Based on research in the market and in many countries, I tried to figure out the exact mechanism by which startup ideas are created. Aim is to facilitate and expedite this process for would-be entrepreneurs. Is it mainly a matter of brainstorming effort or are external factors at play?
Starting your own business can be an exciting but challenging endeavor. Even for those experienced in management, entrepreneurship can be daunting. With unexpected obstacles that constantly crop up, you need to protect your business from day one if you wish to succeed. Here are some essential tips for safeguarding your startup:
It isn’t exactly easy to succeed in innovation. The vast majority of innovation attempts seem to fail and a mere 6% of executives are satisfied in their innovation performance, despite innovation generally being considered as very important for the future of their organization.
IdeaScale has honored innovation leaders in their annual Innovation Management Awards for six years now. Award recipients have come from almost every industry with a variety of goals (from eradicating cancer to identifying new university technology best practices), but this year’s winners share a few key characteristics that all innovation leaders need to embody.
As the Co-founder at Viima, an idea management software company, I frequently get asked about the future of idea management. With the amount of innovation that we’re seeing across industries, it’s hardly surprising.
In an analysis of high performance innovators (called in this article the “Global Innovation 1000”), researchers made a surprising discovery: “spending more money does not open the doors to innovation.”
Nearly every company’s strategy these days is to grow through innovation, yet many fall short. We all know the standard reasons: innovation is hard, innovation is uncertain or innovation grinds against the gears of the operating organization. They are all more or less true, but they are also simplistic, not really guiding executives on how to actually get more innovation.
In our previous article we focused on some of the serious issues being faced by clients and vendors who are working with innovation / ideation platforms.
The ideation platform marketplace hasn’t really changed that much in the past 7 years or so. There was an early burst of innovative design and alignment with user needs, but at this point the sector seems to have stagnated in terms of how they add value. Call it reaching middle age, or perhaps they are having a 7-year itch?
The 97th Floor Mastermind Series recently interviewed IdeaScale about our company, our industry, our vision for the future and more, but we thought that one of their questions about what values we look out for when building a team are worth repeating here for those of you that are looking to build a culture of innovation at your company (whether it’s start-up sized like IdeaScale or not).
If you’re in charge of innovation, it means that you’re constantly being surprised. Not just because technology and trends are emerging that are impacting your business in new and unexpected ways, but almost every project that you’re working on continues to evolve and improve over time.
Everyone wants to think that their innovation program is going to change the world and that feeling persists, because successful innovation programs can have enormous real-world returns. Businesses can save millions of dollars, new business models can disrupt markets, but some of the most impactful innovation efforts are genuinely in the healthcare space. Not only does healthcare innovation overall save the system money (for every dollar spent on innovative medicines, total healthcare spending is reduced by $7.20) but it also has the power to truly save lives as evidenced by research that states “between 1980 and 2010, medical advancements helped add 5 years to U.S. life expectancy.”
Last month, leaders in public sector innovation gathered to discuss ways of crowdsourcing new solutions to longstanding problems at IdeaScale’s Open Nation DC. Speakers from a range of agencies as diverse as the FDA and the US Coast Guard presented best practices on creating actionable change in government.
IdeaScale’s second largest customer segment is in the field of education (our largest segment is our work in government innovation) and it’s been growing steadily over the past four years. One of the reasons that we think there’s a renewed focus on innovation in education, is because numerous emerging trends impact education at every level: from remote learning to the maker movement and the gig economy.
If you’re working with an innovation management platform, then you know the importance of building a community. The success of these programs is intrinsically linked to the spirit and engagement of your community: how much they participate, how they’re participating, why they’re participating.
