Tag Archives: Innovation Management

What is crowdsourcing?

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Eugene Ivanov

In recent years, crowdsourcing has become a popular topic in business publications and social media. Yet, its acceptance as a practical problem-solving tool has been slow. Why? Because there is a widespread, often completely paralyzing, uncertainty over what crowdsourcing is … Continue reading →

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Is your shovel good enough to hit the nail?

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Eugene Ivanov

Imagine you’re outside and need to hit the nail into the wall to hang a picture. You select the nail of the correct size and then look around for an appropriate hitting tool. You pick up a new, shiny shovel … Continue reading →

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Does “process” kill innovation?

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Eugene Ivanov

Reading Steve Blank is always a pleasure. Not only is he among the world’s best scholars of corporate innovation; his ability to explain complex things in a simple language is unparallel. Blank’s recent HBR piece, “Why Companies Do ‘Innovation Theater’ … Continue reading →

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Measuring innovation, one patent at a time (or all of them at once)

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Eugene Ivanov

Measuring innovation is tough. To begin with, innovation is rooted in creativity—and measuring creativity isn’t straightforward, to say the very least. Besides, innovation is about transforming creativity into value—and measuring value isn’t easy, either, even if you measure it in … Continue reading →

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We’ll get back to you. Or not.

Posted on January 17, 2019 by Eugene Ivanov

During my time at InnoCentive, there was a job I and my colleagues hated the most: collecting clients’ feedback to contributions by the members of the InnoCentive crowd. The clients would post a problem to the InnoCentive website, and a … Continue reading →

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A board game

Posted on November 5, 2018 by Eugene Ivanov

Blaming the CEOs for all real and imaginable transgressions is a common thing these days. I’m not an exception myself: on more than one occasion, I argued that all major problems of the corporate innovation process stem from the lackluster … Continue reading →

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Innovation: for and against

Posted on April 28, 2018 by Eugene Ivanov

I like Jeff Bezos’ line: “Good intentions don’t work, mechanisms do.” To me, it sounds like a full support of my conviction that endless talks about establishing a “culture of innovation” is a distraction, rather than an enabler, in fostering … Continue reading →

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Innovation “quid pro quo”: firms that treat workers better are more innovative

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Eugene Ivanov

In my previous post, I described studies showing that giving stock option grants to both executive and non-executive employees fosters innovation, which points to the important role compensation plays in defining corporate innovation performance. However, compensation is only one factor … Continue reading →

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Innovate today, get paid tomorrow

Posted on March 7, 2018 by Eugene Ivanov

Theoretical analysis conducted by Gustavo Manso in 2011 suggests that the optimal incentives motivating employees to innovate must include a combination of tolerance for failures in the short term and reward for success in the long. Tolerance for early failures allows … Continue reading →

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Crowdsourcing 2.0

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Eugene Ivanov

I like to argue, only half-jokingly, that crowdsourcing is very simple. It consists of only two components: a question and a crowd—a question that you present to a crowd and a crowd that you assemble to answer this question. And … Continue reading →

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