10 Signs of Failure

10 Signs That Innovation Will Fail

What are the signs that innovation in a company is set up to fail? It would be great to have a check-list on this, but according to Stefan Lindegaard, innovation is too complicated and company-specific to just apply a standard one for this. Stefan lists some red flags to look for when evaluating innovation. Do you have others from your experience?

Read more at 10 Signs That Innovation Will Fail | Stefan Lindegaard: Leadership+Innovation.

Predicting the Next Innovation

Are you using innovation to predict what your competitors or the marketplace will do next?

Read more at Blogging Innovation: Predicting the Next Innovation - Innovation blog articles, videos, and insights.

Innovation Stories

Does your Innovation have a story?

Stories are a great way to impart knowledge and build a brand. Too often, we try to communicate facts, features and benefits. Great leaders know that storytelling teaches and persuades. A new book by Michael Margolis, "Believe Me," identifies 15 storytelling axioms and notes that storytelling is especially important to innovators.

Read a summary at Blogging Innovation.

IdeaAid

Starting on Saturday, IdeaAid starts the world's first brainstorming benefit. Instead of sending your money, send your ideas to help solve the world's toughest problems. On Saturday, the first challenge is to find novel, easy ways of raising $1 billion annually to help eradicate global poverty.

IdeaAid is attempting to use the same social networking phenomenon that spreads the news of celebrity breakups to solve real social problems. If you've been wondering what all this linking, friending and tweeting is really good for, this is your chance to find out.

Find out how you can participate on the IdeaAid.com website.

Sustainable Language

Every so often the vocabulary of business adopts new words that filter into the mainstream business psyche. For example, the language of brands and branding is now commonly used and understood across a range of sectors- from universities to social enterprises to small businesses. Over the past year or two, the new vocabulary has brought in "sustainability," whether it is to talk about the environment or general business operations, about communities or the future. Google the term and you'll see that "sustainability" has 28 million definitions-only a few million short of the 34 million entries for "branding."

Read the entire article at brandchannel.com.

Sinnovation

The seven deadly sins of the innovator-and how you can stop yourself from committing them. Just for fun, let's take a look at seven of the most common and deadly sins of the innovator. We've seen all of these cause failures of Biblical proportions.

Read them at BusinessWeek.com.

New Brand Taglines

Do you think you can name some of the top ten words used in brand taglines? Tagline Guru, an agency dedicated to taglines and slogans, has released its analysis of more than 150 corporate taglines debuting in 2009.

Check your guesses against the top ten at Brandchannel.com.

More than Ideas

Nothing against ideas. They are very important, but it takes more than ideas to create real change.

Read more at
Ideas Don't Equal Innovation | N2Growth Blog.

Blizzard Saved ATM

Creating convenience is not a good enough reason for consumers to embrace change. It often takes 'pain.' Banks weren't open during a blizzard in 1978. Previously unpopular ATMs made it possible to get cash. Does your latest innovation solve a 'pain?'

Read more at Blogging Innovation: How a Blizzard Saved the ATM - Latest innovation articles, videos, and insights.

Optimizing Innovation

Optimizing Innovation - Dr. Stephen K. Goers of Kraft Foods

According to Dr. Steven K. Goers, VP, Open Innovation and Investment Strategy at Kraft Foods, Kraft Foods needs to innovate because they are in the fast-moving CPG industry, maintain a breadth of categories, and need to continue to maintain an edge over private label products. Goers spoke at the Optimizing Innovation Conference, which was held October 21-22, 2009 in New York City.

Read the summary of the presentation at Blogging Innovation, or read an interview with Dr. Goers at IdeaConnection.com.

Upside of Turbulence

How Innovation Saved Nokia

Don Sull teaches “International and Strategic Management” at the London Business School. His new book is The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunities in an Uncertain World. He discusses how Nokia and others have survived turbulent times through a willingness to reconsider even their core business.

Read More at The Upside of Turbulence: How Innovation Saved Nokia | Back to B-School | BNET.

Intuit Entrepreneur Day

Intuit is actively marketing Open Innovation with individuals and firms outside the company. Although Intuit devotes internal resources to innovation, they are building value by getting new ideas from outside sources.

According to Intuit,
"Entrepreneur Day is part of Intuit’s broader initiative to drive mutual growth through Open Innovation and partnerships. A select group of entrepreneurs, startups and small but more-established companies will have the opportunity to meet and talk with a broad group of senior Intuit leaders. The potential rewards for collaboration are considerable: access to leading brands, large customer base, award winning product lines, developer ecosystem and extensive marketing and distribution channels."

Proudly Found Elsewhere

Making the Change to "Proudly Found Elsewhere"
Interview - Chris Thoen - P&G
Braden Kelley had the opportunity to interview Chris Thoen, Director Innovation & Knowledge Management at P&G about the challenges of shifting an organization as big as P&G from closed innovation to open innovation, and the P&G Connect + Develop program. Dr. Thoen is a twenty year P&G veteran who started his career as a research scientist in the Fabric & Home Care division and now heads up the Global Open Innovation Office, also known as Connect + Develop.
Read More at Blogging Innovation.

No Need to Click

A new Sony device takes photos automatically. It finds and follows faces and takes shots when people are in the frame. Shutterbugs won't have to interrupt the action to capture the fun. What innovation would make your product more fun to use?
From PC World.

Innovate to Collaborate

People collaborate to innovate. But what about the other way around? Could a structured innovation approach be used to bring people closer together? In other words, collaboration becomes the endpoint and innovation becomes the means to that end?

From Innovation in Practice Blog

Innovate in Your Life

Five Ways to Create Innovation Throughout Your Life

When innovation is brought up in a business context, we mostly think about, well, the business. We think of innovations related to products, business models, go-to-market strategies and the like. Innovation can make positive changes in other areas of life as well.

From Blogging Innovation

Innovation Capital

Rowan Gibson explains how intellectual capital has become an outdated way to measure an organization's worth. What's needed are new measures used to create value today, such as imagination capital, entrepreneurial capital and relationship capital.
From Innovation Tools.

My Private Brand web site

Follow the latest news on private brands at the My Private Brand web site, or join the LinkedIn group by the same name.

Art of Innovation in 10 Steps

Entrepreneur, Twitter star, and former Apple software evangelist Guy Kawasaki highlights advice for creating meaning, innovation, and...revenue.

Inside Disney's Toy Factory

Members of the Disney Toy team use systematic brainstorming and prototyping for the innovation to overhaul the lineup every six months. It sounds old school, but Disney toys gets 50 percent of their new products from this process.
From BusinessWeek

To re-invent your company, reinvent yourself

Continuous innovation requires that leaders manage two different "gut instincts" at the same time, one more operational and one more entrepreneurial. Encourage executives to build their innovation skills using these tips.

From Innovation Tools

Online Social Data to Result in New Products

LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman Says Massive Amounts of Online Social Data to Result in Cultivation of Highly Specialized New Products

Don't Just Survive--Thrive

Don't Just Survive--Thrive: Leading Innovation in Good Times and Bad
Academic research:
For over a decade, money from around the world poured into the United States seeking innovation. Despite these massive investments, when adjusted for inflation, U.S. GDP grew slowly with much of the growth coming from government, professional, and business services, including real estate and outsourcing. What's more, inflation adjusted wages stalled for many, even as consumer spending increased. This paper argues that innovation is not a side business to a real business: rather, innovation is the foundation of a successful business.
From Harvard Business School

Prospect theory, risk and innovation

Prospect theory provides an intriguing framework for understanding how executives perceive risk and innovation opportunities, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner.
From Innovation Tools.

Excerpt: 'The Innovation Zone'

Tom Koulopoulos is the founder of Delphi Group and author of The Innovation Zone. An excerpt from the book is found on the Forbes.com web site.

No Money? No Problem. Low Cost Innovation

This blog post from Kathy Harris includes a list of functional areas and a list of actions and options to start low cost innovation. If your organization design doesn't match your current business objectives, you have an innovation opportunity.

Innovation: Back to the basics

Innovation is more than a great idea, it's the effort that turns the idea into a profitable reality.
From Innovation Tools

Jazz and Innovation

What do jazz and innovation have in common? Quite a bit.
According to innovation expert, Stephen Shapiro, companies should have a structure that allows and encourages innovation similar to the simple structure of jazz compositions that encourage extensive improvisation. more...

Smart Innovations During Downturn

Smart innovations from Wal-Mart and P&G draw cost-conscious consumers. From BusinessWeek.

Most Innovative Companies

The 50 Most Innovative Companies, according to BusinessWeek, are not reining in innovation investments.

Management Imperative

Turning Innovation Into a Continuous Process
by Bruce Temkin
Companies operate in an increasingly dynamic environment driven by shifting consumer needs, intense competition, and new enabling capabilities. The result: faster obsolescence of offerings process and business models... more