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innovation checklist for large organizations

maz — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:58:04 +0000

Patricia Seybold conducted a case study concerning “The Anatomy of Innovation”. One of the main results is a kind of checklist for innovations within large organizations:

Hire an outside renegade.

Have him build and sell his vision.

Let him create his own team.

Locate the team off-site.

Take a blank slate approach.

Create a blueprint with an integrated cross-functional team.

Have the team implement the technology, the content, the user interface design, the business plan, and the marketing plan in parallel.

Leverage your corporate technology group by agreeing on design standards up front and having them conduct architectural reviews throughout.

Engage customers as hands-on advisors throughout the process.

Design your information architecture around customers’ activities towards their goals.

Build in instrumentation that lets you measure what matters to your customers as well as your sponsors.

Beta test with friendly customers and invite them to invite their friends.

Promote via the Internet and social media.

Make it easy for customers to tell you what role(s) they are playing.

Let customers see what activities they’ve performed, so they can pick up where they left off; profit from your ability to track what activities customers in different roles are doing.

Pretty useful imho, especially because of the open and cross functional approach as well as the integration of the customers. Because on the long run you innovate to win or retain customers.

creativity turns into innovation

maz — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:29:53 +0000

Creativity is thinking of new and appropriate ideas whereas innovation is the successful implementation of those ideas within an organization. In other words creativity is the concept and innovation is the process.
William Coyne, Senior Vice President for R&D at 3M

This quote deals with the core of my dissertation which is about “systems to support new concept development”.
Although I like this illustration because it demystifies innovation, it is a bit simplified. The way from the creative element to an implementable innovation concept is not trivial. Quite the contrary – the so called “fuzzy front end” is one of the most discussed parts of innovation management throughout the corresponding scientific literature.

You may be interessted in reading “The PDMA toolbook for new product development” for more detailed information.

Innovation Machine

maz — Sun, 24 May 2009 08:54:36 +0000

This illustration of a “Corporate Innovation Machine” presented by jpb.com

credit: jpb.com

reminds me of (and goes largely along with) the New Concept Development Modell (NCD) published by Koen et al. in 2001:

credit: IRI | Research Technology Management

3 steps that matter

maz — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:39:49 +0000

I really like Jim’s illustration of the birth of a big idea:

credit: Innovating To Win Blog

This schematic picture is not only a great – because of it’s simplicity – explanation of the (at least one-person) innovation process it also describes the differences between data, information and knowledge according to Helmut Willke.
But in this context there is no knowledge till the solution. ??? Sorry – to fast. So one step back because to my mind this description is worth to know. There is some data – after you’ve extracted the problem out of it, you call it information. So it’s data that has relevance for you. In the next step you “mix it up” with existing information in your memory and ….. now you have the solution. This combination with other relevant information is called knowledge.
So – enough academic drivel for today

creating an “innovation culture”

maz — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:08:23 +0000

Via the Endless Innovation Blog I’ve found an interesting post about things fostering a culture that supports innovation.

Here are a few strategies suggested by experts to encourage innovation that might surprise you:

Hire naive misfits who argue with you; encourage failure; avoid letting client input limit your vision; and fully commit to risky ventures.
Donâ€™t do what the customer wants; do something better.
Fail often to succeed sooner.
Applying cross-disciplinary knowledge to help creatively solve [...] problemsâ€”and broaden perspectivesâ€”is a time-honored strategy.
Team composition that might lead to the most efficient design process does not necessarily lead to the best design.
and one thing that has a really close relation to my dissertation:
[Launch] an â€œArchitectural Forumâ€ on the intranet, which will be a â€œcollaborative vehicle for posting questions, comments, techniques, materials issues, and so on, about specific projects to capture a running discourse on various design topics throughout the office. It will be searchable and will contain pertinent solutions and best practices through a firmwide dialogue”.

Credit: maz

If you have a smile on your face after reading these suggestions and think “nice but reality is different”, be aware that innovation is just a part of business. Earning money on the short run is rightly important but it is held dear in daily business anyway. So to my mind it is crucial to put the long-term thoughts from time to time in the spotlight.