General

Disruptive Innovation: why the theory absolutely makes sense.

Jan Spruijt

Recently, there has been some debate about whether or not the theory about Disruptive Innovation should be followed upon by business leaders or not. In her article The Disrupting Machine Jill Lepore suggests that the theory is based upon flawed assumptions. Many articles have tried to support Lepore – such as John Parkinson – and many others, including Christensen and Irvin Wladawsky-Berger have tried to proof why it’s a trustable theory.

But the discussion is about the wrong topic: it shouldn’t be about whether or not the theory is suitable, it should be about whether or not theories could ever be undiscussible. They can’t. Theories are build upon models; aggregated from results, averages of true situations and therefore there will always be examples of situations in which they don’t seem to fit. That is the nature of theories. Reality is far more complex than theories could ever describe and business owners and leaders should always keep that in mind before rigurously implementing one single strategy based upon a certain theory.

We should embrace scholars who use true data to gather results, analyse them and draw significant conclusions. But we should even more embrace scholars who have the courage to use their intuition and vision to fill in the gaps – and of course make those steps clear to the reader – and create possible new ways of thinking about ongoing matters. It is them who have changed management and business in general.

Please read the article below for another way of looking at disruptive innovation – and sustainable innovation.

Read full article: Disruptive Innovation: why the theory absolutely makes sense.

Agile Methods in a New Area of Innovation Management and Business Modeling.

Jan Spruijt

This article by Link and Lewrick (2014), presented at the Science-to-Business Marketing Conference, provides an interesting overview of the possibilities of Agile Methods in Innovation Management. The authors propose that Agile Methods should not be used in R&D only, but also in fields like organizational culture, management style, structures, effective working and cunstomer relationships.

Preliminary results indicate that using their methodology for Agile Business Models creates more than 100% growth in new business results year-to-year, 100 times cost reduction, innovative solutions, brand image growth and reduction of process life cycles.

Read full article: Agile Methods in a New Area of Innovation Management and Business Modeling.

agile.png

6 Lessons that Innovation Managers could learn from Louis van Gaal

Jan Spruijt

This article was written before the powerful match against Spain last Friday and states that there are 6 reasons why Louis van Gaal can beat Spain: the lessons from Louis van Gaal. These lessons also translate perfectly to Innovation Managers. These are the 6 management lessons from Louis van Gaal to Innovation Managers:

1. An Innovation Manager is nodest
2. An Innovation Manager puts the individual in the middle
3. An Innovation Manager understands the power of the media
4. An Innovation Manager puts proces before outcome
5. An Innovation Manager embraces life-long-learning
6. An Innovation Manager changes tactics

Read full article: 6 Lessons that Innovation Managers could learn from Louis van Gaal

10 Years of Open Innovation Research

Jan Spruijt

This scientific publication by Bogers and Chesbrough provides an interesting and pragmatic overview of 10 years of scientific research towards Open Innovation. It uses trends graphs, wordclouds and most cited articles to clarify the development of the expertise.

Topics include:
– Intra-organizational Individual : Group/Team , Project , Functional area , Business unit
– Organizational Firm : Other (non-firm) organization, Strategy , Business model
– Extra-organizational: External stakeholders, individual, community, organization
– Inter-organizational: Alliance , Network , Ecosystem
– Industry: Industry development , Inter-industry differences
– Regional innovation systems: Local region, Nation , Supra-national institution
– Society: Citizens, Public policy

Read full article: 10 Years of Open Innovation Research

oi1.png
Source: Bogers & Chesbrough, 2014
oi2.png
Source: Bogers & Chesbrough, 2014

Where does ‘The Innovation Funnel’ come from? A short history.

Jan Spruijt

This great article from 2011 by Gerry Katz provides us with an overview of the different models that have been developed around innovation processes and New Product Development. In short:
— 1980: New Product and Development Service Process (Hauser)
– 1986: Stage Gate (Cooper)
– 1992: Innovation Funnel (Wheelwright & Clark)
– 1992: New Product Development Funnel (McGrath)
– 2005: Innovation Funnel (MIT)

And he proposes a new design in the end. The article, however, misses the evolution of Open Innovation.

Read full article: Where does ‘The Innovation Funnel’ come from? A short history.

University R&D doesn’t create economic growth

Jan Spruijt

“It is not clear, then, that university-based research necessarily leads to the economic payoffs that governments expect,” the report concludes. “But it does point out that investment in research can lead to higher-quality university education and so improve a country’s “human capital”.”

Read full article: University R&D doesn’t create economic growth

The Innovator Dating Service

Jan Spruijt

This is an interesting article about the role of big data in HR departments and the effect it could have on innovation processes. “In this way, these HR divisions have essentially become dating services. They believe that they will discover their next generation of innovators by using algorithms that evaluate how well potential recruits align with a pre-determined set of qualities that they’re looking for in a match.”

Have you seen HR using big data in this way?

Read full article: The Innovator Dating Service

Immediacy, Accuracy, Innovation – It’s Required

Jan Spruijt

An interesting post by Scott MacFarland in the Huffington Post explains why immediacy and accuracy are important factors in the innovation process: “As innovation becomes a necessity for survival, so will immediacy and accuracy characteristics that make up the innovative process and the product. Innovation is not just something that can be bought and sold like nearly everything in our consumer-driven culture; it requires immediacy and accuracy to be injected into every aspect of the entire company.”

Read full article: Immediacy, Accuracy, Innovation – It’s Required

Business Model Innovation: Ten Lessons from Nonprofits

Jan Spruijt

What keeps business leaders up at night? If it’s not their company’s ability to streamline operations and lower costs, it’s whether their teams have the vision to see future opportunities and the flexibility to pursue those opportunities faster and more profitably than competitors.

Read full article: Business Model Innovation: Ten Lessons from Nonprofits