Effectiveness or performing the right tasks has long been acclaimed as the key ingredient to success implementation of business innovations. The efficiency of innovation or getting the tasks performed properly, has until now been relatively ignored but now getting more importance. This is because innovation is no longer a rare occurrence, but a constant process, so consistency in repeatability is now a matter of concern. For this, the organization must ensure that the process gets optimized across multiple geographies, timelines and stakeholder groups. A portfolio needs to be designed that will cater to the diverse needs of all such businesses. Before setting out at implementation, the firm must also ensure that the right metrics are used to measure. This will ensure that the business analytics operations are performed on the right set of data. Innovation can never work if people are stifled at their creativity. So, an open system with limited silos needs to be curated at the office space.

Source:http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/11/03/the-efficiency-of-innovation/

Uploaded Date:19 January 2018

For companies seeking to implement business innovations, they must induct agile learners to their system. Such agile learners are more open to new learning experiences, seek out new challenging assignments and extract more out of the usual work experiences. This ends up in greater output because they inculcate new skills along the way. Agile learners are usually flexible and resourceful, plus they absorb information from a variety of sources. While implementing innovations is mission-critical for several organizations, they do not set aside adequate resources for the same. Four factors can help identify the agile learners. Those include agility in four paths- mental, people, change and subsequent results.

Source:http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/11/08/why-agile-learners-are-ideal-for-innovation/

Uploaded Date:19 January 2018

A lot of products are bought but then surprisingly discarded. This happens at the individual level but even more surprisingly at the organization level. Organizations license external products and outside knowledge from business consulting or research firms in various methods. Some could be standard licenses, others partnership or embedded licenses, where a collaboration is forged between the provider and receiver. Partnership mode licenses work best when invested in cross-company teams. The success in implementation however, also depends on the inputs it receives from the top management. The top management’s role may not be to directly work on the innovation, but to at least be aware and provide the required stimulus. Business innovations may be implemented in either bottom-up or top-down models. The former is usually more common, but the latter can be more effective if the right support is received. Latest innovations if applicable do not need much internal marketing to become popular. Mere mentions by the CEO can trigger off its usage.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/how-attention-from-top-managers-impacts-innovation-7801

Uploaded Date:18 January 2018

2017’s best business innovation books have now been identified and each book talks about a specific paradigm. The first of them is Competing against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice. This book has been co-authored by Clayton M. Christensen, Teddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan. Through this book, the writers, want to put an end to the “hit-or-miss” process which most organizations tend to follow with innovations. Christensen coins the term Jobs Theory to highlight what real innovation requires. Kevin Kelly in her book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will shape our Future, lays twelve broad tech trends that will shape the coming future. He sees the future as something akin to a Marxist one though he doesn’t explicitly use the term. The final entry on this list is Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future penned by Erik Brynjolfsson. He discusses in this book how organizations are best leveraging the tools on offer in the ongoing digital age. Three shifts are spoken about at length- products to platforms, humans to machines and to the crowd from the core.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Best-Business-Books-2017-Innovation?gko=9ef9d

Uploaded Date:09 January 2018

In our increasingly globalized world, most firms are resorting to partnering with several others within the chain to perform specific functions. This is because technology is getting so rapidly complex, that for niche functions, one needs to enlist the services of specialists. Also with operations moving out globally, foreign collaborations have become the norm. A study was conducted by Wharton’s Mack Institution for Innovation Management to assess the best forms of partnership engagements. There are three broad ways to collaborate. The first is where all partners are domestic. Another is where all are foreign, and the third being a mix of domestic and overseas collaborators. The study involved pharma and biotech firms from across fifty-seven countries. The interesting business intelligence to emerge was that for “radical” path-breaking innovations, that break the status-quo in the respective industry, all-foreign partnerships served the best purpose. For impactful “innovations” which were more incremental in nature, preserving the status-quo was essential, so all-domestic partnerships work best. This also takes into account countries with diverse differences internally in culture and laws. The mix of foreign and domestic players hardly serves any purpose. The network system in business will only expand over time.

Source:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-first-step-to-successful-innovation-choosing-the-right-partners/

Uploaded Date:14 December 2017

En number of companies these days have adopted a new approach towards facilitating business innovations. They have taken to heart the principle that experiments are bound to occasionally result in failures, and these are necessary on the run towards innovations. Companies on this list include Coca-Cola, Amazon, Domino’s Pizza and Netflix. A liberal arts college in western Massachusetts- Smith College- has taken the drastic step of even introducing a “Failing Well” programme. On completion of this course, students are presented with a Certificate of Failure. The idea behind this exercise is that failures prepare people to face the hardships later imminent in life.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/11/how-coca-cola-netflix-and-amazon-learn-from-failure

Uploaded Date:18 November 2017

The general understanding behind innovations is that they occur as a result of random happenings that lead to eureka moments. This view sees business innovation being bereft of discipline and a result of unconstrained activities. In reality though, companies or government agencies need to see it as an end-to-end process. Without formal innovation process pipelines, project approvals are dependent on lobbying the hardest or presenting the best demo. Hypothesis testing, customer interaction or understanding barriers to execution are seen as secondary. Instead companies must have an evidence-based innovation pipeline that will foresee the needs before any is proposed. A canonical Lean Innovation process needs to be established having specific steps. The first of these will be innovation sourcing that lists ideas, problems and technologies critical to invest in. Then the entire process needs to be curated for the specific needs. All probable options need to be listed in terms of priority levels to decide which ones to go for first. Management consulting giant McKinsey has developed a Three Horizons Model to ease out in this process. Post this the probable solutions need be explored and a hypothesis devised to be tested in a pilot. After this, the process needs to get adequate aid to incubate smoothly. Finally, the horizons need to be integrated under a system. Any changes to be incorporated must be refactored in now.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/09/what-your-innovation-process-should-look-like

Uploaded Date:18 November 2017