I wrote a post last week about the importance of connecting different groups as a precursor for innovation and the special role that some people have as bridges between disparate knowledge communities where ‘structural holes’ exist within the network between the communities. After writing this post I went looking for more research on the psychological […]
Stefan Lindegaard wrote two interesting posts this morning. The first talked about how a number of people in his open innovation workshop last week were very frustrated with the innovation process within their company. The second followed up a comment that I made on the first one – where he said that he sometimes advises […]
How we define things is incredibly important. I’ve been reminded of this almost constantly this week. Here are some examples: I was talking with a friend of mine over the weekend about using social media to improve the flow of ideas within an organisation. She is a high-ranking manager in a very large organisation, and […]
A while ago Tim wrote an excellent post on the difference between networking and network structure. It’s one of my favorite posts and it’s among the most popular on the blog. Just to recap the main idea from that post – some network structures are better at supporting innovation and we need to understand how […]
Our post and press release on how accounting kills innovation has generated some really nice debate. Although I had a lot of criticism from my academic colleagues in accounting and finance, most of that was from people who hadn’t actually read the research paper. One of the biggest objections was that innovation academics like me […]
I already told you about Ada Lovelace Day – it’s the day for everyone to write blog posts celebrating inspiring women in science and technology. As I mentioned, there are a ton of good candidates doing great work these days. Since there are likely still a bunch of hours left in March 24 wherever you […]
I often talk about Ada Lovelace in my public talks and in class. In the mid-1800s, she was the world’s first computer programmer – writing code to run on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Like Babbage, she was well ahead of her time, and an important figure in the history of computing. Which is why Ada […]
We have been following a bit of a theme lately on valuation methods and selecting innovation projects. This was started with my post on some research that we have been doing on valuing innovation projects. Using surveys and quantitative analysis the study showed that traditional valuation methods such as net present value inhibited innovation. However, […]
Last week I talked about how I use Malcolm Gladwell’s TED talk in my innovation courses. Another one that I use to illustrate how the innovation process is changing is the talk by Charles Leadbeater: The innovation lessons are a little easier to pull out of this one, since it is directly about innovation. Leadbeater […]
I was doing some work with a company this week, and ran across one of my pet peeves. The organisation itself was very exciting. We interviewed over 20 people about various projects that were going. To a person they were smart and engaging, with great ideas, vision and energy. It was invigorating. The number of […]
