The Japanese Approach to Innovation: Research for D&M
It is conventional wisdom that Western companies are better at inventing and developing new technologies than at producing and commercializing them, while Japanese companies are particularly skillful at commercializing technology. Convincing arguments have been made for a continuous exchange of knowledge between Design and Manufacturing as a way to improve the entire product development process – from conception to commercialization. This article, based on extensive … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Sigvald Harryson | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Best Practices, Innovation
The Innovator’s Advantage: A Customer Relationship Management Perspective
Innovation in customer relationship management can result in superior business performance, Accenture research finds. Through our client work, Accenture has identified three broad innovations in the customer relationship management arena.
Content: Article | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation
Product Juggernauts: How Companies Mobilize to Generate a Stream of Market Winners
Deschamps and Nayak, vice-presidents of the international consulting firm Arthur D. Little, Inc., argue that a company’s success depends on its ability to improve its products or services continuously while simultaneously focusing the entire organization on the process of product creation. Product juggernauts are companies that attain market leadership by creating a continuous stream of world-class products through concentrated efforts on product development procedures. The … [ Read more ]
Content: Book | Authors: Jean-Philippe Deschamps, P. Ranganath Nayak | Subject: Innovation
Innovation: The Key Process for Business Growth
This article outlines some of the thinking expressed at a recent gathering of Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) by Arthur D. Little. The discussion covered a wide range of issues, from whether “stale” companies should just be allowed to die and make way for new ones, to the role of governments in encouraging innovation. Participants looked at what motivates companies and individuals to continue looking for … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Chris Floyd, Frank Morris, Geoffrey Marlow, Jean-Philippe Deschamps | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Innovation, Management
Innovation: Survival of the Fittest
The best way for large organizations to work through the dilemmas posed by innovation is to borrow from the most powerful innovative force in the world: biological evolution.
Content: Article | Author: Charles Leadbeater | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subject: Innovation
Hidden Asset
Thomas Davenport has helped midwife some of the biggest trends to have shaped business over the past 25 years–among them, reengineering and knowledge management. Now he’s asking: Where do ideas come from? And how do they get traction? Here’s his eight-point plan for winning with ideas.
Content: Article | Author: Bill Breen | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Innovation, People
Linda Huett
We have the challenge of making things standardized without letting standardization itself become the new straitjacket. First, I believe that it may kill off common sense-for which I have a high regard-because people honestly believe that the system is what you want them to do, rather than what is sensible. And second, I think it’s the mavericks and maverick thinkers in all of our organizations … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Innovation, Management
2003 Handbook of Business Strategy
A three-part blueprint for building processes for innovation into your organization.
Editor’s Note: for the same basic information in a different format, read “It takes systems, not serendipity: A blueprint for building a disruptive-innovation engine” at:
Content: Article | Authors: Alistair Corbett, Darrell K. Rigby | Sources: Bain & Company, Journal of Business Strategy | Subjects: Innovation, Strategy
The Innovation Value Chain
Innovation Management: Traditional
Innovation Management: Contemporary
Toward Sustainable Innovation: A Progress Report
As part of our ongoing research, Arthur D. Little has explored many of the key barriers, enablers, and drivers for innovation management in a wide variety of companies and industries. The firm has also examined many of the key dimensions of the next-generation enterprise, from cross-functional teams and global networks to external sourcing and partnering.
The key findings can be clustered around six critical pathways … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Arun N. Maira, Ron Jonash, Tom Sommerlatte | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Innovation
Stimulating Consumer Demand Through Meaningful Innovation
In this challenging economic climate, many firms are focusing on cost-cutting and on gaining short-term efficiencies. Our study of more than 3,500 consumers suggests, however, that innovation geared toward actual consumer preferences and incomes may be the best tool to achieving valuable long-term results.
Content: Article | Authors: Brian A. Johnson, Paul F. Nunes | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Innovation, Marketing / Sales
Good Ideas Are Not Enough: Adding Execution Muscle to Innovation Engines
An Accenture survey of Chief Executive magazine readers determined that the majority of CEOs feel innovation-in everything from products and services to business models-is one of the five most important factors required for competitive advantage. The research suggests that companies can improve their efforts by focusing on two fronts that are critical for innovation to flourish. They can build the context within their organizations by … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Ajit Kambil | Source: Accenture | Subject: Innovation
The Industrialized Revolution
Clayton Christensen’s idea of “disruptive innovation” made him the unintended mascot of the dotcom boom. So what’s he thinking now?
Content: Article | Author: Polly LaBarre | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Innovation, People
Michael Mainelli
One important characteristic of the next big thing is that it must have the power to surprise at the time it starts to become big, but surprise only a little bit.It’s not whether you can see it coming; it’s whether your neighbour doesn’t, but only by a little bit. Your neighbour must also share the perception that the next big thing has the power to … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Innovation, Trends / Analysis
The Practice of Innovation
Peter M. Senge offers an excellent look at Peter Drucker’s discipline of innovation (focus on mission, define significant results, and do rigorous assessment), providing along the way some of the best comments about mission and vision that I have ever read.
Content: Article | Author: Peter Senge | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior
Gary Hamel
Alan Kay’s famous aphorism is that perspective is worth 80 IQ points. An innovative insight is not the product of an individual’s brilliance. It’s not as if innovators’ heads are wired in different ways. Innovation typically comes from looking at the world through a slightly different lens.
Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Innovation
Innovation Metrics: A Framework to Accelerate Growth (.pdf)
In the past, competitive advantage rested on factors such as quality, productivity, access to low-cost resources, and customer service. Today, these factors have become threshold competencies-keenly important, but unlikely by themselves to provide sustainable competitive advantage. Yet many organizations still gauge overall performance by measuring these threshold factors.
Organizations that continue to rely on such traditional measures are locked into the old-and dangerous-paradigm that past success … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Darren Smith, John Collins | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Innovation