Innovation

Innovation Thinking Methods

Innovation Thinking Methods

Jan Spruijt

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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ISPIM Conference Porto & ISPIM Grand Prize for Innovation Management Excellence

Jan Spruijt

As a member of ISPIM, we’re proud to be part of the ISPIM 2016 Conference in Porto again.

Organised by ISPIM, and supported by ANI – Agência Nacional de Inovação (the National Innovation Office of Portugal), this event is for innovation researchers, industry executives, thought leaders and policy makers.

  • Understand the latest innovation management thinking in 50+ workshops, keynotes, tours and discussions
  • Broadcast your insights to 500 innovation experts from 50 countries
  • Get feedback, get published and share understanding
  • Deep dive into the Portuguese innovation scene
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71 Innovation Methodologies

71 Innovation Methodologies

Jan Spruijt

A while ago I sat down with Machiel Wetselaar & David van Dinther to create a list of innovation methodologies for a course we’re developing. Up to now we’ve gathered 71 different methodologies for implementing innovation in your organization. We are still looking for ways to categorize them, but for now we’ve based our categorization on the maturity of the organization.

We’re pretty sure there are many more methodologies out there. Please drop a comment if you would like one or more methodologies included in this overview. The list is almost random.

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

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

Jan Spruijt

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

Jan Spruijt

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)

Jan Spruijt

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

Jan Spruijt

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

Jan Spruijt

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

Jan Spruijt

“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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