Tag Archives | Ecosystem

Dual Innovation Ecosystem Strategy: Broker vs. Orchestrator

Being faced with disruption and increasing pace of change, many established companies fail to keep up. They often turn out to be ill-prepared to innovate under uncertain and time-critical conditions. Rather than going it alone, some companies reach out to suitable partners with the aim to build up innovation ecosystems that complement the companies’ capabilities, competences and strategies. A decisive question is: What types of ecosystems […]

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Scaling Edges vs. Transforming Core

Dual approaches are evermore finding their way into corporate strategy, development and innovation. There are several manifestations at play, such as Organizational Ambidexterity: Drawing on Tushman/O’Reilly, an ambidextrous approach is deployed if a venture is of high strategic relevance and its synergies with core business are high, therefore suggesting a strong leverage of core assets and capbilities as well as an ultimate integration into core business […]

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Scaling Up Startups in Corporate Settings

This ‘opinion’ on the question “What can startups and incumbents learn from each other and what are the biggest threats?” was originally published at innoboard.de.   In recent years, an increasing intensity in collaboration between incumbent companies and startups has been observed. Meanwhile, close to 80% of corporations and startups have already been or are […]

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The Firm of the Future Will Manage Two Types of Businesses

Bain and Company has just published a worthwile article, debating on the question: What will the firm of the future look like? Among several characteristics, the authors also particularly anticipate future-proof companies to be required to manage two types of businesses by deploying distinct “engines”: Companies have always pursued innovation in their core business. Clayton Christensen has called […]

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Startup Engagement in Corporate Innovation

Recently, Match-Maker Ventures and Arthur D. Little have released an interesting report, titled “The Age of Collaboration“. The study does a good job in synthesizing the global state of play of corporate-startup collaboration and latest findings on success requirements for its implementation. More and more corporations seek to engage with startups by pursuing corresponding activities across dedicated ecosystems and incorporating them […]

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Key Innovation Issues for 2016 and Beyond

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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Leveraging New Ventures for Innovation

As pointed out in a recent post, teaming up with startups provides an opportunity for established firms to drive innovation without risking major interference with their core businesses. Particularly, with regard to radical or disruptive innovation, investing in startup incubators, accelerators or corporate venturing increases the chance to get access to promising novel technologies and business models. On the other […]

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Balancing Large and Small Firm Capabilities

As outlined in earlier posts, organizations need to balance exploitation (i.e. development of existing business) and exploration (i.e. creation of new businesses) in order to thrive on the short and long term.  The corresponding integration of incremental and radical innovation can basically be achieved in different ways:   Building ambidextrous and lean startup capabilities Established organizations with larger size usually target at extending their core business by incementally […]

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Balanced Portfolios and Business Model Innovation Distinguish Outperformers

Among others, Tim Kastelle (here and here) and Paul Hobcraft (here and here) have recently highlighted the increasing importance of business model innovation. A newly published report from the IBM Institute for Business Value confirms this point, the need for balanced innovation portfolios and some other key issues being outlined in a previous post. I’d like to summarize the main results […]

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Innovation and Serendipity

In a previous post, I have pointed out the importance of diversity for innovation and organizational adaptability. Diversity is a crucial precursor to serendipity. In the Power of Pull, John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison emphasize the rising need for serendipity: We need to find ways to attract relevant innovators and edge participants […]

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