722 Posts Found

This content is restricted to site members. Please log in or register

How do you create a company that unleashes and capitalizes on innovation? HBS faculty experts in culture, customers, creativity, marketing, and the DNA of innovators offer up ideas.

Content: Article | Authors: Garry Emmons, Julia Hanna, Roger Thompson | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Innovation

It’s easier to change 20% of your organization by 80% than it is to change 80% of your firm by 20%. Work your innovations from the outside-in.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeff DeGraff | Source: FORTUNE | Subjects: Change Management, Innovation, Organizational Behavior

A Japanese executive once told me, “Your country has invented so many things, then failed to improve upon them. My country has invented nothing. But once we embrace something, we never cease to make it better.” Adopt the same approach to your enterprise. Always be working on your better plan.

Content: Quotation | Author: Bryce G. Hoffman | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Innovation, Management

Think of innovation strategy as a pyramid: big bets at the top, a few projects in development in the middle, and a broad base of continuous improvements, incremental contributions, and early-stage new ideas at the bottom.

Content: Quotation | Author: Rosabeth Moss Kanter | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Innovation

This commencement speech by Neil Gaiman is mandatory listening for anyone who hopes to be creatively successful. [Hat tip to Tim Ferriss]

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Neil Gaiman | Subjects: Innovation, Personal Development

Only if managers define market segments that correspond to the circumstances in which customers find themselves when making purchasing decisions can they accurately theorize which products will connect with their customers. We believe that customer segmentation (or categorization) should be based on the notion that customers “hire” products to do specific “jobs.” Doing so will help managers segment their markets to mirror the way their … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor | Source: CIO Magazine | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation, Marketing / Sales

In order to generate new ideas, remain competitive and unlock breakthrough innovations, Phil McKinney argues that we need to ask more questions. Most recently vice president and chief technology officer for Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) $40 billion personal systems group, McKinney retired in December 2011. During his nine-year tenure at HP, McKinney founded and directed the company’s innovation program office. In his new book, Beyond the Obvious: … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Phil McKinney | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Innovation

Experience shows that good ideas and early success aren’t enough. What does it take to stay on top?

Content: Article | Authors: Anil K. Gupta, Haiyan Wang | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subject: Innovation

Anyone can sit down and pound on a piano and create new sounds, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to listen to the results. Innovation is about the process of generating something new that has value.

Content: Quotation | Author: John Kao | Source: Business 2.0 | Subject: Innovation

The science—yes, science—of innovation.

Content: Article | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Innovation

A healthy knowledge ecology needs two types of contributors, characterized metaphorically as the serious scientist (analytical, focused, consistent) and the hungry artist (playful, transcending boundaries, unpredictable). How we bring together different cognitive styles largely determines the success of our strategic capabilities. The key is to insist that both types be equally grounded in the mission of the organization. With shared understanding of purpose we can … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John Seely Brown | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Innovation, Knowledge

Managers and entrepreneurs walk past lucrative opportunities all the time, and later kick themselves when someone else exploits the strategy they overlooked. Why does this happen? It’s often because of the natural human tendency known to psychologists as confirmation bias: People tend to notice data that confirms their existing attitudes and beliefs, and ignore or discredit information that challenges them.

Although it is difficult to overcome … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Donald Sull | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

INSEAD professor Soumitra Dutta’s Global Innovation Index helps show which nations are on the rise and which are not.

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Soumitra Dutta | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, Innovation, International

Incentives for innovation can only be adequately designed if managers know what innovation is when they see it. IESE’s B. Sebastian Reiche and his colleagues set out to clarify the concept of innovation in their paper “Innovation as a Knowledge-based Outcome,” which offers a new, broader definition designed to help managers improve innovativeness and overall firm performance.

Content: Article | Source: IESE Insight | Subject: Innovation

because Disruptions necessarily take root in unattractive markets, the quest for innovation can begin by looking not where the money is (the essence of good management) but, rather, where the money isn’t (the essence of good Disruption). Consequently, rather than encourage a wide range of solutions to a host of problems—typically the result of an emphasis on variation—innovation processes can begin by focusing people’s creative … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Innovation

Einstein said that if he had an hour to save the world, he’d spend fifty-nine minutes defining the problem and one minute finding the solution. The reality is that people spend sixty minutes running around finding solutions to problems that don’t matter or that were never defined properly.

Content: Quotation | Author: Stephen Shapiro | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Innovation, Problems / Solutions

As Keith Sawyer demonstrates in Group Genius, his influential book on creativity, the process of brainstorming, at least as it’s been practiced since its creation in the 1950s by advertising icon Alex Osborn (the “O” in the Madison Avenue firm of BBDO), has been a better marketing success than business tool. “Brainstorming is the most popular creativity technique of all time,” Sawyer argues. “There’s just … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Keith Sawyer | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Creativity

If someone comes up with a great idea—or even an idea—we should start at yes, and work through every reason why we can’t do it. We never start at no.

Content: Quotation | Author: Doug Ulman | Subject: Innovation

To build your capabilities and cast a wider net for ideas, you must figure out which of the three types of innovation strategies you already have — and design your R&D approach accordingly.

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