Innovation Management - The online learning center for Managing Innovation.

Are you thinking about ways to transform your workplace into an environment more conducive to innovation? This article takes a closer look at six components of creative climates that have shown to be significant at facilitating creativity according to new research.

Many activities in organizations that are considered innovative risk being missed if we solely use the standard toolkit to measure innovation. In this article we will look at three types of scales that measure intangible aspects of innovation that are easily added to the toolkit of any organization.

One of the most common questions people ask me is how I measure innovation when conducting my research. The question echoes an underlying concern about how innovation can be captured and adequately measured. In this article I delineate the most frequently used innovation indicators, their strengths, and their drawbacks.

How do cultural values influence innovative thinking and behaviors? There has been some research but the field is still young. In this article I attempt to summarize the current thinking regarding two cultural values and their implications for personal innovativeness.

The maxim quoted in the title is famous for Swedish parents and essentially means that words can only take your teachings that far. But does this maxim extend to the work context? In this article, aimed at managers and leaders in organizations, we will examine the concept of creative role models and see how leaders can use themselves to leverage creativity in their teams.

In this post we will look at something that all leaders who are students of creativity should know: how to harness the self-fulfilling prophecy as a tool to facilitate creativity. The Pygmalion effect is a phenomenon which effectiveness in stimulating creativity is only surpassed by its simplicity.

Conflict is a dreaded word. Most people associate conflict with interpersonal clashes ranging from inelegant avoidance tactics in the breakroom to fierce and open hostility. Surely, it is obvious that conflict in teams is detrimental to creativity and innovation. But is it? In this post we will explore this matter further and see when conflict sometimes can enhance the creative thinking skills of teams.

The top management team of an organization is arguably the most important team for deciding and implementing innovation strategies. They typically decide which markets to be entered, which markets to be exited, and which new technologies to pursue. But decision making is fraught with biases – errors in judgment that affect the quality of decisions. Sometimes with devastating results. In this post we will see how basic human psychology affects the decision making of top management teams.

The nature of problems in innovative work is that they are often ill defined, novel to the individual who engaged them, and complex in that often several solutions exist to the same problem. In this post we will see how expertise is an important factor in innovative problem solving, and how leaders and organizations can cultivate R&D team expertise.

Team diversity is conducive to innovation. When R&D project teams are composed of people with different skills, competencies and knowledge, the likelihood for new thinking and innovative solutions increase. However, too much diversity may lead to breakdown in communication and ensuing conflict. There is a sweet spot in how much diversity R&D teams should have.

It is well known that intrinsic motivation–the kind that comes from working with a task because it’s interesting, involving and challenging–has the strongest relationship with individual creativity. Extrinsic motivation–especially based on monetary rewards–has a detrimental effect on creativity. But is this really true? In this article, we’ll explore how to reward creativity and realize that everything may not be as it seems.