Innovation is expected to come from the producer of the product. That’s the reason manufacturers have R&D departments. But more and more innovation is emerging not just from the producers but also from users and end-users. For example, many users develop modifications to video games or software that changes the product they originally bought. The […]
Read More… from Turn Your End-User Innovators Into R&D Partners
In the early 1990s, large corporations started moving, slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, away from the kind of broad scientific research that led to such inventions as Nylon and the graphic user interface (GUI). GUI transformed personal computing by enabling users to, for example, simply drag a document into a folder instead of typing […]
Read More… from Will Corporations Leaving Basic Scientific Research Kill the Golden Goose?
The best companies are forward-looking. They are not only concerned with what customers want to buy today, but what they will want to buy in the future. A company’s ability to project future customer needs is usually tied to factors such as how much a company knows about its customer and the extent of customer […]
Read More… from Work with Customers to Understand and Shape their Future Needs
Crowdsourcing and social media channels have largely replaced the private channels between a lone individual and an organization with a public debate in which external contributors not only submit suggestions but also vote for and comment on suggestions made by others. In the best cases, these interactions evolve into a vibrant initiative, granting the host […]
Entrepreneurs innovating in the technology space often lack the know-how or “specialized complementary assets” within their companies to successfully commercialize their innovations. Consequently, to date, the academic literature on this subject has advised them to contract with or license the commercialization to incumbent companies that already have an established market presence. In the short term […]
Read More… from Should Technology Innovators Participate in the Commercialization Process?
It is hard to resist the pull of emerging markets, such as India and China. Given the immense population in such countries, even the small percentage of the total population that can be considered ‘middle class’ represents huge markets for companies in developed countries. And this new emerging-market middle class is only growing. Succeeding in […]
Read More… from Three Product Innovation Strategies for Emerging Markets and How to Choose
Innovation through collaborative teams can succeed or fail in large part based on resources dedicated to the venture. While many factors may ultimately impact success or failure, all else being equal, if more resources are allocated to a project, the risk that it fails is less. Whether or not managers are willing to dedicate those […]
Read More… from Balancing Incentives, Risk and Tolerance of Failure for Collaborative Innovation
How can new product development (NPD) teams best generate ideas and develop them into viable concepts? The ‘obvious’ answer — through interaction and working together — is not necessarily the right or best one. While some studies suggest group debate and group brainstorming offer significant benefits — for example, the ability to combine and integrate […]
Read More… from When Suspending Group Debate Enables Innovation
In a classic episode from the old American TV show The Odd Couple, the main character Felix replaces all of the traditional furniture in his apartment with new furniture featuring radical designs (e.g. the chairs are in the shape of huge hands). While his roommate Oscar figures out how to use the ‘hands’, he’s astonished […]
Read More… from Great Innovation! But What’s it for? Marketers Beware
Crowdsourcing is an expression that describes the act of taking a task once performed by an internal employee or team, and outsourcing it to a large, undefined group of people external to the company. With the need for innovation being a top priority for businesses today, many have turned to crowdsourcing in an attempt to […]
