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Category: Innovation

Innovation is at the heart of any great business. But how do you know which ideas are worth pursuing? These articles will show you how to harness creativity in your business and how to keep innovating and trying new things. You'll learn how to stop wasting time and why failure can be positive. 

The art and science of decision making

Lorenzo Vitturi

Could an excessive reliance on data analysis be limiting your company’s scope for imagination and innovation?

Management is more than just a science; discover an alternative approach to business strategy.

How to compete in the new borderless economy

Bernard Cohen

The onward march of digitisation will change the nature of the game for everyone – including your company – over the next ten years.

It's time to recognise and accept this impending change and create a gameplan for a borderless economy.

Here are your four new critical priorities. 

Create a winning team to drive innovation

Richard Smith thinking innovation

Build creative dissonance into your team and you’ll turbocharge digital innovation.

If there’s one trait humans possess that artificial intelligence (AI) does not, it’s the ability to think outside the box. 

To profit from AI’s ability to accelerate innovation, build your team around creatives who, collectively, combine these six contrasting personalities.

Slow and steady wins the innovation race

John McLean

People think of innovation as a fast-moving process that brings about large-scale change almost overnight.

But there is an alternative. A low-key approach which takes effect gradually over a much longer term. And it’s called “slow innovation”.

How to become a digital leader

Bernard Cohen Study 2

In order to unlock the full potential of digital technologies and achieve “digital transformation”, your company must foster a digital leadership structure, writes Stijn Viaene for The European Business Review.

The aim is to enable your company to identify opportunities and take advantage of them quicker than your competitors.

Elon Musk: expert generalist

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s success is down to more than just hard work, the ability to visualise the future and a ‘never say die’ attitude.

Elon Musk is CEO and CTO of SpaceX, co-founder, CEO and chairman of Tesla Inc, co-founder of OpenAI and founder and CEO of Neuralink. He is worth US$15.3bn.

How has the 45-year-old entrepreneur achieved all of this in such a short space of time?

Why you need to understand your products’ demand windows

Richard Smith Maryland

If you don’t know what the demand windows for your products are, not enough of your customers will be demanding them.

“The most predictable characteristic of today’s consumers may be their variability,” say Emre Sucu, Matt Egol, and Edward C. Landry writing for Strategy+Business. The predictable customer of a certain age, gender and postal code is a thing of a past.

Disruption: exploding the slow-incumbent myth

John McLean

The idea that large companies are slow to innovate is a myth. In fact, they may be too innovative for their own good.

We have all heard of well-established businesses ignoring the potential of new technologies. By the time they take the new technology seriously they have been disrupted by it, and small, fast-moving startups have taken over. This is the way many people believe disruption works.

How to harness the power of transformation

caterpillar

Companies must avoid routine thinking and behaviour and embrace wholesale transformation to ensure they remain at the top of their game.

Your company’s way of doing business might have brought success for 20 years. It might still work today. But routine leads to complacency, and in the world of business, complacency can be deadly.

Collaboration is key to innovation

collaboration

In an ever more digital and connected world, business leaders must collaborate to innovate.

Cisco’s ‘ecosystem innovation’ process differs from a more traditional form of collaboration between companies. Instead of research and development alliances Cisco’s process is designed to explore opportunities and develop and test solutions with end users in a short space of time.

Turn your brainstorm into a marathon

brainstorming

Is the best solution still germinating when the average brainstorming session ends? Take more time to let creativity flow.

The long-established brainstorm model puts a group of colleagues together for an intensive hour or two to come up with as many ideas as possible. When embarrassing silences kick in, it’s generally accepted that the well has run dry and the session will fizzle out.

Your three key players in the race for innovation

office desk

Startup companies will naturally have a keen eye for innovation as they work out their route to the top. But larger, long-established companies can keep pace with the new kids on the block by maximising the talent at their disposal.

You probably have some excellent talent on your teams. But how do you motivate it to come up with cutting edge ideas and deliver results?

 

Five breakthrough leadership lessons

John Kirby

Five key leadership behaviours lay behind rare ‘breakthrough’ success in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) business.

‘Breakthroughs’ are products that expand or create new product categories – often required to maintain or grow a company’s market share. In the CPG market, 80% of growth comes from 1% of brands. Breakthrough success is so rare that of 3,500 new brands only 18 made the grade.

How to get your team’s creative juices flowing

Tim Arterbury

A counterintuitive approach may be the way to make groups think more creatively.

Your team is stuck for new ideas. It seems they have come to the end of the road and are just regurgitating old suggestions.

Some people think creativity is a random process; others believe it can be taught in a classroom.

 

Why creativity and criticism complement each other

siyan-ren-mask

Your creative team need to be criticised, but not stifled – it’s a fine balancing act.

Some people believe that criticism and creativity make unhappy bedfellows in the workplace, but Theresa Johnston, writing for Stanford Business Journal, disagrees.

How to achieve corporate longevity

skyscraper-compressor

The secret to staying the distance lies in your company’s ability to simultaneously exploit existing markets while exploring new ones.

When digital photography threatened celluloid film, Fujifilm managed this tricky balancing act while Kodak went bust.

Don’t leave your firm vulnerable to market disruption. Discover the the key to your firm’s long-term prosperity.

Five behaviours that create a culture of innovation

pony

Inspire innovation by forging ahead on the path you want your employees to take.

Thriving in the face of industry disruption means creating a company culture that champions innovation. Start by changing your own habits and attitudes. Your employees will follow where you lead and the impact on company culture will be profound.

Here are five key behaviours that drive innovation.

Create your firm’s future today

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What you do today determines your company’s future. The most successful firms learn to detect, analyse and capitalise on the earliest signs of emerging trends.

Writing for Harvard Business Review, Vijay Govindarajan describes how firms can master "planned opportunism" – a systematic process of detecting and interpreting the first signs of future developments in everything from customer behaviour to technology – and use these insights to reimagine your company’s future.