Innovation Management - The online learning center for Managing Innovation.

The basics of Prospect Theory by Daniel Kahneman tell us that we hate to lose 3 times more than we love to win. This mindset, probably deeply engraved in our DNA, has implications on the way we develop and brand our products as we are more prone to reduce the drawbacks we have relative to our competitors rather than to improve our advantages. According to Bengt Järrehult this leads to commoditization.

Has your product lost competitive advantage? If your customers cannot differentiate your product from those of your competitors, most likely you have fallen into the “commodity trap”. The following article explores how this harmful phenomenon can be better understood and ultimately avoided by studying the dynamics within flocks of birds.

When faced with the question “Are you creative?” I have found that only the half of the audiences I speak to consider themselves creative. This is true even when you talk to people that are supposed to be creative in developing products or market plans. As innovation is partly depending on guts to dare, something that comes from self-confidence, I think it is time that we stretch our old opinion on what creativity is all about – here are 7 different ways to be creative. I am sure you can find yourself described at least in a couple of them.

An important topic in Innovation Management is that of motivation. What kind of incentives can an organization provide to stimulate innovation? Bengt Järrehult argues that there is no such thing as extrinsic motivation and we should really concern ourselves with working in Flow.

Inspired by Susanna Bill’s post regarding the importance of vulnerability for innovation, I was reminded of an eye-opening story from the book Sway by the Brafman brothers. This story may explain why we retrospectively look at what we have done and ask ourselves “how could I be trapped like that?” It also applies to companies that have an ambidextrous innovation strategy that incorporates both the “play-to-win” approach and the far more common “play-not-to-lose” approach.

Why is your boss neglecting the fantastic idea you came up with even though it looks promising (in your eyes at least)? And why is your boss so intent on avoiding negative situations? This is an irritating behavior many of us have experienced and one that Bengt Järrehult examines more closely in today’s blog.

You want to be perceived as a good innovation project member, to be appreciated for your achievements – and just to safeguard that notion some of what you do leads to a success in time – you do multiple projects in parallel. But is this really efficient and effective? Check out Bengt Järrehult’s somewhat mathematical look at multi-tasking, where the exercise of putting numbers in leads to a result that may surprise you.

There are different approaches to facilitating cultural change within an organization in order to promote innovation. Bengt Järrehult argues that the viral change, whereby successful changes are achieved through experimentation and then spread by different groups copying or adopting the change leads to faster and more long-lasting culture change.

In trying to understand why we act in a predictably irrational ways, for example choosing short-term instead of long-term rewards, Bengt Järrehult uses the metaphor of the mahout and elephant to depict the different parts of the human brain and it’s processes. In an innovation effort, how can you direct the mahout and motivate the elephant?

Do you often find yourself procrastinating on important, yet non-urgent matters in order to take care of the stuff that needs immediate attention? This all-too-common circumstance also takes place on a larger scale. Bengt Järrehult walks us though how to deal with the incremental and breakthrough projects at the same time

If you scrutinize the theories on innovation they seem to conclude for example, that ambidextrous organizations are best at handling incremental innovations rather than radical, and if we would focus more on learning, experimental organizations we would be better off… So why don’t we act accordingly? Bengt Järrehult takes a closer look at the reasons why we act against better knowing regarding innovation.

Companies put in lots of Market Research efforts to nail down the needs, wants, wishes and whims of the elusive consumers. But, how reliable are the results? Are there logical – or illogical – reasons why consumers sometimes say one thing and still do the other? In this blog, Bengt Järrehult uses the findings of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Laureate in Economy 2002 to understand more of this in the area of innovation.

Sometimes we find ourselves unwillingly obeying unwritten laws and rules that hinder us from growing our business the way we want to. In this blog, Bengt Järrehult looks at studies done on ant societies and draws different parallels to human organizations. Is stagnation a natural phenomenon after a period of growth?

One of the major findings in mankind’s history is realizing the value of working together. Without it we would have starved to death about 100 000 years ago because a single man going hunting is very inefficient (I know – I am a hunter). We have also seen a very strong correlation between the amount of innovations happening and the number of people who are interconnected in the society during the course of the years.

This in-depth article provides you with fresh experiences and insights from how SCA, a consumer goods multinational company, has developed and worked with a new model for managing both incremental and radical innovation projects.