Outsource innovation?

Recently, Jim – not the real name of one of my mentees – asked, “Why can we not just outsource all the development to a tech company and have them develop our platform. I don’t want to have to bother with all those nuts and bolts. I read online though, that you cannot outsource innovation. […]

An Innovation Fest for Summer Interns

How do you give your interns a meaningful experience in the brief period that they are part of your organization? Have you ever thought about the value of a (no-code) hackathon? A 2-days workshop within their internship in which they will get to experience what innovation truly entails? An experience that will make their summer […]

How to make a new service team?

New service development is a team sport. How do you convene a winning team of professionals, when everyone is busy with their own work and lives? How to create a new service team that has the ability to develop the service and create a new revenue stream?  

FISHStep Second Edition

The law firm Fish & Richardson launched the second edition of the FISHstep program January 9th. FISHstep is designed to enable startup companies to protect their intellectual property early in their formation. Learn more and apply now (Deadline is February, 2 2015)

Employee Engagement

Two recent examples, Delta Airlines and Marlin Steel, demonstrate the power of employee engagement. These companies cares about their employees, and in return, their employees care about the company. The results speak for themselves. If employee engagement is this effective, why does not every firm apply this concept?

Why Nations Fail—and Organizations Too

The book Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson show that man-made political and economic institutions underlie economic success (or the lack of it). To what extent does this also explain the success and failure of organizations?

Three Sciences

There are three sciences which all have the same overall objective, advance healthcare: Basic, Clinical & Translational, and Implementation science. Is it wise to maintain this split, because each has a significant different focus? Or would it be better if these three sciences came together, as they strive for the same goal?

Organizing for Innovation

In this Organizing4Innovation Webinar, Floortje Blindenbach-Driessen, PhD, explains in 30 minutes what it takes to manage innovation in professional service organizations. She points out why organizing for innovation is important, what it entails and how it can be achieved.

Innovation as a Core Business Process or a Support Service?

Is innovation a core business process or support service in your organization? Your first answer is probably innovation is core to our business—because improvements and new services enable our organization to sustain its profits, survive, attract new customers, etc. But do you need to innovate in order to advise your clients or see your patients? Likely not. Although important, innovation is a support service in most organizations, just like Accounting and Human Resources. Important, but not an integral process of each service delivery.

Innovating in Collaboration

How convenient would it be to have someone else innovate on your behalf? You point out the issue that needs to be resolved or improved, and someone else will do the work and come up with a new product, service that will do exactly what you asked for. Then you only have to …, well what parts of the process would you still have to do?

FISHstep

Can law firms create new services? Absolutely! A nice example of legal innovation is the FISHstep program. This program is a unique new legal service for technology start-ups in need of intellectual property support.

What Doctors Can Learn From Each Other

Different clinicians, in different hospitals produce different results on different procedures. Stefan Larsson looks at what happens when doctors measure and share their outcomes on hip replacement surgery, for example, to see which techniques are proving the most effective. Could health care get better — and cheaper — if doctors collect such data to learn from each other and innovate?