Innovation: Should you Roll the Dice?
Paul Sloane uses a gambling analogy to show how uncertain innovation is and why senior management isn't likely to approve a new idea after several failures in a row.
Growing B2B Services: 3 Trends to Act Upon Now
What does it take for companies to market new, innovative capabilities as a service? The challenge to expand beyond products is daunting, but as market exemplars show, the returns on the investment can be worth it. The case studies explored in this article illustrate the extent to which services demand a premium in the market, drive differentiation from the competition, and build loyalty.
6 steps on How to Achieve Innovation in Outsourcing
There has been a huge amount of growth in the outsourcing industry over recent years, so much so that it has become engrained in the way many large enterprises run their business. As the industry matures and the range of outsourcing services extends to higher value activities, client firms raise the bar regarding their expectations, seeking the delivery of high impact innovation from their vendors.
Analytics Spur Competitive Advantage and Bottom-up Innovation
Before getting to this stage, 44% of organizations say the primary barriers to enterprise-wide analytics adoption are cultural. IBM Institute for Business Value and MIT Sloan Management review released research based on a survey of more than 4,500 business leaders from more than 120 countries and a variety of industries.
The Future of Innovation Management: 5 Key Steps for Future Success
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.
Measuring for Innovation – A Guide for Innovative Teams
As innovation is a necessity for any organization today, the ability to assess and measure the progress and impact of your innovation efforts might be a true source of competitive advantage. This in-depth article offers fresh experiences, best practice and insights from how a number of multinational companies within the MedTech, telecom and manufacturing industries are working with establishing and implementing innovation measurement programs.
How to Improve Patent Quality by Using Crowd Sourcing
Worldwide filings of patent applications and the ensuing invalidation requests have seen staggering growth over the last decade. The result is increasing patent backlog, deteriorating patent quality and an uncertain economic environment. This article briefly describes the crowdsourcing phenomenon and then details how it can aid patent review.
How to Successfully Implement Collaborative Idea Management
Are you effectively using the creative potential of your employees, customers and partners to address your innovation challenges? Collaborative idea management is a method to learn from the “wisdom of the crowd” in order to drive innovation. This in-depth article gives you an introduction including best practice from how Ericsson, the global telecom company worked with introducing and designing a successful collaborative idea management system.
Social Media Reinforce the Competitive and Innovative Abilities
Last week, the Dutch Financial Times reported that the Netherlands moved up to the seventh place in the yearly competitiveness index by the World Economic Forum (WEF). To close the gap with the top five, social innovation needs to be tackled. Not only raising R&D budgets, but also better innovation management and work smarter.
Intellectual Asset Management for Universities
Universities can now access a new tool to help develop and manage their intellectual assets. The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has a new strategy guide called 'Intellectual Asset Management for Universities’. This new guide provides advice and information to universities to help them understand how they can best use their institution's Intellectual Property. This can be an invention, trade mark, original design or the application of a good idea.
Framing the Critical Question: Insights from Survey Research
Campaign teams cover a lot of ground as they work with the sponsor of a collaborative innovation challenge. In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins makes the case that campaign teams should focus their energies on helping the sponsor develop the critical question that serves as the basis for convening the community. Forming the powerful question—the question that accurately reflects the sponsor’s intent and that resonates with the community—yields the greatest return on time spent in developing the campaign, relative to its ultimate success.
How to Link Design, Marketing and Innovation
Over recent years the terms innovation and design thinking have taken on a life of their own through a variety of channels and media. Millions of words have been written on these topics by journalists, consultants, practitioners, and curious bystanders. Then throw in discussions about design itself and an even wider range of opinions emerge. What is a business leader supposed to make of all of this?
Boosting Innovation by Integrating a Gender Perspective
Why does gender diversity matter when it comes to product and service innovation? What has research shown? And what does hard-won experience tell us? This article shows how businesses gain a competitive edge by integrating a gender perspective into their innovation work – a much needed boost as global competition becomes increasingly tough.
Four Approaches to Fostering Companies’ Innovation Capability
For many companies being and continuing to be innovative is essential. But how can companies become ‘more’ innovative? Carmen Kobe & Ina Goller asked experts, consultants, and managers how they experienced successful improvement of innovativeness in their business life. Out of the interviews four interventions that are used to develop companies’ innovation capabilities could be extracted.
Rethinking the Financial Drivers in Innovation Culture
Recent reports in the Harvard Business Review question the efficiency of the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital innovation funding model and more emphasis is now being placed on how to manage the innovation process in a low finance environment. In this article we look at one grass roots movement that is providing a model for creating the widest possible innovation culture, at the same time bringing this new innovation management thinking into the mainstream.