Author Archives: Eugene Ivanov

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About Eugene Ivanov

Eugene Ivanov is the founder of INSILICONOVATION, a consulting company that helps resource-constrained organizations diagnose root causes, surface hidden assumptions, and choose practical next steps before they spend money, time, or political capital on the wrong fix.

Want the correct answer (and perhaps to be a millionaire too)?

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

Over the past few months, I’ve been preaching the virtues of crowdsourcing to young entrepreneurs and startup (co)-founders. Perhaps, I’m not a good preacher, but very often, my message is being met with a visible skepticism. Why would I approach … Continue reading →

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Are We Faking Innovation?

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

Let me begin with a couple of quotes. “Innovation is like teenage sex; everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it!” (Cris Beswick, Founder … Continue reading →

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Can we make crowdsourcing available to small companies?

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

Crowdsourcing is a powerful open innovation tool allowing organizations to tap on the collective wisdom of their own employees (internal crowdsourcing) or pools of external talent around the world (external crowdsourcing). Internal crowdsourcing (usually managed through Internal Innovation Networks) can be … Continue reading →

Posted in Crowdsourcing, Innovation, Internal Innovation Networks, Startups | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Can the Wisdom of Crowds Help Solve the Refugee Crisis in Europe?

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

(A longer version of this piece originally appeared on the Qmarkets blog) The refugee crisis that keeps tormenting Europe, as serious as it is, has two additional troubling features. First, despite the fact that the humanitarian situation in the Middle … Continue reading →

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Do Corporate Accelerators Create Real Value?

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

(This post first appeared on the Front End of Innovation Blog) Corporate intrapreneurship is relatively new business concept aimed at helping large companies advance their disruptive innovation initiatives. Due to its novelty and immaturity, this model of corporate innovation obviously needs … Continue reading →

Posted in Startups | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Art of Killing (a Project)

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

(This post first appeared on the Front End of Innovation Blog) As innovation becomes an increasingly popular topic in business literature, social media and public discussions, it also turns into a powerful magnet for clichés. One of the most used, if … Continue reading →

Posted in Portfolio Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Internal Innovation Networks as a Basis for Corporate Intrapreneurship

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

(This post first appeared on the Front End of Innovation Blog) Intrapreneurship is a relatively new concept developed to help large companies create new businesses, a process often called transformational (or disruptive) innovation. Intrapreneurship aims at instilling the spirit of entrepreneurship–usually … Continue reading →

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Ambidexterity vs. Ecosystems: In Search for Sustainable Model of Intrapreneurship

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

(This post first appeared on the Front End of Innovation Blog) Innovation has climbed to the top of the corporate agenda in many large organizations, but its practical impact on the corporate performance has often been disappointing. Some would go as … Continue reading →

Posted in Portfolio Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Why Do Startups Fail?

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

I came across a March 2015 TED talk by Bill Gross, founder of the business incubator Idealab. He set out to identify the “single biggest reason why startups succeed” (or fail). To do so, he considered the five major factors: … Continue reading →

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3 Ways to Improve the Efficiency of the “Idea Generation” Process

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

In my previous post, I compared the efficiency of two approaches to corporate innovation: “bottom-up” and “top-down.” The former approach relies on ideas that are first generated by a company’s employees and then channeled up to the company’s senior management. … Continue reading →

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