The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Enabling Organization
The continuous technology-driven unbundling of markets and the rising complexity and unpredictability of our socio-economic systems are pushing us to redesign a theory of organizing that works for the 21st century. Such a theory, as Simone Cicero shared recently on our virtual stage, is based on transforming organizations into networks of loosely…
How Executives Develop Herd Immunity to Innovation
How did the terms “brainstorming” and later on “design thinking”, become synonymous to “ideation” or “innovation”? This is a strange phenomenon, made doubly puzzling by the fact that both BS and DT are respectively pretty useless and not-so-helpful when it comes to driving people, teams and companies to break their usual ways of thinking and…
The Disruptive Leadership Report: A New Playbook for Leaders of the 4th Industrial Revolution
We are in times of unprecedented disruption and change – climate change, the global pandemic and rapid, seismic shifts in technology are reshaping how we work, live and consume at a pace we can barely comprehend. Social and political upheaval are forcing businesses to question their own role in building societies that work for everyone and their…
Why Does it Take a Crisis to Unlock Innovation
Why do innovation efforts fail and what is different about innovation in a crisis that enables new ideas to launch at speed? What are the key attributes of a crisis that we should leverage during non-crisis times? During our recent Innov8rs Connect on Strategy, Leadership & Governance Domhnaill Hernon (VP, Innovation, Strategy, Creativity,…
Innovation Ability Predicts Growth
Across the board, innovation efforts aren’t yet yielding enough results. The missing piece is the human aspect of innovation – the raw innovation ability or innovation talent of the workforce. A snippet from Suzan Briganti’ session during the Innov8rs Connect Unconference, June-September 2020. To watch the full session recording, join Innov8rs…
How To Be An Effective Rebel
Francesca Gino is an award-winning behavioral scientist, researcher, and author. She works as a professor at Harvard Business School and has been named one of the top 50 most influential management thinkers. Her 2018 book, Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life, has created a buzz throughout the business world. In her…
The Five Habits of High-Impact Intrapreneurs
Intrapreneurs who try to make change from the inside out are often met with resistance, which either makes them give up and get in line or burn out and leave the company. Challenging the status quo with disruptive ideas requires balancing the rebel spirit with diplomatic tactics. These diplomatic rebels are successful in inspiring change because…
Building a Capability for Strategic Innovation
Strategic innovation is an organizational capability the fuels growth and renewal of mature organizations. It operates in a context of high uncertainty and ambiguity, and therefore requires different managerial and executional approaches than those that drive the core business. Companies initiate strategic innovation on a sporadic basis but so…
How The Most Innovative Companies Empower Their Employees to Work on Their Own Ideas
Most companies have under-utilized one of their most important assets – the ideas inside their employees’ heads. Frontline employees by virtue of working with customers and products every day are bombarded with insights that can have a significant impact on the company’s bottom line. However, in most companies, these employees don’t have a voice…
Lean Scaleup: Set Your Corporate Ventures Up For Success
Corporate innovators must start with four things that help to adapt to budget cuts, to set up the company for post-crisis growth and to maintain corporate innovation’s role within the company: Understand the “new normal” Spot the opportunities coming from changes in customer needs, customer journeys, shifts in the channels and from new business…
Ignoring the Future Won’t Make it Go Away: Learning How to do Business in the Era of Macrotrends and the Next Abnormal
This is a guest post by Ken Tencer, CEO at Spyder Works, as originally published here. I think we can all agree, it’s been quite a year. From a global pandemic to a rapidly changing work environment and economic uncertainty, the changes we’ve seen this year have come to affect us all. In one way or another, we were all blindsided by COVID-19. But…
Be(come)ing Ambidextrous: What Works and What Doesn't
Much has been written (and argued) about "the Ambidextrous Organization" since the early 2000's when Charles O'Reilly and Michael Tushman found that ambidextrous organizations were significantly more successful in launching breakthrough products or services. The idea makes perfect sense: ambidextrous organizations separate their new, exploratory…