Read these tips if you're thinking of starting a side project this year.
Popular
Improve cyber security while encouraging staff to be more inquisitive and imaginative.
Embrace corporate sustainability to drive growth and protect the planet.
Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Avoid these traps and make social tools work for your firm.
Use these four guiding principles to define your vision and inspire your teams.
Augmented reality is the new digital revolution.
Here’s what it is, what it can do, and how to plan for it.
Design thinking may be the go-to approach for positive change, but all too often it fails to deliver.
Discover the key steps to help your company use design thinking effectively.
Your company must foster a culture of innovation in order to take advantage of the recent resurgence of corporate R&D departments.
Here's how to create an innovation culture in your firm.
Digitisation is ushering in a dramatic change to the infrastructure underlying industrial civilisation.
If you want to be a leader of the “next industrial revolution”, you must act now.
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.
For continued success in our digitally driven age, your company’s culture needs some close scrutiny.
It’s up to you to take a strong lead rather than hold out for an organic organisational shift.
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.
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.
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”.
For innovation to thrive, you must create space for open, free-form interaction and engagement.
Get it right – build and nurture innovation-friendly networks – and the ideas will flow.
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’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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Does your backup plan have your back, or is it holding you back?
“Get rid of your safety net,” says Stephanie Vozza in an article written for Fast Company, in which Vozza proposes that having a backup plan might not always be good for business.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Innovation isn’t just for startups – established companies can attack new markets too. Incumbent firms operating in mature, saturated markets should use the power of…
Imagine an algorithm that could tell you when your company needs a new business model or when it should enter a new market. The bad…
Chinese companies can teach the West responsiveness, flexibility, improvisation and speed, say Thomas Hout and David Michael, writing for the Harvard Business Review. China’s economy…
Is it possible to invest in tomorrow without damaging performance today? Ken Favaro, writing for Strategy+Business, looks at short-term/long-term tension and how to get over…
Weak markets are not a valid excuse for a company’s slow growth, write Kasturi Rangan and Evan Hirsh for Strategy+Business. With the right market proposition,…
Adopting a new management practice could give your company competitive edge and boost performance. But, warns Julian Birkinshaw, writing for Harvard Business Review, leaders should…
When innovation initiatives succeed, leaders immediately want more. While this is encouraging for innovation teams, it presents them with the dual challenge of scalability and…
As Amina Elahi points out, writing for the Chicago Tribune’s Blue Sky section, innovation doesn’t just happen – it’s created. Leon Segal, an innovation psychologist…
You can’t achieve innovation through mission statements or press releases. Many leaders talk about the importance of innovation but are merely paying lip service to…
Creative work can take a long time, observes Jane Porter, writing for Fast Company. Results can be inconsistent, the gestation period can feel unproductive and…
Creativity can be the key to catching customers, according to Daigo Smith, co-founder of UK online dating website Loveflutter, writing for The Guardian. Smith summarises…
Business leaders strive for positive cultural change and innovation, resulting in happy, fulfilled employees creating value throughout the organisation. Writing for Strategy+Business, Lisa Bodell observes…
Does the hierarchy of your organisation stifle innovation? That’s the question posed by David Burkus, writing for management website ChiefExecutive.net. If creative ideas originate from…
There’s no doubt that innovation can be the difference between success and failure for a business. Writing for InnovationManagement.se, Simon Mitchell insists that innovation and…
You might want your organisation to be thought of as innovative, but simply asking your employees to think outside of the box won’t produce game-changing…
Most of the talk regarding the potential of digital technology for business has been centred around online sales, social networking and mobile applications. However, writing…
Webcam job interviews are growing in popularity as companies cut back on recruiting budgets, writes Tara Weiss of Forbes.com. Even giant companies such as Nike…