722 Posts Found

The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery—these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the groundbreaking ideas that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson’s answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Steven Johnson | Subject: Innovation

Defining a managerial approach to innovation starts with developing a better understanding of the problem we need to solve. I’ve found asking two basic questions can be enormously helpful.

How well is the problem defined?
Who is best-placed to solve it?

Content: Article | Author: Greg Satell | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Innovation

Meet lots of different people without trying to extract value from them. You don’t need to connect the dots right away. But if you think about each person as a new dot on your canvas, over time, you’ll see the full picture.

Content: Quotation | Author: Tony Hsieh | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Creativity, Personal Development

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Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off.

Content: Quotation | Author: Clayton M. Christensen | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Innovation, Thought

What do humans do? We create. We don’t have to learn to be creative. We have to unlearn what gets in the way of our creativity. Discipline, on the other hand, is not the natural human state. So it’s a differentiating factor. What is super rare is the ability to blend creative thinking with discipline and to do it in such a way that the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jim Collins | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation

If you’re focused on the job that has to be done, you’ll be more likely to catch the next technology that does it better. If you frame your business by product or technology, you won’t see the next disruptor when it comes along.

Content: Quotation | Author: Clayton M. Christensen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Competition, Innovation

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At Reebok, the cushioning in a best-selling basketball shoe reflects technology borrowed from intravenous fluid bags. And at IDEO, developers designed a leak-proof water bottle using the technology from a shampoo bottle top. These examples show how so-called “peripheral” knowledge — that is, ideas from domains that are seemingly irrelevant to a given task — can influence breakthrough innovation. But how does such information make … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Martine Haas | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Innovation

In the ever-changing world of business, we’ve arrived at a point where process has trumped culture, where the race toward efficiency has made us complacent and unable to reach our potential. Stuck in the land of status quo, we’ve forgotten how to think. And the very structures put in place to help businesses grow are now holding them back. It’s time to Kill the Company.

What … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Lisa Bodell | Subject: Innovation

The greatest difference between entrepreneurs and corporate managers lies in the difference of a single belief about the future. Professional managers assume the future can be predicted; they create goals and plans and then attempt to control how things will unfold. The fundamental assumption, therefore, is that personal assumptions and learning happens primarily in the beginning of the process. Serial entrepreneurs, on … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Soren Kaplan | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Management

A comprehensive look at the evidence will show, to the surprise of many, that the economic return to innovation is quite meager and that it has been progressively declining over time, as an extensive review of the literature has shown.

Content: Quotation | Author: Oded Shenkar | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Innovation

How can great companies do everything right – identify real customer needs, deliver excellent innovations, beat their competitors to market – and still fail?

The sad truth is that many companies fail because they focus too intensely on their own innovations, and then neglect the innovation ecosystems on which their success depends. In our increasingly interdependent world, winning requires more than just delivering on your own … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Ron Adner | Subject: Innovation

The early stages of innovation can be challenging. But Booz & Company’s annual study of R&D spending reveals that successful innovators bring clarity to a process often described as fuzzy and vague.

Content: Article | Authors: Barry Jaruzelski, John Loehr, Richard Holman | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

Many companies have embraced open innovation, only to discover that it is not for them. In fact a good number of those companies are not right for open innovation, mainly because they lack the capabilities needed to promote and leverage collaboration – within the company and with external partners. These authors identify and describe three strategies for open innovation, and explain what an organization must … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Barry Jaruzelski, Richard Holman | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Innovation

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. Always begin, again and again.

Content: Quotation | Source: LifeHacker | Subjects: Achievement, Innovation, Potential, Problems / Solutions

Thinking in terms of time and attention will quickly start to change the way you think about products and services, customer behavior, even business models. This is the great frontier for innovation for the next decade, this author believes. Companies that master time and attention innovation will find lots of market traction. Readers will learn how to get that traction in this article.

Content: Article | Author: Adrian C. Ott | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Innovation, Marketing / Sales, Strategy

Micro-innovation is the Holy Grail of modern management. Micro-innovation (incremental improvement) that is driven by employees is the secret to transforming the customer experience, accelerating revenue growth, and reducing costs.

Yet, the level of employee engagement required for micro-innovation remains one of the most elusive outcomes in modern organizational life. Research shows in aggregate that employee engagement continues a 25-year decline.

In our real-time economy, the most … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John Bernard | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

We play host to an imaginary gathering of experts who share their real-life thoughts on how to brainstorm better–or whether to brainstorm at all.

Content: Article | Author: Anya Kamenetz | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

The vast majority of participants in Hay Group’s recent global Best Companies for Leadership survey indicated that their organizations have become flatter and more matrixed. Individuals may be assigned to work on different project teams and report to multiple managers. The advantages can be huge — new innovations, increased sharing of information and better capacity to solve complex problems. And yet the more … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Rick Lash | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior