Tag Archives | Three Horizons

SCALING UP in Corporate Settings: First Achievements and Outlook

First of all, Frank Mattes and I would like to wish you all the best for 2017 – we hope you’ve been starting successfully and innovatively into this new year. Last September, Frank and I launched a new initiative „SCALING UP: From Corporate Startup to Innovation Impact“. We have been overwhelmed by the huge resonance […]

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The Trinity of Dual Innovation and Transformation

Here is a chart, shown by Scott Anthony from Innosight during a worthwile talk on ‘Dual Transformation’ in July this year. It puts in a nutshell what he refers to as the “hardest challenge in business today”: Simultaneously strengthening today’s business while creating tomorrow’s. The chart greatly captures the fact that dual transformation involves three distinct playing fields: Transformation A: Strengthen Today […]

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SCALING UP: From Corporate Startup to Innovation Impact

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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Corporate Innovation Ventures: Separation vs. Integration

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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A Model for Integrative Innovation Management

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

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

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

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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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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Managing Innovation Portfolios – Part 2: Operational Portfolio Management

This is part two of a two-parts article co-written with Kevin McFarthing from Innovation Fixer. The first part can be found here.   In our previous post, we discussed how Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) ensures that the content of the portfolio is driven by innovation strategy and associated targets. We would now like to move on to […]

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