Six Ways to Improve Innovation Through Culture Change
What does it take to become a truly innovative organisation? There are still organisations that see innovation as a function, assigning a small group of people the impossible task to transform their business. They then might embark on an overly ambitious transformation programme that fails or loses momentum with little measurable outcome. Wazoku,…
How Three Top Telcos Are Turning Disruption Into Opportunity
The telecommunications industry is facing major disruption. That presents big challenges - and opportunities - for telcos. So how are telcos transforming themselves? At Innov8rs Madrid, we heard from three top telecommunications companies, all of whom take a very different approach to innovation. Telefonica: Leveraging Data For Bigger Impact “It's…
Want to Win in the Digital Age?
What can established brands do to move at the speed of startups? Read this article by Thor Ernstsson, Founder and CEO at Alpha, the on-demand insights platform (alphahq.com), about how teams at Northwestern Mutual and XO Group put the customer at the center of what they’re building. Here’s what successful product executives recommend you do.…
Beyond The Sticky Notes: Aligning Innovation with Corporate Strategy
When we’re trying to innovate within a large corporation, it can often feel like we’re in a foreign country where no-one speaks our language. No matter how hard we try to communicate, our message gets lost in translation. Frustrating? For sure. But as Tendayi Viki explained at Innov8rs Madrid, the problem lies with...well, us. And this became…
Innovation Management Platforms: For Some Industries, In-House Is Better Than The Cloud
Cloud apps are great. They’re quick to set up, they’re scalable, and generally don’t require huge capital expenditure to set up. But if you’re in an industry where watertight security is imperative - government, financial services, pharma - the risk may not be worth the reward. So when does it make sense to choose an in-house solution over a…
The Innovation Instinct: Survival of the Fittest in Nature and Business
Nature has long inspired visionaries to look beyond existing ways of living and thinking. Many notable engineers, architects, designers, and other creators have discovered unique adaptations between a species and its environment, and applied these insights to drive innovation across a huge variety of inventions, products, services, and……
Obsessed with Your Ratings? The Power of Open Crowdsourcing
Netflix Black Mirror series episode “Nosedive” is a perfect depiction of what happens when we take an extreme approach to building a life filled with empty gestures to elicit feedback or criticism. Being obsessed with scores and ratings in of itself is not the solution. Without focus, purpose and context, actions will not yield any meaningful…
A Sneak Peek Into Whirlpool’s Innovation Machine
Let’s have a look how we can move beyond today’s obstacles, and future-proof corporate innovation, and our organizations in general. The single biggest threat facing organizations today is their inability to innovate, experiment consistently and cost effectively. Ludwig will examine the 5 current challenges that plague corporate innovators and how…
Why You Shouldn't Innovate like Google
This is a guest post by Dr. Amantha Imber, as previously published here. I spoke at an innovation conference recently that had some big name speakers and companies. A leader from Airbnb talked about how his team had applied design principles to improve the inclusiveness of their innovations. An ex-Apple executive discussed the big mistakes…
Problem Solving: Your Problem May Be Your Most Valuable Asset
This is a guest post by Rachel Audigé, as previously published here. We all have ways of solving problems but we sometimes get stuck on trying to identify THE problem or tackling the root cause that may be unsolvable. Inventive thinking should bring huge degrees of freedom and more counter-intuitive ideas. This is an approach to solving problems…
Has Your Innovation Program Jumped The Shark?
Innovation programs and systems are launched with a lot of fanfare... ... but the sizzle will fizzle unless you properly nurture your innovation program and the underlying policies, processes and systems you use to help deliver better innovation results. Has your Innovation Program Jumped the Shark? How can you avoid this from happening? “Jumping…
Innovation Isn’t about Strategy, It’s about Culture
This is a guest post by Jacob Goldenberg, a visiting professor of Marketing at Columbia Business School and a professor of Marketing at the School of Business Administration in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. If you are not focused on creating a startup culture that inspires innovation, you could get stuck in the present, soon to be past.…