Want to Drive Innovation? Talk to Your Customers

The customer is always right. The timeless aphorism holds truer now than it ever did before, as the customer truly drives the ever-changing trends and shapes the industry, with companies battling each other to stay relevant in the hearts and minds of their devoted audience.

Is Innovation Data About More Than Ideas?

Anyone who is managing their innovation program with innovation software is generally amassing a wealth of data. Many people are looking at that data on an individual idea-level, but it’s actually possible to start looking at that data and identifying new themes, trends, or topics that will inform your strategy in the coming years by grouping that information on tags, text analysis, and more. It can be a trend early-warning system if you pay attention to it.

How Employee Diversity Promotes Business Innovation

Lack of diversity among employees hurts a company’s ability to innovate and remain competitive. Diversity - both inherent and acquired - naturally drives innovation through team members’ different abilities to spot gaps, solutions, and opportunities; to avoid groupthink; and to reach clients and customers who were inaccessible before.

Rethinking The Way We Generate Insights

Identifying new sources of growth has become increasingly more complex given the myriad of alternatives that new business models, strategic partnerships, advanced technologies, and other disruptive mechanisms offer us. Taking a systematic approach to finding these opportunities means veering from our usual mode of operations to a much more speculative mindset where the learning journey is as important as the destination itself.

Using Global Insights to Drive Local Innovation

“Innovation” has become yet another buzz-word, used overwhelmingly by organizations to distinguish themselves from competitors. This article explores one strategy that local champions can use to be more innovative in their local markets: scan the globe for trends and insights and generate insights and ideas that can be adapted to drive innovation at the local market level.

How Next-Generation Social Technologies can Help Drive Innovation

Product innovation is about developing and delivering the “next” product or service-to-market quickly and cost-effectively. A well-managed innovation process that meets customer demands for new and unique products and services can contribute to creating a competitive advantage and business growth. Organizations can improve their innovation processes through the use of next-generation social technologies, says Catherine Constantinides.

Open Innovation for Small Companies

Open innovation may seem to be the preserve of big business. After all, it is often associated with long established monstrosities like Proctor and Gamble and IBM. But it is an approach that can be used by all companies, especially start-ups and small businesses, explains Jeffrey Baumgartner.

How Biases, Prejudices and Ignorance can Quietly Undermine Innovation

The missing ingredient of innovation may lie in the human ability (or lack thereof) to see the world from someone else's perspective and take action on the insights that this ability can reveal.

Improvisation is an essential element of the new paradigm of work, says Jay Rhoderick

What does improvisation have to do with the needs of business today? Plenty, says improv expert Jay Rhoderick, who shares some practical strategies for using it to break out of our rutted thinking and generate new insights.