I look forward to the football (soccer in Australia) world cup when it comes around, particularly when Australia qualifies or the Dutch are doing well. This time it’s been a slightly unhappy experience – not just because the Australians got thumped by Germany but also due to the constant drone that comes through my TV […]
When I first got interested in managing innovation, I was coming at it from the point of view of a scientist. To someone with a PhD in biochemistry it was ‘obvious’ that most innovation resulted from the commercialization of science. Looking at OECD innovation indicators back in the 1990s I used to get frustrated that […]
One of the major themes on the blog is how innovations are created from new connections. The connections can be between people or technologies. Today I want to continue this connections theme but instead talk about innovations resulting from new connections in our minds. To start with, have a look at this famous optical illusion. […]
As we keep saying on this blog, innovation is risky and hard work. Having an idea is easy but selecting the best idea and turning it into something of value is where most failure occurs. Given these challenges, it might be tempting to let others do the innovation. Clearly if someone else is going to […]
A significant report was released last week on Australian public sector innovation. It’s called “Empowering Change” and I think it represents a blueprint for an important sector that has traditionally had a very fragmented approach to innovation. In Australia it represents 30% of the economy and delivers services that are vital to the well-being of […]
Last week I ran an executive education course called “Strategy In Action“. It’s an intensive full-week course and we try to equip managers with ideas and processes that will help them to develop and execute strategy. As part of the course, I also arrange guest speakers who have examples of good strategy in their business […]
Tim and I had a conversation in my office the other day about the importance of fundamental innovation messages and how we really can’t repeat them enough in seminars, conversations and on this blog. I suppose that we don’t want to become repetitive but occasionally we still get reminders of how important it is to […]
I’ve always assumed that the most creative and innovative phase of life is the period in decade or two after formal education. We have lots of energy, fresh ideas and we are just a little bit overconfident in our abilities so we try ambitious things. It’s true that there are good examples of this, including […]
We’ve been following a theme on the blog lately on business models and innovation. Last week I wrote about the connection between business model innovation and strategy and Tim wrote a really nice case study of business model innovation in the electric car industry. In this post, I’ll discuss some key ideas about business models […]
Tim does a really nice talk on the invention of the computer and he has posted the slides on this blog. While he uses the story to discuss the difference between innovation and invention, I think there are a lot of other really interesting lessons here. Firstly, I’d like to add to Tim’s story by […]
If you have been following the posts over recent days you can probably guess that Tim and I have been talking a lot about business model innovation. To quote a phrase, we know business model innovation when we see it and some business model innovators such as Ryan Air and Ikea have become global market […]
