What Happens When Leadership Focus Shifts Away From Innovation?

Corporations tend to focus on fads, often packaged into corporate initiatives or programs, that roll in and out of favor over time. Attention from leadership around any single initiative doesn’t last forever, and it will shift to the next bright and shiny object at some point. How do you prepare for when this happens?

The 7 Principles of Highly Effective Innovation Culture Change Programs (Part 2)

Nothing is more constant than change. Furthermore, the speed of change is accelerating. So for instance, the global knowledge is growing exponentially, disruptive megatrends (e.g. Internet Of Things, urbanization, demographic shifts) are shaping the innovation agendas and new approaches for capturing value by innovation (e.g. Business Model Innovation, Design Thinking) are becoming mainstream. Thus, new realities for innovation management are emerging and firms are forced to change their innovation management ever faster.

The 7 Principles of Highly Effective Innovation Culture Change Programs (Part 1)

Nothing is more constant than change. Furthermore, the speed of change is accelerating. So for instance, the global knowledge is growing exponentially, disruptive megatrends (e.g. Internet Of Things, urbanization, demographic shifts) are shaping the innovation agendas and new approaches for capturing value by innovation (e.g. Business Model Innovation, Design Thinking) are becoming mainstream. Thus, new realities for innovation management are emerging and firms are forced to change their innovation management ever faster.

Take Your Business Model to the Next Level

Your business model should answer two important questions: (1) What is your value proposition and (2) how are you organizing your company and your ecosystem to create this value. The 8 building blocks of the business model template help you to visualize your answers and think strategically about your business model.

Increasing Innovation Impact in the Enterprise

You would be hard-pressed to find a business leader who would question the importance of innovation not only to promote growth within their organization, but also to ensure its very survival. These business leaders have invested significantly in their innovation initiatives to support this importance. Yet a 2012 Accenture study found that more than half of corporate executives were disappointed by their innovation results and returns from their innovation investments.

Red One: a blue ocean in the cinematographic camera industry

In 2005, Jim Jannard (founder of Oakley) set up a company called RED Digital Cinema, with the specific aim of creating a ultra-high definition digital camera which would be as good as the 35 mm film cameras. This very successful strategic move that changed the 100 year-old cinematographic cameras industry is analyzed here through the logic of Blue Ocean Strategy - a theory grounded in the concept of value innovation.

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.

What SMEs can Expect from Value-Creating Innovation Management Consulting

Owners and managers of small and medium sized companies (SMEs) are reluctant to hire consultants and even more so when it comes to innovation management consulting. And they often have good reasons to do so. They don’t see an appropriate value for the money and time they invest on innovation management consulting - especially since the quality and range of such services varies dramatically.

Using Communications to Drive Innovation – How to Develop an Engaging and Sustainable Program

Enterprise innovation has one main goal – developing business value. There are many different elements that support that goal, but one of the most crucial is communications. As mentioned in the previous article in this series, software has a key role to play, but it doesn’t guarantee employee participation or value to the business, we need to think more widely to address these needs.

Creating Innovation Value: Four Key Drivers to Success

The ability to increase business value through innovation is a critical success driver for most organizations. The markets that we operate in provide both opportunity and risk from an innovation perspective as they are rapidly changing. This article takes a look at a useful framework; The Innovation Diamond™, that examines the complexity and addresses some of the challenges in product innovation.

Using the 6 W’s to Measure R&D and Innovation

“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.

Measuring the Practice of Collaborative Innovation

Developing and supporting the practice of collaborative innovation takes time and money. What do we assess to weigh its value? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins proposes focusing on strategic alignment of the program, relative advantage of the ideas, and engagement of the community members.

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”.

Innovation for Financial Services

The concept of “financial innovation” can be defined as making and promoting new financial products and services, developing new processes to facilitate financial activities, to interact with customers and to design new structures for financial institutions. This article takes a look at the needs for innovation in the financial sector and some basic requirements.

The Promise and the Reality of Collaborative Innovation

Practitioners in each new field emerge to explore its early, exciting promise, reconciling that potential with the results they achieve in reality. The rapidly emerging and rapidly evolving field of collaborative innovation is no different in this regard. In this article Doug Collins shares his perspective on the current state of affairs in terms of where the field stands, relative to the claims made on its behalf.