When is an Innovation an Innovation?

Greg and I have been talking about whether or not innovation needs a purpose.  While we agree on many points, we can see two differing views on the question.  I will argue that within an organisation, innovation does need a purpose, and here is Greg’s post arguing the other side. Let’s start by looking at […]

Culture Provides the Beat for Your Organisation

Kristin Hersh’s two bands sound very different. Why? Because they have two different drummers. Culture plays that role in organisations. An idea that works great in one culture may fail miserably in an organisation with a different culture.

Integrative Innovation

This post was first published as opening post to my new blog, titled Integrative Innovation.   Some people I’ve been collaborating with have recently encouraged me to open up an own blog. After having given it some thought, I decided to do so. I’m launching a new site and platform titled “Integrative Innovation” to share ideas […]

Four Key Issues in Innovation Management

Ralph Ohr & I met up at the end of last year and talked a lot about the state of innovation. These are the four issues that we identified as the ones that we think are the most important/interesting in the field right now.

Your Brand is What You Do

Here’s the story of one the dumbest decisions I ever made as a marketer. I was managing sales & marketing for a software startup at the time.  We were part of a group that included a retail & wholesale computer store as well. The thing that set the retail store apart was that we made […]

What Will Make Nate Silver Blow Up? Political Innovation

The emergence of the poll aggregators, especially Nate Silver, was one of the stories of the election for me. While these methods are a huge advance, there are still ways that they can fail. The key cause might be political innovation.

Why the Future of Innovation is Open

As outlined in my previous post, sustainable innovation requires evolution and revolution. Over the long term, organizations need to be capable of both moving along existing growth trajectories and creating new ones when the old business matures or stalls. This can be depicted as recurring movement along innovation s-curves. In the case of a new […]

Mistakes versus Experiments

One of the reasons that people try to avoid failing is that it seems like they’ve screwed up if they fail. This can certainly be the case, if your failure is major. But if you set up experiments to test ideas out, and you learn from them, then failing can be very productive. Here is […]