In most organizations, there is an omnipresent quest for more. With crowd-sourcing innovation programs, the first impulse is to seek more ideas. Is more really better? What about idea quality? Does ‘more ideas’ work against idea quality? And if so, then what do you do about it? In 2011, I launched the employee open innovation program at UnitedHealth Group (Fortune ...

This is the third blog in our series of three blogs, on cultivating a fail fast culture. In last month’s blog, Cultivating a Fail Fast Culture – as a manifestation of learning & exploration we explored what it means to take a reflective stance, to use the experience of failure to support ourselves and others we interact with, as a ...

This is the second blog in a series of 3 blogs, by Janet Sernack, on cultivating a fail fast culture. In my previous blog “What does it mean to cultivate a fail fast organizational culture” I shared what typically happens when people experience failure, and how important it is to uncouple people’s fears about failure and to support and enable ...

How could developing a “fail fast” culture help organizations unfreeze, survive, flow and flourish with the current levels of fear, ambiguity, uncertainty, volatility and instability in 21st century organizations?

After relying on cost and operational efficiencies to grow the bottom line, many businesses are emerging from an innovation slumber post-recession. Now there is an imperative to refocus on organic growth. The importance of innovation in driving this growth is resurfacing to the top of the agenda. For many organizations, there are some radically new behavioural, structural and operational models of meeting this challenge are gaining popularity.

We aren’t all child geniuses turned mega entrepreneurs, but there are 3 things that as fellow innovators, we can learn from Elon Musk. He epitomises thinking big.

Ideas are the problem. I suspect many of you have heard this statement as often as I have. It’s usually translated as “we don’t have enough ideas”. Yet when you dig beneath the surface, you find that the bald statement isn’t always as it first appears. In this post, I’d like to offer some different translations of “Ideas are the problem”.

Nicolas Bry interviews Benjamin Ott, a young innovator working at T3LGroup, a French SME with a long tradition of developing new manufacturing processes, and product applications for office products, and shopfitting equipment.

Innovation is not a solo activity (and neither is my favorite sport to coach – basketball). And while the rare lone genius may be able to invent something on their own (although still always inspired by others), nobody can innovate by themselves. Innovation, by its very nature, requires collaboration. Companies are like brains. The brain is composed of two hemispheres. ...

German rail company, Deutsche Bahn AG, is making its data available to start-up businesses and SMEs as part of Data Pitch, a new European Commission-funded initiative which is supporting open innovation with data. Deadline for entrants is Oct. 1st.