The Lean Scale-Up: Innovation & Entrepreneurship for New Ventures

The Lean Scale-Up: Innovation & Entrepreneurship for New Ventures

Traditionally, organization design (OD) is an area of expertise focused on the roles and formal structures of organizations. The main goal of OD would be to design the organization in such a way that it makes it possible for the company to reach its vision and thus facilitates the growth.

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7 Billion Universities: How Simulation Games could disrupt Education

7 Billion Universities: How Simulation Games could disrupt Education

Over a week ago, I gave a TED talk about the role of simulation games in higher education and how they could disrupt the education system as we know it. Below, you’ll find the video, the slides I used and the full transcript of the text. Are you interested in helping me to make this game ready to enroll in a couple of years?

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The Early Bird Gets the Worm, But the Second Mouse Gets the Cheese: Non-Technological Innovation in Creative Industries

In the most recent edition of the Journal of Creativity and Innovation Management, I ran into an interesting article about being a startup versus being an early adaptor. The article suggests that early adaptors have a higher probability to succeed in the case of non-technological environments than the startups that proceed them.

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Innovation Ecosystem

Schematic overview to understand the complexity of the Innovation Ecosystem (Infographic)

The Innovation Ecosystem

The Innovation Ecosystem is one of the most under-researched topics. One the one hand because policy researchers usually tend to focus more on polls, elections and international collaboration and business researchers usually tend to focus more on organizations and interorganizational collaborations. However, publisher Edward Elgar has repeatedly published interesting works on innovation policy, innovation systems and the like. An ecosystem of innovation could be described as, quoting Wikipedia, the flow of technology and information among people, enterprises and institutions [which] is key to an innovative process. It contains the interaction between actors who are needed in order to turn an idea into a process, product or service on the market. The Innovation Ecosystem is extremely important to the economy and welfare of a country or region. It is one of the main drivers of GDP. Over the past decades more research has been done on the dynamics behind these ecosystems and its subsystems. Below you’ll find a schematic overview of the innovation ecosystem. It will take you to the download side of Innovative Dutch, where you can download it in full resolution.

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15 Best Open Innovation Articles of 2015

15 Best Open Innovation Articles of 2015

2015’s Innovation Management conference (ISPIM) was all about Open Innovation. In fact, it was one of the most keywords – and definitely the most specific one – used amongst all 233 papers presented during the conference. Although the articles are not completely available yet (if you’re not a member), I have used it to draw up a list of the 15 best articles presented on the conference on Open Innovation of 2015 so far. I have added elements of the abstracts here, but following the links you can download the full papers from the ISPIM website.

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Trending Topics in Innovation Management

Trending Topics in Innovation Management

Last week, 233 papers have been presented at the ISPIM conference. Although not proceeded yet, the papers and abstracts are already available for ISPIM members. Being a member, I was able to scan all the abstracts, titles and keywords for trending topics. After a few manual adjustments, such as combining words and ignoring research-related terminology I could come up with the following wordcloud. It identifies the main topics that are currently trending in innovation management. Read more

5 Most Powerfull Insights on Innovation Management gained at the ISPIM Conference

5 Most Powerfull Insights on Innovation Management gained at the ISPIM Conference

“If you go from Moscow to Budapest, you think you are in Paris. And if you go from Paris to Budapest, you think you are in Moscow,” as Gyorgy Ligeti very sharply noticed, perfectly describes the location of the XXVI ISPIM Conference in Budapest. ISPIM, short for International Society for Professional Innovation Management, organized this worldwide event once a year. A place to be for everyone involved in Innovation Management, both practitioners and scholars.

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A 5-Dimensional Model for Managing Innovation through Organizational Change

A 5-Dimensional Model for Managing Innovation through Organizational Change

I’m in the lucky position to run into quite a few business owners, corporate directors and leaders on a daily occasion. And when talking to them about innovation – and their ambitions – it almost always comes down to one simple question: “How can we implement innovation in our organization?”. A question which seems easy to ask, but needs a complicated answer.

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Creating Space for Innovation: The Role of “Design Zones”

For quite some years already, we (as in educational institutes) have been trying to set up the best ‘creative classroom’ possibile, because we believe that it is an essential element of modern education. I believe it contributes to collaborative learning and a strong attitude towards innovation. We are not the only one, many institutes are testing educational concepts based upon collaborative workspaces, Babson College and the Design School probably the most well-known of them.

I stumbled upon the following article about the ‘design zone’ at Babson College. After some years of analysis, they conclude that these zones:

  • increase student participation and therefore create more positive energy;
  • increase personal contact between lecturers and students;
  • the layout can be easily adjusted to the requirements needed at the moment.

There are also some challenges:

  • Set-up and clean-up times take away part of lecture times;
  • Because of its size and layout, these rooms don’t work well for presentations (i.e. sharing knowledge);
  • It requires more participative teaching methods by the lecturers, which some seem to struggle with.

I have found it relieving that ‘even’ Babson College seems to deal with the same problems as we do. On the other hand, it strikes me that even there, they are still small-thinking in terms of classrooms (with walls), whereas we can easily find much better examples especially in business.

Do you know of any extraordinary collaborative workspaces that increase sharing and learning? What is your experience with this way of working?

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Using Games to create Business Model Innovation

I believe this article by Sune Gudiksen is interesting because it explores the rationale of game theory in combination with business model innovation. The article argues that gamification (in the innovation process) could lead to novel business model insights.Gudiksen describes game theory by referrin the ‘magic circle’: “As stated bypioneering play researcher Huizinga (1949), itis a playground in which special rules apply.He further argues that magic circles are ‘temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart’ (Huizinga, 1949, p. 10). Salen and Zimmerman(2004) argue that within the magic circle, specific meanings can emerge. Building upon the experiential learning model, in which learning happens as a result of concrete experiences, reflective observations, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation (Kolb, 1984), Kolb and Kolb (2010) suggest that the ludic learning space is the highest form of experiential learning. The ludic learning space is characterized by principles such as the freedom to play, the chaos of uncertainty, welcoming foolishness and stepping out of real life. Such a temporary space can allow for the various perspectives and forms of professional expertise to come alive in the search for newbusiness model initiatives.”

Gudiksen concludes with the statement that there are three reasons for using games in business model innovation:

    • Games can be a beneficial way of combining various interests.
    • Games challenge assumptions.
    • Games create surprises that might eventually lead to innovation.
    • Games offer the freedom to improvise, suggest, play and test alternative and future business model scenarios.

Please take a look at the Innovation Management Game if you’re interested in business model game.

Read full article: Using Games to create Business Model Innovation