Innovation Is Not Clockwork – The Challenges of Innovation Systems

A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system. – W. Edward Deming
Ignoring the interconnections between organizational subsystems causes havoc when innovation is demanded of all areas of the business, instead of one function, and the competition for resources becomes fierce.

Working The Processes of Innovation – Learning to Love & Live Failure

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
- Henry Ford
To create innovation there must be a structure that can support the exploration, the risk-taking, the resource expenditure without direct monetary return. A structure that supports innovation must capture and support an organization’s ability to reach beyond what it produces in the present to what it might produce for the future. It demands a structure that can seek and use unknown resources, to build the unknown for unknown customers (or at least meet current customers’ unknown needs!)

The Politics of Innovation – Dodging the Seagulls in “Finding Nemo”

…Business is not a sporting event. Victory for one company doesn’t mean defeat for everyone else.
- James Surowiecki

Playing Games With Innovation
Let’s be blunt, innovation has become the latest political football in many organizations and the competition around owning it has become fierce, if not ugly. For those organizations who do not know how to address [...]

Afterlife: An Essential Guide To Design For Disassembly, by Alex Diener – Core77

What if we take another run at the idea that everything has a life beyond its immediate life? What if we decided that things must be reparable, recoverable, recyclable, re-purpose-able? How different would then be our innovation and design approaches? Our disposable society must be disassembled.
Afterlife: An Essential Guide To Design For Disassembly, by Alex [...]

Innovation Economies & The Benefit Of Creative Destruction

Today innovation sits at the heart of economic value creation. If the 1980’s were all about productivity, the 1990’s were about quality, and the 2000’s about globalization, the current decade will most likely be about the capacity of organization to harness the controlled chaos inherent in innovation to create value. With the acceleration of globalization process, innovation is more and more seen as the appropriate tool to create business value.

Eyes on the Prize – In a CoIN a flexible approach to changing conditions means more wins

In his fascinating research on collaborative innovation Peter Gloor, a Research Scientist at MIT’s Sloan School for Management Center for Collective Intelligence, identified a model he termed CoIN for, Collaborative Innovation Networks. He first named this model in the popular press in his book, Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage through Collaborative Innovation Networks. His stated goal [...]

Brand Complacency – Why User Experience (UX) Designers must look to their cultural impact

If there is a future for designers and marketers in big business, it lies not in brand, nor in “UX”, nor in any colorful way of framing total control over a consumer, such as “brand equity”, “brand loyalty”, the “end to end customer journey”, or “experience ownership”. It lies instead in encouraging behavioral change and [...]

Innovation Trapped – Rethinking the flow of ideas to market

I think we do need to move very swiftly in creating value for consumers and reacting to the economics.
- Brian Becker
On BusinessWeek’s website recently (November 9, 2009), Vivek Wadhwa posted a ViewPoint column focused on the implication of globally outsourced innovation. While what he reviewed was not necessarily earth-shattering in its revelations it did highlight [...]

The Future of Improved Team Performance Begins With Individual Self-awareness

The future of improved designs for organization structures (including their systems and process models) is fundamentally grounded in the self-awareness of the individuals of which they are comprised. If we don’t know ourselves how can we help others to help us achieve our goals? When this principle is considered in light of an expanded need for innovation, not just in product and service development, but in the way we engage with our customers and markets, it is vital that self-awareness be an anchor tenet of our approach to improving team performance over time.

If Innovation Is Our Goal Are Institutions As We Know Them Are Dead?

“Traditional institutions will survive and thrive when management, board members and/or shareholders are able to step out of the “what we did yesterday will work for us tomorrow” mentality. In order to survive for the longterm, one has to recognize that the things that got you where you are will not get you where [...]