Innovation in the West has become too rigid, insular and bloated to remain effective, according to Judge Business School’s Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja. During the recent economic downturn, in particular, once favoured structured approaches to innovation have failed where agility and differentiation were required. These approaches do not seem to address the […]
Subject: Creativity and Innovation
Lean Thinking Increased Innovation
In this White Paper, the author looks at how organizations can free up necessary resources to pursue their overall business strategies. Identifying the ‘waste’ and ‘complexity’ in a company can free up people and space needed to do so, calling this process becoming ‘Lean.’ As we Lean the business, says the author, enthusiasm is generated, […]
How Social Intrapreneurs Get Heard
Many large companies have developed corporate social entrepreneurship (CSE) initiatives. Examples include global management consultants Accenture, French cement, concrete and aggregates company Lafarge and Swiss pharmaceuticals multinational Novartis. Often referred to as ‘social businesses’, CSE initiatives are usually started by employees who want to help underprivileged people. Motivated partly by personal experience, these social intrapreneurs […]
Managing Workforce Ideas Effectively
Idea management programs can be used to increase the proportion of successfully implemented projects based on ideas contributed voluntarily by employees. This research highlights that people who come forward with ideas care deeply about their organization. ‘Idea Management’ provides the support such employees need for their expertise and creativity to be recognised, developed and successfully […]
Reverse Innovation: Ideas from Emerging Countries
How do you sell an automobile in an emerging nation where salaries are a tiny fraction of salaries in developed countries? The traditional answer: make a cheaper model of the car you sell in developed countries. Companies traditionally take the products they are selling in developed markets and then make small changes to those products […]
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How Team Reflexivity Fosters Innovation
Assessing a situation before acting may seem like common sense. After all, many languages have an equivalent of the English proverb: ‘look before you leap’. However, people rarely apply this in their daily working lives; we seldom make time to stop and reflect on our processes, and most teams and organizations are action-orientated. If you […]
The Pros and Cons of Sharing Intellectual Property
The purpose of R&D is to invest time and money in a technology in order to bring it to market to make a profit. The window of competitive advantage that exists when a company brings a new technology to market before everyone else is one of the primary incentives for a company to make that […]
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Creating Harmony: Harnessing Stakeholders to Boost Innovation
In today’s increasingly competitive and fast-changing global marketplace, businesses must seek to develop more frequent and higher quality innovations. At the same time, customers, employees and other stakeholders are demanding more opportunities to co-create and collaborate with businesses. Stakeholders, who are increasingly informed, connected, networked and empowered, are challenging firms. Customers, for example, are demanding […]
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Live and Learn: The Innovation Imperative
There is a quote from Mahatma Gandhi that should be in the lexicon of every aspiring business: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever”. Yet many firms shy away from innovation. Sticking with what they know, they fail to see the benefit of a lifelong learning […]
Tap Outside Communities for Innovations
Ethan Mollick, the Edward B. and Shirley R. Shils Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has conducted extensive research on how user communities — product users and informal groups of amateurs — contribute to the development of innovative products. Apple’s App Store is perhaps the most famous example […]