Customer Innovation
Surveys by IBM, The Council on Competitiveness, and Business Week/Boston Consulting Group produced important findings on U.S. industry innovation and competitiveness and the drivers which fuel the desire to stay ahead of the game. There were also some surprising reflections on the roles assigned to customers.
Don’t Cut Innovation
When tough economic conditions mandate various types of expense reductions, apply the principle of Lean Thinking to your innovation projects. Finding it necessary to downsize various aspects of your company’s operations usually results in quite painful resource reductions in people, physical assets, and eliminating slow or non-moving products. We suggest you also take a very close look at the various product and/or service projects currently under development or at the ideation stage.
Foundation for Innovation
For a successful enterprise, innovation is a key element that initiates and then sustains continued forward movement. It is not achieved without careful thought, planning, and execution. Successful, consistent innovation requires its own framework, structures and support systems. Innovation works where it is designed into an organization’s fiber. This paper discusses some of these “innovation by design considerations.
Innovation Challenge
Highly creative people tend to believe that innovation is the result of a mind-set that cannot be duplicated, and of intellectual adventure that defies replication. In order for competitive organizations to thrive, a process and management philosophy must also be in place that provides the foundation for channeling creativity into sustainable market leadership.
Innovation Culture
“Overarching cultural frameworks and strategic guideposts help establish the foundation for an innovative culture.” This quote is the most significant key finding from the eye-opening study on innovation best practices done by The APQC. This paper looks at that study.
Managing for Innovation
Innovation is critical to the competitive success of virtually all companies. Whether you’re on the leading edge, or following an imitation strategy, innovation is the only process for sustainable competitive advantage. Creativity and innovation are often used synonymously . This is unfortunate because there is much more to the innovation process than just creativity. This paper explores the issues in more detail.