Monthly Archives: April 2010
by Braden KelleyPardon our dust…Blogging Innovation is moving from the Blogger platform to the WordPress platform today.What does this mean for you?Well, there may be some disruption in the blog. Sometime today you’ll see the whole blog switch over, and for a time there may be some broken links. I’ll try to fix them all up, but it would be a huge help if people could report any broken links that they find.RSS subscriptions to our may or may not need to be updated. If you’re subscribed to the blog via feedburner, then the switch should be automatic, but if you’re subscribed to atom.xml or rss.xml you may have to re-subscribe in the ‘Where to Follow Along’ section of the sidebar when the new site goes live. I will try to forward the old feed urls to the new ones but I’m not sure whether that will work or not.The … Continue reading
Have you ever noticed how when people talk about what lies ahead we always say the future? As if there is one, and only one, immutable future that will come to pass.Fact is, there are an unlimited number of possible futures, and it’s up to us to create the one we want. This is especially true when engaging in strategic planning.Many leaders and managers mistakenly see strategic planning as a process of predicting the future. In reality, it’s a process of creating the future, one that will provide ample rewards to the organization and all its stakeholders. Assuming that only one future exists can lock us into a course of action that may not serve our organizations well.Despite the dangers, it’s easy to see how we fall into the pattern of thinking there is only one future.We start out by investing a lot of time and energy in crafting a … Continue reading
Robert Shelton published an enlightening article about the three levels of open innovation maturity. But for most companies, open innovation raises instinctive fears that their ideas will leak out to their competitors and destroy any competitive advantage they would have hoped to get from their innovation.Three levels of Open InnovationLevel 1: aware & adhoc – Companies are aware of the need to open up to external sources of ideas and to leverage external capabilities. They build adhoc partnerships with suppliers and customers along their tradtional value chain.Level 2: pro-active & systematic – Companies set up an explicit goal that a significant portion of their new developments will come from outside and they organise themselves to attract outside input. P&G’s programme Connect&Develop provides a case in point.Level 3: confident & natural – Companies orchestrate a multilateral collaboration network (Shelton says “an eco-system”) of companies and talent. They are not directly involved … Continue reading
This is the fifth of several ‘Innovation Perspectives’ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘What is the role of social media in innovation? (Either inside or outside the organization)’. Here is the next perspective in the series:by Steve ToddOne of the main innovation themes that I encounter as an intrapreneur in a global organization is innovation by adjacency. This theme is a key driver for introducing new products into the high-tech industry. The e-book “Innovate With Influence” provides several examples of new products that have resulted from the integration of adjacent technologies. The adjacency theory relies on collaboration with two separate yet equally important parties: customers and technologists.I use the diagram below to highlight the main task of a corporate intrapreneur.An intrapreneur starts with deep technical knowledge and goes in search of new problems to solve (customer needs and requirements) and new … Continue reading
I had the opportunity to attend a Biznik Innovators event featuring John Hagel III (JH) and John Seely Brown (JSB) earlier this week and thought I would bring you some of the highlights and a video interview with John Seely Brown. Here are some of the key insights: Don’t focus on employee satisfaction. Often the most passionate people are the most frustrated. In the typical organization about 20% of the employees are passionate and 80% are not. This percentage is inversely correlated with corporation size. – JH “Extreme performance only comes from people who are passionate.” – JSB Compactness Theorem – Kids need to link, then lurk, then join – JSB Spikes are places where you have a concentration of people focused on the same thing. When it comes to spikes in today’s flat world, you can either go there, or try to pull them to you or pull them … Continue reading
Fair warning: today’s post is a philosophical debate about the direction and focus of innovation as a tool to create new products and services. Too often we in the innovation space take for granted how different and unique the tools and processes we bring to bear are for many in corporate settings. We also don’t always understand how these tools and methods depart from the traditional, comfortable methods of many of our clients.We stand today, 2010, at a crossroads from an innovation perspective. Innovation is going to become either a reputable science or a disreputable side show, and there are two constituents that will direct the outcomes. Innovation consultants and others who offer innovation services are one group that will dictate how innovation is eventually accepted and perceived, and our prospects and buyers in firms large and small are the others. In just a short time we’ll all have to … Continue reading
