Category: Headlines
If the innovation war is just beginning, then you need to make sure you’re fighting it outside your organization — not inside. But the battlefield of business success is changing. Future business success will be built upon the ability to: Continue reading
Is the era of innovation over? Or is the war for innovation just beginning? I came across an article in one of Canada’s main newspapers — The Globe and Mail — by Barrie McKenna titled ominously, ‘Has Innovation Hit a Brick Wall?’ The article speaks to how the Canadian government sinks billions of dollars into research and development every year, yet the country remains an innovation laggard compared with most of its trading partners. The author refers to this as Canada’s “innovation deficit.” The article then goes on to examine some research from University of British Columbia economics professor James Brander that examines whether Canada’s problem is part of a much broader global phenomenon. The conclusions that Dr. Brander comes to are less than comforting (if you agree with his view of innovation); his research found the pace of innovation to be slowing dramatically in four key areas: agriculture, energy, … Continue reading
This post may also be viewed on the American Express OPEN Forum Idea Hub. In 2011, I will be a regular contributor to the American Express OPEN Forum on the topic of innovation. Here is the third one of the year: Have you ever wondered why with all of the people trying to innovate, more innovation isn’t created? I’ll give you a hint… Often, something gets lost in the translation between what people think their customers want and what their real desires are. Part of the reason so many people fail to innovate is that they fail to recognize that ideas and innovation are not the same thing. Ideas are easy, innovation is hard. For ideas to translate into innovation they must be based on unique insights that unlock new customer value. In their book The Other Side of Innovation, Chris Trimble and Vijay Govindarajan assert that: Innovation = Idea … Continue reading
“We need to out-innovate, outeducate, and outbuild the rest of the world” – President Obama In reading the stories and quotes from last night’s State of the Union address by President Obama, it is clear, and frustrates me to no end, that my government talks a lot about innovation but still does not understand how to foster it. Innovation in America, especially in the short term, is not achieved by pumping huge sums of money into government-sponsored research and development efforts. Yes, many successful innovations have resulted from government research investments, but we need to take a more strategic approach to these efforts. The focus on research and capital projects by the Obama administration also begs the question of whether long-term investments be our only approach to innovation. The Internet itself may be one of the most successful government research and development efforts, but we need more of these types … Continue reading
In 2011, I will be a regular contributor to the American Express OPEN Forum on the topic of innovation. Here is the second one of the year: Ideas are easy; innovation is hard. Ideas are exciting, but innovation is scary because it is all about change. The changes required by minor innovations are easier for customers and organizations to absorb. But the large changes generated by major innovations often disrupt not only the market, but the internal workings of the organization as well. This requires organizations to become increasingly flexible and adaptable. And companies that successfully innovate in a repeatable fashion have one thing in common: they are good at managing and adapting to change and complexity. People often fail to imagine just how the change injected into organizations by innovation ebbs and flows across the whole organization’s ecosystem. Innovation creates a complex web of change not just for customers, … Continue reading
This post may also be viewed on the American Express OPEN Forum Idea Hub. In 2011, I will be a regular contributor to the American Express OPEN Forum on the topic of innovation. Here is the first one of the year: by Braden Kelley Have you ever woken up in a cold sweat in the middle night from a nightmare focused on you throwing a big party that nobody comes to? Or, in real life, have you ever thrown a big launch party for a new product or service, made a lot of noise with advertising, marketing and public relations – only to have the sales returns be anemic at best? According to a Linton, Matysiak & Wilkes study from 1997 titled Marketing, Witchcraft or Science, the success rate for new product introductions in the food industry is only between 20 and 30 percent. But, there is a key insight … Continue reading
