In today’s “knowledge-based” society, it is becoming increasingly imperative for companies to “mine” knowledge and technology generated by universities. Why? Because the outcome of such industry-university collaborations help companies create new activities and jobs.
In economically and socially advanced societies, education is the leading industry going forward. Yet it continues to operate as if it is still 1950. If education is the imperative in our societies, it needs to use new techniques, new methods, new tools, and creativity to make the educational experience more rewarding. It is time for education to catch up with society once again.
Health clinics are a common feature of most urban health care landscapes treating ailments and illnesses not serious enough to be treated by hospitals. But when was the last time you ran into a “clinic of innovation” – a clinic that treats ideas rather than patients? Chances are pretty low, unless you happened to be in Norway recently.
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.
Creative problem solving isn't just brainstorming, although that's what many people may associate it with. It's actually a well-defined process that can help you from problem definition to implementing solutions, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner.
One key partner that has the potential to greatly affect and enhance the human condition is government. This author prefers the open market as the main catalyst for change, but given the complexity and scale of certain types of research, government can play a vital role in advancing knowledge in science and technology by supporting basic research. While some governments have been funding research for quite some time, the inefficiency of the process may be keeping new discoveries from being commercialized.
Make sure your internal innovation capabilities and processes are in order before you open up your idea and innovation strategy to the world.
For companies desiring organic growth and whose innovation efforts are not yielding the results demanded, using a Strategic Innovation approach using structured tools and methods will produce higher value products, services, systems, and environments that will resonate deeper with people to encourage them to become loyal customers. This approach delivers better solutions that are feasible to build, viable for profit, and desirable to the user.
Corporate innovation has traditionally been driven from the technology side; from departments like R&D and engineering. It’s an approach that can be very successful. Indeed, it has often led to great breakthroughs. But if a company wants to win in today’s value-based economy, this is no longer the best way of doing things.
The role of innovation in industry has changed. What used to be a closed and often secretive exclusive business of the R&D department is now being transformed to an open and collaborative eco system in many companies. InnovationManagement.se spoke to GBS Bindra, Global Innovation Director at Logica about the role of innovation.
There is one area in which open innovation differs significantly from in-house innovation: the legal element. The consequences of ignoring the legal side of open innovation can be catastrophically expensive, warns Jeffrey Baumgartner.
A desire to act as a bridge builder between technology and people has taken him from Sweden to New Delhi where he now heads Ericsson ConsumerLab Asia Pacific, a unit within the Ericsson Group that gathers in, processes and analyses data on end consumer needs. Their surveys are based on a cross section of the world’s population in all parts of the world.
Research at Lund University is world-class. Research is undertaken in areas such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, automatic control, wireless communication, logistics, ecology and cognitive science.
It has long been said that travel broadens the mind. That has never been tested empirically until recently. And the result is that travel alone is not sufficient to boost creativity. Living overseas, however, has been demonstrated to improve creative thinking ability, according to a new study.
The benefits of open innovation during the current economic downturn have only recently been analyzed. Henry Chesbrough and Andrew Garman have recently published a Harvard Business Review article (June) on this. Wim Vanhaverbeke, Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Hasselt University, Belgium, provides some additional benefits when companies apply open innovation in a downturn, which has not been mentioned in the HBR-article.
