Reading List – Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steve Johnson
reading list Johnson has written other well-received books and this one has created quite a buzz. It’s a little dry, even with the many stories, but there’s no question it contains lots of interesting takes on innovation, inventions, and process. For example, Johnson detected patterns of innovation and analyzed their origins: How most innovative ideas [...]
The Innovation Ecosystem: Built from Your Intangible Capital
Innovation does not happen in a vacuum. It happens inside your existing business. The ideas you develop will arise out of the competencies or experience of your employees and your external network. They will build on your existing strengths to perfect something you already do or to apply your knowledge in a new direction. There [...]
Basics of Innovation Process
An innovation process is not necessary for all innovations. Hopefully, many innovations will happen incrementally through continuous learning. But for bigger ideas, you will want to have a process. Just as there are many definitions of innovation, there are also many different views on the best components of an innovation process. They all essentially address [...]
The Dual Challenges of Innovation Management
A number of years ago, a manager in charge of implementing a balanced scorecard system shared his organization’s strategy map with us. One of the organization’s “learning and growth” goals was “to become a more innovative organization.” We asked how he was going to do that. He had no idea. This was one of the [...]
Innovation Info Flows – Bottom, Top, Inside, and Outside
Emergent strategy and innovation are about opening up the flow of information and ideas. The farther we get into the knowledge economy, the more that knowledge gets spread across a company’s network, both internally (through human and structural capital) and externally (through relationship capital of all kinds). The fact that much of the important knowledge [...]
Innovation as Emergent Strategy
One of our favorite writers on strategy is Henry Mintzberg. He is an academic and is co-author of one of the major textbooks on strategy, The Strategy Process. But he is also a gadfly with a real sense of humor. In fact, one of his recent books, Strategy Bites Back, has a photo of a [...]
The definition of innovation that we like
Before we go too much farther, it makes sense to define what we mean by innovation. Most people look at innovation as related to invention and/or creation of new products. Others try to draw a fine line between incremental and “true” or “fundamental” innovation. Both of these views are too limited. We believe that innovation [...]
With every day, the innovation imperative grows…
In the U.S., the election of Barack Obama will be remembered as a watershed moment for many reasons. Not just because of the man himself but also because of the moment in history. The world economy was in crisis, graphically demonstrating the extent of the globalization of markets. The U.S. was fighting two wars, in [...]
Innovation is the New Strategy
In the tangible economy, strategy and strategic planning typically occur within a defined market space. To form their strategy, senior managers study opportunities in the market and align the company to take advantage of the available opportunities. The path laid out for a company is usually clear and concrete. The strategy says, “We know what [...]
Five Steps to Building a Regional Innovation Ecosystem
Our firm recently participated in the Regional Innovation & Jobs Summit hosted by the Washington Economic Development Commission. Kudos to Egils Milberg and Noreen Hobin for a very full day of content and conversation. The full day was webcast, including the intro to our session. Also thanks to our colleague from the WA-based Ingenesist Project, [...]
