An Innovation Definition: Something That Does Not Work Yet

Those of us that spend a lot of time thinking about innovation tend to view it as something that is good. After all, research shows that organisations that are more innovative are more profitable, have happier employees, grow faster, are more resilient, and have many other positive attributes. So how can you not love innovation? […]

How to Innovate Ancient Technologies

People were using charcoal for art about 30,000 years ago. And we’ve been consciously manufacturing charcoal for at least 5000 years. Because charcoal burns hot and clean, it was the primary fuel source for making iron for quite a while, before it made its recent shift to cooking steaks on barbeques. Most of our charcoal […]

Staying Innovative While Growing

Google Australia lost two key people over the past couple of weeks – Lars Rasmussen, one of the developers of Google Maps and Google Wave, and Kate Vale, their first employee in Australia. It seems like the main motivation in both cases was the possibly premature death of Wave, but Vale made some comments that […]

Innovation and Human Capabilities

Guest Post: by Ralph-Christian Ohr John Steen wrote a series of  posts on why experts and crowds usually miss disruptive innovation and how to use networks to tap expertise and knowledge. I’d like to expand these thoughts a bit more towards the question: what’s the role of human capabilities in innovation? For elaboration, I’m going […]

Is Innovation Good or Bad? Yes!

An article by Pat Lencioni in Business Week called Why Companies Need Less Innovation has generated a bit of controversy, at least in the part of the internet that I live in. His basic premise is that it is a mistake to try to make an entire company innovative – instead, it is better to […]

Innovation for Now and for the Future

One of the important ideas that follows from managing innovation as a process is that to be successful at it, you need to manage a portfolio of different innovation initiatives. This means that you need to have a mix of incremental and radical innovation ideas. One good way of building an innovation portfolio is to […]

Nothing Lasts Forever

Nancy and I spend the day yesterday looking at what’s left of Hadrian’s Wall. It was a fascinating day. Around 200 A.D. the wall went for about 75 miles across the UK, with forts all the way along. This is what the fort at Birdoswald looks like now: Seeing this makes me understand why it […]

Why is the Retirement Age 65?

Here’s an interesting question: Why is the Retirement Age 65 in most developed countries? I’ll give you a second to think about it. Or google it. Here’s a hint: the retirement age of 65 was first selected in 1880. Here’s the answer: the retirement age was set at 65 because when it was first introduced […]

Is All Innovation Good?

A simple question: Is All Innovation Good? The simple answer to this is: No. Which poses a bit of a problem – we know that innovation is an essential part of long-term success – as Andrew Howlett says, “The ROI on innovation is survival.” And yet, because innovations create change, and the outcome of change […]

When Planting a Garden is a Radical Innovation

Nothing could be less innovative than planting a garden at your house, right? Maybe – but maybe not. Take a look at this: It’s a Green Roof that’s been planted as part of an initiative put together by Sustainable South Bronx. This is initiative started by Majora Carter. The gardens do three main things. They […]

Electric Cars & Business Model Innovation: Better Place

When was the first car fully powered by electricity built? Depends on how you define it. There was a prototype built in 1835. One built in Belgium set the land speed records in 1899 (68 mph!). And a few were on sale from at least 1895 on. In all that time, they’ve had one fundamental […]

Outsource Remembering to be More Innovative

What do you think of this? [It] is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to… memory. … [It has] slanting translucent screens, on which material can be […]