If you’re working with an innovation management platform, then you know the importance of building a community. The success of these programs is intrinsically linked to the spirit and engagement of your community: how much they participate, how they’re participating, why they’re participating.
When the United Way told the story of their crowdsourcing program, Edwin Goutier, Innovation Lead at Unitd Way, said that one of the things that he hears a lot is that people don’t think of the United Way (or nonprofits in general) as innovative.
When I say “innovator,” what image comes to mind? A brilliant, but misunderstood figure hunched over a drawing board by the light of a single lamp in the middle of the night – cup of coffee dwindling slowly, pages of crumpled notes on the floor?
Too many notes, Mozart was once told. Too many ideas, we might say today. The culture of innovation is awash with idea generation and its sidekick, fail-fast fail cheap innovation. Worse, we need a culture of transformation not just innovation. Accenture recently reported that 81% of executives they interviewed see platforms as central to their strategy over the next three years.
How to organise a meeting in such a way that they result in creativity and energy? How to ensure that people are actively participating instead of being only passively attending meetings?
Switzerland – a tiny country with few natural advantages – has become incredibly successful in the world of banking, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and more. James Breiding, author of the bestselling book, Swiss Made, explores the enabling factors for innovation in Switzerland. He makes the point that when an entrepreneur comes up with a new and innovative method or product, there will be resistance from those who have accepted the status quo. Entrepreneurs as well as intrapreneurs need to have thick skin if they wish to disrupt the market.
As Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN) and a Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Rob Wolcott knows a bit about networking and the politics of innovation. In this episode of Innovation Ecosystem Rob shares practical advice for intrapreneurs who are looking to get stuff done from within the middle of the organization. And for growth leaders of businesses, he also has some great tips about where to get your inspiration!
In view of creating more competitive regions and industry sectors, innovation capabilities of SMEs play a central role. SMEs are strong economic drivers in many countries, and their ability to innovate will determine the health of national and regional economies in the future. A key support for SMEs in their innovation efforts are public innovation support programmes.
In this fourth and final installment in this whitepaper series, we examine a live case study of where both innovation training and network development have been actively managed and sustained within Intuit, an IT organization based out of Silicon Valley.
In the previous two whitepapers of this series we examined both the benefits of innovation training and areas of innovation skills that mid-to-junior level employees can be taught. In this installment we will address an important topic that is often missing from innovation training / education programs: How to build effective employee networks that support employees who have been trained with new innovation skills.
Many successful innovation programs are extending their offerings to include training efforts for employees around the skills of innovation. This whitepaper (the first in a series of four) examines the benefits of such an approach for companies, innovation program leaders, and the employees who participate.
Most innovators understand what serendipity is. Dictionary.com calls it "an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident." But have you ever heard of serendipitous network intelligence?
Product innovation is not simply about generating new ideas. It is a complex process, and many organizations struggle with the design and implementation of an effective innovation strategy that yields measurable results over the long-term. Sustained growth and profitability can be achieved through the integration of three critical levels: People, processes and tools.
Customer and market research, competitive benchmarking, and focusing on market share could be detrimental to your organization's future performance. These approaches are critical improvement tools. Top performing organizations have turned them into a disciplined and useful science. But they can also lead to "me-too" followership or - even worse - commodity products and services that compete only on price.
Looking back is a natural as we look to learn lessons from past activity. But perhaps more interesting is to look forwards. In this article Rick Eagar draws on the results from recent research that surveyed the opinions of global Chief Technology Officers and Chief Information Officers and identifies key changes in five distinct but interrelated innovation management concepts as being important for the years ahead.
