Innovation Management - The online learning center for Managing Innovation.

Europe boasts a world-leading chemical and biotechnology sector which will make a substantial impact on future growth and job creation. The European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry (SusChem), a forum that unites industry and academia, announced plans to evolve into a Europe-wide network that captures the full benefit of Europe’s strengths in research and a well-connected network for innovation in the chemical and biotechnology value chain.

Global FMCG player Unilever has launched a new online platform which offers experts the opportunity to help the company find some of the technical solutions it needs to achieve its ambition of doubling the size of its business while reducing its environmental impact. Unilever has a long track-record of collaborating with partners to develop products, but it’s the first time that its research projects have been shared so publicly in an open forum.

Learning a foreign language is exceedingly difficult for many people, but digital technology is making modest translations of text and voice faster, easier, and more accessible. Machine translators (MT) have been around for years, but the level of availability and their quality continue to rise. They promise to cost-effectively unite the world even more than before with a variety of applications from tourism and social collaboration to business and politics.

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.

New materials and processes are proving effective against a growing range of bacteria and have wide ranging applications. Similar approaches may also change the way we clean our clothes and how often we paint our houses. They could also prove disruptive to existing sectors’ income streams.

Have you participated in a brainstorming session that felt like wasted time? For some reason no new and interesting ideas were formed? Perhaps you need to get rid of your old ideas first! Gis van Wulfen explains.

Western societies and the systems we depend on to make them function are becoming ever more complex. As a result, they are also becoming more vulnerable to catastrophic, systemic failure. As individuals, communities and societies we may, at the same time, be becoming less able to cope with such events as we lose basic skills, families are more scattered and communities less connected.

Author and Venture Partner Geoffrey Moore believes it is “a great privilege” to work in a high technology company as a product manager, because product managers have their hands on the tiller that can change the direction of a company’s fate. In this clip, Moore identifies ways product managers can actively advance innovation and performance within their teams.

The current economic climate has affected all industries including food and beverage companies and they must continue to innovate in order to survive and thrive in the short, medium and long term. This programme highlights the most effective strategies, tools and techniques to maximise innovation, competitiveness and profitibilty in new market conditions. Successfully communicating with [...]

An innovation based training program that helps companies develop the skills needed to commercialise their research. This intensive four day program will assist Australian companies gain the innovation training needed to overcome one of today’s biggest growth obstacles – how to develop, protect and commercialise technology. The four day program at a glance: Innovation pre-assessment of [...]

DSM has recently been in the news twice. One occassion due the launch of an open innovation contest that challenges designers and creative thinkers to develop high-quality sports equipment using the company’s own Arnitel® Eco material. The other occassion because the American ethanol producer POET and DSM announced a joint venture to demonstrate commercial cellulosic bio-ethanol production and license the technology by 2013. On top of this news, Deloitte and VNCI published a report on the state of the chemical industry in the Netherlands where DSM is headquartered.

New forms of learning by doing seem to be emerging. Technology could play a role in finding innovative ways to enable skills development and greater understanding of personal actions, reactions and decisions.

It is a difficult time for regulators trying to make sense of nanotechnologies, the engineering of super-small particles to utilize their size and unusual properties. While environmental, health, and safety (EHS) concerns abound, so too do the technological and economic benefits which extend particularly to the electronics, green tech, and health industries. As regulators seek to protect the populace, they also need to avoid undue public backlash which could damage these huge benefits because of poor communication and limited scientific research.

China’s ambition of become an innovation-oriented country by 2020 is an important part of the nation’s long-term strategic plan. Being the second largest science and technology thesis producer, and running the second largest economy next to the US, a lot of things are happening in China. Innovation Management spoke to Professor Richard Li-Hua, word-leading expert on innovation about his thoughts on China’s innovation.

Is innovation a numbers game? We’ve all heard the statistics around the number of ideas it takes to eventually lead to a single successful product. But if we look at why it takes 3000 to 6000 or more ideas to find a single winning concept, the answer becomes fairly obvious: not every idea is a good idea. Mark Atkins explores how we can create better ideas, not more ideas.