722 Posts Found

Innovation is driven primarily by tacit knowledge. It draws on highly subjective insights, intuitions and hunches that form an integral part of tacit knowledge. These factors are soft and qualitative and therefore defy traditional mechanistic management approaches. Therein lies the managerial challenge. It involves building the requisite social capital and putting in place appropriate integration mechanisms that enable people with ideas and experience to connect … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Innovation

The cult of innovation seems healthy on the face of it. In a free market, after all, innovation underpins competitive advantage, which in turn undergirds profitability. Being indistinguishable from everyone else means operating with a microthin profit margin, if not outright losses. So why not try to innovate everywhere – to let, as Chairman Mao famously put it, a thousand flowers bloom?

Here’s why not: For … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

Lacking production-oriented control systems, markets create more surprise and innovation than do corporations. They operate on the assumption of discontinuity and accommodate continuity. Corporations, on the other hand, assume continuity and attempt to accommodate discontinuity. The difference is profound.

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

In my view, innovation is just another word for “giving up.” It’s saying things are so bad that it’s easier to get into an entirely different business than to deal with our problems. And this whole “innovation culture” is just the latest in a long line of business fads.

Content: Quotation | Source: Zyman Group | Subject: Innovation

The source of wealth is knowledge. If we apply knowledge to tasks we already know how to do, we call it productivity. If we apply knowledge to tasks that are new and different, we call it innovation…the two beacons of productivity and innovation must be the guideposts of industrial management and leadership.

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Innovation, Productivity / Work Tips

There’s a simple, important principle at the core of the disruptive-innovation theory: Companies innovate faster than customers’ lives change. That’s why companies end up selling products that are too good and too expensive for many customers. This happens for a good reason: Managers are trained to seek higher profits by bringing better products to the most demanding customers. But in that pursuit of profits, companies … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Optimize Magazine | Subjects: Innovation, Marketing / Sales

A new study by Teresa Amabile (HBS) will change how you generate ideas and decide who’s really creative in your company.

Content: Article | Author: Bill Breen | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

As a MOOT CORP judge, Rob Adams sees too many business plans written with the ink of wishful thinking. A clipboard and some astute questions are always more useful.

Content: Article | Author: Rob Adams | Source: BusinessWeek | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation

In the decades ahead, successful companies will be those that can develop products with real customer value – and do so fast, consistently, and cost-effectively. Toward this end, most forward-thinking companies have taken initiatives to improve their product creation processes. Among their new tools and techniques have been simultaneous engineering, cross-functional program teams, milestone reviews, and product strategy boards. They have had four critical objectives: … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Bruce McK. Thompson, Michael S. Rosenberg | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Innovation, Management

In this second volume of The Drucker Foundation’s Wisdom to Action Series, twenty-seven remarkable thought leaders help today’s leaders meet the challenge of releasing the power of innovation. Leading for Innovation brings together Clayton M. Christensen, Jim Collins, Howard Gardner, Charles Handy, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, C. William Pollard, Margaret Wheatley, and other thought leaders to offer you practical guidance on leading your organization to a … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Frances Hesselbein, Iain Somerville, Marshall Goldsmith | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Here’s an innovation tool that’s often hidden in plain sight. If you’ve looking for new ideas, don’t. Look for problems instead. Go and talk to whoever runs the customer complaints department and ask for a list of the top 10 moans and groans. Alternatively ask some customers . Or maybe grab a product designer, a psychologist, and a social anthropologist — and watch people using … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Innovation

The value of know-how depends on a company’s ability to apply it to usefully differentiate its products, services, and processes from those of its competitors. Without differentiation, value perceived by stakeholders does not increase; instead, as performance improves, expectations rise and perceptions stay constant. This argument suggests that the internal development of know-how should focus on those areas in which the company generates the highest … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Innovation

Innovation’s encounter with the market results in a game of both high risk and high stakes. Often its outcome defies common sense: Superior new products flop, unlikely ideas become runaway hits, and-despite rapid technological advances and intense interconnectedness-change happens at a snail’s pace. What really happens during this encounter? How can you increase your own odds on this complex game board?

In The Slow Pace of … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Bhaskar Chakravorti | Subject: Innovation

The great corporate research departments at companies like Bell Labs, IBM and Xerox were once the motor of American industry. But that may be changing, according to this probing academic study of corporate technological innovation. Chesbrough, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, argues that the old “closed innovation” model-vertically integrated research-and-development departments that develop technology in-house for the sole use of their corporate … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Henry Chesbrough | Subject: Innovation

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Content: Quotation | Source: Zaadz | Subject: Innovation

History reveals the dirty little secret of innovation: Its potential remains dormant unless it is coupled with a business system that unleashes its disruptive energy – either by unsettling an existing industry or by creating a new one – and channels that energy into a value-capturing enterprise.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

Creating value is just the beginning. To make money from innovation, you must drive your industry’s evolution – even before the industry exists.

Content: Article | Authors: Raman Muralidharan, Rhonda Germany | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Strategy

At W.L. Gore, innovation is more than skin deep: The culture is as imaginative as the products.

Content: Case Study | Author: Alan Deutschman | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior | Company: W. L. Gore & Associates Inc.

There are four benchmarks for predicting the success of your product or service, according to this view from Strategy and Innovation. Here’s how a few well-known products tested out.

Content: Article | Author: Eric Mankin | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Innovation

Great firms can be undone by disruptors who analyze and exploit an incumbent’s strengths and motivations. From Clayton Christensen’s new book Seeing What’s Next.

Content: Article | Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Innovation, Strategy