Innovation Weblog

New report outlines how to develop business models for service innovation

Peer Insight, a consulting firm that has done pioneering research in the field of service innovation, recently published a new report that provides a practical framework for exploring potential business models in this area. Entitled The Six Secrets of Business Model Exploration, it outlines six methods that innovation practitioners can use to increase your odds of success in formulating your firm's service strategy.

This report is a free download, but you must register to access it. I think it contains some valuable insights, and I recommend that you read it.

Five pillars of sustainable innovation culture

What does it take to create a sustainable innovation culture? James Todhunter, writing in his Innovating to Win blog, explores five factors that innovation leaders need to keep in mind, in the areas of:

1. Executive leadership,
2. Skill development,
3. Innovation infrastructure,
4. Developing a network for innovation mentoring and facilitation, and
5. Internal promotion of the firm's innovation successes.

James intends this post as an overview; he plans to dig into each factor individually in the near future. This is a brief but worthwhile read, and I look forward to reading his posts as he explores them further.

What is incubation, and how can you utilize it to be more creative?

Paul Williams, in his excellent Think for a Change blog, recently wrote a post the defines what creative incubation is, and how you can put it to work on your ideas.

Most creativity books and experts tend to focus on utilizing different methods and techniques to generate ideas. But incubation is just as important, because it leverages the incredible power of your subconscious mind. Paul describes how this works, using several common examples.

"Simply understanding how your subconscious mind works provides you with a critical advantage in problem solving," he explains. "Once you understand how the process works, you can create the right environment for the incubation process."

Paul then shares six tips for creating a rich environment for incubation. If you're looking for ways to be more creative, I would definitely read this blog post!

New Innovation in Practice Blog tackles the practitioner's perspective

One thing that has been lacking in the innovation blogosphere during the last few years is a practitioner's perspective. Drew Boyd, Director of Marketing Mastery for a division of Johnson & Johnson, aims to remedy that with his Innovation in Practice: A Fortune 100 Perspective Blog. Recent posts include these gems:

• Innovation behavior - Top organizations drive growth by nurturing and investing in innovation as a competency.  One way organizations make it real is by including innovation within formal competency models.
• Innovation through Co-opetition - How do you innovate a business model?
• Choosing innovation consultants - Choosing an innovation consultant is challenging for several reasons.

This blog should be on your "must-read" list - it's that good!

The 100 lamest excuses for not innovating

Mitch Ditkoff recently published another "top 100" list in his Heart of Innovation blog. This one contains the top 100 lamest excuses for not innovating. And a surprising pattern emerges when you look at them more closely.

As an innovation consultant to a wide variety of organizations for over 20 years, Mitch has seen and heard it all, and decided to create a list of the excuses that he has heard over and over again. Here are some of my favorites:

• I can’t get the funding
• We're not in the kind of business that is likely to innovate
• There's too much bureaucracy here to get anything done
• My career path will be jeopardized if this doesn't fly
• It will take too long to get results
• I won't be able to get the ear of senior leadership
• Our company is going through too many changes right now
• We need more data
• I'm not skillful at building business cases
• I'm not sure how to begin
• We need to benchmark the competition

Mitch acknowledges that many of the excuses on this list may in fact be reality at certain organizations. But he emphasizes that just because something is part of the current reality at your employer, that doesn't mean that it must always be that way.

Mitch challenges the reader to go for it anyway, even if these hurdles really exist: "Real innovators challenge excuses. Real innovators challenge the status quo. They do not concede to current reality. They find a way over, around or through whatever obstacle is in their way - whether that obstacle is the lack of funding or the assumption that there is a lack of funding."

Mitch closes his post with an interesting exercise, which you'll have to read his post in order to learn more about.

What I found to be particularly surprising about this list is the number of times the pronoun "I" appears. Many of the excuses that Mitch has documented are individual limitations, either real or perceived, like these: “I'm already juggling way too many projects,” “I'm not good at presenting ideas,” “I won't be able to get enough resources” and “I don't have enough clout to get things done” are just a few examples. Clearly, one of the biggest hurdles to innovation is our individual perceptions of it!

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