We know that the innovation process is risky. Nothing can guarantee the success of something new and failure is probably a good sign of a healthy innovation system. Without failures, no innovations. Of course, failure for its own sake is a ‘career-limiting move’ but successful innovation managers take the view that trials and rapid prototyping […]
I had an interesting conversation with someone from the government sector whose job is to support innovation and increase the number of innovating firms in the economy. While I can see why governments want to foster innovation, I think that his job is extremely difficult because he is actually trying to affect the strategy of […]
I wrote a post last week about why experts will often overlook disruptive innovations. Today I’m going to extend this argument by saying that crowds and markets are just as good at missing these step changes, but first I’ll talk about the inspiration for the post. Last night was the Australian federal election and I […]
Tim has written a bit on the blog about Charles Darwin so I thought I would follow along this theme with another idea. As Tim says, the first big test of Darwin’s radical ideas on the formation of new species was a presentation to the Linnean society. Darwin’s supporters chose the Linnean society because of […]
One of the consistent messages from innovation surveys is that customers are a major source of innovation. Sometimes customers with more extreme uses for products will adapt products to suit their purpose and then the manufacturers find out what is happening and take these adaptations on board. If you’ve seen the videos of big wave […]
Last week Tim and I were at the launch of the inaugural “Brisbane Innovation Scorecard”. It was a really nice event with 200 people in the room for lunch with many high-profile speakers. I have been involved with the project since March and its amazing to see something go from a small concept to such […]
When I run strategy seminars, I usually do a session on long-run trends in the macroenvironment. While firms can’t usually influence macro-trends such as interest rates, demographics and legislation, changes and trends can open up strategic opportunities and threats. While some of these can be predicted with a degree of certainty, such as an aging […]
Yesterday I went to a seminar from Bill Eggers, hosted by Deloitte. Bill is a specialist in thinking about governmental reform and the digital economy, but most of his messages about innovation apply to all organizations. It’s been a long time since I took three pages of notes in a seminar so I might do […]
You have probably heard of the phrase “jumping the shark”. This phrase goes back to an infamous episode of the 1970s sitcom called “Happy Days” when the producers, faced with declining popularity, tried to revive the show by getting the Fonz to jump over a shark on water skis. In the corporate world, there are […]
I’ve just finished reading a nice article on IP strategy and open innovation that was published in the MIT Sloan Management Review last year. It’s worth reading because the authors, Oliver Alexy, Paula Criscuolo and Ammon Salter have been doing research in this area for a while and now have a good corpus of evidence […]
One particular project I’ve been involved with in recent months is the Brisbane Innovation Scorecard. It’s a nice collaboration between Deloitte, Brisbane Marketing, Queensland Government (DEEDI),Brisbane City Council and a few of us here at UQ Business School and it will be launched on the 28th of July. If you are in Brisbane that day […]
