Managing innovation - creating value from ideas

This episode offers an enlightening conversation with Robyn Bolton, founder and ‘Chief Navigator’ of Milezero, a consultancy specialising in helping organizations think through their innovation challenges. ⁠⁠ You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including video, audio, cases, tools, even some songs!

This podcast explores the complex links between time and innovation. ⁠⁠ You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including video, audio, cases, tools, even some songs!

This podcast offers a case study of Instituto Caldeira, a successful innovation hub which has helped transform the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil through innovation-led growth. ⁠⁠ You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including video, audio, cases, tools, even some songs!

By their nature people are innovators, full of ideas which can often lead to significant value-creating innovations. This podcast explores the ways in which such innovation happens and how we might tap into this rich well of possibilities. ⁠⁠You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including video, audio, cases, tools, even some songs!

Sustainability matters - of course. You'd have to be living in a bubble not to be aware of the wide-ranging conversation on this theme. But how to translate the rhetoric - whether it be the UN or EU's sustainable development goals or the aspirational strategies of businesses - into something practical? This podcast interview explores the topic in an interview with Henning Breuer of the EU's IMPACT...

Changing our mental models about what we do and how we do it can be an important trigger for new directions - innovation. This podcast explores the idea of reframing as a powerful source of innovation. ⁠⁠⁠You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including video, audio, cases, tools, even some songs!

This podcast looks at the history of data storage, from the early days of recording sound to today's huge data management tools. In its patterns of radical innovation followed by long periods of incremental improvement it highlights some surprising lessons about innovation which have relevance today. ⁠⁠⁠You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including vide...

Machine learning (AI) has its roots back in experiments with ‘artificial intelligence’ in the 1970s but has come to represent a powerful technological trajectory as the idea of mimicking human neural networks and their learning capabilities has been explored. And now we have generative AI, which does what it says on the tin — generates something new. This creates major new opportunities for innova...

What do Mickey Mouse, vacuum cleaners, air travel and light-bulbs have in common? More than you’d think, especially if you look to the originators of those widely different things. All of their innovators spent a great deal of time being knocked back, living through failures and generally struggling to take their ideas forward. This podcast explores the idea of persistence and perseverance in inno...

2022 was a record year for home delivery of parcels and packages. After the Covid-19 lockdowns the idea of remote shopping became an even bigger reality and changed the behaviour patterns of millions. This podcast looks at the innovation history of mail order and draws out some lessons for how we think about and manage innovation. ⁠⁠⁠You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠⁠ together with many other inno...

Christmas, as my 6 year old never tires of reminding me, is coming. Never mind that technically it’s a month away and forget the efforts I make, Scrooge-like, not to allow any trace of the season to cross our threshold until at least 1st December. So this podcast represents an attempt to bring a little Yuletide background to the innovation challenge.. ⁠⁠⁠You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠⁠ together...

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it….. Well, I’m not sure about the last one but someone somewhere has probably done some research on the topic. We humans certainly do it, especially when we’re young. I’m not talking about falling in love but about extending Cole Porter’s observations to a different world, something up there in terms of importance — playing. This podcast explores th...

Ice cream and innovation may seem unlikely bedfellows but as this podcast tries to show there's a lot of useful lessons to be found in exploring the innovation history of ice cream. ⁠⁠⁠You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including video, audio, cases, tools, even some songs!

Innovation isn't a solo act - it depends on sharing and shaping ideas. And one underestimated place where this happens is within what is called a 'community of practice'. It's where different knowledge, often tacit, can be shared and used - and one of the places where this was first seen was in the strange world of photocopier repair engineers! This podcast looks at the many ways in which CoPs can...

This one was written in part as a contribution to the retirement celebrations of the Father of Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough ...... ⁠⁠⁠⁠You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including video, audio, cases, tools, even some songs!

Multiple independent invention is surprisingly common — there have been many research studies highlighting the pattern. Examples include the blast furnace (invented independently in China, Europe and Africa) and the crossbow (invented independently in China, Greece, Africa, northern Canada, and the Baltic countries). And they reveal an important home truth about how innovation actually happens. Th...

Innovation isn't just a matter of fighting through the challenges of the start-up. That's only halfway along the journey to real impact - and the challenge of scaling innovation remains one of the big mountains we still have to learn to climb. This podcast explores some of the issues involved ⁠⁠⁠⁠You can find a transcript here,⁠⁠⁠⁠ together with many other innovation resources including video, aud...

There’s no shortage of scary headlines reminding us of the looming challenge of digital transformation. The message is clear. On the one hand if we don’t climb aboard the digital bandwagon we’ll be left behind in a kind of late Stone Age. On the other we’re facing some really big questions — about employment, skills, structures, business models, etc. This podcast explores some of the challenges ⁠⁠...

Is your innovation team full of 'nodders'? That's the wonderful name P.G.Wodehouse gave to the 'yes-man' characters in his books about the early days of Hollywood. But it is a real problem in teams trying to be creative - because the best ideas often come from people who argue. This podcast explores the importance of creative conflict in innovation You can find a transcript together with many othe...

Innovation is all about knowledge spaghetti. Just like a plate of pasta innovation involves many different strands. Only this time we are talking about knowledge - technical knowledge, market knowledge, legal knowledge, financial knowledge and so on. They need to be woven together to create value. And these knowledge strands are held by different people, inside and outside the organization. We hav...

We’re all going to depend increasingly on healthcare innovation for the quality of our future lives. Keeping ourselves healthy, coping with chronic ailments, living into old age with dignity and independence. We all want this — and we’re going to need all the help we can find to help us get there. This podcast explores the world of healthcare innovation and the key role which user input can play i...

The suggestion box sounds like a very old approach to the challenge of high involvement innovation - how to engage the majority of people in an organization in the innovation agenda. .But its successors - collaboration platforms for innovation - carry out essentially the same task. The difference is that they do so in powerful ways and provide a key engine for innovation. This podcast looks more c...

Innovation is all about uncertainty - no-one knows quite what's around the corner. So there's a limit to how far we can plan to work with it - and instead we need to develop the skills of agility. As this song suggests, it’s a bit like learning to dance.... You can find a transcript together with many other resources, video, audio, cases, tools, even some songs - ⁠at my website here⁠

The great management writer W. Edwards Deming had a powerful introduction to his talks on quality management. Pulling out a dollar bill and waving it in front of the audience he would point out the wording: ‘In God we trust’ — and then go on to comment that in business life the same principle could be applied, but with the afterthought ‘…everything else we should measure’. His argument was simple;...

History is full of examples of innovations which, despite their promise, have been resisted by established players – the ‘not invented here’ (NIH) effect. And although we’re familiar with the problem it doesn’t seem to have gone away; there are still plenty of examples to be found across today’s innovation landscape. This podcast explores the new technology of unmanned aerial vehicles - drones - a...