Monthly Archives: September 2011
Many firms discover along in their search for unknown co-innovators that in different countries potential innovation partners react differently when they are approached by an Open Innovator. Frank Mattes looks at a recent study that may help shine light on the issue. Continue reading
To achieve success you not only have to have a repeatable process but you have to ensure what is learnt ‘sticks’ so it can be used again and again. The company we associate the most with when it comes to ‘sticky’ is 3M for its famous invention of ‘sticky notes’. They are used everywhere. Innovation needs more than a simple sticky note though Motivational Glue leads to stickiness. Besides ‘sticky’ we need something I’ll call motivational glue. A glue that binds between knowledge and learning to become a series of building blocks for innovation. These motivate us to keep thinking, pushing and developing our ideas into final products or services. As you know innovation is made up of both tangibles and intangibles. Tangibles are more physical whereas intangibles are often our real hidden assets of knowledge, the intellectual assets that lie within our business. These can be made of firstly, … Continue reading
Rapid, Disruptive Innovation Overview: In many organizations a false dichotomy is taken as innovation gospel. The choices offered are easy, short, “safe” incremental innovation or difficult, time consuming, risky disruptive innovation. Given these attributes, there is little wonder that most innovation is incremental innovation. We argue that this is a false dichotomy because given the appropriate methods, tools and management support, a team doesn’t have to choose between “safe” incremental innovation or “risky” disruptive innovation. On the surface incremental innovation seems less expensive and less risky, more likely to create a useable outcome. However, we all also recognize that incremental innovation is rarely a “game changer”. In fact incremental innovation is what many firms settle for once they are convinced that disruptive innovation is too dangerous, too risky, too uncertain or too expensive. But this is simply conventional wisdom about disruptive innovation, learned over …
We’re starting to come to terms with the green revolution; we’re staring to realize that green is good for our planet and even better for our business. But how do we put greenwashing behind us and truly make a difference? To improve recycling, find the non-recyclable stuff in your product and design it out. Make a Pareto chart of non-recyclable stuff (by weight) by major subassembly, and focus the design effort on the biggest brown bars of the Pareto. (Consider packaging a major subassembly and give it its own bar.) To improve carbon footprint of logistics, find the weight and volume of your product and design out the biggest and heaviest. Make a Pareto chart of weight by major subassembly, and focus the design effort on the heaviest brown bars. Make a Pareto chart of volume by major subassembly, (Make cube around the subassembly and calculate volume in mm3.) and … Continue reading
Think your job has changed significantly over the past decade or two? Compound that with the complexity of leading an entire organization! Previous generations of leaders could at least count on a reasonably stable world, where change unfolded at a much slower pace. These days, the past is increasingly less predictive, the future is almost unimaginable, and the present exists for about a nano-second. From an employee perspective, today’s leaders have to manage multiple generations of workers with values, interests, and needs that often conflict. From a customer perspective, today’s leaders face great expectations and less certainty than ever. “Good enough” doesn’t even come close anymore. We have an enormous number of choices, less tolerance, more self-interest, and a dramatically different definition of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Put these all together and you get a huge chasm between the old leadership style of administrating and directing versus the new model … Continue reading
