About Ralph-Christian Ohr

Experienced innovation management and corporate development professional. Consulting on organizational and personal capabilities for high innovation performance. Integrative thinker. T-shaped.

Author Archive | Ralph-Christian Ohr

SCALING UP: From Corporate Startup to Innovation Impact

By on September 21, 2016

More than three years ago, we noticed a pain point in corporate innovation: How should companies balance the different requirements in searching for tomorrow’s business and in running today’s business? We wrote a well-received article series urging the need for organizational ambidexterity, i.e. implementing dual corporate innovation structures.   First important steps have been taken Our […]

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Organizational Agility Entails Complementary Innovation

By on August 2, 2016

Recently, I’ve come across a couple of posts and articles debating on the question: In order to increase agility, should organizations aim to become more nimble across their existing structures or should they capitalize on separated units/ventures – such as innovation or digital labs – being dedicated to initiate and develop explorative ideas and opportunities? Let’s define agility as […]

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Corporate Innovation Ventures: Separation vs. Integration

By on June 8, 2016

Probably the most critical structural ingredient for innovation capability is how new ventures – internal as well as external ones – are to be implemented in the organization in order to get validated and scaled. Should a new venture be entirely separated from the core business as stand-alone venture? Should it be integrated into an existing business unit? Or is it […]

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The Case for Dual Innovation

By on April 7, 2016

The first time I was advocating the idea of a dual innovation approach, here also referred to as organizational ambidexterity, is now more than 5 years ago. At this time it became pretty obvious to me that this concept – academically worn-out but deficiently or not at all put into practice in most organizations – would be of increasing importance […]

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A Model for Integrative Innovation Management

By on March 21, 2016

In previous posts, I have shared my view on important cornerstones for successful innovation management systems. As pointed out several times, balanced and up-to-date innovation management requires organizational ambidexterity, i.e. the capability to explore novel offerings and capabilities while simultaneously exploiting existing ones. In the following, I would like to summarize and complement these thoughts by suggesting an innovation management model that may help organizations to innovate more […]

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Key Innovation Issues for 2016 and Beyond

By on January 28, 2016

In the course of this first month of 2016, I was asked a couple of times what my prospects are for the year ahead when it comes to key innovation issues. Hence, I gave it some thought, starting by revisting an earlier reflection: Beginning of 2013, Tim Kastelle and I identified four key issues in innovation management for the time […]

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Innovation Requires Dedicated Management

By on July 19, 2015

For quite some time, I’ve been advocating the idea that successful and sustainable corporate innovation management systems should be based on the following cornerstones: Organizational ambidexterity: Sustainable innovation management is required to account for organizational ambidexterity, i.e. optimizing existing businesses and developing new businesses have to be driven in parallel. Failing to achieve an individually optimal balance will not lead to company success in the short and long […]

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Organizational Models for Breakthrough Innovation

By on March 28, 2015

As we have suggested earlier, innovation activities that are radical or disruptive in nature, should be separated from incremental innovation around a company’s established core business. The main reasons are: Required capabilities, structures, approaches, success metrics and culture for radical/disruptive innovation are highly incompatible with those required for incremental innovation. Radical/disruptive innovation activities need full-time resources to get executed properly and time-efficiently. However, separation is a […]

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Innovation and Organizational Culture

By on February 14, 2015

Recently, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has published key findings of their latest “Most Innovative Companies 2014” survey. Beside the annual ranking, headed by the top three companies Apple, Google and Samsung, some insightful outcomes with regard to organizational and cultural requirements have striked my eye. According to BCG’s research, successfully innovating companies approach innovation as a system. The system is rooted in experimentation, […]

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One Size Doesn’t Fit All Innovation

By on January 7, 2015

Yesterday, I was quite delighted to see my post Integrating Lean Startup and Design Thinking ranked #11 of the Top 100 Innovation Posts 2014 at Innovation Excellence. Once again, I was pondering why this post has been by far the most resonating one I’ve written up to now. My conclusion: many of us are aware that innovation tools, even up-to-date ones, have a limited scope […]

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