Trends

Exploring Trends

I have participated in a number of trend focused workshops over the past several months, which have proven to have been insightful into how to implement a structured approach to understanding and synthesising trends that are relevant for a specific business.

Idea Campaigns

Building Idea Campaigns

Whether a company is running an internal or external idea campaign, they need to have a structured approach in managing both the process and the ideas that have been submitted. 

Sustainability in Innovation

The term ‘sustainability’ is often heard when companies describe their overall innovation and business goal. Those who fully integrate this trait are gaining both monetary and brand reputation benefits. Where sustainability is generally described as “the capacity to endure”, for innovation it stretches beyond having a long-term maintenance of environmental, economic and social responsibility. Amid a continuously growing population with rising customer expectations, Government regulations and employee demands, businesses are being driven to make huge changes in not only their products, services and processes, but in how their innovation is organised and managed. But with the numerous trends, tips and hints which are being recommended from numerous sources, how can sustainability be embraced in a viable way for your company?

Uniqueness of Leadership

Develop your leadership within an area that comes natural to you

Through a group in LinkedIn, I was lead to an article from Harvard Business Review entitled ‘Discovering Your Authentic Leadership’. It made me relate to one of our past Innovation Masterclass on Leadership and Culture provoking my neurons to create naïve thoughts around how great the ‘working’ world would be if both were combined. 

Tools and Best Practice for Identifying Blue Ocean Opportunities

Blue Oceans, taken from the highly successful publication, Blue Ocean Strategy, and is defined as a product or service that is operating in an uncontested market space, which is opposed to Red Oceans, where the product or service is swimming in contested market competition.  Taking the theory from this publication, Richard (Dick) K. Lee, CEO and Chief Innovation Officer, Value Innovation Inc. (VI) developed a ten-step methodology that serves to facilitate companies in discovering Blue Ocean opportunities through the usage of a number of key tools and techniques, which this blog posting will briefly explore.

On Ideation and Other Why’s

Methodologies and other factors

This week, one of our Masterclasses was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, deep diving on the Front End Innovation. Taking this opportunity, I'll give a snapshot on common techniques used to generate ideas and other factors that will affect the quality of them. 

The Power of Collaborative Partnerships

What to Consider Before Establishing a Partnership

In a world of widely distributed knowledge, companies cannot solely rely on their own competencies to sustain a competitive market position. The paradigm of Open Innovation recognises this and provides a structure which encourages organisations to go outside the four walls of their team, department and company to find and access knowledge to fill internal competency gaps. Engaging in Open Innovation requires an organisation to develop a strategy, build a networking culture and create partnerships with external sources. In the context of Open Innovation, partnerships enable companies to establish relationships with universities, SMEs, research institutes, etc. to acquire or jointly develop a technology.