10 Best Board Practices on Innovation Governance – How Proactive is your Board?

All global business and technology trends point in the same direction: there is a need for more proactive and far-sighted management of innovation. Innovation for business reinforcement and growth – and for transformation in particular – are, of course, the prime responsibility of top management. Innovation governance – a holistic approach to steering, promoting and sustaining innovation – is thus becoming a new management imperative.

Creating the Optimal R&D Organization

Driven by the need to respond to global hyper-competition and the increasing clock speed of technological change, companies are relying heavily on their R&D functions to accelerate innovation while maintaining tight budgets. However, organizational structures for R&D in large international companies are often sub-optimal and act as a major barrier to performance improvement. In order to successfully optimize R&D’s contribution to business value, companies need to address the three key dimensions of structure, governance and process. From our extensive work with the R&D functions of leading global companies, we have identified eight imperatives to ensure a successful transformation across these dimensions.

Five Ways to Boost Innovation Governance for Growth in 2015

Innovation governance translates corporate strategy into robust, results-driven portfolios. Who among the executive ranks would oppose that? With innovation governance, the short and the long-term innovation opportunities are balanced, resources are strategically allocated (especially people), and the organization acquires an improved ability to achieve both stretch growth goals and market differentiation.

The Human Side of Innovation: Seven Lessons For Sustained Success

Enterprise innovation success seems illusive for large organizations. In the United States, executive leaders frustrated with the slow pace of innovation success are seeking elixirs to step up progress. This article reveals seven highly effective lessons for corporate leaders seeking to declare an innovation victory in the coming years. The answer lies on the “human” side of the equation.

Innovation Governance: Why Should Top Management Care?

In its research report “CEO Challenge 2014, ”[1] The Conference Board lists the ten most important challenges facing CEOs in 2014. Innovation ranks N°3 in this survey of 1,020 responses, on a par with operational excellence. Innovation was the N°1 issue in 2012, and in 2014 it is still the N°1 challenge in China. This article (in a series of seven) looks at the theme of innovation governance from a top management angle.

Balancing Innovation via Organizational Ambidexterity – Part 3

The optimal balancing of radical and incremental innovation is becoming a Key Success Factor in many industries. Organizational ambidexterity is the approach to achieve this. With a best-in-class ambidextrous set-up, firms can become innovation leader.

Implementing Open Innovation – Making It Stick

Open Innovation is becoming an essential part of an enterprise innovation strategy. Yet, so often, companies focus on getting a narrow set of tactical activities going without thinking through the strategic and organizational issues necessary to enable those activities to have the intended impact. This brief article covers a few of the implementation challenges faced by companies seeking to establish successful Open Innovation programs.

Leading Innovation in Multinational Subsidiaries – Part 3

The changing global economy creates special challenges for leaders of multinational subsidiaries. History shows that innovation is key to survival. This series of articles explores this challenge and offers subsidiary leaders a way to identify and implement innovative strategies to sustain local operations and create added value for their parent corporation. It also looks at how corporate managers can help drive more innovation from global subsidiaries.

Balancing Innovation via Organizational Ambidexterity – Part 2

In the first part of a 3-part article series innovation-3’s Frank Mattes and Integrative Innovation’s Ralph-Christian Ohr worked out why successful firms need to balance radical and incremental innovation. They introduced the concept of organizational ambidexterity as an appropriate way for simultaneously conducting exploration and exploitation, the two paradigms behind radical and incremental innovation.This second part shows some best practice examples of how the most innovative firms are setting up organizational ambidexterity.

The Perfect Innovation Team

In my new book ‘The Innovation Expedition’ I love to refer in discussions on innovation teams to The Mayo Clinic's Center for Innovation. The Mayo Clinic is a best-practice organization, which was researched in APQC's Innovation: Putting Ideas into Action 2009 study. It favors a specific combination of personalities when it builds innovation teams.

Leading Innovation in Multinational Subsidiaries – Part 2

The changing global economy creates special challenges for leaders of multinational subsidiaries. History shows that innovation is key to survival. This series of articles explores this challenge and offers subsidiary leaders a way to identify and implement innovative strategies to sustain local operations and create added value for their parent corporation. It also looks at how corporate managers can help drive more innovation from global subsidiaries.

Leading Innovation in Multinational Subsidiaries – Part 1

The changing global economy creates special challenges for leaders of multinational subsidiaries. History shows that innovation is key to survival. This series of articles explores this challenge and offers subsidiary leaders a way to identify and implement innovative strategies to sustain local operations and create added value for the corporation. It also looks at how corporate managers can help drive more innovation from global subsidiaries.

Balancing Innovation Via Organizational Ambidexterity – Part 1

Organizational ambidexterity is becoming a Key Factor for Success in many industries. With a proper ambidextrous set-up, firms can optimally balance radical and incremental innovation.This is part 1 of a 3-part article co-written by innovation-3’s Frank Mattes and Ralph-Christian Ohr from Integrative Innovation. In this article we are showing the need for organizational ambidexterity, introduce the concept, show how it can be implemented and provide two case studies from leading German firms

Want your Organization to Thrive? Create a Supportive Environment for Creativity

Employees have tremendous creative capacity. If properly harnessed with a supportive culture, it can help companies to thrive in today's turbulent business world.