Innovation Management - The online learning center for Managing Innovation.

To be upfront about where we stand, yes – we are great supporters of tapping into the wisdom of the crowd for many pursuits – for citizen engagement, open innovation, or crowdfunding. That said, we realize that it’s important to be aware of the fact that there are risks to consider. This article is a response to the concerns raised by people we meet along an organization’s path of considering crowdsourcing to fulfill a particular need for their organization or their constituents.

Risk management can provide visibility, analytical insights and governance that can help companies better manage and optimize their innovation portfolio. In this article Adi Alon and Ken Hooper look at learnings from the VC industry and risk management practices to provide three principles that can drive higher return from an innovation investment.

From incremental to breakthrough innovation projects, managers need to handle different activities and with them dissimilar venues of risks. In this article the internal, external and hidden risks of incremental, differential, radical, and breakthrough innovation projects are identified and ranked accordingly. In addition, for every category a general innovation eco-system has been analyzed.

Inspired by Susanna Bill’s post regarding the importance of vulnerability for innovation, I was reminded of an eye-opening story from the book Sway by the Brafman brothers. This story may explain why we retrospectively look at what we have done and ask ourselves “how could I be trapped like that?” It also applies to companies that have an ambidextrous innovation strategy that incorporates both the “play-to-win” approach and the far more common “play-not-to-lose” approach.

Fail fast. Fail cheap. Fail early. Go out to fail. We have all heard these words numerous times in connection to innovation and how to create radical innovation, the ultimate dream for all of us involved in the field. In fact the f-word is used so frequently in connection to innovation that it is about to become yet another meaningless slogan. Why is failure so hard? In this blog post Susanna Bill takes failure out of slogans and into a human orientated perspective.

Why is your boss neglecting the fantastic idea you came up with even though it looks promising (in your eyes at least)? And why is your boss so intent on avoiding negative situations? This is an irritating behavior many of us have experienced and one that Bengt Järrehult examines more closely in today’s blog.

The fact that innovation is a risky business is well-known. But what are those risks? After the identification and the assessment of the internal and hidden risks of innovation projects Altin Kadareja now delves deeper into an exploration of the external risks of innovation projects, those risks that the company can/does not fully control, mostly related to factors external to the company, meaning coming mainly from its environment.

As the economy is dynamically changing and innovation becomes crucially important, a look into the management practices and risks that such projects face should always be welcome. In part two of this series of articles focused on identifying risks on innovation projects, the attention will be directed towards the identification of the internal and hidden risks of innovation projects.

Innovation nowadays has many similarities with voyages of discovery in the past. In this blog Gijs van Wulfen walks us through practical learnings for innovation inspired by successful explorers.

Every innovation project starts from an idea or a problem and mostly, all innovation teams do jump immediately to the feasibility study and scenario analysis dedicating little or no time to the assessment of the risks of innovation projects. This series of article represents an extended dashboard of internal, external and hidden risks of such projects in aiding innovation teams throughout their risk management activities. The first article looks deeper into what drives a successful innovation eco-system.

“We don’t have an experimental system, we have a human being,” says UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, referring to the unique circumstance that life science innovators must consider when measuring risks against rewards. She also explains why leaders must have an operating style that accommodates employees whose job functions require different schedules and tolerances for risk.

Bestselling author Guy Kawasaki encourages entrepreneurs to tell a great story. In this clip, he uses Silicon Valley examples to explain the importance of the skill. He also urges entrepreneurs and startups to “plant many seeds” when it comes to getting the word out about new products. According to Kawasaki, this advice may eschew traditional marketing philosophy, but with the media world now inverted, entrepreneurs never know which outlets will make the difference in building critical mass for a product.

From our talks with innovation management practitioners and business executives it seems that not many organizations have a well-defined and integrated innovation strategy. To find out more about how to go about creating and executing such a strategy, we spoke to Wouter Koetzier and Christopher Schorling at Acceture who encourage a very pragmatic and execution-oriented approach.

Existing methods for the management of innovation projects have a low probability of success in the development of radical or disruptive innovations. A new spiral approach has been developed that provides the balance of flexibility and control needed for a repeatable and successful approach to disruptive innovation.

Serial entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman encourages individuals to become the entrepreneurs of their own lives. Hoffman shares the importance of taking intelligent risks, building thoughtful networks and continually adapting your skills to navigate a fulfilling career path.