Monthly Archives: September 2011
How much longer will countries outsource idea generation to the US? I was thinking recently about the challenges and possibilities of outsourcing. It’s interesting if you think carefully about it, since what we call outsourcing is to some extent simple economics. Comparative advantage was first conceived by David Ricardo, who argued that each participant in a transaction should spend its efforts doing what it did best and acquiring goods and services from other participants doing what they do best. To the extent that free trade is possible, Ricardo argued that every country or participant benefits when each focuses on its comparative advantage. For years we in the West have exercised this philosophy, outsourcing work that we can’t do effectively to locations where labor or other costs are cheaper. Textiles present an excellent example. In the 1700s England dominated much of the textile industry, until low labor costs …
Henry Chesbrough: How Innovation Changed While Nokia Wasn’t Looking Award-winning author Henry Chesbrough discusses with Gary Hamel how Nokia had fantastic success in the 1990′s building products but got left behind by the other companies like Apple, Research and Motion, and Google who are now building platforms that others can build on top of instead of focusing purely on the handset.
Once in a while you have to stop and reflect. Why do I keep banging away at innovation, along with countless others? Often I feel we are preaching to the converted, or the ones forced to listen just in case they miss something and are suddenly banished to hell, a non-innovating organization. A place where no one will ever listen to them and this would have been the message to free the shackles and bring them back to innovation salvation. So here I am standing in the innovation pulpit giving the weekly sermon on innovation beliefs and principles, offering this weekly reading on the (next) ten steps to avoid in that particular sin which we all know you are certainly committing! Sometimes at the end of the sermon (or article), someone comes up and leaves an offering (comment) that sustains us …
Once you’ve enough iterated your innovation to sharpen it to go to market, you might feel relieved.
But there are still several traps to address if you’re willing to “cross the chasm“. To jump over the gap, abouding and then focusing, elbowing on perceived quality, and building a interactive relationship with your users are key. 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 with the FORTH innovation method. The fuzzy front end is the nickname for the start of innovation or ideation phase. Getting innovative ideas is a vague process. It’s considered as hard to do. That’s exactly why I like to unfuzzy it. I wrote more than a dozen blogs on this on Innovation Excellence. In this blog all my advices come together in 20 tips for ideation excellence. Create momentum for your ideation project. There must be urgency otherwise innovation is considered as playtime and nobody will be prepared to go outside the box. If this is not the case: just wait until the organisation is ready. Manage the expectations of your bosses and …
Nine practical tips to consider before starting an innovation or ideation project from Nick Demey. Based on LinkedIn discussions and our own experience in running innovation projects for our clients. View more presentations from Innovation Excellence
