A New Disruptive Paradigm

Let’s face it, running a business in today’s world is a formidable endeavor: change and disruption have become the new norm. In an effort to keep up, innovation is at the top of every executive’s priority list and new innovation methodologies, training and strategies are available every day. But is all the hype really helpful while Western businesses and policy-makers are working under an outdated paradigm? In his new book, Platform Disruption Wave, Haydn Shaughnessy says that modern enterprises need to explore a new way of doing business—one that embraces continuous improvement, self-learning, horizontal structures and diversified ecosystems, rather than individual achievement and the hero’s journey. If they fail to do so, the U.S. and Europe will start to see a major power shift to the East, and not in 20 years time—this process has already begun and the effects are at our doorstep. Read the full Blog about A New Disruptive Paradigm at Innovation Management.

30 Minutes to Get Unplugged from the Innovation Hype

At a time when organisations are plugging more effort into innovation, Gerard Harkin has written a book called 'Innovation Unplugged'. Why? As he puts it himself, Gerard is on a mission to make innovation more effective by ‘unplugging’ from the hype, confusion and ‘gobbledygook’ that are so prevalent today, and return to the basic principles of innovation, and its role in enabling business growth.

One of the first things that struck me about Innovation Unplugged is that it’s different from the standard 250-page business book. Innovation Unplugged is a ‘30 minute read’ and is refreshingly free from complex innovation models and stage gate processes.

Across the eight short chapters Harkin covers everything from how to match your corporate ambitions with your innovation goals, to practical advice on setting up major innovation programmes.

• Chapter 1 discusses the importance of profitable innovation and why responsibility for innovation should be shared across the management team.
• Chapter 2 highlights the vast range of innovation options available to help a business to grow. Harkin paints a clear picture why technology companies should not limit themselves to technological or product innovation. He also stresses the importance of articulating the big and small challenges facing a business, before commencing an innovation programme.

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From Bankruptcy to Industry Leading Success – The LEGO Story

LEGO has earned the right to celebrate. Not only are kids playing with more mini LEGO people than there are human beings on the planet (Delingpole J, 2009) but in 2015, they were nominated by Forbes as the most powerful brand in the world. For a company which was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2004, the toy maker has made an amazing turnaround. They restructured, hired a new CEO, and forged more licensing partnerships than ever before. Most importantly, they discovered the secret to some of the world’s most successful, low risk innovation strategies.

These strategies helped LEGO create a powerful brand envied by every other company in the world. However, successes like these are not, and need not be, restricted to global companies with billions in revenue. The point of low risk innovation tools is that one can use them to test ideas in any setting and with any budget. Whether you are a cash strapped startup or a Forbes 500 firm, sustainable innovation can be your ticket to success.

Out of LEGO’s lessons and that of hundreds of other companies, I have distilled the most successful techniques to innovate cheaply and effectively. They are all contained in the book Innovation Tools and, as an additional bonus, the readers of the Innovation Management community can get it for free this week. Among others, my book answers questions regarding how strategies used by companies like LEGO are able to turn companies around from looming bankruptcy to industry leading success.

Read the full blog about From Bankruptcy to Industry Leading Success – The LEGO Story at Innovation Management.

Avoid Innovation Paralysis – Why all Companies Can and Must Embrace Change

    Someone once told me this: “Innovation is like an apparition of the Virgin Mary: one person saw her, but everyone talks about it.” Although funny, the quote aptly captures an attitude towards innovation that exists in many companies today. Innovation – and the skills that enable it – are sometimes considered as mystical gifts, preserved for the chosen few. In other cases, innovation is feared, because it involves unregulated processes, risk taking and investments with unpredictable outcomes.

Innovation. The word is tossed around carelessly, and is repeatedly illustrated with the same few business cases. Some of the usual suspects include autonomous transport (Google, Tesla), wearable tech (Apple) and of course … the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb).

Innovation is a business discipline

A lot of business leaders know they want innovation, yet they struggle to define what it actually means to them. Simply put, innovation is about making changes that add business value, in terms of either revenue growth or increased operational efficiency. This value can be created in four ways:

1. introducing new products;
2. optimizing operational processes;

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The (Non)Sense of Employee-Focused Innovation Training

A lot has been written about Innovation Training in the recent past. At Culturevate, we clearly see the sense of such training, but there are some important conditions that needs to be met for these efforts to generate long-term impact for an organization. Not all companies understand these conditions, which often leads to mediocre results and missed opportunities. One extra difficulty is that a good Innovation Training should be driven by and aligned with several functional parts of a large corporate organization.

An innovation training effort should be an integral part of any corporate innovation program/strategy. A concrete training effort gives a clear message that innovation should be taken seriously and supports your employees who may not know how or where to begin.

However, just launching an innovation training effort independently, without context to a company’s strategy or culture, will create confusion and generate low output at best. We prefer a model that makes use of the momentum of a training effort to explain (and reinforce) the organization’s innovation program and strategy throughout the curriculum. This way, you achieve the additional advantage that a big picture strategy is much better understood by the community and that the training fits in the big picture strategy of the company.

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Innovation that Matters: Tomorrow’s Winning Cities

Innovation that Matters examines and ranks 25 cities’ readiness to capitalize on the inevitable shift to a digital economy. It carves out critical trends every U.S. city leader can learn from and offers recommendations local leaders can adopt to strengthen their region’s digital competitiveness.

We are at the dawn of an extraordinary technological revolution, and it is transforming every part of the U.S. economy. Beyond social media and e-commerce, advances are coming to every industry and leaving a wake that could be either disastrous or transformative to every city in the country. In the same way a handful of cities became major commerce centers in the industrial era, new cities will emerge as leaders in the digital economy. Yesterday’s expertise will not guarantee tomorrow’s economic wins. Without leaders who understand this and act to help their communities transition, cities will fall behind.

While the San Francisco Bay Area is the clear leader in total startup activity, its lack of a cohesive community and declining quality of life for residents helped move Boston to the top spot.

Of the 25 cities examined, five rose to the top:

1. Boston
2. San Francisco Bay Area
3. Denver
4. Raleigh-Durham
5. San Diego

Read the full Article about Innovation that Matters: Tomorrow’s Winning Cities visit Innovation Management.

The Global State of Customer Experience 2016

This in-depth research report written by CX Network looks at the key customer experience trends, challenges and investments for the next 12 –18 months and the digital transformation of organisations. Their annual survey gauged the views of global leaders – across all major industries – within customer experience, service, insight, digital and marketing, on the changes that will be defining the industry in 2016.

CX Network collected the data from the over 700 responses for this report, to provide insights into the trends, challenges, investment priorities that will be shaping customer experience and the digital transformation of organisations. They compared the responses from their practitioner community with that of solution providers and analysts, to see where they align and where there is a marked difference.

Key findings:

• Customer loyalty and retention, CRM, and the online customer experience are the top investment priorities for the next 12-18 months
• Demonstrating ROI, finding budget, and gaining board level buy-in are the top 3 challenges bringing these investments to fruition.

Read more about The Global State of Customer Experience 2016 at Innovation Management.

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Top Online Learning Management System Tools in 2016

The e-learning industry has tremendously evolved and is continuing to evolve year after year. It has become an industry grossing tens of billions of dollars. There are numerous online platforms which have utilized different learning management system tools to make education available to their remote students. The popularity of learning management systems is expected to continually grow, as various companies have realized the potential of these tools, which can be used to teach future employees about the business in a quick manner.

But, like in every industry that grosses billions of dollars, the competition is high. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular learning management system tools and what they offer to their users; so that you can find out which learning management system is right for you.

Read the full article about Top Online Learning Management System Tools in 2016 at Innovation Management.

Innovation Tautogram — A Simple and Powerful Innovation Tool

he human vocabulary with millions of words is adequate to explain all of our expectations and experiences, even those which are imagined. Why not harness the power of language to discover new products and services? Author Shanta R Yapa shares the Innovation Tautogram technique, which can be used as an individual or a group exercise.

Humans around the world use millions of words in thousands of languages to explain and communicate their attitudes, emotions, anxiety, aspirations, etc. Experiences, irrespective of whether they are actual or desired, are already in the vocabulary of different languages but not available to us as actual products, features and processes. We have words to describe any unidentified flying object if seen suddenly, a creature not seen hitherto on the earth, an out of the world feeling a product can offer, a need felt, etc. Use this powerful brainstorming technique to mine your vocabulary database in a random way to bridge the gap between what is real and what is imagined.

Tendency to think rationally

Most of us spend many years learning things pertaining to our own disciplines. Therefore, our minds are trained and framed to think logically or rationally within those domains. Coming out of the box makes us feel uncomfortable. We are afraid, or simply not bothered to challenge the concepts, principles or theories we learn at the beginning of our professions.

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Everyone Talks About Innovation … But What is it Really?

From manufacturing to accounting: in every sector, organizations sooner or later declare themselves ‘innovative players’. Sad but true: as a mantra for businesses far and wide, ‘innovation’ too often becomes a catchphrase devoid of meaning. So let’s break it down and get back to the nitty-gritty: what is innovation exactly, and why should you care about the word’s core meaning?

What comes to mind when you think of innovation? Ask this question to a handful of people and you’re bound to end up with answers that contain either the words ‘drone’, ‘self-driving car’ or ‘Airbnb’. Or you might just hear a random Steve Jobs quote. Although innovation surely is about these big and bold ideas as well, there is more to the word than meets the eye.

A working definition of innovation

The Latin word innovare – which means ‘to make changes’ or ‘to do something differently’ offers a partial answer to the question what innovation is. After all, doing new things is still at the heart of the matter. However, it does not cover the why. Organizations don’t make changes just because they’re fun or interesting. The key driver for all innovation is value creation and, ultimately, the long-term survival of your business.

A working definition of business innovation might look something like this:

Business innovation means making changes that add value, in terms of either revenue growth or increased operational efficiency. This value can be created by introducing new products, operational processes or business models. The ultimate goal is to safeguard the competitiveness and long-term survival of the organization.

Read the full Article about Everyone Talks About Innovation … But What is it Really? Visit Innovation Management.

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13 Practices of the World’s Most Innovative Organizations

    Successful organizations know the significance of innovation in business. Apple is a good example of how effective innovation management can improve your products and scale up your business. After reaching on the brink of collapse, it achieved new heights of success by implementing effective innovation management policy. The success of its innovative management strategies once again brought it in the league of leading organizations. If you are an entrepreneur who wants to learn from innovative management strategies of successful organizations, consider the following thirteen strategies.

In non-technical language, innovative management is any process that involves changes in planning, ideation, technical execution and production of resources in a way that can make a system more functional for people. In context of business, it focuses on two major objectives:

• Improving operational systems of an organization
• Enhancing products/services for end-users

In the former case, it takes into consideration the leadership, management and resources that make up the working machinery of an organization. In the latter case, it works on the systems and processes involved in creative and technical aspects of developing a product/service. An effective innovation strategy results in better performance of employees, increased productivity and higher customer satisfaction.

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A Strategy that Requires Innovation

    Every executive knows that their teams should be more nimble, should be operating at a higher speed, and should be innovating. But these are all discrete capabilities, not necessarily in service to any greater strategy, and in fact much of what passes for strategy doesn’t understand how to take advantage of these capabilities. In this article, the authors describe the Maneuver Strategy from the new book, Outmaneuver. This strategy relies on innovation to achieve its goals, rather than accommodating innovation when it must.

For at least a decade, pundits and experts have expounded on the need to innovate.  Corporations need innovation, we say, for a number of reasons.  The pace of change is clearly accelerating.  The average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has been cut in half over the last twenty years.  Customer expectations are changing rapidly.  New technologies emerge constantly.  These reasons drive the need for more innovation.  But what’s often missing is the rationale and focus.

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4 Ways Your Travel Brand Can Innovate with the Help of the Crowd

When you’re thinking about innovation in the field of travel and transportation, more horsepower, hydraulics, and fuel efficiency might come to mind. But with the pace of change increasing rapidly, it’s difficult to imagine how government organizations and private companies will be able to absorb some of the most exponential and impactful changes that are sure to come in the next decade.

Just think: if the city of New York makes over $500 Million from parking tickets, what happens in an era of driverless cars where it’s impossible to violate a parking restriction? How will the city and its citizens shift to accommodate this new trend? The good news is that NYPD and its citizens are working together to look ahead to develop new systems that help everyone live in an unpredictable new future. And I think this attitude of looking to the crowd for new ideas is one that is going to continue.

But it’s hard to know what you need to focus on first. At IdeaScale we’ve identified four areas in transportation that require innovation in order to stay competitive and maintain sustainability.

• Customer Service: This area seems obvious, but in many industries it is one that is commonly overlooked.

Read more about 4 Ways Your Travel Brand Can Innovate with the Help of the Crowd at Innovation Management.

Misconceptions About Culture

Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO at HubSpot, lists some of the most common excuses early-stage companies give when asked why conscious effort isn't put into developing culture. Entrepreneurs often point to office parties and perks, or the supposed importance of their mission as their startup's culture. They also claim culture grows organically, or that they just don't have time, Shah says. Read full article about Misconceptions about Culture visit Innovation Management. Also read our latest articles on Various topics based on Innovation along with our Online Learning Innovation Programs.

Making Work Fun to Improve Culture and Engagement

For HR and business managers, it can be challenging to create a productive workplace where employees are motivated to be engaged. It may be time to make work fun again with a variety of practices and tools that are implemented. To transform the environment of your workplace and create a positive environment. Here are a few simple changes that can benefit the business.

Schedule outings

Allow your employees to get a break from their cubicle by scheduling outings throughout the month, which can include hosting a movie night at a local theater or taking time to visit the zoo together on the weekend. This will allow them to avoid burnout and get to know one another in a new setting.

You can also schedule sports competitions that allow the staff to compete against one another over a game of baseball, basketball, and soccer. This can offer a greater sense of unity within the company and allow everyone to develop trust and transparency with one another.

Makeover the office

It’s easy for employees to have a lack of motivation when they’re surrounded by white walls and a lack of decor for several hours a day.

Send out a newsletter

Give your staff an interesting piece of reading material during the week by sending out a letter. This can provide fun facts about the company, highlight certain employees, and even provide fun activities to enjoy during the season.

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