The Challenge of Imovation

It is surely one of business’s great paradoxes that maybe, just maybe, an innovator might have something to learn from an imitator. However unlikely, it is a truism, and this author describes why an innovator should pay close attention to, and even respect, an imitator. He also describes why and what an imitator can learn from – who else ? – an innovator. In the … [ Read more ]

Claude Legrand and Dr. David S. Weiss

The problem with any discussion on innovation is that the word “innovation” is used in many different ways. The most useful and practical definition is “applied creativity that achieves business value.” Rather than thinking of innovation as a value or an end goal or the exclusive domain of R&D, it is most useful to think of it as the best process to solve complex problems … [ Read more ]

Claude Legrand and Dr. David S. Weiss

As we moved from the industrial economy to the knowledge economy over the past 25 years, the nature of critical issues changed from complicated to complex. Complicated issues can be solved with logic and by drawing on past experience. It’s simply a matter of simplifying, organizing and applying solutions that have worked in a similar situation. Complex issues, on the other hand, are more ambiguous, … [ Read more ]

Strategic Innovation and the Fuzzy Front End

Innovation is a process, and while the introduction of a genuinely innovative product or service may be highly publicized or even glamorous, the process itself is driven much less by creative brainstorming or strategic planning than by carefully managed and highly-sophisticated cross-disciplinary thinking and research. Readers will learn how to manage the critically important first steps from this thinker, author and CEO.

Henry Chesbrough

The business model is the predominant way a business creates value for its customers and captures some piece of that value for itself. It is generally accepted that a better business model can often beat a better technology. Yet companies that spend many millions of dollars on R&D seldom invest much money or time in exploring alternative business models to commercialize those … [ Read more ]

The Innovator’s Straitjacket

Even the sanest of companies can unintentionally put themselves in a straitjacket that makes it hard for them to create high-potential new growth opportunities. Here’s how leaders unintentionally limit their innovation efforts.

Jonah Lehrer

We use creativity in the singular, as if there’s one way the brain generates new connections. But there are probably three neurologically distinct forms of creativity. One is when you have these moments of insight that come out of the blue–when you have epiphanies in the shower. Those seem to come from the part of the brain that’s involved in things like the interpretation of … [ Read more ]

The Five Cs of Opportunity Identification

Simply asking “what job is the customer trying to get done?” can be a powerful way to enable innovation, because it forces you to go beyond superficial demographic markers that correlate with purchase and use to zero in on frustrations and desires that motivate purchase and use.

Seductive simplicity hides a rich, robust set of opportunity identification tools. Through our experience utilizing the “jobs-to-be-done” concept in … [ Read more ]

Putting the Customer First

Hayagreeva Rao explains why innovation is about more than just new technology.

10 Reasons Why Ideas Fail

Whether you’re an executive in a big company, a marketing manager, a business owner or pretty much anyone with a dream, here’s a checklist of the 10 most common pitfalls to avoid, with some recent real-world examples.

Mukti Khaire

Commentary influences culture, which influences what we consume, which is influenced by what is actually out there in the market. If you can shift one of these elements you can actually create a new market.

An Interview with Yves Doz

Yves Doz is Professor of Strategic Management and the Timken Chaired Professor of Global Technology and Innovation at INSEAD, and Visiting Professor at the Helsinki School of Economics. He was Dean of Executive Education (1998-2002) and Associate Dean for Research and Development (1990-1995) at INSEAD. He has also taught at the Harvard Business School, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Seoul National University, and Aoyama Gakuin … [ Read more ]

Lewis L. Lehro

Managers are people who like order. They like forecasts to come out as planned. In fact, managers are often judged on how much order they produce. Innovation, on the other hand, is often a disorderly process. Many times, perhaps most times, innovation does not turn out as planned. As a result there is a tension between managers and innovation.

Oded Shenkar

Innovating firms are able to internalize routines that facilitate variation (e.g., improvisation), have combinative capabilities (e.g., are capable of decomposing and recombining different types of knowledge), and can reflect, update, select, assimilate and integrate superior routines and capabilities. They develop routines for exchanging information with suppliers and for appropriating spillovers (which implies imitating activity). Good imitators possess much of the same: They are able to … [ Read more ]

Funding Innovation: Is Your Firm Doing it Wrong?

Many companies are at a loss about how to fund innovation successfully. In his new book, The Architecture of Innovation, Professor Josh Lerner starts with this advice: get the incentives right. Also, read an excerpt of the book.

The Art of the Imperfect Pitch

Professor Baba Shiv discusses how you can coax risk-averse managers to innovate and introduces the “X Framework.”

The Global Innovation 1000: Why Culture Is Key

Booz & Company’s annual study shows that spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture that supports innovation.

How Do You Capture Value from an Innovation?

Creating a good product does not ensure success in the marketplace, though it is a necessary first step. The next steps, whose goal is to capture maximum value from the new product, are crucial. This article will help practitioners successfully structure these “next steps.”