What is a lean startup? How can you best visualize a business model? How can innovation performance metrics be improved? Who were voted the best innovation bloggers in 2010? And what are some other collections of good innovation links that are published regularly? Click here to get some suggestions on great innovation links.

What can the most recent academic research tell us about managing innovation? That is the main topic of today’s column on What’s up in innovation management. Learn more about the types of social networks different phases of innovation require, on how to design business experiments and of the relation between differentiation strategies and vertical integration.

One would think that innovation intellectuals out there would follow their own advice and take a break over summer, but July offers just as many interesting innovation blog posts as ever. Some interesting themes of the month are hints for finding the right problem to solve, more ideas on the relation between business model innovation and strategy and what drives entrepreneurs to perform.

Read the latest column to get answers to the following questions: How can you use social networks for your innovation activities? Why is a best-selling author giving about his management audiobook for free? Why don’t executives understand innovation? Why is the 24h rule so important in the early stages of innovation? And by the way – what does ‘innovation’ really mean?

Disruptive and business model innovation on the one hand and green innovation on the other – those are the major themes among the innovation blogs this time around. In a visionary post at HBR, Umair Haque argues why the future of profitable business likely is to do more good and less evil! And don’t miss the series of blog posts on increasing your creativity!

This time around, there have been some unusually clear trends among the major innovation blogs. These include The Apple iPad, Business models for online content, Location based business models, Creativity management, The role of experimentation in innovation management and Customer driven innovation. This week’s favorite describes cutting edge research about idea generation in groups in an easily accessible way.

Do accountants really kill innovation? Yes, sometimes, according to an Australian study recently presented in a blog post while the authors are awaiting the journal publication. Another blog post lists 56 reasons for why innovation initiatives often fail. A third discusses whether peace and harmony is good or not for innovation activities. What do you think? Read on to learn about actionable and inspirational posts from the world of innovation blogs.

This month’s blog harvest offers ideas for how to make the case for further diversification to your boss. Another blog explains how to develop your business modelling skills by using a financial concepts. Inspired by the concurrent TED conference, many innovation blogs have also proposed action towards making ‘a better world’. Why not partake in Osterwalder’s business model challenge that can improve the lives of billions?

What are good metrics to measure the progress of innovative projects? How should you decide if an innovation is too innovative for your firm? Who was the most disruptive innovator of the last decade? Is there an easy method for improved customer insight? Answers to these are linked to in this week’s column. Here are the most actionable or inspirational blog posts from the open web!

Happy new 2010! Finally, markets seem to be recovering from what Time Magazine refers to as “the Decade from hell” and demand is predicted to increase. Some actually claim that the estimates for global growth in the near future are fantastic. And what were the 12 most important management trends in the last decade? Here are the most actionable or inspirational blog posts and articles from the open web.

What did a first class researcher write about organizational values for agility? Are there eight critical capabilities necessary for innovation? What is the difference between strategic and business model innovation? Welcome to have a look at the review of December’s online discussions.

A dozen or so million new blog posts have passed since my last post. I checked out 500 of those that were related to strategy and economics. Below is my collection of the 14 most useful posts from an innovation management perspective.

Innovation management as a topic is wider than any single website can hope to cover completely. Marcus Linder, an innovation researcher at Chalmers, offers a regular column at innovationmanagement.se covering the most inspiring and actionable contents from other online sources, such as blogs and magazines. The first favorite link? Why executives should spend more time and less cash on innovative projects.