Tag Archives: innovation tools

Fashion guru Tim Gunn on crowdsourcing

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Eugene Ivanov

Tim Gunn is a prominent fashion consultant, TV personality and author. He’s best known as the Emmy Award-winning co-host of the reality show Project Runway; he’s also the author of four bestselling books. Now, I have to admit that I … Continue reading →

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Big Brother Loves You

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Eugene Ivanov

By contributing to economic growth and creating jobs, small businesses play an important, perhaps, increasingly important, role in the global economy. Moreover, as the cradle for novel technologies and business models, small companies serve as the engine of the innovation … Continue reading →

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The dawn of the “craft economy”?

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

In a 2012 Harvard Business Review article, Maxwell Wessel made an interesting point. He argued that the corporate scale had ceased providing large companies with the same competitive advantage as it used to in the past. Being bigger doesn’t guarantee … Continue reading →

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The beauty of crowdsourcing

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

Last week, I spoke with Paul Arnold, a seasoned business writer and BBC alumnus. The topic of our conversation was crowdsourcing: how companies use it and why they’re often disappointed with the results of their crowdsourcing campaigns. The full text … Continue reading →

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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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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 →

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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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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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What Do Numbers Say About Different Models of Innovation?

Posted on August 6, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

I’m not a fan of the “idea generation” model of innovation. This approach, which I call “bottom-up,” puts the focus of innovation on ideas that are generated by employees on the ground and then channeled upwards to senior management. I … Continue reading →

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On Henry Ford, Toyota and Faster Horses

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Eugene Ivanov

A consensus seems to have emerged that customer feedback, gathered through market research, is a key to successful innovation. And yet, dissenting votes can still be heard. Some folks claim that paying too much attention to customers can stifle innovation, degrade … Continue reading →

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