Innovation
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Fusion, Flow and Fluidity are needed in our Management Practices

Jun-19-17. By Paul Hobcraft

To achieve better outcomes and to drive sustained growth we need different management practices. We require scalable participation (ecosystems) to relate to and generate new knowledge flows. We need to be increasingly responsive, adaptive and fluid in any design of structures and solutions.

Silent Geniuses: Why we need more Respect for the Creativity of Introverts

Jun-16-17. By Nick Skillicorn

What ends up happening in a brainstorming session is that a small number of people end up dominating the discussions and suggesting a lot of ideas. The truth is, even the quietest people often have ideas that are as good as, or often better, than the loudest people. You just need to find a way to let them share the ideas.

What Accelerates Innovation

Jun-15-17. By Jeffrey Phillips

Universities, businesses and even cities and regions are talking about innovation and the need to create accelerators or innovation enablers. I'm glad that everyone is excited about innovation, and that they want to provide the means to help it flourish and help it move more quickly. But the thing is, like most late arrivals, they've got the wrong end of the stick as the Brits like to say.

Will Big Data create a new Untouchable Business Elite?

Jun-13-17. By Nicholas Barrett

Bill Janeway described the way AI could allow an elite group of firms to innovate at speeds the rest of the world could only dream about. When I listened to his interview with Kenneth Cukier, it made me wonder whether economic ideas could be applied to the world of big data.

Ethical Innovation Means Giving Consumers a Say

Jun-12-17. By Susan Liautaud

Technology is approaching the man-machine and man-animal boundaries. And with this, society may be leaping into humanity-defining innovation without the equivalent of a constitutional convention to decide who should have the authority to decide whether, when, and how these innovations are released into society. What are the ethical ramifications? What checks and balances might be important?

AI and Machine Learning Will Enable Your Car to Read Your Expressions

Jun-09-17. By Ravindra Savaram

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are taking the Automobile industry(Car industry in particular) by storm while all the major automobile players are utilizing their resources and technology to come up with the best. The beauty of devices with artificial intelligence is that it tries to learn from sensor inputs like real sounds and images.

National Innovation Systems, Blockchains, and Accelerating Change

Jun-09-17. By Langdon

If governments are leading investors in blockchain applications it may tell you that there is indeed something different happening here. They see need and opportunity, and their uses can consolidate and prove that they hype is not hype.

Two Surprising Strategies for Effective Innovation

Jun-09-17. By Nadia Goodman

“Innovation is an unpredictable process, but one with predictable features,” says Reeves. “It’s not just a matter of luck. It’s possible to have a strategy of innovation.”

The Eureka Moment is a Lie

Jun-03-17. By Nick Skillicorn

Mark Zuckerberg, the man who created Facebook and dropped out of Harvard University, recently gave some surprising revelations about what it takes to have your ideas succeed when he gave the commencement address to the class of 2017.

Advancing My Applied Innovation Thinking

Jun-02-17. By Paul Hobcraft

We need to bring innovation and its process up to date. With cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, cloud-based solutions, purposefully designed apps and specific tools and frameworks, we do need to begin to stretch our imaginations further and flex our technology and app solutions more towards providing a better, more connected innovation process. I want to see a new innovation era happen.

Experts Predict when Artificial Intelligence will exceed Human Performance

May-31-17. By Emerging Technology from the arXiv

Artificial intelligence is changing the world and doing it at breakneck speed. The promise is that intelligent machines will be able to do every task better and more cheaply than humans. And that raises an interesting question: when will artificial intelligence exceed human performance? More specifically, when will a machine do your job better than you?

Can Creativity be Scheduled?

May-30-17. By Jorge Barba

So, can you be creative on purpose without waiting for lightining to strike?
Yes, you can be creative on command but in my experience two things have to be true for it to work:
1) A well defined problem;
2) Deep immersion and then distancing yourself from the challenge.

Could Artificial Intelligence lead to World Peace?

May-30-17. By Niko Nurminen

Honkela believes peace - not weapon - technologies should be prioritised and says applications utilising neural networks, big data and digital humanities will be fully at our disposal in some 20 years. Trailblazing advancements, he says, are already under way. At present, most artificial intelligence technologies are focused on business and marketing applications. We're using them while browsing through social media, calling service lines and typing text messages with text prediction. So what would a Peace Machine entail?

Why the Future of Innovation is Open

May-25-17. By Jacob Morgan

The most successful organizations are those that can prep for the future and push the envelope creatively to find the next innovative idea. But what if how we have been thinking about innovation is all wrong? Open innovation is a newer idea that is spreading across industries and changing how companies work together and plan for the future.

Curiosity may be Vital for Truly Smart AI

May-23-17. By Will Knight

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, developed an “intrinsic curiosity model” to make their learning algorithm work even when there isn’t a strong feedback signal. The trick may help address a shortcoming of today’s most powerful machine-learning techniques, and it could point to ways of making machines better at solving real-world problems.

A Curious Plan to Save the Environment with the Blockchain

May-22-17. By Nick Stockton

Walmart recently launched a trial using a blockchain to fight food poisoning and waste by tracking food from supplier to shelf. Say a salmonella outbreak hits Sioux City, Iowa. Walmart’s supply chain blockchain would let it irrefutably trace the tainted product back to a spinach farm in Salinas, California.

Microsoft has a Plan to add DNA Storage to its Cloud

May-22-17. By Antonio Regalado

Tech companies think biology may solve a looming data storage problem. Computer architects at Microsoft Research say the company has formalized a goal of having an operational storage system based on DNA working inside a data center toward the end of this decade.

The Innovation Value Lies within the New System

May-22-17. By Paul Hobcraft

There is a significant transformation of the value lying within this extended system of collaborators and organization design. It is the ability to leverage, through technology the broader ecosystem of partners and internal collaborators by a more holistic view of sharing building ‘greater’ value together

When it comes to Innovation, Go Big or Go Home

May-22-17. By Ivy Cohen

To be considered truly innovative, a product or service must be “meaningfully unique” or be protected as intellectual property. “Meaningfully unique” is essential for small businesses. Large companies like Proctor & Gamble and AT&T can successfully release a new product because they have name recognition and an existing customer base. Small businesses have to rely on free press and word-of-mouth, which is why unique concepts are make-or-break for startups and small businesses.

The War over Artificial Intelligence will be won with Visual Data

May-17-17. By Evan Nisselson

Major technology companies and new startups are at war over having the most valuable artificial intelligence and at the core of this war is having unique high quality visual data. This battle will be won by owning the connected camera.

The Lack of Intelligence about Artificial Intelligence

May-15-17. By Steve Andriole

Everyone’s talking about artificial intelligence (“AI”). Most of the talk is wrong, misleading and often intended to frighten us about a future that’s unlikely to occur. AI will not steal our babies, hold us hostage for Bitcoins or start nuclear wars. But it will fundamentally change the labor market through the intelligent automation of many routine tasks individuals and companies perform all the time.

Are We Crushing Real Innovation?

May-12-17. By Paul Hobcraft

Can we be bolder and more determined to differentiate ourselves or do we stay tucked into the pack, like a long distant runner, waiting for something (someone) to break away, hopefully, able to equally ‘kick in’ and stay in touch, still hopeful we will be in a position to win but mostly remain a fast follower only?

How Big Data is Empowering AI and Machine Learning at Scale

May-08-17. By Randy Bean

Big data is moving to a new stage of maturity — one that promises even greater business impact and industry disruption over the course of the coming decade. As big data initiatives mature, organizations are now combining the agility of big data processes with the scale of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to accelerate the delivery of business value.

How Machine Learning will Impact Online Security this Year

May-08-17. By Justin Blanchard

Machine learning is different. Instead of pointing a limited set of “dumb” algorithms at data, machine learning algorithms are capable of ingesting huge amounts of data and spotting patterns related to particular desirable or undesirable outcomes.

Innovation Moshpit

May-05-17. By Gregg Fraley

I’ve been touting concept blends in innovation for some time. My reason is simple, it’s a fast path to new and different ideas. From the Printing Press to the iPhone, big new market-creating innovation happens when concepts from two different domains are combined. These Mash-Ups are not intuitive for most people to do and maybe that’s why some people try it and fail. Take heart, smart people can do concept blends with careful mental scaffolding.

Innovation is Evolution

May-04-17. By Chris Kalaboukis

Many companies feel that innovation programs, innovation labs, and other innovation initiatives are great in good times, but are superfluous in tough times. The number of times I've heard that firms are axing or "re-purposing" their innovation personnel to work on "core product" or "core services" when times are tough, are legion.

How Artificial Intelligence May Help Doctors Save Lives

May-03-17. By Jonathan Vanian

Artificial intelligence has shown promise in helping doctors predict which patients may be susceptible to chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s. But despite the rapid advances, the healthcare industry is still in the early days of rolling out AI-powered treatments and drugs, Morten Sogaard, Pfizer’s vice president and head of genome sciences and technologies, said.

Why You Don't (and Can't) Think Alone

May-01-17. By Jag Bhalla

“Our intelligence resides not in individual brains but in the collective mind.” This “division of cognitive labor is fundamental to the way cognition evolved and the way it works today.”

5 Steps to Predictable Innovation

May-01-17. By Amanda Ciccatelli

Innovation appears to be a random, inherently unpredictable process. But what if we could understand the causal factors that contribute variability to the innovation process and learn how to control them? Would that bring predictability to innovation? The answer is yes—we have proven it can be done, but it requires new thinking.

Seamless Experience - Innovation's Holy Grail

Apr-27-17. By Jeffrey Phillips

When people talk about innovation they talk too expansively and without good definitions. Innovation always reverts to whatever Apple did recently, whatever cool new technology or product someone produced. We need to move beyond talking about innovation to actually doing more of it, and when we do it we need to do it with purpose and intent. But beyond that we need to move beyond this narrow definition of innovation - a new product or service - to a much more expansive definition of innovation possibilities.

Asking the Right Questions can Frame a Successful Transformation

Apr-27-17. By Tom Puthiyamadam

When done right, business transformations can solve major problems, the kind that often force you to take a make-or-break leap into the future. When such transformations go wrong, even after months of careful planning and implementation, the results are dispiriting. And so the prospect of a transformation is understandably daunting. That’s why when company leaders ask me where they should start, I tell them to start asking questions.

8 Companies Changing how Machine Learning is Used

Apr-24-17. By Serenity Gibbons

There are some standout companies that are now making significant strides in how machine learning can be used, setting themselves well above others in their industry. Keep your eye on these eight incredible companies this year to see how they incorporate this technology.

It’s All About the Product, Silly!

Apr-17-17. By Maggie Graham

The Harvard Business Review article argues that companies can become industry leaders by going after one of these value disciplines (Customer Intimacy, Product Leadership, Operational Excellence), bb7 dares to argue that there is an area in business where you can succeed at all three value disciplines. That area is (naturally) product development. Yes; it's all about the product! We believe that, if your product development strategy scores in all three value disciplines, you will achieve market dominance.

Why AI will both Increase Efficiency and Create Jobs

Apr-17-17. By Sarah K. White

Artificial Intelligence is already impacting every industry through automation and machine learning, bringing concerns that AI is on the fast track to replacing many jobs. But these fears aren't new, says Dan Jackson, director of Enterprise Technology at Crestron, a company that designs workplace technology. "I'd argue this is no different than when we moved from an agricultural to an industrial economy at the turn of the last century. The percentage of people working in agriculture significantly decreased, and it was a big shift, but we still have plenty of jobs 100 years later," he says.

Ethics may be the Next Challenge for Artificial Intelligence Engineers

Apr-17-17. By Leslie Carde

Imagine a self-driving vehicle cruising down the road with a passenger in the front seat when a child suddenly darts out in front of it, Venable said. "Its only choices are to hit the child or swerve into a tree, which could injure its passenger. How do you program a computer to deal with these sorts of moral dilemmas?"

14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas

Apr-16-17. By Mitch Ditkoff

What sparks innovation? People. What sparks people? Inspired ideas that meet a need -- whether expressed or unexpressed -- ideas with enough mojo to rally sustained support. Is there anything a person can do -- beyond caffeine, corporate pep talks, or astrology readings -- to quicken the appearance of breakthrough ideas? Yes, there is. And what follows are 14 catalysts -- simple guidelines, principles, and approaches that will help you on your way.

Daydreaming: Imagining Creates Reality

Apr-11-17. By Jorge Barba

We live in a society that values and rewards efficiency over creativity. Yet, the tasks that lead to efficiency are slowly being taken over by robots and bots leaving us humans to do things that are not repetitive in nature. As this happens, we’ll have more time to do what leads to creativity: daydreaming.

Embedding Innovation into Your Organization

Apr-10-17. By Michael Graber

It takes two factors to make innovation real at an organization: concepts and culture. Work on both at the same time and the rest will emerge as a by-product of the process.

AI, ML will Shatter Moore's Law in rapid-Fire Pace of Innovation

Apr-07-17. By Tom Sullivan

As the next generation of both patients and caregivers – including clinicians, doctors, nurses, specialists, even executives and administrators – starts taking a foothold in the healthcare workforce, hospitals looking for a first-mover advantage already know that AI is on the verge of becoming a critical component across the entire organization, and not just IT.

Get Social with Your Innovation

Apr-04-17. By Braden Kelley

If your organization has lost the courage to move innovation to its center and has gotten stuck in a project – focused, reactive innovation approach, then now is your chance to regain the higher ground and to refocus, not on having an innovation success but on building an innovation capability. Are you up to the challenge?

Innovation Evolution

Apr-04-17. By Jeffrey Phillips

I've developed a five step evolution for innovation in most organizations. With tongue firmly planted in cheek I'll relate these evolutionary steps to famous Hollywood productions. Perhaps you'll recognize your organization in one of these phases.

Sanford Researchers Create Deep Learning Algorithm that could Boost Drug Development

Apr-03-17. By Taylor Kubota

Artificial intelligence algorithms rely on training that involves thousands to trillions of data points. This means artificial intelligence doesn’t work all that well in situations where there is very little data, such as drug development. Vijay Pande, professor of chemistry at Stanford University, and his students thought that a fairly new kind of deep learning, called one-shot learning, that requires only a small number of data points might be a solution to that low-data problem.

Innovation's Degrees of Connectivity, Interactivity and Sharing

Apr-02-17. By Paul Hobcraft

We often forget it is our people that really make innovation work. They determine the ideas, drive these forward to deliver them as new innovation concepts into the world. People connect the fragmented pieces or dots within innovation from being random and intangible, into being explicit and tangible.

Innovation by Design: What is it and Why does it Matter?

Mar-30-17. By Phil McKinney

Innovation is what drives the world forward. It is what heals illnesses, protects individuals from danger, and makes life easier, more efficient, and more enjoyable. However, innovation does not just happen. It takes a catalyst, and one of the most robust catalysts for innovation is design. It moves an idea smoothly along its journey from a simple insight to a tangible, marketable product or service. Design provides the focus and structure that innovation so badly needs.

The Age of Everything: The Power of Big Data and IoT

Mar-28-17. By Aashish Kalra

The internet has revolutionised a lot of aspects in our lives; it has not only made several things accessible, but also changed the way we do many things. IoT or the Internet of Things is beyond just connectivity. It is a connection that is mobile, virtual and instantaneous and which is going to make things in our lives ‘smart’. IoT, coined by Kevin Ashton, revolves around increased machine-to-machine communication built on cloud computing and network of sensors that gather data.

Frustrated by Big Data? Harvard Professor says it's Justified

Mar-27-17. By Bill Siwicki

The American Medical Association’s CEO James Madara, MD, famously called digital health the “snake oil of the early 21st century.” Rather than improving care and boosting professional satisfaction, many digital tools, he wrote, don’t work that well, and actually impede care, confuse patients and waste everyone’s time. Has data become a “four-letter word”?

Is Blockchain the Solution for Healthcare?

Mar-27-17. By Aditya Rana

EHR is one of the most sensitive pieces of information about a person and such data can wreck havoc in their lives if nefarious elements are able to access it. Blockchain solves the issue with secure storage of this data. Since there is only one source of truth for the data, each node (healthcare provider) in the system derives from it and stores a local copy with it. Each trusted node has a secret private key and a public key that acts as an openly visible identifier. A patient’s private key would be required to access the relevant information from the blockchain.

The Problem of Understanding in Machine Intelligence

Mar-26-17. By Mark Skilton

“Does the machine understand?” is highlighted in any current generation consumer machine learning algorithm such as an online chatbot, a translator function in your mobile phone or home speech assistant is that the current natural language processing consists of largely transactional one-way responses. It is perhaps a similar question that Alan Turing raised in the introduction of his 1950 paper “Can machines think?”. Yet “understanding” something within a context could mean different things to the act of “thinking” both narrowly or more broadly depending on the problem or frame space.

How to use Creative Thinking in Business

Mar-26-17. By Lynda Shaw

What comes into your mind when you think of creativity? An artist painting beautiful works of art? A designer with imagination and skills for contemporary architecture? An original thinker of the type lauded as a genius? Of course, creativity is all of these, but creative people also think of valuable and practical ways of doing things. They solve problems on a regular basis by employing creative thought. That is the kind of creativity that is exceedingly helpful in business and an incredible transferable skill for anyone who can master it.

9 Ways your Business can Plan for Artificial Intelligence

Mar-25-17. By Chris Stock

While you may not necessarily need to make artificial intelligence the core of your operations right now, most experts agree that AI's role and importance in business will only continue to grow. Nine members from Forbes Technology Council each shared a way that companies can begin preparing for AI right now.

How TiVo Confronted the Disruptor's Dilemma

Mar-23-17. By Matt Palmquist

Disruptors face a fundamental paradox. To survive and grow, they need the support of the very incumbents whose industry they seek to revolutionize. After all, a TiVo box wouldn’t have been much good without a compatible TV or cable system to hook up to. But established firms have every reason to resist or even retaliate against an upstart firm that threatens their way of doing business.

What Makes a High-Performing Team? The Answer May Surprise You

Mar-22-17. By MIT Sloan Executive Education

What sets high-performing teams apart? Strong leadership? Skilled team members? Shared goals? Maybe. But what if we told you that one of the key drivers of team performance was how many women were on the team? Numerous studies continue to show the value that gender diversity has proven in boosting productivity and the bottom line within all levels of a company.

Innovation is About Finding and Discovering

Mar-20-17. By Jeffrey Phillips

The recurring theme of failing to innovate in a corporate setting has more to do with the failure to find things and discover things. I'd like to address what you need to find and discover, because if we can name the barriers or challenges, we may be able to eliminate them and accelerate innovation.

4 Ways Startups Can Harness Innovation and Disruption

Mar-20-17. By Shellye Archambeau

I believe we’re moving towards a future where financial services and healthcare organizations will not be known as financial services and healthcare organizations any longer, but as technology companies. These technological disruptions are upping the stakes on the playing field, making it more important for companies to stay on top of their game, and to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Harnessing the Secret Structure of Innovation

Mar-20-17. By Martin Reeves, Thomas Fink, Ramiro Palma, Johann Harnoss

In an era of low growth, companies need innovation more than ever. Leaders can draw on a large body of theory and precedent in pursuit of innovation, ranging from advice on choosing the right spaces to optimizing the product development process to establishing a culture of creativity. In practice, though, innovation remains more of an art than a science. But it doesn’t need to be.

4 Ways to Celebrate Risk Taking

Mar-10-17. By Mike Brown

While an innovation strategy that suggests throwing a party to celebrate a failed idea seems outrageous, the message from the pharma companies is that it’s smart business. Even if your innovation success rate is dramatically higher, motivating employees to embrace risks vital for innovating can be challenging. Let’s suspend judgement and see the innovation strategy decisions certain pharma players are introducing to motivate taking risks.

Companies Don't Innovate, Markets Do

Mar-07-17. By Jorge Barba

One of the reasons big companies can’t innovate is they grow inert and can’t match the dynamism of the market. Markets are dynamic, companies are not. It’s very hard for companies to match the velocity, variance and selection of markets. As a business leader, a good question to ask yourself is: Are we changing as fast as the world is changing?

Turning the Innovation Tables

Mar-06-17. By Jeffrey Phillips

If AAPR and UNC can get 100 people to show up for pizza and soda for several hours of their own time to work on solving a problem, why can't businesses do a better job sponsoring innovation and tapping into the wealth of ideas and energy of their own people?

Reflecting on our Innovation Practices

Feb-24-17. By Paul Hobcraft

Innovation has been rapidly changing and much of its basics have been swallowed up by some newly defining frameworks that have raced up to the top of the innovation agenda. They have driven much of our thinking and reacting. It is right that we all respond to these but we often forget much of the rest of what innovation needs to be built upon.

The Uncertainty Advantage

Feb-22-17. By Karen Avery, Gary Lynch

The uncertainty advantage is an approach in which corporate leaders leverage disruptive change by making targeted, bold moves toward new market opportunities. It's a strategy that compels managers to perceive the unknown as a market differentiator and an opportunity to unleash innovative solutions that appeal to customers, investors, strategic partners, regulators, and competitors.

What Increases Innovation Capability and General Performance in Organizations

Feb-19-17. By David Wilkinson

A large-scale study has just been published in the Chinese Language Journal of Quality. In effect what this study is showing are the close connections between having a learning culture, a concern with creativity and innovation capability and the performance of the organization. This is strongly suggesting that efforts to promote and develop a learning culture and develop innovation capability will enhance the performance of the organization.

The Future of Innovation: Where Creativity Meets Data

Feb-16-17. By Phil McKinney

The utilization of big data is the future. The companies that are embracing this are the ones that are thriving and creating truly game-changing innovations. In fact, 65 percent of the top innovators are either using social networks or big data to mine for ideas. Apple, Tesla, Netflix, Google, and more all know that it’s their consumers, unwittingly through their data, who will give them the next earth-shattering innovation. And because they know this and indulge it, they consistently stay at the top of their industries.

Innovators Will Win with Seamless Experiences

Feb-15-17. By Jeffrey Phillips

Innovators often create technologies or products, which have interesting capabilities or features, but rarely do they think through the actual use of the products and understand how they fit in with other products, services, infrastructure, channels and data that exist in a customer's life. These new products are often interesting but not "seamless" - customers encounter challenges when attempting to use these new solutions in their everyday settings.

Building Differentiating Capabilities for Innovation

Feb-09-17. By Paul Hobcraft

We spend far too much time copying others and not deliberately setting about building our own ‘distinct’ capabilities and capacities to innovate, building the necessary building blocks through our own learning experiences. These are always shaped by the context and content of your innovation, the organization’s position, its resources, commitment and leadership appetite for innovation. Each of our choices takes up on our own evolutionary paths, we can never truly understand other ones because we never really “walk in someone else’s shoes” Copying only renders us the same, not a great ‘winning position in highly competitive market conditions, is it?

Crowdscanning: The Future of Open Innovation and Artificial Intelligence

Feb-08-17. By Alessandro Di Fiore, Simon Schneider

Open innovation will take on a new meaning as AI will scan internal and open data to find the best ideas. A.I. will replace up to 45 per cent of jobs within 20 years. There is a lot of talk about how such intelligent systems and chatbots will eliminate low level jobs, customer service and repetitive tasks. Let’s review, as examples, some actual practices where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already changing the way jobs are performed.

4 Myths about Creative Breakthroughs You Need to Ignore

Feb-05-17. By Greg Satell

Probably the most persistent myth about innovation is that it is the product of a lone genius who experiences a magical moment of epiphany and changes the world. This can be incredibly appealing because it implies that, if we are one of the chosen, a great idea will come to us in a flash and the job will be done. Like unicorns, the Eureka! Moment is mostly a myth.

What Will Happen When Everything is Connected?

Feb-02-17. By Jeff Loehr

Soon everything will be connected and addressable — from thermostats to refrigerators to doorknobs. This will enable automation, even bigger data and new technology that is currently unfathomable. But this is just the beginning. Everything means everything and that includes us.

Both Inside, Outside Ideas Are Core Of ‘Open Innovation’

Jan-27-17. By Samuel Greengard

Open innovation–introduced by Henry Chesbrough, an adjunct professor and faculty director of the Center for Open Innovation at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley–focuses on a more open and collaborative framework for developing products, services, and more. By plugging in outside ideas along with internal thinking, it’s possible to take innovation to a new and better level. In many cases, open innovation intersects with startups, business incubators, joint ventures, spin-offs, and even crowdsourcing.

Smart Ideas Need Smart Collaborations

Jan-25-17. By Christina Gerakiteys

Ever felt the electricity of the group in an idea building session? That’s what true collaboration feels like. At the end of the session, no one individual feels like they own the idea/solution/concept. It has resulted from the contributions and building-block approach of the whole.

Three Words That Will Alert You To Opportunities for Innovation and Growth

Jan-20-17. By Michael Plishka

These three words, “I don’t understand…” alert us to niches. When designing products and services, we must play in those niches . And as we’ve seen, those niches can be comprised of millions and millions of people.

How This Guy Makes a Living by Stealing Other People's Ideas

Jan-18-17. By Nick Skillicorn

The Fidget Cube is a small device designed for people who often fidget. It really resonated with people, going viral and raising more than $6 million on Kickstarter. It was a blockbuster success, apart from one small problem. Because it was very obvious how successful the campaign was, other people could see that this product was going to be a huge success, with lots of demand. And this showed other people who didn’t have the idea itself that if they could get the same product to the audience first, then they could profit from this demand.

What the 20th Century's Greatest Invention Can Teach You About Business Ideas

Jan-17-17. By Serhat Pala

The guy who invented the first machine that pre-sliced bread in 1928, Otto Rohwedder, had a degree in optometry and worked in the jewelry industry. How did he come up with a machine that would revolutionize the baking industry when he wasn't even involved with it? Simple. He was presented with a series of dots and he simply drew the lines to connect them. The good news is that you can do this, too.

Here's Why Emotions are the Secret Sauce of Innovation

Jan-17-17. By Ed Hess

When I ask those business leaders what they’re doing to create more and better innovation, they usually answer in two ways: they are hiring better people and/or they are putting in place better processes. When I ask them what they’re doing to emotionally enable more innovation in their organizations, they usually look at me like I’m crazy or respond “what do you mean?”

Signal versus Noise

Jan-16-17. By Jeffrey Phillips

Many executives have concluded that innovation is important and must become a cornerstone of their business strategies. However, they have little understanding of how innovation works. To them, innovation must seem like magic pixie dust: sprinkle it around, encourage it and new innovative products will spring to life. So, they take to the lecterns and advocate for innovation, but don't change deliverables or goals or investments. So people hear about innovation but don't see the requisite change in risk attitudes or investments, so they become conflicted. In this case, innovation is NOISE introduced to a consistent SIGNAL that is business as usual.

The Future of Innovation Core Lies at the Edge

Jan-16-17. By Paul Hobcraft

The tenet of each organization in the past has been in protecting its core. This is changing as the very core is changing to adapt to more volatile conditions, changing landscapes and more disruption. The core is not so much in what we know or own but in what we can learn from that surrounds our core and this is increasingly found at the edges and externally.

Competitive Innovation Could Put You Out Of Business. Here's How To Innovate Your Way To Safety

Jan-13-17. By Micah Solomon

Whatever your line of business, you're never invulnerable to the arrival of innovative competitors. So, the question is this: what should you do between now, when you’re sitting snug and happy, to the moment when some competitor starts eating away at your business?

Mathematical Model Reveals the Patterns of How Innovations Arise

Jan-13-17. By Emerging Technology

Innovation is one of the driving forces in our world. The constant creation of new ideas and their transformation into technologies and products forms a powerful cornerstone for 21st century society. Indeed, many universities and institutes, along with regions such as Silicon Valley, cultivate this process. And yet the process of innovation is something of a mystery.

Understanding the Innovation Economy and its Impact on Our World

Jan-12-17. By Phil McKinney

It is no longer enough for a business to lean on their core competencies, making incremental improvements to maintain an edge on the competition. In order to be a true leader in any industry, a business must focus on creating killer innovations.

Innovation Confidence Course

Jan-06-17. By Jeffrey Phillips

Young marines are put through an arduous obstacle course to prepare them for obstacles they may encounter in warfare, but the purpose of the course is to build confidence and teamwork. In the same way, corporate innovators should expect their ideas to compete for time, attention and resources - a corporate obstacle course - but they need to know how to guide ideas through this course effectively.

Get a Grip on Innovation - 10 Question, 20 Minutes

Jan-04-17. By Gregg Graley

Ten questions for you to focus on assessing the state of your organization’s innovation program. Twenty minutes to learn something and take action steps. If you think your current program is working, non-existent, or just a disaster — you will learn something by taking this quick survey.

Building the Core Competencies for Innovation

Dec-28-16. By Paul Hobcraft

For me, the bedrock of innovation is built upon competencies, capabilities, and capacities and all these involve people as well as technology. They go hand in hand in our connected world.

The World Is Not Enough: Innovation, Quality, Safety, and Sustainability

Dec-22-16. By Doug Collins

We seek in our organizations transformation. We aspire to become more agile. We want to be able to change more readily and rapidly than the Digital Age demands. If we stay ahead of the curve, then we control our own destiny.

What Makes Innovations Sticky and Contagious?

Dec-18-16. By Michael Plishka

Innovations get adopted when people’s paths cross. And they need to be sticky and contagious. Put them out there so they’re easy to try. The best ones end up letting you see the world and yourself a little more clearly.

Innovation Isn't Slowing Down. In fact, a New Era Is About To Begin

Dec-12-16. By Greg Satell

The truth is that innovation is never a single event. First, scientists need to discover new phenomena, like Fleming's early work with antibiotics. Then those phenomena need to be engineered into a viable solution to an important problem. Finally, the new technology needs to be be adopted by the marketplace. This process of discovery, engineering and transformation usually takes about 30 years. If we really want to understand what lies ahead, we need to start with discovery.

The Final Key to Innovation: Understanding the Law of Execution

Dec-08-16. By Phil McKinney

Innovation can sometimes seem totally intangible. It’s easy enough to come up with an idea that you believe will change the world, or at least your industry. It is putting that idea into action that becomes another ballgame. Developing a real product or service that can be sold or put into practice is a daunting task.

Innovation Ain't What it Used to Be

Dec-06-16. By Jeffrey Phillips

As a new technology matures and people become familiar with its uses, and the technology is simplified and becomes part of a solution, more and more people adopt the technology. Any student of history can tell you this, and we believe it is a natural order - almost a requirement.

The Perfect Conditions for Entering A New Innovation Era in 2017

Dec-02-16. By Paul Hobcraft

So if there was ever a time to clear the existing innovation agenda and rework the entire space for innovating, it is about to become the pressing reality as we enter into 2017. We are moving from diverging into one of converging, we are at a changeover point for innovation.

How to Create a BHAG That Will Motivate Your Team and Drive Innovation

Dec-01-16. By Phil McKinney

Businesses that would like to lead their industry don’t just need any goal, they need a Big Hairy Audacious Goal—a BHAG. To create this type of goal, though, a company needs to abide by a few rules.

Leap Innovation: A Strategy to Get Ahead and Stay Relevant

Nov-29-16. By Shanta Yapa

Leap innovation is a new way of looking at innovations in your organization. Leap innovation describes the importance of switching the innovation focus between product, process and business model innovations in order to get ahead and stay relevant.

Four Lessons for Silicon Valley from Its First Startup

Nov-28-16. By Peter Burrows

In business as in life, nothing lasts forever—including the growth that high-tech juggernauts such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook have enjoyed in recent years. So when the growth inevitably slows, how can these companies manage the downshifting as adeptly as possible?

How to Make Sure Prototypes are Useful, Even When They Fail

Nov-28-16. By Michael Plishka

It worked flawlessly for 4 minutes and 25 seconds… And then it didn’t. The VP smiled and said, “I get the idea.” After getting through the embarrassment of the failure, the team learned what went wrong, and got to work testing variations of the failed component. The new versions didn’t fail, and the product went on to eventually make millions…

Without Experimentation There is No Innovation

Nov-24-16. By Jorge Barba

Established organizations want to better their operations, find a new way to go to market, increase customer loyalty or any other positive outcome that betters the business; with a predictable strategy. But better and different outcomes are not achieved in a straight line; chaos is the norm.

Innovation Inside the Box: A Systematic Approach to Link Innovation and Marketing Strategy

Nov-21-16. By Drew Boyd

The thesis of this talk is that Creativity is a skill, not a gift. This practical advice starts with a promise from Boyd: “I’m going to teach you how to use your brain to innovate anyway you want.”

How Companies Can Stay Ahead With Rapid Innovation

Nov-18-16. By Mike Nolan

Business leaders tell us they feel great urgency to respond to rising market disruption with innovation, but knowing where and how to start can be daunting. A recent KPMG study of more than 400 U.S.-based CEOs found that 85 percent don’t believe they have the right amount of time to strategize about disruption and innovation.

Innovation Fitness: Measuring It to Maximize It

Nov-14-16. By Laszlo Gyorffy

To gauge the innovation capabilities of an enterprise, it is helpful to apply a systematic method for assessing the quality of, and the relationship between the various and distinct dimensions that drive all functions of the enterprise. As with a sports team, simply having talent does not ensure success. It is the quality of the team work which ultimately elevates or hinders the level of their play.

Understanding the Law of the BHAG and What it Means for Innovation

Nov-10-16. By Phil McKinney

Hubbard proved to the world that setting a seemingly insurmountable goal is the way you achieve greatness. In today’s world, companies achieve innovation in a similar way. It is called the Law of the BHAG. By setting a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, organizations are able to provide their workforce with a singular vision and passion, one that gets the wheels of innovation turning.

Group Chat Emerges as the Hottest Thing in IT

Nov-06-16. By Christopher Mims

Forget artificial intelligence. Forget the cloud. Forget everything you think you know about what will separate the winners and losers among business-technology vendors. The defining turf war of the next decade will be group chat.

No Idea is an Island

Nov-04-16. By Jeffrey Phillips

This post is meant to point out the reasons behind a rather uncomfortable fact: even good ideas often fail in the marketplace. This skips right over the outright failure of bad ideas and bad products, of which there are legion. But why do good ideas and products seem to have such a high failure rate?

Innovation is a Second Language

Oct-30-16. By Tina Seelig

This past week I had a revelation… Innovation is hard because creativity is easy. Innovation is a second language that enables us to move beyond the first right answers to come up with unique solutions. It requires us to stretch our imagination, to reframe the problem, and to challenge assumptions. This is hard work!

8 Ways to Launch a Successful Digital Platform

Oct-30-16. By MIT

The digital platform—connecting people, organizations, and resources in an interactive ecosystem through technology—is taking the business world by storm. The platform model powers many of today's biggest and most disruptive companies, like Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber. How can you begin to build a user base for a two-sided market when each side depends on the prior existence of the other?

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