Innovation Management - The online learning center for Managing Innovation.

This series of articles has explored the definition and scope of innovation governance as well as the different organizational models that companies typically choose to allocate responsibility for innovation. This last article will discuss questions linked to the perceived general effectiveness or inadequacy of innovation governance endeavors, and it will characterize the managers’ level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the various organizational models that their companies have adopted.

The world we live in is changing at a dizzying rate and sectors including energy, technology, entertainment, communications, finance, sports, manufacturing and engineering are all experiencing shifts on a seismic scale. Many of the innovative advances of the past ten years, from smart phones to digital cameras have become commoditised and creativity has become the currency of success. In this article author Matthew Griffin shows how large and small organisations alike can build lean, agile, high performance innovations teams and bridge any shift successfully.

Research from Jean-Philippe Deschamps, Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at IMD, indicates that there are at least nine possible models of innovation governance, some of which are more widely used than others. This second article in a series of three on the topic of Innovation Governance will review the various governance approaches or “models” that companies have put in place.

Organizations big and small have begun to explore the practice of collaborative innovation as a way to increase engagement and to foment a culture of innovation. Let’s say you work for such an organization. What’s the quid pro quo when you find yourself part of the crowd from which wisdom is sought? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins wrestles with questions that you may want to ask the practice sponsors and yourself.

One of the challenges leaders face in times of uncertainty and rapid change is helping senior managers to engage in bigger-picture thinking. To enable this process, a growing number of companies are creating “decision rooms” – dedicated areas that help them visualize challenges and opportunities from a number of perspectives and make better decisions.

The skills that matter most when you move up in an organization are not actually taught in schools, says GE healthmagination CEO Sue Siegel. Here Siegel describes why the soft skills of working with and sharing credit with others, and being able to express empathy, are critical to personal and professional success.

It’s better for a CEO to describe success than to prescribe the exact methods employees must use to achieve it. This is done, says Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig, by establishing a company vision and sharing it often with employees. He advises to not think in terms of business models, but rather to reframe the questions to ensure your company is thinking big enough. Then, hire people willing to be part of a team that will be integral to this vision.

Matthew E. May, author of the new book The Laws of Subtraction, believes if we would take a more minimalist approach to our work, seeking ways to get maximum impact with minimum effort, there would be much less waste – and much more innovation.

Conflict is a dreaded word. Most people associate conflict with interpersonal clashes ranging from inelegant avoidance tactics in the breakroom to fierce and open hostility. Surely, it is obvious that conflict in teams is detrimental to creativity and innovation. But is it? In this post we will explore this matter further and see when conflict sometimes can enhance the creative thinking skills of teams.

The nature of problems in innovative work is that they are often ill defined, novel to the individual who engaged them, and complex in that often several solutions exist to the same problem. In this post we will see how expertise is an important factor in innovative problem solving, and how leaders and organizations can cultivate R&D team expertise.

Team diversity is conducive to innovation. When R&D project teams are composed of people with different skills, competencies and knowledge, the likelihood for new thinking and innovative solutions increase. However, too much diversity may lead to breakdown in communication and ensuing conflict. There is a sweet spot in how much diversity R&D teams should have.

I have decided to take a small innovation psychology detour because I urge you to tap into an amazing innovation experience that I just had. After watching the documentary “el Bulli, Cooking in Progress” I realize that I was invited into a full innovation circle and I crave to share some of the great insights that two hours of watching offered me.

What do attending a business lunch or going to Catholic Mass have to do with groupthink? Susanna Bill discusses the notion of groupthink and how experiencing something for the first time helps you snap out of it.

Innovation projects are said to fail 90% of the time. Why is this? Part of the answer lies in the special “innovation teams” who are mandated with finding breakthrough growth in large corporations. Setting these teams up for success is vital, yet corporations often fail when doing this. This article provides a collection of ten tips that serve as a talent management roadmap for growth companies in search of high-performance teams that deliver.

With Marlow’s time heavily invested in one potentially big client, his colleagues have been picking up the slack on the other running innovation projects for months. Will Marlow’s persistence and investment in the Accipiter project pay off for the firm?