Monthly Archives: September 2009
What should innovation leaders do make things happen in times like this to? Let me present you with some ideas and hopefully you can add more advice on this in the following discussion. Here are eight quick tips:1. Align With ExecutivesYou need to have a better alignment between the innovation strategy and the overall corporate strategy. One way to do this is to make an extra effort of understanding what matters most for the executives right now and deliver on this.2. See What Comes NextOnce you deliver what the executives would like to see right now, you still have to be able to see what comes next and make sure that your company moves in that direction . The small wins gained by aligning with the executives hopefully make them more attentive to your suggestions on how to develop strategies on what comes next.3. Go External, Get ConnectedAs we move … Continue reading
Building a prototype of your innovation is a crucial link between conceiving the idea and commercializing it. A physical prototype helps you get immediate feedback from customers, designers, and financial backers as to the commercial viability of the project. It is a necessary step in the patent process. It is a pivotal point in the “GO vs. NO GO” decision, and it can save an inventor money and time as even Abraham Lincoln found out when he prototyped his patented invention.Prototyping can be difficult especially for a small company or independent inventor. Here is help. Imagine a 15,000 square-foot workshop with tools, equipment, and instruction to build and prototype your inventions. It is called TechShop, now with three locations in the United States. From their website:”You can think of TechShop as a health club but with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment. It is sort of like a Kinko’s … Continue reading
Interview – Christian Terwiesch of “Innovation Tournaments”I had the opportunity to interview Christian Terwiesch, one of the co-authors of “Innovation Tournaments” about how to create and select exceptional opportunities. We also discuss a variety of other innovation topics including: barriers to innovation, education, and metrics.Professor Terwiesch teaches MBA and executive classes in the areas of operations management and product development at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a visiting appointment at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Here is the text from the interview:1. When it comes to innovation, what is the biggest challenge that you see organizations facing?Innovation is seen as an art and organizations believe that the best way to nurture innovation is to simply create the right organizational culture and environment for people to become creative. Open floor spaces, many meeting rooms, x-functional collaboration, etc. But it is not enough to rely on culture … Continue reading
A few weeks ago I received “Innovation Tournaments” by Christian Terwiesch and Karl T. Ulrich in the mail. “Innovation Tournaments” is a relatively short, easy, and pleasant read. This book is definitely one of my favorite innovation books to date as it covers concepts clearly and in an accessible way. Wharton professors Terwiesch and Ulrich have chosen to focus their innovation book on creating and selecting exceptional opportunities.Because all companies can create lots of ideas when they engage their employees, suppliers, partners, and even customers in the idea generation process, the real differentiation comes from creating processes for sourcing and selecting those ideas that are truly exceptional and having the courage not to back those that are only merely good.Professors Terwiesch and Ulrich start off by defining innovation as a new match between a need and a solution.One of the key concepts that they cover in this book is the … Continue reading
This is the fourth of several ‘Innovation Perspectives’ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on “Where should innovation reside?” Here is the next perspective in the series:by Drew BoydWho leads innovation in your company: marketing or R&D? It’s a trick question, of course. But it’s a useful question for Fortune 100 companies to consider. Has your company made a conscious choice of how it “allocates” this leadership role? Allocating innovation to one group over the other will yield a different business result. The approaches to innovation by marketing are dramatically different than approaches to innovation by R&D, so the outputs will be dramatically different. The question becomes: which group will outperform the other? Technical-driven innovation or marketing-driven innovation?But there is another layer of complexity. Allocating innovation resources to one group over the other will also yield a different kind of innovation. Market-driven innovation … Continue reading
Ten great ways to boost your personal creativityby Paul SloaneLet’s say you are wrestling with a tough issue – maybe at work, at home, with your children or in your social life. You have been stuck for a while and you can’t seem to make a breakthrough. You want to come up with some really creative ideas. What can you do? Here are ten great practical ways to boost your inventiveness and to crack the problem:1. Ask why, why?Ask, “why has this issue arisen?” Come up with six different reasons and for each of them ask, “why did this happen?” Keep asking why for each cause. This helps you to better understand the different reasons why this is a problem and so in turn you will see different possible solutions.2. Sleep on itPonder the issue and all its aspects for some time and then put it out of your mind. … Continue reading
