Besides being the single most complicated facet of business, it can be said that project management is also the most perplexing one. Not only that it demands a flawless cooperation of multiple employees, teams and even departments, unfailing organizational strategies and uninterrupted workflow, but it requires an absolute absence of standstills, inaccuracies and slips as well.
Recent experiences show that Agile project-management methods can be used in the innovation process and has a great potential to reduce development time and increase the success rate of new products. The article briefly outlines how an Agile method, such as Scrum, can be used within a structured innovation process with milestones and decision points, such as Stage-Gate®, and what benefits it provides to both manufacturers and service-providers.
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.
At the start of the twenty first century the innovation buzz has become deafening. It commands the attention of everything - from the popular media to scientific journals. Innovation is claimed to be the driver of economies and the competitive edge of companies. With innovation being the core of many new management styles, one question still remains for the enthusiastic manager; what are the concrete tools for my employees to build our revolutionary innovations?
Eric Reis first introduced the concept of Lean Startup in 2008. Today Lean Startup is deployed far beyond entrepreneurial circles and is taking root in large, complex organizations looking to improve their new product success rates – and in the process build lean cultures. This is very good news. Too often the processes corporations use in pursuit of innovation can actually erode their capability to innovate. Still, when applying the principles of “Build – Measure – Learn” to initiating Lean practices in corporations, there is room for improvement…and possibly even for a pivot.
We’ve covered some essential ground to help you prepare your innovation journey, and now it’s time to put these concepts into action. The innovation formula addresses the very specific tasks that have to be accomplished for innovation to emerge from your organization not only as a matter of luck or at random, but through a concentrated effort that results in sustained innovation performance. Here you will find the Taking Action steps along with 25 additional suggestions that we hope will help you to think and plan creatively and productively about how to make innovation a reality in your organization.
There are four different types of innovation tools that we’ll describe here, including the design of the work place itself, practices that encourage and even enable effective collaboration, open innovation approach to connect inside innovation teams with outside partners and experts, and online tools that constitute the virtual work place. Separately and especially together, these can make a tremendous enhancement in the performance and the satisfaction of individuals, teams, and your entire organization.
Time and time again I get asked and challenged on an age-old issue of whether or not mind mapping is, at worst, just another fad, a ”nice to have” or, at best, a real value-adding benefit that has a serious place within a business or organisation.
Innovation portals have taken an important place in the open innovation landscape. Expectations are great in portal performance but often, for purely budgetary reasons, these portals are launched and managed internally by corporates themselves, to discover that they generate a number of community management issues that they are not used to coping with. Prior to launching a corporate portal it is a good idea to ask a few specific questions on whether to do this internally or through experienced third party innovation providers. Using external resources can often avoid pitfalls and align the portal success rate to corporate expectations, objectives and ambitions. Here six questions are asked that can help you take the decision whether to launch a managed portal internally or externally.
Innovation Assessment is one of the pillars of an innovation program. Evaluation should be done as an on-going activity and revised with the most valuable feedback gathered along the entire innovation journey. In the third of a series of articles focused on Innovation Culture, we are going to propose a different approach for Innovation Assessment that by offering a different user experience could increase awareness, engagement and elicit more valuable contributions from key stakeholders.
As innovation practitioners, few of us would refute that decision-making is one of the biggest progress-halting problems in corporations pursuing innovation as a continuous process. This article introduces a hands-on tool to help innovators, management members and corporate boards to follow a visual, utterly practical method to “consider” (as opposed to evaluate) new projects and their possible implications in their companies’ future. The tool in turn, fosters lean communication and inclusive understanding among diverse participants, claiming that, by following its structure, innovation is not only possible, but repeatable.
How to apply metrics to open innovation (OI)? That's the question we often get from our clients when they start to develop their open innovation capabilities. In order to provide an answer to this critical question, the following article will focus on the key findings of our Open Innovation KPI 2012 study. Based on this study, a metrics-based management toolkit has been developed, which provides the most relevant key performance indicators from the perspective of innovation managers, subject matter experts, and consultants.
Innovation is highly relevant to every organization. Yet, eighty percent of innovation projects never reach the market. Many have a false start. My new book is written to inspire you with practical tools on HOW to start innovation effectively. The process of innovation is a process that many struggle to master.“What is the right moment?” “How do I discover what customers want?” “How do I get breakthrough ideas?” “How do I get internal support?”
Although plagued with mixed opinions that are influenced by mythology surrounding the investment industry, corporate venturing is finally resurfacing as an important component of the corporate innovation toolbox. As companies reassess the contribution that corporate venturing can make to their innovation objectives, it is critical that the fundamentals of corporate venturing are understood. This article addresses a number of important points to consider when applying corporate venturing in a global innovation strategy.
Word lists, because of their simplicity, are often overlooked as a tool for brainstorming. That's too bad, because they can be quite powerful and are very easy to use. They leverage the mind's awesome associative powers to help us uncover new connections, insights and ideas.
