Category Archives: Innovation

How to Cultivate Innovation in the Workplace

Posted on November 21, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

Innovation is what most businesses aim for no matter what industry. In fact, a lot of today’s most successful businesses were founded on innovation. Look at Apple and Microsoft; both companies started from ideas that seemed impossible at the time … Continue reading →

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Don’t “fiddle” with the crowd — ask it better questions instead

Posted on November 16, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

(This post originally appeared on InnovationManagement.se) As the examples of successful use of crowdsourcing to address complex technical, business and social issues grow in numbers, so do the instances of failed crowdsourcing campaigns. To make crowdsourcing a widely recognized idea-generating … Continue reading →

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Does crowdsourcing need “rethinking”?

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

  (This post originally appeared on Edge of Innovation) An article in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review describes a product development study by Reto Hofstetter, Suleiman Aryobsei and Andreas Herrmann (Journal of Product Innovation Management, forthcoming). What caught my … Continue reading →

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Bring me problems, then solutions, then problems again…

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

Innovation managers hate the line “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” They insist that before any innovation project can begin, a thorough investigation of the underlying problems must take place; collecting solutions can only start when the problems are … Continue reading →

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The numbers game

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

In my previous post, I argued that a popular in the corporate innovation circles belief that ideas are plentiful and cheap (“a dime a dozen”) doesn’t withstand scientific scrutiny. A joint Stanford/MIT research team has presented a wide range of empirical … Continue reading →

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Are ideas plentiful and cheap?

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

  We often hear: ideas are cheap. “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless,” claims a 2013 article in Forbes. As a prevailing point of view has it, innovative ideas are plentiful; it’s the idea … Continue reading →

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Balancing startup success and failure: how VC investors can tip the scales

Posted on September 10, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

Recently, I’ve come across an interesting paper, “Tolerance for Failure and Corporate Innovation,” published in 2011 by Xuan Tian of Indiana University and Tracy Yue Wang of University of Minnesota. Tian and Wang studied the relationship between venture capital (VC) … Continue reading →

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One more time about “culture of innovation”

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

My previous post, “The “culture of innovation:” misnomer, oxymoron, myth or chimera?”, has caused a lively discussion in a number of LinkedIn groups. Approximately half of the commenters were sympathetic to my claim that the very term “culture of innovation” … Continue reading →

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The “culture of innovation”: misnomer, oxymoron, myth or chimera?

Posted on June 28, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

In the opening piece of the Summer 2017 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review, Paul Michelman writes about diminishing importance of corporate culture in the age of networked enterprises. Obviously, not everyone agrees with Mr. Michelman, and the whole discussion … Continue reading →

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From a Spark to raging fire. (How Liberty Global got its corporate innovation right.)

Posted on June 14, 2017 by Eugene Ivanov

(This post has originally appeared on Edge of Innovation) So many companies struggle with their corporate innovation programs that it’s important to identify and celebrate “success stories,” as there still aren’t many cases of organizations that get corporate innovation right. One … Continue reading →

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