they arise. Sort of an innovation toolbox, according to Michael Fruhling.

How to use Twitter as a Powerful Idea Discovery Tool

Twitter can be a powerful tool for developing breakthrough ideas. In fact, it's one of the best tools for exposing you to new ideas, insights and trends. Unfortunately, it has gained a reputation as a place where narcissistic people talk about the glorious minutiae of their lives - such as, "Guess what I'm having for breakfast?" There is some of that, of course, but it is also a vibrant community where people share some amazing ideas and resources.

Creativity as a Search for Meaning

Creativity is part of, and not necessarily separate from, our intellectual efforts, explains John Armato in this thought-provoking article about using creativity to make meaning in our lives.

How do you Measure Innovation Results and Outcomes?

The sixth major issue to be tackled by our distinguished panel of innovation practitioners is the all-import issue of metrics: How do you measure innovation results and outcomes and motivate the organization to deliver across all stages of the process, and what are the best metrics for measuring innovation performance?

Evaluating an Idea’s Potential Using ‘PPC’

Most of us have a tendency to discard ideas too quickly, because we cannot see the potential value. Gary Bertwistle of Blue Moon Creative, author of the new book The Keys to Creativity, has come up with a technique that he calls PPC, which stands for Positives, Potentials and Concerns, that can help you to overcome this tendency.

The Great Innovation Lie

Often, organizations have a tendency to turn innovation into a highly complex system involving numerous processes, approaches and models. Here's a little secret: It doesn't need to be complex to be effective.

When Brainstorming, Don’t Give in to Limited Thinking

When we are trying to dream up ideas for a particular problem, we have a tendency to look at the limitations and focus our ideation on ideas that meet the demands of our limitations. In short, we only consider ideas that come within the “good ideas” portion of our realm of ideas. Ideas that do not make it into the good ideas realm are often rejected immediately.