Innovation Management - The online learning center for Managing Innovation.

The business world is very rational. Operational excellence, financial mastery and technology savviness have become pre-requisite not to stand out as a winner but to be allowed to compete. While a hard-nosed business mind is essential to cope with the increased pressure of globalized competition, it is creativity, in the form of innovation and the ability to implement it rapidly that is fast becoming the most treasured competitive asset. Companies need to innovate in a fast yet relevant manner in order to remain competitive today and develop the game changers that will allow them to remain competitive in the future.

While the previous two methods – Netnography and Social Media Solution Scouting – outline the potential of passive methods in using the power of social media for innovation, the next two approaches enable companies to interact with consumers. Configuration Tools as well as Innovation Contests invite users outside the company’s four walls to become an active part of new product development. In part two of this article you will learn how Audi and Henkel empowered the crowd and turned them into co-producers.

Open innovation has found its way into companies’ innovation processes and is a widely used approach to spur collaborative innovation with consumers. A multitude of methods and tools have come into being, creating confusion about how to make the most out of users’ knowledge and creativity. This article provides innovation managers with insights into four popular open innovation practices at four German blue chips and contrasts the various approaches.

Consumer products giant Unilever has begun to use consumers as a source for insights and ideas for two of its top brands, Closeup and Pond’s. Together with Carrotmob Unilever co-creates sustainability campaigns. Read further how Unilever leverages the power of co-creation.

Media firms such as the BBC, HBO, and Corbus, along with brand-drive organizations such as Visa and the Estee Lauder Companies, hire people to manage their digital assets. Digital assets include content such as television shows, movies, photographs, and advertisements. Viewers and consumers create their own content, too, in response to shows and brands. Co-creation introduces new challenges for digital asset managers, including deciding what content to manage. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores possibilities for digital asset managers to apply the practice of collaborative innovation to help them do their own work more effectively.

One of the most obvious benefits of crowdsourcing is its ability to stimulate creativity and accelerate innovation on a global scale. Leading companies such as Dell, Starbucks or Frito-Lay have pioneered this trend by building platforms (respectively IdeaStorm, MyStarbucksIdea and Doritos Crash The SuperBowl) that connect them to a crowd of passionate individuals. These success-stories paint a very positive picture of crowdsourcing, but the reality is that connecting with the crowd is not as easy as it seems. In this post, we will present the advantages and drawbacks of using crowdsourcing to source creative ideas, and explain how specialized intermediaries can help companies by providing crowds, platforms and experience.

The Digital Age disrupts the practices and beliefs that gird the archetypical relationship between advertising agency and client. The Procter & Gamble Companies discarded a relic of the client-agency relationship, the creative brief. They seek more authentic engagement that leads to more compelling campaigns. What possibilities do clients open when they move from exchanging information to engaging in co-creation? What role might the practice of collaborative innovation play in redefining roles between client and agency?

We prize our time. People who practice collaborative innovation know they cannot monopolize the waking hours of their sponsors and communities. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores the three C’s of critical question, community, and commitment. Practitioners raise the odds that everyone involved in collaborative innovation will view their time as well spent when they help sponsors address the three C’s in authentic ways.

Whenever customers are not getting what they need, business opportunities are opened. When properly implemented, mass customization has the potential to provide a long lasting competitive advantage through better, more adapted products and services that can be sold at premium prices. This final article in the Customization500 series sums up the conclusions and key learnings.

While compiling data for the Customization500 study over a period of 12 months, the researchers noticed that roughly 20% of the companies went out of business during this time. In part 7 of this series, we take a closer look at the reasons why both startups and established companies fail at implementing mass customization and in what areas managers can expect the strongest resistance.

The customer’s experience and a feeling of achievement during the co-design process is vital to the success of a custom product. In part 3 of the Mass Customization Series, Dominik Walcher & Frank Piller explain why managers should look beyond the sheer technology and back office integration of configuration toolkits and also focus on delivering a great configuration experience.

The mission of this project is to support the EU Commission and the EU in general to help small & medium businesses, innovative entrepreneurs and the public sector to understand, adopt and leverage Social Media with the intention to more successfully grow their respective businesses, create additional jobs and better integrate government and population.

When providing a customizable product how can a firm minimize the burden of choice and maximize the customer joy resulting from the co-creation process? In part five in this series on mass customization Professor Frank Piller explains how to turn choice complexity into customer experience and loyalty.

Offering customized products is a strain on a company’s resources. What are the different ways that you can minimize the deterioration in the firm’s operations and supply chain? In part four in this series on mass customization, Frank Piller and Fabrizio Salvador explain the robust process design – whereby the firm reuses or re-combines existing organizational and value chain resources to fulfill differentiated customers’ needs.

A company seeking to adopt mass customization must first understand what the idiosyncratic needs of its customers are. After this crucial step, the company may establish what it is going to offer and what it is not. In part three in this series on mass customization, Frank Piller and Fabrizio Salvador walk through some of the potential methods of solution space development.