Avoid the Toxic Trap: the Toxic Matrix

Avoid the Toxic Trap: the Toxic Matrix

Innovation is the foundation of progress and success in business. A culture of innovation is essential for companies to thrive and stay competitive. One of the biggest challenges for companies is to ensure that the culture of innovation is not overshadowed by a culture of toxicity. There are a number of potential pitfalls that must be avoided in order to create an environment that encourages creativity and collaboration. This blog will discuss these issues, as well as strategies for avoiding the Toxic Trap.

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Business Model Innovation Canvas

How to blend 10 Types of Innovation with the Business Model Canvas?

Simple but effective: I’ve tried to combine the excellent framework of 10 Types of Innovation (Keeley et al, 2013) with the highly successful framework of the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder, Pigneur et al, 2008). I wasn’t the first one to come up with this idea, some others have plotted the 10 types on the BMC before, such as Huw Griffiths on Medium or Heather McQuaid on Slideshare.

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Ambidextruous Organization

The Ambidextrous Organization

4 Paths to a Sophisticated Innovation Strategy

In december I reached out to both Alexander Osterwalder and John Bessant and asked them what is the most important organizational skill for engaging continuously with innovation. Their answers were almost the same:

  • Osterwalder mentioned that every board should consist of both a Chief Executive Office and a Chief Entrepreneurship Officer.
  • Bessant noted that organizations should always find a balance between innovators and innovation managers.

Shorty after, I read an article by Ayse Birsel, on Inc.com1. She also talked to asked Alexander Osterwalder and asked him the question why ‘designers who are fluent at business strategy’ and ‘business people who are fluent at design’ are so different to each other. He could easily name 8 differences between the two of them, but the article concluded with the statement that organizations are in need of both explorers and exploiters – or evolutionaries and revolutionaires2.

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university2040

The University in 2040: 6 trends & an infographic.

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

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

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

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)

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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5 Most Powerfull Insights on Innovation Management gained at the ISPIM Conference

5 Most Powerfull Insights on Innovation Management gained at the ISPIM Conference

“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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Creating Space for Innovation: The Role of “Design Zones”

For quite some years already, we (as in educational institutes) have been trying to set up the best ‘creative classroom’ possibile, because we believe that it is an essential element of modern education. I believe it contributes to collaborative learning and a strong attitude towards innovation. We are not the only one, many institutes are testing educational concepts based upon collaborative workspaces, Babson College and the Design School probably the most well-known of them.

I stumbled upon the following article about the ‘design zone’ at Babson College. After some years of analysis, they conclude that these zones:

  • increase student participation and therefore create more positive energy;
  • increase personal contact between lecturers and students;
  • the layout can be easily adjusted to the requirements needed at the moment.

There are also some challenges:

  • Set-up and clean-up times take away part of lecture times;
  • Because of its size and layout, these rooms don’t work well for presentations (i.e. sharing knowledge);
  • It requires more participative teaching methods by the lecturers, which some seem to struggle with.

I have found it relieving that ‘even’ Babson College seems to deal with the same problems as we do. On the other hand, it strikes me that even there, they are still small-thinking in terms of classrooms (with walls), whereas we can easily find much better examples especially in business.

Do you know of any extraordinary collaborative workspaces that increase sharing and learning? What is your experience with this way of working?

Read full article: Creating Space for Innovation: The Role of “Design Zones”

Teamwork and Organizational Innovation: The Moderating Role of the HRM Context

This study examines whether staff groups which are organized in teams are better at organizational innovation than staff groups who aren’t. Moreover, it examines whether human resource management (HRM) systems, which can be of facilitating or constraining nature, enhance the teamwork and therefore innovation outcomes.18 to 45 organizations from the UK manufacturing sector have been researched. Results suggest that the more widespread the use of teamwork in organizations, the higher the level of organizational innovation. Furthermore, this effect depends on the overall quality of the HRM systems that exist in their organizations. Teamwork is further moderated by an HRM practice that provides teams with time for thoughtful reflection. Thus, HRM systems can be of more or less facilitating or constraining nature for teams in organizations.

Read full article: Teamwork and Organizational Innovation: The Moderating Role of the HRM Context