Managing innovation

Just to let you know…..  my website will be changing soon.  Don’t panic – everything will still be there but I’ve tried to improve the look and feel and to tidy up.  What had become a bit of a sprawling jungle is now, hopefully, a more organised garden, easy to walk around and enjoy.  You should be able to find everything easily – blogs, resources, etc. – and if you can’t then please let me know and I’ll try to fix it as soon as I can.  The address remains the same and the ‘search’ box should help if you’re trying to track down something specific.   I plan to…

All EpisodesDelete Edit Flirting with good ideas… March 26, 2021johnDescription Next time it starts to rain and you reach for your folding umbrella spare a thought for Slawa Duldig.  She was the Viennese sculptress who invented and patented the device back in 1929 and it’s been keeping people dry ever since.  But the birth of this, like so many innovations, was not in the research labs of a large company but as a result of her frustration with the large heavy and clumsy umbrellas of her time.  Along with many user innovators her concern to solve an annoying problem led her to create a solution from which many more of…

The ideas behind ‘open innovation’ aren’t new – innovation has always been a multi-player game. Smart innovators recognise that ‘not all the smart people work for us’ and have been exploring ways of managing knowledge flows in to and out from their organizations. David has been involved in this journey form the earliest days of experiments at the turn of the century and in this interview he shares some of the emerging lessons and good practices which he has observed.   Click here for the interview

Imagine the scene.   Crowds looking up, craning their necks to see against the blinding sunlight glistening in the spray.  The roar of the waters as they crash down nearly 200 feet to smash against the rocks below.  The damp chill of mist clammy against skin despite the summer heat.  Stretched across the gorge is half a mile of thin wire climbing away from a platform on which a tiny figure of a man stands, about to step out…. Charles Blondin knew a thing or two about risk management.  The most notable daredevil of his day he took the first step on June 30th 1859 on what was to be his…

The kitchen blender has a lot to answer for.  These days there are plenty of experiments with what you can cram into the jug and then blur into a fine emulsion – not all of them entirely edible.  It’s the ideal lockdown toy, but whilst it might permit all sorts of interesting smoothies it would be a slightly odd mind which decided to try and make one up out of egg white and titanium dioxide.    Doesn’t sound like it would delight the taste buds – but then again it might have other uses, not least as a source of innovation. I enjoy writing.  Not least because if I make mistakes…

Where do innovations come from? Research suggest that there are many different sources, some working to create opportunities (‘knowledge push’) and some channeling various kinds of demand signal (‘need pull’). This song offers some ideas about the different ways in which innovation can be triggered……   Audio version here:   Video version here:   #innovation #creativity #entrepreneurship #sourcesofinnovation #strategy

Connect the dots –  an interview with Catharina van Delden, founder and CEO of Innosabi talking about collaborative ecosystems   Podcast version here   Video version here   #innovation #entrepreneurship #ecosystems #agileinnovation #creativity

I don’t know about you but I’m spending a lot of time listening these days.  As my physical room to move about contracts (thanks to lockdown) so I’m enjoying taking voyages inside my head, carried along by music.  The choice of vessels in my harbour is impressive; I can embark on a whole series of different journeys depending on my mood – jazz, classical, soft folky reminiscence or driving angry rock.  But whatever the journey there’s a pretty good chance a guitar will feature somewhere in the mix.    (Confession; I’m a guitar player, have been since I was twelve years old and managed to persuade my parents to let…

Building an open innovation ecosystem – an interview with Christoph Krois, Open Innovation Manager at Siemens in which he talks about the opportunities and challenges in deploying open innovation across a large transnational company   Podcast version here