What is disruptive innovation? Clayton Christensen defined it as a cheaper, inferior, niche product that in a short period of time upends the entire market. Larry Downes and Paul Nunes, have a different opinion. In their view, disruptive innovations do not have to start as inferior, nor are necessarily linked to technology, making disruptive innovations an even greater threat to even more industries than ever before.
Products are not successful, it is the people behind the scenes that make these products successful. Hence the efforts of innovators is a better indicator of where the product is going than the product itself. Thirty years of research has not made us better in predicting innovation success. To be more innovative, we need more people engaged in innovation, and be more stringent in the efforts they put in to validate their ideas.
It is bad that 1 out of 10 innovation fail, but for another reason than you may think; The number of innovations that fail is too low. You need many more innovations to ensure success in the market place. We are focusing on the wrong metric. The metric used here is the number of projects that enter the innovation pipeline versus those that make to the marketplace and succeed. Over the years, the “best” companies have become very effective in trimming down the number of project in the early stages. However, what remains very difficult to predict is which projects to keep and which to discard. The chances of throwing away the child with the bathwater are significant.
25% Of ideas your employees voice are never listen too. While on the contrary, you will likely be willing to listen to any expensive outside experts, who will kindly tell you what your employees already knew. By the way, the more you pay, the more likely you will listen. The Washington Blog post: “The troubling flaws in how we select experts”, gives interesting insights in why we don’t listen to our own people, but are willing to follow the advice of (less qualified) experts. Unfortunately, this article does not provide a solution to the problem. In this blog we explain where to start to address this issue.
Attached is a TED talk by Simon Sinek, who explains the importance of What, How and Why. These concepts are very relevant for innovation. Often, when sharing an innovative idea with someone else, we start with the what. What does the invention accomplish that currently cannot be done, or what can it do better. However, if you truly want to be successful, as Simon Sinek explains, you need to start with the Why. Why is it important to change the status quo? Once you have answered that question, the How and What will follow naturally. For yourself, and your audience…
To be successful innovator you need a structured approach. This blog gives you 5 reasons why: five reasons why a structured approach is essential to innovation: (1) The weakest link determines performance (2) Innovation is not urgent today, but important for tomorrow (3) Incentives and rewards: Innovation is teamwork and not always successful (4) Improve your process (5) Want to be the best?
The margins of many professional service firms are under pressure, because of technology, internet, globalization, or changing customer expectations. Cost cutting is one way out, but only gets you sofar. This webinar shows how innovation can bring prosperity to professional service organizations, similar to what it has done for many facturing firms. However, to be successful, requires an alternative approach to innovation.
It may takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, but fortunately, acquiring creative thinking and working skills takes less time. Unfortunately, these skill are rarely taught, and reading a book about creativity is unlikely going to make anyone more creative. The only way to learn creative thinking and working skills are by doing. Living and breathing these skills every day, is what makes an organization like IDEO so creative.
It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, but do these 10,000 hours of learning also help you to be more innovative? Amabile found that creativity is linked to domain skills, creative thinking and working skills, and intrinsic motivation. Everything else equal, experts should thus be more creative, and creativity is the source of innovation, right?
The department of commerce expects that 50% of all new employment between 2012 and 2022 will be created in the health and professional services industries? Is your organization going to drive this growth? Or are you currently in cost cutting mode, because your revenues are under pressure? To benefit from this growth you will have to innovate, but how good are you at innovating?
Research and development can provide innovative solutions to today’s pressing health care challenges. The NIH invests a vast amount of money in research; basic and translational research. The centers for Medicare and Medicaid also spent considerable money on innovation. In comparison, the health services industry is lacking behind. If the purpose of innovation in health care is to improve patient care, who is going to take care of the innovations that impact the latter?
Legal innovation may not be main stream, but it certainly happens, as the yearly issue of the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer attests. The number of law schools that offer entrepreneurship and innovation courses is growing too. So are the number of legal innovation labs, such as the NuLawLab at North Eastern University and ReInvent Law at Michigan State. How about legal breakthrough innovations?