Innovation Management - Creating value with innovation management.

For years, management and business schools have vastly exaggerated the importance of tools and theories in delivering innovations to the markets effectively. As common sense indicates, the overwhelmingly important predictor of success for an innovation is not the use of tools, “innovation frameworks”, or handbook of rules, but the quality of leadership of the project and the talent and motivation of the staff carrying it out. In innovation management, we need to go back to basics.

From Science to Business on effective firm–university partnerships is a new book on the university-enterprise arm of innovation. Karin Wall talks with author Dr. Georges Haour, Professor at the executive education institute IMD.

As western countries jump further into the embrace of open innovation, countries in Asia are forging ahead with innovation investments through R&D. R&D spending is up 27% in India and 40% in China, year on year but in decline globally. Georges Haour runs a rule over the numbers and what they mean for the outlook of the enterprise.

As we look for models of corporate success, the European and North American management establishments need to become much less ethnocentric and more curious about Asia’s ascending actors. This article takes a closer look at the success of a Bangalore-based firm in global outsourced IT services. Infosys is a striking example of successful, rapid, profitable growth.

In today’s “knowledge-based” society, it is becoming increasingly imperative for companies to “mine” knowledge and technology generated by universities. Why? Because the outcome of such industry-university collaborations help companies create new activities and jobs.

Innovation is very much the word of the moment. We hear it used in science, the arts, in politics, in society, and often for good reason. For example, the creation and building of the European Union, is one of the most innovative – and indeed frustrating – processes in history. So what actually is innovation? Read more in this article by IMD professor Georges Haour, IMD, one of the world’s top business schools.