Most business leaders don’t understand what makes innovation so different from everything else they do at work — and they haven’t adjusted their behavior to accommodate these differences. This article covers five truths about innovation that many leaders overlook, and what to do to improve their success in implementing it.
When companies start innovation programs, one of the biggest challenges is how to select the right leaders to spearhead them. The search for an innovation champion often begins internally for someone who is a confident leader comfortable working in an unstructured environment, capable of thinking creatively and a genuinely good listener.
Mural.ly is a new web-based application that lets you create your own virtual bulletin board, posting and arranging inspiring images, notes and more to spur your imagination. It also enables small teams to collaborate on murals, bringing a new dimension to team creativity. In this review, the author explains how Mural.ly works.
As individuals, there is little stopping us from picking up a hobby or creating a project just for ourselves. But when it comes to an entire organization, it’s a bit harder to work on something “for fun.” There are clients to serve, deadlines to make. One ad agency has come up with a clever process to capture ideas, identify the best ones and conduct creative experiments.
All firms have strategies and cultures. But sometimes the quickest and surest way to gain valuable insight into their fundamentals is by asking, “What’s the most important argument your organization is having right now?” As author Michael Schrage puts it, it’s not about polite disagreement about ideas, but spirited debate about discerning a clear path forward.
Businesses use varying techniques to guide problem-solving. In the realm of innovation, such problem-solving processes and tools are predominantly employed to generate novel but realistic ideas – brainstorming being one of them. Therefore, the future of effective brainstorming could be creating unusual-even senseless combinations as starting points that will later trigger more creative and valuable solutions.
When it comes to leading successful innovation projects, established companies tend to employ the knowledge and techniques they already know. But what about the unknown ones? In terms of innovation capabilities, enterprises fully aware of their blind spots are more likely to avoid biased outlooks getting ready to face unexpected roadblocks. Therefore it is always worth asking: what does your firm not know?
Ideas have long been recognised as the primary source of innovation. Yet most companies still fail to distinguish the different kinds of ideas and how they impact innovation management. By knowing that each idea “stream“ is critical and serves a different/ sometimes competing purpose, the efficiency of innovation programs is significantly prompted.
Firms around the globe strive for more effective innovation outcomes. Therefore, to boost their overall performance, firms must have a clear understanding of the underlying matters that hinder innovation capabilities. In an on-going discussion, Tim Kastelle has accurately linked four of the biggest issues for owners and managers driving innovation.
Crowdstorming, or soliciting ideas from crowds, is growing in popularity and importance. Shaun Abrahamson, who is co-author, along with Peter Ryder and Bastian Unterberg, of the new book “crowd storm: The Future of Innovation, Ideas and Problem Solving,” shares three common patterns of crowdstorming projects.
Over the last decade, organizations like GE, P&G, DARPA and LEGO have pioneered a particular type of work with crowds. They work with crowds to brainstorm, or “crowdstorm.” Crowdstorming patterns are evolving quickly from simple searches for ideas to more complex interactions where crowds take on multiple specialized tasks.
According to researchers at Penn State, crowdsourcing works best when the right type of crowd is matched up with particular types of crowdsourcing projects. But which crowd is right for your type of business? The paper offers a simple framework on how to match organizational needs with the “right” crowd.
Businesses of all sizes hold meetings and events for various groups of stakeholders. How can design thinking be applied to plan events that “wow” attendees? Inspired by IDEO founder and chairman David Kelley, this blog post author shares some intriguing possibilities for transforming meetings and events.
The most innovative companies know that even when they’re selling a product, they’re actually selling the function that it provides. How do you turn your product-based company into one that provides services? Here are three simple principles you can use to escape the commodity market and turn anything you do into a valuable service:
Can we create an environment where innovation is more likely to occur? Blogger Vanessa Miemis recently posed this question to her readers, and they replied with a resounding “yes!” Themes included creating cultures of play and emotional safety, challenging assumptions, giving permission to try new things and using storytelling to spark new thinking.
