Mad Scientists and Creativity Labs

Managing solitary and collaborative innovation: All innovation is based on creative ideas which are generated and developed by passionate people working alone and with others. Both solitary and collaborative work are important to the effective development of innovation in organizations. The key for leaders is to effectively promote both.

Collaborate with Night and Nature to Come up with New Ideas

It is not widely known that most people, before the advent of the Industrial Revolution around 1800, tended to go to sleep shortly after nightfall but then get up around midnight for several hours before going back to sleep until dawn. Modern lab experiments have been able to reproduce this ancient, two-sleep pattern. Furthermore, there is separate anecdotal evidence that a number of people currently practice divided sleep as a natural habit, without the prompting of an experiment. Some of these people, in turn, use their nighttime wakefulness period for creative thought, writing and problem solving. The divided sleep phenomenon fits in very well with the dualistic and holistic principles of East Asian philosophy. One should ideally integrate work, thought and sleep with the natural light cycle in order to maximize the potential for individual creativity over the course of a full day and night.

Elements of a Successful Innovation Roadmap

Countless articles argue: To remain competitive, companies need to consistently build their innovation portfolio. Value-oriented improvement and new developments must permeate the business. This article discusses a structured approach, known as a Rapid Innovation Cycle, which brings a repeatable process to innovation, empowering individuals to contribute more and organizations to look beyond themselves—all leading to a higher success rate.

Mastering the Innovation Process

The innovation system described in The Innovation Master Plan provides a comprehensive approach to a difficult, challenging, and significant problem for organizations, the problem of how to manage innovation in the face of excruciating change.

Your Consumer and the Innovation Equation – Why They May Not Be Involved Enough

Identifying (let alone creating) a new innovation that will dramatically grow your business is difficult. Line extensions and product / package refreshes will keep the business moving forward and engaged with consumers. But what about the breakthrough innovation that executives are expecting? Transformational innovation requires significant investment, risk taking, and preparation which can be a challenge to coordinate.

Why Product Lifecycle Management Should Be On Every Executive’s Agenda!

Product lifecycle management (PLM) initiatives often miss their true potential and make projects unnecessarily costly. Not understanding how to optimize these investments can have long-term effects on both the top and bottom line, while companies that realize how to use PLM as a competitive weapon can capture significant market advantages. In this article we give you insights into how to take an approach that addresses the true potential of a PLM investment.

Silence the Voice of the Customer

Innovation is successful when it targets customers’ needs, but how sure can we be that this is something we can predict effectively? In this article Tony Ulwick argues that the traditional voice of the customer methodology is the wrong tool to determine customer needs. Tony presents an alternative methodology that makes it possible to determine all the needs of a given customer group.

A Strategically-Focused Innovation Process

Many people assume that creating new ideas is the beginning of the innovation process, but actually that’s not true, according to Langdon Morris. He explains that ideation occurs in the middle of a disciplined, strategically-focused innovation process. In this article, he outlines an 8-step innovation process that promises better results than the traditional 'spray and pray' approach to developing and managing ideas.

Creativity: Start from Scratch Conceptually

Business, governments and individuals can easily become bogged down by procedures and processes that harm efficiency and kill innovation. The obvious solution is to start from scratch. Here's how to do it, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner.

How to Avoid the Innovation Death Spiral

Consider this all too familiar scenario: Company X’s new products developed and launched with great expectations, yield disappointing results. Yet, these products continue to languish in the market, draining management attention, advertising budgets, manufacturing capacity, warehouse space and back office systems. Wouter Koetzier explores how to avoid the innovation death spiral.

Measuring for Innovation – A Guide for Innovative Teams

As innovation is a necessity for any organization today, the ability to assess and measure the progress and impact of your innovation efforts might be a true source of competitive advantage. This in-depth article offers fresh experiences, best practice and insights from how a number of multinational companies within the MedTech, telecom and manufacturing industries are working with establishing and implementing innovation measurement programs.

How to Successfully Implement Collaborative Idea Management

Are you effectively using the creative potential of your employees, customers and partners to address your innovation challenges? Collaborative idea management is a method to learn from the “wisdom of the crowd” in order to drive innovation. This in-depth article gives you an introduction including best practice from how Ericsson, the global telecom company worked with introducing and designing a successful collaborative idea management system.

Innovation for Financial Services

The concept of “financial innovation” can be defined as making and promoting new financial products and services, developing new processes to facilitate financial activities, to interact with customers and to design new structures for financial institutions. This article takes a look at the needs for innovation in the financial sector and some basic requirements.

Building Your Innovation Toolbox for Successful Co-Creation

Innovation management has become one of the most critical factors contributing to sustained business growth. Co-creation is an extremely powerful driver of innovation provided that you manage the process and harness social technology. In this article Catherine Constantinides takes a closer look at the different tools you need to consider to be successful.