Global Strategy Consultancy Firm
On November 23, I had the honor of giving a talk at the NRC Live event for Education. I was scheduled immediately after Bert van der Zwaan, rector magnificus at the University of Utrecht. Van der Zwaan launched his book that day: the result of sabbatical he and his wife took in 2015. During that sabbatical they traveled the world and tried to speak with as many educational visionaries as possible. It led to the work: The University in 2040, does it still exist?
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As part of a simulation game on innovation management we have been running at universities and in corporate training programs for over 4 years now, we have developed an integrative model for dealing with innovation management on a daily basis. Innovation Management is a strategic activity that isn’t necessarily needed to implement throughly for every company. Mostly large companies have included structured processes that include administrative stages to following the (large number of) project that are in progress and to be able to follow-up on them and calculate the effect of innovation management in general. For smaller companies however, that is not general practice: having such a formal process in place simply doesn’t weigh up to cost efficiencies will generate. But for them, innovation management is just as important – but they rather use a toolkit than a formal process. Our 8 Types of Innovation Processes model is a simple design that makes it easy to bridge the gap between a formal process and the tools available.
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A few weeks ago, a friend brought the book “Innovation Thinking Methods: disciplines of thought that can help you rethink industries and unlock 10x better solutions” from Osama A. Hashmi to my attention. I ordered it, read it and was impressed by the both the power and simplicity of the work.
The book is thin and comprehensible. In fact, it read like a weblog post enriched with interesting personal thoughts of the author and beautiful examples from his own perspective. What I most liked is the fact that it takes another approach then we’re used to see: the book is a random list of thinking methods that could be used when dealing with innovation as an entrepreneur. The list is not categorized, nor is there a structured process that guides you through the book, nor an analysis or an advice. And therefore it is mostly an inspirational book and a homage to disruptive, non-incremental or structured thinking; the fuzzy front-end of innovation. A non-methodological list of methods. Both an obeisance for the entrepreneurial-minded free-thinkers and experienced managers looking for a solution to create passion and change in an innovation team.
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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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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 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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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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This time, we’ll put Kelley’s Ten Faces of Innovation in the spotlight. First published in 2005, but still growing in popularity, this work focuses on the different roles people can adopt in innovation teams. I’ve created an infographic that is inspired by the work of Kelley.
The Ten Faces of Innovation are:
– The Anthropologist
– The Experimenter
– The Cross-Pollinator
– The Hurdler
– The Collaborator
– The Director
– The Experience Architect
– The Set Designer
– The Caregiver
– The Storyteller
By far one of the most interesting books on innovation of the last few years is “Ten Types of Innovation: the discipline of building breakthroughs” by Keeley. At the time of publishing he was director of the firm Doblin, however the firm has recently been acquired by Deloite. The Ten Types of Innovation explain different forms of innovation, bundles in three categories. Because I believe this book should be present on everyone’s desk, I have created an infographic that is inspired by the framework of the Ten Types.
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