A few weeks ago I spoke to a high level manager in a financial institution. We talked about his (truly) impressive activities in the field of innovation, and then he surprised me somewhat by saying: “In 2009 we plan to freeze innovation activities.”
Since the company is not a client of ours, I wasn’t directly affected by this decision, but still, I was curious to understand what stood behind it. Another victim of “the Situation”, I said to myself, but to my surprise he went on to explain: “We have so many good ideas now that we need to pause with innovation and focus on implementation.”
This approach is, in my eyes, a symptom of one of the biggest and most common misconceptions in the field; that innovation is all about coming up with ideas of what to do (products, services, whatever it is you do). The corollary is, obviously, that once you have these ideas you don’t need to be bothered with innovation any longer, all you need is to “just” implement.
In reality, the situation is nearly the opposite. Continue reading ‘No innovation please, we’re too busy.’
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A week ago I started teaching an SIT course in the Bar-Ilan University. After an interesting discussion on the value of innovation, one of the students asked the most basic academic question: “what is your definition of innovation?”
Well … What is my definition of innovation? I suddenly realized that in 10 years of teaching innovation & facilitating innovation processes I have never thought of a definition for the darn thing …
Continue reading ‘Harry Potter and the definition of innovation’
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Last week I attended and spoke at an interesting conference in Stavanger, Norway (www.innotown.com). The last session I
listened to before I left was, for me, the most thought provoking. The session’s title was “Innovation is not what innovators do… it is what customers adopt”, and it was delivered by Michael Schrage, of MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business.
First, I was happy to discover that the catchy title reflected only a small part of the content that Michael chose to share with us, and second, that contrary to what the title might suggest, we were not submitted to yet another “listen to your customers” sermon. To learn about Michael’s ideas, you are invited to his website. But meanwhile, for a very imprecise (non-authorized), partial, quick and subjective list of some points I found insightful and helpful:
Continue reading ‘Insights from Innotown’
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