Innovation

Serious games effective in teaching (open) innovation & management

Serious games effective in teaching (open) innovation & management

Jan Spruijt

Recently, an article about the effect of serious games on teaching and learning the essentials of (open) innovation and innovation management has been published on the ssrn. The authors have researched a group of students from different nationalities playing a game in the context of an education course. By playing the game, they had the following goals:

  • Creating a shared experience of social dynamics and the paradox of co-opetition for the students;
  • Enable critical reflection on social dynamics of co-opetition based on this experience;
  • Experience-based learning — enable the students to apply what they learned from their reflection and experience through iteration;
  • Create deeper understanding of open innovation;
The study uses a series of plays and discussions and compares the results of these sessions with game theory. They round up with several interesting conclusions:
  • We argued that play can be a source of creativity, imagination and fun in a teaching setting (cf. Kolb & Kolb, 2010).
  • We found evidence that playful games can help to create such an experience through interactive experience and simple simulation — thereby helping the students to better understand the theory behind open collaborative innovation (Bogers, 2012; Chesbrough, 2003; Chesbrough et al., 2006; Dahlander & Gann, 2010; Nalebuff & Brandenburger, 1997).
  • Moreover, playful games allow understanding open innovation as interplay of complex processes of relating, social capital, and institutions (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Rolfstam, 2009; Searle, 2005; Stacey & Griffin, 2005).
  • They thus allow us to get a more holistic understanding of the complex social dynamics that emerge when people have to deal with novelty. (Bogers & Sproedt, 2012).
Two of the most used innovation games in teaching (professionals) and higher education are:

 

Creativity as a Life Skill for Innovation

Creativity as a Life Skill for Innovation

Jan Spruijt

One of my favorite reads of the last couple of years is the work “Creative Leadership: Skills that drive innovation”, written by Puccio, Mance and Murdock. They argue that by making use of the right thinking skills an individual should be able to think outside their ‘area of familiarity’. The origin of radical innovation begins outside this so-called zone of comfort. By making use of the right converging techniques the individual should be able to make deliberate decisions between alternatives. See figure 1.

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Puccio et al. mention the following essential thinking skills necessesary for diverging and converging:
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Affective Skills (Puccio, Mance, Murdock)

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Cognitive Skills (Puccio, Mance, Murdock)

Recently, Puccio gave a wonderful Ted-presentation about creativity:

Innovation Management at Avans University

Jan Spruijt

A couple of weeks ago, I had to give a presentation about innovation management at the Frismakers Festival in the Netherlands. The presentation was about innovation management at Avans University, where I’m employed as a lecturer on this topic.

The presentation follows a structured number of steps:

firstly, I had to jump into the subject: the innovation management game, a game about innovation management, a company that is now commercially developed but started as a spinn-off from Avans University.

In the next step, a short summary of the need for innovation in the educational sector followed: it all comes down to our business model. Why are students going to Universities? Right, because they’ll receive graduate certificates. Why do they need them? Right, because companies ask for these credentials. But what if companies are not asking for credentials from a single University anymore, more rather like their new employees to have different certificates from high-end institutes like MIT or Harvard, received by following online courses (which is already possible), why would students go to a smaller institute like ours? The current business model is on the edge of a huge change and educational facilities need to think about their innovative capacity quickly.
In the next phase, I explained what we did: the process of innovation. The direction of innovation is mainly top-down. But most of the (fuzzy front end of) innovation starts bottom-up, like in many professional organizations. Therefore, many great ideas will never make it to a good business case, let alone a true a commercial product or service.

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So what did we learn? Innovation has to be facilited both top-down (for the larger projects, oftenly incremental) as bottom-up (for radical ideas). We also learned that innovation (therefore) mostly happens incidently. However, the whole idea behind innovation management is to not let is happen incidently. And thirdly, there is never enough time. Innovation is something we usually do in the weekends.

Bottom line: we acted on it by creating a new rol: the innovation director (1 fte) in the lowest level of hierarchy in the organisation: the team of lecturers. All the lecturers got 5% of their time to spend on innovation, which is managed by this director. Ideation and Concepting are seperated; some people are better at the first, some people do better at concepting. The director talks to the educational board and makes sure that project fall within strategic plans or – when not – are supported by external or internal financial resources. And it’s starting to pay off.

The video:

European Commission opts for Industrial Revolution 2.0

Jan Spruijt

Recent decades have been the years of outsourcing. Not only did companies outsource traditional cheap production towards more interesting markets, companies also outsourced most of their ICT and knowledge-based services towards cheaper countries. During recent years, many organisation have also outsourced their innovation departments and knowledge-intensive research and development branches towards countries in the Far East and Brazil. No longer does the Europe have the competitive advantage of being an innovative leader.

The Lisboa targets have been losing importance because of these trends; seemingly enough reason for the European Commission to launch a new goal: Industrial Revolotion has to be re-enforced.

Will this “Industrial Revolution 2.0” become a realistic scenario?

More information: Europese Unie

Global Innovation Barometer: Innovation has Strategic Priority

Global Innovation Barometer: Innovation has Strategic Priority

Jan Spruijt

Last week the Global Innovation Barometer (GE) has been launched. The barometer provides results from (the most important) economies around the world . For instance, in the Dutch Report they conclude: “Innovation is a strategic priority for Dutch Businesses”, with almost 91% of the respondents mentioning it.  Moreover, the report mentions the following indicators as most important for innovation:

  • the improvement of existing products or services (mentioned by 80%)
  • the development of entirely new products (mentioned in second position by 70% of Netherland respondents)
  • the development of new business processes to improve profitability (mentioned in third position by 61% of respondents).

Visit their website for the full reports.

Open Innovation: Comparing Collaborative and Non-Collaborative Idea Sharing in SMEs

Jan Spruijt

Open Innovation has been hyped for over a decade now. Despite of the fact that many researchers have been researching core aspects of the Open Innovation definition – as Henry Chesbrough has put it in 2003 and redefined it in 2010 – the concept has somewhat ‘blurred’, meaning that Open Innovation oftenly is mistaken for related terminology, such as (plain and easy) collaboration, co-creation or corporate transparancy. So it’s time to make choices…what is Open Innovation and what is not Open Innovation?

Ed Cottam, a researcher currently undertaking a PhD on Open Innovation at the Newcastle Business School, recently started an extended research study to break down the topic of open innovation into its bare essentials. This way he aims to be able to identify the key concepts that really matter and removing the superfluous.

He is asking your help, as part of the Open Innovation expert community, to gather as much qualitative information as possible. If you have experience in the field of (open) innovation or innovation management, he (and the whole community) is desparately waiting for your input.

Please answer the following questions (preferably in a comment, but an email will also do fine); leave your email address and we’ll share the final results with you personally. Thanks in advance on behalf of Ed Cottam!

  1. Please specify your current position/organisation and your experience with Open Innovation. Please specify an URL to your Linkedin-account so that Ed Cottam is able the check your credentials (for research purposes).
  2. Currently, what are the key on-going debates within open innovation?
  3. What are the key perspectives in open innovation?
  4. What resource(s) would you recommend a PhD student study, providing an excellent account of the chronological development, perspectives and debates in open innovation? This could be a thesis, article(s) or book(s).
  5. If you were to train a student for 8 weeks so they could produce an excellent, PhD standard literature review on open innovation and you had a million dollars on the line, what would you have them focus on? What would that programme look like?
  6. Do you know any researchers who’ve tackled this corpus very effectively and efficiently? Who are they? What did they do that was different?
  7. What are your favourite open innovation instructional books and resources? If a PhD student had to teach themselves, what would you suggest they use?

Who’s kicking off?

Innovation Management Game: start-up of the year

Innovation Management Game: start-up of the year

Jan Spruijt

Just like last year, we’ll publish a (small) list containing the most promising start-ups of the year. Obviously, we’ll share our opinion from the perspective of Open Innovation by answering the following questions:

  • Does the start-up contribute to the field of Open Innovation?
  • Does the start-up contribute to the field of Innovation Management?
  • Does the start-up contribute to the European knowledge economy?
  • Is the product/idea innovative?
  • Does it meet customer needs?

1st: Innovation Management Game

This year, the number 1 position goes to the Innovation Management Game. The Innovation Management Game is a business strategy simulation game for universities, higher education, business schools and corporate/executive trainings. The game centralizes topics like Open Innovation, Co-Creation, Innovation Management and Business Model Innovation.

Does the start-up contribute to the field of Open Innovation? 5/5
Does the start-up contribute to the field of Innovation Management? 5/5
Does the start-up contribute to the European knowledge economy? 5/5
Is the product/idea innovative? 4/5
Does it meet customer needs? 5/5
Overall: 4.8/5

2nd: Owlin

The second position goes to Owlin; a start-up in the financial sector that scans and analyzes social data and creates insights in financial opportunities before organisations and press offices would be able to recognize it themselves. Owlin is part of the Rockstart’s Acceleration Programme and received earlier this week €200.000 euro on venture capital.

Does the start-up contribute to the field of Open Innovation? 4/5
Does the start-up contribute to the field of Innovation Management? 4/5
Does the start-up contribute to the European knowledge economy? 5/5
Is the product/idea innovative? 5/5
Does it meet customer needs? 5/5
Overall 4.6/5

 3rd: Fosbury

Just a few months online, however already getting wide attention, Fosbury. A start-up, developed by two of the former founders of Yunoo, that enables organization to quickly segment and advertise coupons and vouchers to smartphones. We’re expecting this type of organisation to set back the traditional paper advertising markets before the end of 2013.

Does the start-up contribute to the field of Open Innovation? 4/5
Does the start-up contribute to the field of Innovation Management? 3/5
Does the start-up contribute to the European knowledge economy? 5/5
Is the product/idea innovative? 4/5
Does it meet customer needs? 5/5
Overall: 4.2/5

 

European Innovation Scoreboard exposes substantial regional differences in performance

European Innovation Scoreboard exposes substantial regional differences in performance

Jan Spruijt

The European Innovation Scoreboard has been one of the most important European studies for national en regional performance on innovation performance. As one of the key elements for economic growth en job growth, the performance or regions in regard of innovation is comprehensively assessedon a yearly basis. The results are therefore widely used by local and national governments in policy and decision-making. Just over a week ago, the 2012 report was launched in Brussels and for the first time the report made a difference between regions that are Innovation Leaders and regions that are Innovation Followers.

Substantial Regional Differences

One of the most significant findings of this year is that the performance of regions in regard to innovation isn’t bound to the national borders of the member states, but is much more focused to specific areas within those nations. As Michael Porter said many years ago:

“Paradoxically, the enduring competitive advantages in a global economy lie increasingly in local things-knowledge relationships, and motivation that distant rivals cannot match.”

These results aren’t a surprise, because many countries have been developing “National Place-based Policies” (OECD), such as the “Peaks in the Delta”-policy in the Netherlands in which three regions have been pointed out as the country’s nuclea for innovation: Mainport (Rotterdam-The Hague), Airport (Amsterdam) and Brainport (Eindhoven). These strategies are now reflected in the results of the European Innovation Scoreboard.

Germany, Denmark, Finland and Sweden are the most innovative

The most innovative countries in Europe – the ones with the highest percentage of regions being Innovative Leaders – are Germany, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. This reflected in the following figure.

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We can see a kind of “blue belt” stretching over Scandinavia, Denmark, Germany and the Benelux, Switzerland and Southeastern France. The following image shows the difference between regions better because of a more detailed legenda:

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We do see very big differences in certain countries, such as in Sweden and The Netherlands. For instance, in The Netherlands we see dark blue results in the three areas that have been receiving strong Regional Innovative support over the years (Brainport, Mainport and Airport), and we see even some moderate areas in the northeast. In Sweden, and also the UK and France, similar effects are being seen,

What do you think that we could conclude? Do regional innovation strategies work? Or do we need to invest more in a more widespread innovation policy?

Europe dominates Global Competitiveness Report

Europe dominates Global Competitiveness Report

Jan Spruijt

Switzerland keeps its prime position in the list and Singapore stays second. Switzerland is renowned for its high investment in Research and Development and highly integrated collaboration efforts between business and knowledge institutes. In Singapore the main factors mentioned are the professional attitude and efficiency of the government. The top 5 is completed with two Scandinavian countries – Sweden and Finland, because of their investments in innovation and their outstanding integration between higher education and companies and The Netherlands.

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One of the new-comers in the Top 5 are The Netherlands, according to the recently published report by the World Economic Forum. The last time they were part of the Top 5 was in 2000. The Netherlands score particularly high on “advanced technology” and “innovation” and is therefore one of the most innovative countries of the world this year.  The figure below shows the competitiveness of The Netherlands over the years:

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The report has taken into account a bunch of different factors, grouped among the following aspects:

  • Institutions
  • Infrastructure
  • Macro-economical environment
  • Health and prime school
  • Higher education and training
  • Efficiency of the goods market
  • Efficiency of the labour market
  • Development of the financial markets
  • Technological consciousness
  • Market size
  • Business environment
  • Innovation

Spreaded across the different aspects, several different factors in the field of innovation have been studied and depicted in the report. For instance, The Netherlands score as followed on those factors:

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The following factors translate as: capacity for innovation, quality of scientific institutes, expenditures on R&D, R&D-related collaboration between universities and companies, governmental procurement of advanced technological products, availability of knowledge workers and intelectual property/patents.

For more information (in Dutch only) you can download the report of the Rotterdam School of Management.

A New Model for Innovation: Fast Track Innovation

A New Model for Innovation: Fast Track Innovation

Jan Spruijt

Recently, I spoke to Deloitte‘s Innovation Concepts Manager Marc Maes and Innovation Consultant Klaas Langeveld about their idea of managing innovation and idea generation within companies. They explained me about their Fast Track strategy and their home-made Innovation Maturity Model. The model intrigued me because of its fairly complete coverage of innovation-related issues and its slim simplicity. It triggered me to grab some literature to find prove of this model. My rationality: if it looks simple and complete, it must be good. And if it’s really good, it must be (partly) supported by earlier findings.

Deloitte’s Innovation Maturity Model: a short explanation.

Below, you’ll see the adopted version of Deloitte’s Innovation Maturity Model. The goal of the model is to “score” companies performances on innovation in the model. As Marc and Klaas said, probably in slightly other words, the line should be straight and preferably as high up as possible. Take a look for yourself:

So in the basis the model contains two axes, both unnamed. I’ll try to figure out correct names for them later on. On the vertical axe we’re basicly seeing four forms of doing business. On the horizontal axe we’re seeing management topics, three of which are combined into one: the innovation process. The result of the model would look something like this (I tried to complete them for [edit: anonymized on request], two companies I know fairly well):

Why is it good?

Now, it is time to look into some literature and give the two axes name plates. First of all, the vertical axe. The four aspect seem to correlate on “innovation effectiveness”. In innovation literature, when researching the effectiveness of innovation, scholars are often referencing to Organizational Development. Basically, the four above-mentioned steps have a lot in common with Greiner’s model of organizational growth (Greiner, 1972), which still is the most valued model about organization growth. Another perspective would be Rothwell‘s generations of innovation, who looks into adopted innovation models over time and shows the increasing professionalization of innovation management literature. The first three aspects are based on Greiner’s work, the “Network”-factor in Deloitte’s model is more or less based upon Rothwell’s work. Moreover, another traditional model organizational development – and later oftenly used to explain cultural differences – is Quinn & Cameron‘s model for Organizational Growth.

 

So, to be scientifically correct, I would suggest to use “organizational development” as the dimension of the vertical axis. And, if we would like to stick to just four aspects, then use:

  • Adhocracy-oriented organization
  • Interal-oriented organization
  • Hierarchy-oriented organization
  • Market-0riented organization

The second axis looks like two groups of aspects that are of interest for innovation managers. But why these? I’m seeing two different groups of aspects:

  • Change management issues: what to do when you want your organization to change (develop)?
  • Innovation process: how to manage your innovation process better?

For the first item, I would suggest to use one of the widely adopted change management models. For instance, the six logical levels interpretated from organizational perspective:

  1. Mission: is innovation part of your mission statement? Why (not)?
  2. Identity: is innovation part of your identity?
  3. Values: is innovation part of your key values? Is it part of your companies’ culture? How do you manage this?
  4. Knowledge: is your company competent on innovation? Do you include innovation in HRM?
  5. Behaviour: see next.

For the second item, which is all about behaviour, Deloitte has suggested three steps that make up the process of innovation. Many scholars have looked into these processes. I’ve gathered some of them:

(Gopalakrishnan en Damanpour 1997) (Adams e.a. 2006) (Goffin en Pfeiffer 1999) (Verhaeghe en Kfir 2002) (Rothwell 1992)
Inputs
Idea Generation Knowledge management Creativity Idea Generation Idea Generation
Project Definition Human Resources Technology Acquisition
Problem Solving Strategy Innovation Strategy Networking
Design and development Project management Portfolio Management Development Developing,
prototyping & manufacturing
Marketing and commercialization Commercialization Project management Commercialization Marketing &
Sales

What we see is that there is no standard for the innovation process. But most of the literature suggests at least three items to be part of every innovation process:

  1. Idea Generation
  2. Concept Development
  3. Commercialisation

Those items are indeed very coherent with Deloitte’s model for innovation. To my opinion, “knowledge management” should be an integrated part of the innovation process. And then I mean “external knowledge management”, or, if you wish, market research or crowdsourcing. It should be step 0.

Conclusion: a practical model for innovation

All in all, Deloitte’s model would suffice for practical implementation and for companies looking for a way to place their own activities into perspective. Although it needs scientific perfectioning, it is very usable and friendly. What do you think? How is your company performing on the above-mentioned aspects?

Note: Deloitte did not instruct or reward me in any way for writing this article. Above-mentioned perspective is my personal reflection of their model. In fact, we are not only friends, we are also competitors, but that doesn’t mean I could not be interested in their perspective on innovation 😉