The Three-Step Formula for Innovation Success
A lot of theories circulate on how organizations make innovation a reality. Over the past 20 years, I have found a very simple formula that helps a company transform the way it innovates. Here’s the key: Ask the right question, the right way, of the right people. Let’s break that down into the three core components. […]
A Challenge to Find Challenges
Most organizations focus their energies on ideas, suggestions, and opinions. But for innovation to be efficient and focused, you need to ask better questions. What do you do when you don’t even know what questions to ask? Run a challenge to find challenges. That’s what InnoCentive is doing with the support of the Economist and […]
Best Practices Are Stupid on ABC News…and more
My new book, Best Practices Are Stupid, has been all over the news lately. Here’s just a small sample… Interview on ABC News (click video above) Review on Fortune.com – “Why your company (probably) can’t innovate” Best Practices Are Stupid on the USA Today reading list Best Practices Are Stupid on the CIO Magazine reading list Interview […]
Ask the Wrong Question, Waste a Lot of Money
Innovation is accelerated when you “ask the right question, the right way, of the right people.” It may seem obvious, but if you ask the wrong question, you may be led down a futile path. An example of this comes from Colgate-Palmolive (shared at a recent open innovation conference). While asking customers what they wanted […]
How I Used Crowdsourcing The Wrong Way And What You Can Learn From It
We often hear the expression “Wisdom of crowds.” And if you have read my articles, it will be apparent that I am an ardent fan of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing makes the argument that the aggregation of information produced by groups, result in decisions that are often better than those that are made by a single individual. […]
Is Lack of Innovation Keeping You Stuck?
I was recently interviewed by Lisa Earle McLeod. The resulting article has been published in a number of newspapers and online sites, including the Huffington Post. Here’s the first half of the article… Do you ever find yourself trapped inside the same issue over and over again? Maybe it’s because you’re looking at it through […]
How to Create a Happy Work Environment
While speaking at a conference on “happiness at work” in Copenhagen, I met Cathy Busani, the Managing Director of Happy, a training and consultancy business operating in the U.K. Although they only employ 30 people, Happy has won wide recognition for its innovative approach to management and to customer service. I was intrigued by her […]
How Small Businesses Can Leverage Crowdsourcing
Open innovation and crowdsourcing promise to revolutionize the way companies innovate and develop new products, create marketing campaigns and solve problems of all kinds. Unfortunately, there is more confusion than clarity about how to best utilize these approaches. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Dwayne Spradlin, CEO of InnoCentive, one of the early pioneers […]
Microwork Sourced Innovation Article
In my blog entry yesterday, I posted an interview with a woman who does “microwork” on the fiverr site. Be sure to read that interview first as context. Now, as promised, here is the article on innovation she wrote for $5. Not bad, if you want my two cents… 5 Ways To Make Your Company […]
An Insider’s View on Fiverr and Microwork Outsourcing
As readers of this blog know, I am always interested in exploring different forms of open innovation, collaboration, and outsourcing. Personally, I have used a number of sites including 99designs.com and elance.com. I have used these for the development of logos, graphics, websites, and research. In most cases I would pay several hundred dollars for […]