Innovation

How Nonprofits are Leveraging Innovation Management Platforms

Jan Spruijt

Last year, we wrote a popular article about the Golden Circle of Innovation and the way that not-for-profit organizations are using Open Innovation.

Recently, another article was published on this matter. To sum up, it says innovation management can help nonprofits in three different ways:
– better funding
– internal efficiency
– unlock growth

Read full article: How Nonprofits are Leveraging Innovation Management Platforms

The Rise of Innovation Districts in Europe

Jan Spruijt

According to High Tech Campus frontman Bert-Jan Woertman, building bridges between innovation district is the way forward. He follows up upon a recent publication of Brookings Institution, The Rise of Innovation Districts, and benchmarks the Technology Region of Southern Netherlands with districts mentioned in the report. So, this would be a form of open innovation of open innovation regions.

According to Katz and Wagner, Innovation Districts are: “a new complementary urban model is now emerging, giving rise to what we and others are calling “innovation districts”. These districts, by our definition, are geographic areas where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with start-ups, business incubators and accelerators. [….] Our most creative institutions, firms and workers crave proximity so that ideas and knowledge can be transferred more quickly and seamlessly.”

Read full article: High Tech Campus Eindhoven – Campus Newsletter

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.

Ten Types of Innovation Infographic

Ten Types of Innovation Infographic

Jan Spruijt

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.

Read more →

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.

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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

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Source: Bogers & Chesbrough, 2014
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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.

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