Monthly Archives: February 2010
Sustainable innovation requires structured methods. But it also requires collaboration and information sharing among colleagues. Innovation is a team sport – groups produce better results than the lone genius. So how do you create a more favorable context for collaboration and sharing in your business unit?Reputation is what matters. The degree to which a technical worker will share information with a colleague depends on that colleague’s reputation for returning the favor. The rule of reciprocity states that people give back to those in the form they have received from others. It is a social rule taught by every human society to its members – you give back to those who have given to you. But the key is: to make the first move. You have to be seen as someone who gives and shares information with others, and has a reputation for returning the favor when others give to …
Four Ways to Keep Your Top Performers From Jumping ShipHave you ever lost a top performer to a competitor?I see it happen all the time, even in good companies. Surprisingly, it rarely has to do with money. More often than not, it’s due to indifference, apathy, or neglect on the part of a leader or manager.Why the neglect? Because most leaders and managers focus the majority of their time and energy on the low performers. It makes no sense when you step back and look at it, but leaders are either trying to correct mistakes, deal with behavior issues, or simply get wayward employees back on track with the results they’re supposed to be producing. As a result, they fail to give their winners the time and energy they deserve.If you want to keep your winners, make sure they feel acknowledged and appreciated. Here’s how:1. Identify your winners.Almost every company … Continue reading
The Imagineers at The Disney Company, the folks who dream-up theme parks and make them a reality, have created their own terms that allow quick understanding.The Imagineer TermsBerm – A raised earthen barrier, typically heavily landscaped, which serves to prevent visual intrusions into the Park from the outside world and block the outside world from intruding inside.When you’re in the fantasy world of a Disney theme park – Disney didn’t want the outside world to break that spell.Contradictions – Elements that could break the spell and ruin the experience. Walt Disney taught his team to be attentive to details and to think things through to the very end. They don’t leave the experience to chance, it is all calculated.The Disney Imagineers go to great lengths to eliminate contradictions. They have taken care to ensure you can’t see the future of Tomorrowland while standing in ye olde Frontierland. Cowboys and Astronauts … Continue reading
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On playfool.com I came across a very interesting potential partial solution to the societal problem of drunk driving using an integrated approach, that combines an interactive game with advertising and the services of the local taxi association. And of course, the bars and clubs are happy to participate in order to reduce their risks (or maybe out of the goodness of their hearts). This is a great example of how to create customer value and conversation instead of just shouting at potential customers via traditional advertising.So, without further ado is an interactive marketing experience not likely to be mistaken for the Wii:Are you creating customer value and conversation with your marketing efforts?Can you think of other interactive experiences or innovations to help combat societal ills?Enjoy this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group!Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy … Continue reading
Point: Accelerate innovation by finding an analogous solution from a different industry.Story: Henry Ford’s assembly line is often touted as a breakthrough innovation. What’s less known is that Ford got the idea by seeing the “disassembly line” process of butchering hogs at the Philip Armour meatpacking company in Chicago. Similar techniques were also already being used by Campbell’s to automate canned food production.Adopting ideas from other industries and applying them to your own industry is a powerful and proven source of innovation. But what if you don’t know which industry to examine, or where to look for that potentially breakthrough idea? Solutions may arrive serendipitously as you visit companies and read widely, but how do you accelerate the process and make it systematic?One exciting solution I came across was described by Jim Todhunter, CTO of Invention Machine at the Open Innovation Summit last month. Invention Machine’s Goldfire software uses semantic … Continue reading
I had the opportunity to speak to a group at a university recently about innovation. In fact, I’ve spoken to four universities about innovation in the last few months. There’s a growing awareness that innovation needs to happen in university settings. This would include innovation on the administration of the university, in the teaching methods and in what is taught. But that’s a sideline to what I want to write about today.In my most recent speaking engagement I was confronted by a senior faculty member who argued that all this talk about “innovation” was pointless, and missed the main target, which was that we needed more focus on science and engineering education. In his mind, innovation was equated to technology, and only scientists and engineers could bring new technologies to life. While I agree that scientists and technologists can bring innovations to market, I’d argue that that definition of innovation … Continue reading
