Innovation in the News

Spigit Adds App to Manage Idea-generating Competitions

PC World (March 9, 2010) - Spigit, an enterprise collaboration software vendor focused on idea generation and management, has developed a product for automating contests and competitions involving a company's customers. ContentSpigit can be used in conjunction with the company's innovation management platform or as a stand-alone application. It costs US$5,000 per month for one contest site and an unlimited number of users.

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Don't automatically throw away failures

GetFreshMinds.com (March 9, 2010) - In invention, there will always be failures. Substances won't mix as planned, or a resulting substance will come out with very different properties than expected. For people who are trying to invent a substance that achieves a very specific goal, it's very tempting to throw those failures out and start again from scratch. Which makes sense from a business perspective. But from an innovation standpoint, that might be a big mistake. Failures can become wildly successful if they are just put in the right area.

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Why smaller companies should embrace open innovation

15inno.com (March 9, 2010) - Open innovation at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) presents both great opportunities and great challenges. Forming open innovation relationships can give a growing enterprise access to resources that might normally are beyond their reach with the potential for greatly speeding up time to market. At the same time, working with larger companies is not without its perils.

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Red flags and warnings on open innovation at Corning

15inno.com (March 4, 2010) - Some companies have more difficulties implementing open innovation than others. Now, you might wonder if it is possible to tell which companies that have such difficulties and you might even wonder if your company falls into this category. A recent visit to the Corning corporate website sent up big red flags to Stefan Lindegaard, who found a strong focus on the company's long history of research and development. This seems to fly in the face of market trends, which emphasize open and global innovation.

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Innovation and the Future

Innovate on Purpose (March 9, 2010) - It would seem logical that innovators would be concerned about the future, given that spotting new opportunities or markets before your competitors would provide an innovation advantage. However, Jeffrey Phillips is constantly surprised by how little investigation there is in many firms about the future and the likely scenarios and outcomes. Whether your firm is an innovator, or a fast follower, or is simply trying to get by, understanding the likely future provides insights that can make your firm more profitable and more competitive.

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Where Is Your White Space? Identifying Opportunities for Disruptive Innovation

InnoSight (March 3, 2010) - As a metaphor, white space is at once ubiquitous and frustratingly ambiguous. There may be as many definitions circulating as there are business thinkers. Some people define it as a place where there's no competition. Others as an entirely new market. Still others use it to refer to gaps in existing markets or product lines. For all its ambiguity, though, white space is undoubtedly a metaphor about opportunity; different thinkers define it differently because they take varying approaches to capturing opportunity. In that spirit, Mark Johnson offers up another way to look at white space: to view it as an internal signpost, as a way to map your company's ability to address new opportunities or threats.

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How you frame your challenges changes everything

LiteMind (March 3, 2010) - The way you frame a problem profoundly influences the solutions you get. The same problem, when seen from a different angle can lead to a directly opposite interpretation. Skillfully framing problems is paramount for better problem solving and decision making. On the flip side, it's too easy to fall into thinking traps when it comes to framing. Let's look at one of these traps and explore some ideas on how to overcome it.

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10 Ways to Achieve Growth Through Innovation: Accenture study

TMCnet.com (March 9, 2010) - Accenture has completed new research and analysis about the state of innovation with more than 900 companies in eleven different industries. The research sought to gain insights about management perceptions of innovation processes and investments. Based on this research and analysis, here are 10 actions companies in the business technology and other industries examined should consider taking to improve their innovation performance.

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BYU study looks at how innovation happens

The Salt Lake Tribune (March 8, 2010) - Ever wonder how Michael Dell came up with the idea to create his own computer company? Or how Pierre Omidyar dreamed up the online marketplace eBay? Or how Jeff Bezos came up with the bold moves needed to develop Amazon.com into one of America's most successful companies? After more than six years of research, Brigham Young University professor Jeff Dyer is convinced that these visionary business leaders and others didn't start out completely hard-wired for creativity and innovation.

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Learning innovation skills and best practices

Innovate on Purpose (March 8, 2010) - There's a difference between knowing about innovation and having experience doing innovation. Just as author Jeffrey Phillips doesn't compare himself to Lance Armstrong although they both ride bikes, there are skills and knowledge that are manifest in people who lead effective innovation programs that may not always be manifest in your organization. These skills can be learned through training and through careful exercise within your organization, but it is dangerous to presume that people who have an interest in innovation possess the skills and best practices to carry out innovation efforts.

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