Managing innovation - creating value from ideas

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...

Send us a textHow we think about something shapes what we do about it. What we pay attention to, what we give resources to, what we manage. So it makes sense to check out whether the models we're using to work with innovation are as up-to-date and robust as they need to be. This podcast explores that theme. It forms part of a course , 'The Craft of Innovation' and you can find more details and a t...

Send us a textInnovation is, by its nature, uncertain - we don''t know in advance whether or not it will work, if the market will be there, if some other elements in the environment will shift. But we can build capabilities to help stack the deck in our favour, to enhance our chances of success. And the good news is that we have over 100 years of research into experiences of what makes for success...

Send us a textInnovation involves a journey but it's not a case of 'one size fits all'. Different contexts require different variations on the core framework we use to plan and make our journeys - as this podcast highlightsThis forms part of a course on 'The craft of innovation' - you can find a transcript and much more on my website hereIf you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access...

Send us a textNo-one knows exactly but it’s a pretty fair guess that at any moment several hundred million people are communicating with each other, working, sharing, living big chunks of their lives via internet conferencing platforms. Doctors diagnose, businesses operate, music and theatre happen, parliaments sit – all in virtual space. But where and how did this technology emerge? This podcast...

Send us a textTwenty five years ago work in a research institute in Germany made it possible to compress audio files into a size manageable enough to broadcast and share - ushering in a wave of innovation which shook the music industry to its foundations and laid the foundations for today's world of streaming. This podcast ( the first of two) looks in more detail at the birth of the mp3....Transcr...