Managing innovation - creating value from ideas

Send us a textMetacognition. Sounds a good word and it's certainly an important one. The dictionary defines it as ‘thinking about thinking’, self-awareness, our ability to oversee what we are thinking and doing. It’s not a new idea - the Greeks had it pretty much nailed (literally) to the arch over their oracle at Delphi. If you want advice on how to approach an uncertain future begin with this re...

Send us a textDiving deep for innovationFor many years Gavin McClafferty was Innovation Manager with Subsea 7, a major player in the highly specialised world of deep-sea engineering services. Laying down and looking after pipelines and cables thousands of feet below the surface of some of the world’s roughest water poses plenty of innovation challenges. And solving them is something which requires...

Send us a textWe often talk about innovation being a survival issue - but in the context of humanitarian aid it takes on a very literal meaning. Crises, whether natural or man-made, require rapid problem solving if agencies and aid workers are to avoid the huge negative impacts of such disasters. For a long time humanitarian innovation (HI) took place in a responsive mode, often on an ad-hoc basis...

Send us a textAmongst all of the interest in platform models it’s worth looking at the potential they might have for social innovation. Can we create an ecosystem to help enable better linkage between social needs and means, one which allows the development of innovations across it? There’s a lot of talk about ‘getting back to normal’ after the pandemic. And whilst that’s something we fervently wi...

Send us a textContinuing my quest to put key innovation management themes to music, here's another song. Lyrics below: You like to think you’re sitting on top of your technology Your gadgets are smart and cool ‘cos you do lots of R and DYour software’s fast - your data’s the bestYour packaging’s great - you can ignore the restThere’s only one problem left at your doorFolks don’t want your product...

Send us a textNext time it starts to rain and you reach for your folding umbrella spare a thought for Slawa Duldig. She was the Viennese sculptress who invented and patented the device back in 1929 and it's been keeping people dry ever since. But the birth of this, like so many innovations, was not in the research labs of a large company but as a result of her frustration with the large heavy and...

Send us a textIt's easy to think of innovation as being all about creative freedom, experimentation and exploration. But we also need to recognise the need for what Peter Drucker called 'the discipline of innovation'. This podcast looks at the challenges in balancing innovation activities to maintain a healthy balance and looks at some of the messages around the need for maintaining 'dynamic tensi...

Send us a textThe kitchen blender has a lot to answer for. These days there are plenty of experiments with what you can cram into the jug and then blur into a fine emulsion – not all of them entirely edible. It’s the ideal lockdown toy, but whilst it might permit all sorts of interesting smoothies it would be a slightly odd mind which decided to try and make one up out of egg white and titanium di...

Send us a textWhere do innovations come from? Research suggest that there are many different sources, some working to create opportunities ('knowledge push') and some channeling various kinds of demand signal ('need pull'). This song offers some ideas about the different ways in which innovation can be triggered......You can find a transcript and video version here....If you'd like to explore more...

Send us a textCatharina is the CEO and founder of Innosabi, a successful software business specialising in the innovation field. In this interview she talks about her new book 'Connect the dots' which has the subtitle 'Agile innovation and collaborative ecosystems'.You can find a video version of this interview hereIf you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access a wide range of resourc...

Send us a textI don’t know about you but I’m spending a lot of time listening these days. As my physical room to move about contracts (thanks to lockdown) so I’m enjoying taking voyages inside my head, carried along by music. The choice of vessels in my harbour is impressive; I can embark on a whole series of different journeys depending on my mood – jazz, classical, soft folky reminiscence or dri...

Send us a text An interview with Christoph Krois, Open Innovation Manager at Siemens in which he talks about the opportunities and challenges in deploying open innovation across a large transnational companyYou can also watch the interview hereIf you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access a wide range of resources to help work with innovation, then please visit my website here. You c...

Send us a textContinuing my quest to put key themes in innovation management to music here's a sideways look at why organizations should look again at the value users can bring to their innovation process....You can find the lyrics/transcript hereIf you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access a wide range of resources to help work with innovation, then please visit my website here. Yo...

Send us a textNatalie Turner is a writer, speaker, innovation consultant and coach. In this interview we explore some of the core themes in her book 'Yes you can innovate' and look at some of the challenges facing organizations trying to innovate in today's complex and difficult environmentIf you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access a wide range of resources to help work with innov...

Send us a textThe humble brown paper bag might seem an unlikely place to look for inspiration about innovation. But this sturdy workhorse of the retail world is making a comeback, driven not least by concerns about the impact plastics waste is having on our planet. In this podcast we take a closer look at the surprisingly rich innovation history behind it....You can find a transcript of the podcas...

Send us a textAn interview with Lynne Maher, Clinical Director for Innovation, Ko Awatea , Auckland, New ZealandInnovation in healthcare affects us all. And implementing change in such a complex system is often difficult. In this interview Lynne reflects on her extensive experience of trying to manage and enable innovation in a number of different settings and shares some advice for others working...

Send us a textWhen Earl Tupper invetned 'Tupperware' he pulled off some impressive product and process innovation, turning waste from oil refining into bright housewares with a powerful seal which made them perfect for storing food. Yet the product didn't really sell - until he encountered Brownie Wise and her sales magic. At the heart of this fascinating success story of scaling innovation is the...

Send us a textOne of the challenges facing innovation managers is to help create the kind of culture in which innovation becomes 'the way we do things around here'. It's easy enough when you are working with a specialist team of innovation professionals - but what happens when you try to involve the whole workforce? And how do you do this in a large global organization with thousands of employees...

Send us a textUsers are often a very powerful source of innovation - providing we listen to them! Lyrics below: If you need some inspiration When you’re wanting innovation Ask the crowd, they’ll shout out loud “U – U – Use our ideas!” When it comes to diffusion There’s a really neat solution Bring the users along, you can’t go wrong Just U-U-Use their ideas! In a world of co-creation, customer ema...

Send us a textPeanuts might sound an unlikely source of insight into how we can learn to manage innovation. But - as this podcast shows - there's a lot to this particular legume. Something which didn't escape the attention of George Washington Carver, the man who did so much to promote it as an alternative crop to poor cotton farmers and helped engender an agricultural revolution in the USA. Carve...

Send us a textSomething a little different in this podcast - the beginnings of my quest to put innovation ideas to music! There's plenty of discussion about early adopters and other segments of the population in terms of their approach to adopting new ideas. But this song looks at the other end of the spectrum - the 'laggards' for whom any kind of change is not necessarily welcome....You can find...

Send us a textDiversity matters in innovation. Particularly because it allows us to access a wide range of different viewpoints which can contribute to the innovation task both in terms of improving the front-end design and also by accelerating diffusion downstream because ideas developed with user input have a better chance of being compatible But if we're going to involve users we're going to in...

Send us a textLondon Bridge isn’t falling down. In fact it’s in excellent health considering it straddled the river Thames for two hundred years before being dismantled, shipped halfway around the world and re-erected, stone by stone, in the middle of a lake in Arizona. If you were to take one of the pleasure craft which now ply their way across Lake Havasu you might find yourself looking a little...

Send us a textThis episode looks at the opportunities for innovation in both incremental (do what we do but better) and radical (do something completely different) fashion. It forms part of a series of resources to help learn about the ways in which we might master the skills and build capabilities in innovation and entrepreneurship. For more details please follow this link:https://johnbessant.org...

Send us a textWe’re only just beginning to get a measure of how much innovation begins with user ideas. Studies by NESTA in the UK, for example suggest that close to 10% of product innovations and 15% of process innovation begin in this fashion – and that’s almost certainly an underestimate. Users are a hidden ‘front end’ of innovation, highly motivated, prepared to experiment and tolerant of thin...