Monthly Archives: May 2011
La journée de l’Innovation Come join us June 23, 2011 in Mons, Belgium for some great innovation talks and networking! Blogging Innovation is proud to announce that Braden Kelley will be speaking at Microsoft Innovation Center Belgium’s Innov@MIC – one of several events held throughout the year at the center. Braden will be speaking in English, but most of the program will likely be in French. For those of you in France or Belgium who are interested in attending the event, here is a quick event summary in French: En effet, le MIC vous concocte une journée de conférences innovantes avec, au programme, pas moins de 20 orateurs. Un format dynamique et percutant où chacun des conférenciers (patrons, futurologues, starters, spécialistes,…) disposera de 14 minutes pour exposer sa vision. Ne manquez pas cette journée unique à la croisée de l’entreprenariat, de la créativité et de la technologie. Braden Kelley will … Continue reading
After close to eight years doing innovation work, you’d think there would be few surprises left, but almost every week I get another perspective or another insight that simply floors me. Whether its the gap between what CEOs say about innovation (typically 70% list it as a top 3 priority) and the actual implementation of innovation (barely 25% of firms acknowledge creating an innovative product last year), or the completely mixed signals that many firms send about the importance of innovation without any change to evaluation or compensation schemes, innovation efforts constantly encounter an almost Kafka-esque reality. None, however, more so than the mental and physical athleticism necessary to be a successful corporate innovator. I was thinking about this based on an article I read which dealt with “amping” up creative thinking. In many organizations, the vast majority of people spend very little time thinking about or pursuing ideas, and … Continue reading
“Managing Up” is a great catch phrase and an interesting concept – it’s also a practice that can get you in deep trouble rather quickly if misunderstood or misapplied. Many people would say the purpose of managing-up is to have the by-product of your efforts enhance the work of those you report to. While I have nothing against this concept (I call it doing your job), I do have a problem with the reality that many practitioners of managing-up miss the point altogether. When the practice of managing up gets confused with promotion of self-interest, brown-nosing, deceit, manipulation, the gymnastics of corporate climbing, or other mind games, a good theory rapidly becomes twisted resulting in a false and dangerous reality. While the premise of “managing-up” is sound, the reality of how it’s most commonly implemented is representative of everything that’s wrong with business today. It’s human nature to attempt to … Continue reading
The fuzzy front end of innovation confronts you with a lot of questions. In my new book ‘Creating Innovative Products and Services’ I try to solve them. In my last blog here on Blogging Innovation I presented a structured creative ideation approach called FORTH. It is a customer oriented practical method. A handy format to start ideation! But how do you start ideation in practice? Often there’s a top manager experiencing an urgent need for something new. A new competitor may have entered the market, turnover may have decreased dramatically or a big contract is lost. And something has to happen: we need to innovate. And a special innovation project team is set up and starts generating ideas. But an essential point is often missed: ideas for what? That’s the question! Do you have a clear innovation assignment yourself? You should never start an innovation expedition unprepared. As good …
Lets Take Another Look by John Persico A few years ago, I started thinking about all of the “mistakes” that management and organizations have made. There are several books dealing with the subject and various companies, leaders and managers are noted for the blunders they have made in decision making. For instance, out of the top ten mergers undertaken in the 90’s, eight of them lost money or shareholder value. Not just a little money, but billions and billions of dollars. We are all familiar with other noted disasters such as “New Coke”, Apple’s Newton and Ford’s Edsel. The question I wanted to answer was simply: “what is behind such faulty decision making?” I found an excellent article that looked at the top ten mistakes managers make in decision making. The title of the article was “10 reasons people make stupid decisions.” I have found this article posted on many … Continue reading
In a recent post here, Open Innovation guru Stefan Lindegaard presented the ostensibly nonsensical hypothesis: R & D leaders are often a “threat” to innovation. Stefan’s post resulted from an interaction he had with a senior R & D person at a mid-sized tech company, who apparently adhered to the outdated notion that he and his scientists and engineers know more about the company’s business than anyone else could possibly even try to know. As a result, this R & D leader believes that they cannot maximize (or even create) value for their organization by looking outside the confines of their existing R & D infrastructure to solve the company’s pressing business problems. Reading this, R & D professionals might likely think: “What’s this guy smoking? How can R & D be a threat to innovation?! We’re the reason this company has any innovation …
