An Integrative Approach to Strategy and Innovation

By on May 6, 2013

In my previous post I have stressed why an integrative approach to sustainable innovation management seems increasingly important to me. The main reason is, that modern organizations range in an environment of various tensions and continuous complexity. This situation requires structures, strategies and cultures to be in place that support dynamic balancing of opposing and complementary elements in the innovation process. Recently, [...]

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Integrative Innovation

By on February 19, 2013

Some people I’ve been collaborating with have recently encouraged me to open up an own blog. After having given it some thought, I decided to do so. I’m launching a new site and platform titled “Integrative Innovation” to share ideas and perspectives on innovation. You might ask: why “Integrative Innovation”? Is this yet another buzzword? I don’t think so. I rather [...]

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Key Issues in Innovation Management

By on February 3, 2013

This post was co-written with Tim Kastelle from Innovation for Growth.   What are the key innovation issues facing the business community right now? When we met up in person recently we had a great talk about this question. We’ve continued the discussion over email, and these are the four innovation management issues that we [...]

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Reconciling Organizational Improvement and Reinvention Through Social Business Design

By on February 3, 2013

This is the second part of a post co-written with Thierry De Baillon from Sonnez en cas d’absence. Read the first part here.   A striking change of focus in the social business arena occurred during the last five years. Despite the fact that Andrew McAfee’s original definition specified its scope as «within companies, or between companies and [...]

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Business Model Innovation as Wicked Problem

By on February 3, 2013

This is the first part of a post co-written with Thierry De Baillon from Sonnez en cas d’absence. Read the second part here.   We live in an age where emergent technologies continue to have massive effects on business and society. Rising complexity requires companies and economies to cope with increasingly interlocking systems. If we [...]

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The Future of Innovation is Open

By on February 3, 2013

Sustainable innovation requires evolution and revolution. Over the long term, organizations need to be capable of both moving along existing growth trajectories and creating new ones when the old business matures or stalls. This can be depicted as recurring movement along innovation s-curves. In the case of a new venture, acquiring lean start up skills [...]

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Evolutionary and Revolutionary Innovation

By on February 3, 2013

Triggered by a couple of recent discussions, I’ve been pondering for a while now over the question how evolution relates to revolution when it comes to innovation. In the following, I’ll try to develop my view on this. Let’s define  evolution as continuous and incremental innovations of a firm’s existing business. Whereas revolution can be [...]

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Innovators Hold Strong Visions Weakly

By on February 3, 2013

In one of my previous posts I discussed the crucial distinction between need and solution. Innovation is about matching these two components – i.e. solving a customer problem (desirability) through a viable business model, leveraging feasible products and services – in a novel way. It’s important to note that solutions are not represented by products [...]

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Innovation and Diversity

By on February 3, 2013

Tomorrow’s management systems will need to value diversity, dissent and divergence as highly as conformance, consensus and cohesion. A while ago, I came across this tweet by Gary Hamel.  It reflects well the fact that businesses range in increasingly dynamic and complex environments, imposing accelerated and mostly unforeseeable change. The most promising way for organizations [...]

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The Intersection of Human and Organizational Innovation Capabilities

By on February 3, 2013

One of my main interests is looking at the intersection of organizational and human capabilities. Business is accomplished through people, thus individual mindset, behavior and capabilities determine organizational performance. When it comes to innovation, a recently published research paper, titled ‘The Bias Against Creativity’ serves as a good example. The findings indicate a paradox that [...]

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