722 Posts Found

Companies can improve their innovation performance by getting their formal and informal organizations in sync.

Content: Article | Authors: Jon R. Katzenbach, Zia Khan | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Eric von Hippel | Subject: Innovation

We as executives have to resist our natural tendency to avoid or minimize risks. This instinct leads executives to choose to copy successes rather than try to create something brand-new… If you want to be original, you have to accept the uncertainty, even when it’s uncomfortable, and have the capability to recover when your organization takes a big risk and fails.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ed Catmull | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

As a recently released federal task force report emphasized, Canadian companies need to become more competitive. But “competitive” these days is practically synonymous with “innovative.” The issue is a “But” because there is a dearth of knowledge, especially in Canada, on how companies around the world innovate. These authors researched companies around the world, and their findings, described in this article, will help Canadian companies … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Marcel Côté, Roger Miller | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Innovation

Most organizations have discrete formal groups and processes that use different lenses for evaluating ideas: Marketing represents the customers, finance evaluates the economics, and engineering determines feasibility for launch. They answer the questions in series, and then “throw the problem over the wall” to the next team. They may not even be aware of one another’s findings.

The principles of focused accountability or clear decision rights … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jon R. Katzenbach, Zia Khan | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Best Practices, Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

In stealth-like fashion, outsourcing can erode a manufacturer’s competitive advantage. Believing that profits will rise if it starts to outsource, a company can lose sight of the fact that it is gradually – and unwittingly – losing the capabilities that have differentiated it. But turning inward, specifically to employees, and enabling them to re-capture the company’s reputation for process innovation will help re-build a sound … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Chris Piper | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Innovation

It could be construed as “going back to the future,” but working in a more concrete world – not in the virtual world – can change the way we look at and think about many things. The value of such a profound change resides in its proven ability to spur innovation. These authors describe how individuals and organizations can effect such a change.

Content: Article | Authors: John E. Sawyer, Terri L. Griffith | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Innovation

Ideas invite others to respond with imaginative gusto. Big imaginative ideas succeed by building on two principles. They are democratic (shared by everybody) and demotic (like art, they convince by being suggestive, not merely by making rational sense). By being evocative rather than explicit, they invite participation.

Content: Quotation | Author: Harriet Rubin | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation

Facts do not have control of you; your imagination does, and it need have no limits.

Content: Quotation | Author: Harriet Rubin | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation

The quest for competitive advantage drives companies to increase both efficiency and responsiveness to customers, but there is a trade-off between the two. Improving responsiveness to customers entails higher inventory, distributed warehousing, and multiple transportation channels that raise costs and compromise efficiency. Companies find this balance harder to achieve in emerging markets because of constraints in the external environment like infrastructural bottlenecks and talent shortages. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Atanu Chaudhuri, Craig Giffi, Kumar Kandaswami, Shalabh Kumar Singh | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Innovation, Management

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

Content: Quotation | Author: Frank Capra | Subject: Creativity

To put ideas into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Content: Quotation | Author: Goethe | Subjects: Action, Innovation

The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.

Content: Quotation | Author: Linus Pauling | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation

Josh Kaufman has posted an article, Are You an Implementor or an Enabler? where he posits that businesses revolve around two complementary skill sets. Here I offer an alternative, hopefully more complete model of what roles are necessary for business success.

Content: Member-Contributed Content | Author: Jeff Blum | Source: MBA Depot | Subjects: General, Innovation

As for the genius of innovation, clearly the one percent spark of inspiration is nurtured by a positive culture. But the 99 percent perspiration ingredient comes from employees who love what they do, as well as where they do it, and who invest in that Holy Grail of productivity called “discretionary … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Samso Aparici, Jon Warshawsky, Stephanie Quappe | Source: Deloitte Review | Subject: Innovation

A recent McKinsey Global Survey shows that companies are satisfied, overall, with their use of metrics to assess innovation portfolios—though many findings suggest that they shouldn’t be. The companies that get the highest returns from innovation do use metrics well; these organizations tend to assess innovation more comprehensively than the others.

Content: Article | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Innovation

Established companies are clamoring for breakthrough innovation, but are often hamstrung by the highly reliable, repeatable processes of their management systems. Based on years of research, Grabbing Lightning shows how twelve companies have tried to develop a capability for sustainable breakthrough innovation and outlines best practices for your organization.

The authors show how the management system for innovation is different from the traditional one in that … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Gina C. O’Connor | Subject: Innovation

Models and concepts and frameworks are—to use another phrase—mental boxes within which we comprehend the real world. And ever since the 1960s, we have been taught to be creative by “thinking outside the box.”

The trouble is this: once you have mentally stepped outside the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alan Iny, Luc de Brabandere | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation, Thought

The creation of knowledge, products, and services by online communities of companies and consumers is still in its earliest stages. Who knows where it will lead?

Content: Article | Authors: Brad Johnson, Jacques R. Bughin, Michael Chui | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Innovation

Metrics that convey the effectiveness of an innovative new product can affect that product’s success. For example, the concept of horsepower was invented to measure the power of the steam engine. More recently, metrics have been invented for “clock speed” of microprocessors and “gallons per 100 miles” for fuel efficiency. Using innovative metrics can make it easier for marketers to appeal to potential customers by … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michael Schrage | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation