2016 marked the fifth anniversary of the legendary Kodak’s filing for bankruptcy. Kodak became a victim of its own success and rather short-sightedness as its management sought to protect its own turf rather than explore business innovations. The digital camera was developed first by Kodak themselves but the management rejected the technology as they felt it impeded their photographic film called Kodachrome responsible for four-fifths of the then market in the US and half of the global figure. Kodak’s bankruptcy led to a sizeable majority of the town Rochester where its main office was based in, losing their jobs. Now Kodak, like Blackberry and Nokia has made a comeback as a niche player leveraging its seven thousand plus patents, but is still a tiny player compared to its once exalted status. Traditional management theory states that companies must ensure established processes are followed in order to execute corporate strategy and thus maintain industry leadership. But in modern times, this is not applicable as fast evolving technology quickly renders existing processes as redundant. Thus a proper innovation strategy needs to be wedded in to the company hierarchy. Innovations must be targeted on portfolio basis, divided into categories such as core, adjacent and transformational. While core innovations focus on incremental benefits, adjacent ones leverages existing products to explore a new market, transformational innovations develop totally new offerings. An innovation management system needs to be put in place to monitor such transformations.

Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/tendayiviki/2017/01/19/on-the-fifth-anniversary-of-kodaks-bankruptcy-how-can-large-companies-sustain-innovation/#4de45d346e86

Technology leaders can drive innovation is several ways. First of all they must promote a culture of risk-taking. Failures must be embraced and used as a learning medium. A system must be put in place for new ideas to be implemented. Technology has to play a major role within the C- Suite and be a part of corporate strategy for the team dealing with technology. No amount of innovation is going to succeed without the right team. First of all, appropriate talent recruitment must be made, but then the existing employees must be trained properly so that they are able to use the technologies on offer. Even during times of team rebuilding, external help may be taken from consultants who are experts at this art.

Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/01/26/three-ways-technology-leaders-can-drive-organizational-innovation/#699ba206bd04

A few of the most common traits have been identified for companies that excel in developing business innovations. This list was compiled by the Australian innovation consultancy named Inventium. The first such trait is the rise of open innovation as a concept. This limits the presence of silos so that knowledge sharing and collaboration can take place across departments. The collaboration sought must have a heavy focus towards being done across functional areas. At such places, senior management actually executes what they speak and do not simply bark orders for others to follow. Such firms follow a customer-centric development stage where everything they create must resonate well with their requirements. Most importantly, they actually designate specific time for the purpose of innovations. They do not wait for the eureka moment to arrive but deliberately create an environment where such ‘aha’ moments can get crafted.

Source:http://www.afr.com/technology/the-five-traits-of-a-most-innovative-company-20160817-gqv8z1

The word agile is the talk of the town, but it requires intricate collaboration between any company’s marketing and IT teams. Historically, tech teams were in charge of mapping the tools, systems and the resulting data for marketers. Now it is a more collaborative process. Also IT would use generic tools to help marketing, in order to reduce prices by lumping as many functions as possible with available software. But these were observed to be of limited use to marketers so marketing specific tools are now being used. The field of data science is getting increasingly integrated into marketing as business analytics now plays a very important role in marketing decision making. Even data tasks are getting so agile, that marketers are able to crunch them without having in-depth knowledge of such analytics. Salesforce is one of the pioneering organizations which took away CRM from IT, and handed it over to marketing, almost starting the gold rush of technical professionals to the field of marketing.

Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberlywhitler/2016/12/18/making-agile-innovation-work-for-both-marketing-and-it/#374a8fb065a0

Business innovations have always been known to have triggered from some moments of genius. Increasingly organizations are trying to foster them, yet there is no single definite formula to succeed at developing some. However, some researchers at the Sapienza University in Rome, Italy have developed what they claim is the first step towards understanding this complex art. It is based loosely on Heaps’ Law. Some important questions are raised, but if they can successfully counter these and other questions, this model can well be applied by several organizations in dire need of transformation. Changes could be invoked in biological, technological, cultural and linguistic mediums.

Source:https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603366/mathematical-model-reveals-the-patterns-of-how-innovations-arise/

In order to create an environment that fosters business innovations, crossovers must be built in. Crossovers are situations where the knowledge from one field gets fused with that from another to create the ultimate winning combo. Case in point examples such as the first pacemaker, the space suits worn by Apollo astronauts, medical developments related to HIV/AIDS and during the composition of the Grammy Award winning musical Hamilton. None of these were developed by the intended creators, but by a chance collaboration with seemingly unrelated people from a different field. GE has created the GE Store where specifically innovative business or scientific ideas are fused together in abstract forms to try and come up with scalable premises. Here customers are the co-creators along with the employees themselves. Thus instead of pre-conformed hierarchies, it is time to experiment with such diverse teams to deduce breakthroughs.

Source:https://hbr.org/2016/03/innovation-springs-from-the-unexpected-meeting-of-minds

Most capitalistic companies have historically been seen as value grabbers. They tend to maximize their gains in the short run, but trends have shown that this reduces value in the long run. Companies must instead see themselves as value creators, whereby they create new streams for customers, employees, vendors and the society at large. It is a positive business maxim to negotiate hard but at the same time, some value must be dispensed so that the other part can recall the partner. Cases of illegal mining, or faulty mortgages being quoted are cases of short-termism with no regard for the value created. A researcher from management consulting firm McKinsey states that the role of capitalism has evolved from that of resource allocation to its creation. Corporate must act as real people dealing with real humans. Also the best of leaders seek to create a mind-set that values such creativity.

Source:http://customerthink.com/from-value-grabbing-to-value-creating-lesson-for-leaders-2/