Author Archives: Eugene Ivanov

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About Eugene Ivanov

Eugene Ivanov is a business and technical writer interested in innovation and technology. He focuses on factors defining human creativity and socioeconomic conditions affecting corporate innovation.

Innovation’s “Uncharted Waters”

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

(This piece was originally posted to the HeroX blog) A few years ago, Wazoku, a UK idea management software company, sponsored an innovation survey. The results of the survey are a cause of concern for anyone interested in corporate innovation.  Full … Continue reading →

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Democratizing Innovation with Crowdsourcing

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

(This piece was originally posted to the HeroX blog) In 2006, Prize4Life, a Cambridge, MA-based nonprofit organization dedicated to finding the cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Disease) launched a multi-stage crowdsourcing campaign, the ALS Biomarker Grand Challenge. … Continue reading →

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Crowdsourcing: A Decade In Review

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

(This piece was originally posted to the HeroX blog) In 2004, James Surowiecki published a highly influential book, “The Wisdom of Crowds.” The central idea of the book is that the decisions made by a large and diverse group of … Continue reading →

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Innovation: The Role of Money and Government

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

Over the past couple of months, I have attempted to assess the role of a few major socio-economic factors on the national innovation potential. To do that, I ran a series of simple regression tests to estimate the correlation between … Continue reading →

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Innovation and Money

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

In my previous post, I further explored the notion that the ability of a country to innovate correlates with the level of political freedoms in this country. In particular, I showed that no such correlation exists for non-democratic countries (as … Continue reading →

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Innovation: Governments Matter

Posted on May 5, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

In a recent post, I presented evidence that the ability of a country to innovate correlates with the level of political freedoms in this country. To make this argument, I used innovation rankings from the 12th (2019) edition of the Global Innovation … Continue reading →

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The Fallacy of Predictions

Posted on April 26, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

There is a popular joke (attributed to Niels Bohr): “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” I remembered it when I picked up the March-April 2020 issue of the MIT Technology Review. Subtitled “The prediction issue,” it … Continue reading →

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Innovation and Freedom

Posted on March 24, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

With waves of profound technological change rocking every corner of the global economy, innovation isn’t a luxury anymore, not even a matter of choice – it’s a means of survival.  The mantra “innovate or die” may have become a cliché, … Continue reading →

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Freedom to Connect

Posted on March 14, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

Social media were once considered a liberating technology, a level playing field allowing civil groups and ordinary citizens to reach large audiences at little or no cost. Unfortunately, the open and almost unregulated space of social media platforms has been … Continue reading →

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On Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, and Fast Horses

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Eugene Ivanov

A solid consensus seems to exist that customer feedback, gathered through market research, is a key to successful innovation. And yet, I’m surprised how often one can hear dissenting voices. Some folks, especially not engaged in day-to-day innovation activities, claim … Continue reading →

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