Three Hurdles to Sustainable Innovation

Most people agree on the importance of sustainability in innovation, so why is it difficult to deliver? In this article, we’ll explore three hurdles to sustainable innovation: it’s often not considered by innovators themselves as they plan their projects; sustainability is not framed as an exciting and imaginative opportunity; and that sustainable innovation may not fit into a company’s ongoing processes.

How Business Intelligence Software can Help you Increase Operational Efficiency

Business Intelligence software is an essential tool for analyzing your company's strengths and weaknesses. From inventory management, to accounting, to customer intelligence and beyond, there are many ways you can use BI software to inform your decision-making, increase operational efficiency, and gain a competitive edge.

Driving Innovation in Middle-Market Companies

For those of you who read my articles on a regular basis, you will know that I tend to focus on driving innovative activities and cultures within large, corporate organizations. Today however, I would like to focus on the value of innovation to growing, mid-market companies. For the purposes of this article I will consider mid-market companies as anywhere from 300 – 3,000 employees. This is just an arbitrary number, but it provides context for our discussion.

Q&A: Value-driven BPM in Innovation

An interview with Mathias Kirchmer, one of the authors of Value – Driven Business Process Management: The Value-Switch for Lasting Competitive Advantage, published by McGraw Hill. Mr. Kirchmer is the managing director for Business Process Management at Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company.

Social Product Innovation Challenges: Business Processes

Recent data from the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) shows a sharp rebound in planned R&D spending. After the past few years of operating with reduced budgets and staff, companies are finally starting to make the R&D investments they need to ramp up the innovation and product development activities that will help them achieve their growth goals.

4 Key Success Factors That Can Enable a Higher Return on Innovation

In a slow or no-growth environment, we know successful innovation is absolutely essential for companies to establish and maintain a competitive advantage. While that may be yesterday’s news, achieving it is hard work. How can you achieve high value from your innovation initiatives? In this article Adi Alon discusses four key success factors that can help you get a higher return on innovation.

How Partners React to an Open Innovation Strategy

I have cited Psion Teklogix, provider of rugged mobile computers, several times on my blog for their promising approach to open innovation. Last month, the company took a big step forward with its strategic interpretation of open innovation – called Open Source Mobility (OSM) – when it brought its global partners together for a series of conferences at which they unveiled a new platform designed to give resellers and developer partners the opportunity to co-create with Psion.

Tony Ulwick on Innovation Management

InnovationManagement spoke to Tony Ulwick, founder and CEO of Strategyn, Inc., and publisher of numerous articles on innovation management in the Harvard Business Review and the Sloan Management Review. What are his views on innovation management, what does he like about his job and what should the newly appointed innovation manager who is having a hard time getting the much needed support and buy-in from the top management do?