BQF Innovation BlogBQF Innovation BlogWe review business innovation issues. We discuss creativity, leaderhsip and innovation as part of a special interest group for the British Quality Foundation. 
Articles
How Innovation thrives in a Crisis
2009-09-17 14:05:00 In this article on the Harvard Business Site Scott Anthony explores how and why innovation is thriving in the recession. He asks, ‘How could companies prioritize developing innovation programs in the face of very real questions of fundamental survival?’ In a strange way, the scarcity forced on many companies has been a hidden accelerator of efforts to ... More About: Innovation , Crisis
Put Your Best People on Innovation
2009-09-14 13:30:00 Many businesses make the mistake of giving innovation projects to junior executives. It seems natural to hand innovation opportunities to enthusiastic and promising upstarts. But generally it is the experienced heavyweights who can overcome all the process and political obstacles that will occur. In September 1999 Lou Gerstner, CEO of IBM, read a line buried deep ... More About: People , Innovation
?Good Enough? Innovation
2009-09-02 20:00:00 There is an interesting article on Wired by Robert Capps in which he describes innovation that is just good enough. ‘Cheap, fast, simple tools are suddenly everywhere. We get our breaking news from blogs, we make spotty long-distance calls on Skype, we watch video on small computer screens rather than TVs, and more and more of ... More About: Innovation , Good
Daily Reviewer Award
2009-09-01 13:10:00 We recevied an award as one of the top blogs on innovation. BQF Innovation Top innovation blogs More About: Daily , Award
Think Like a Venture Capitalist
2009-08-24 12:24:00 The most innovative companies have an approach to trials that is like the philosophy of a venture capitalist. The VC is a prime example of an arsonist and fire fighter. He will invest in a portfolio of different start-up companies, fully knowing that most will fail. A few might break even and one or two ... More About: Venture
Innovation Master Class ? Sept 15th
2009-08-14 16:12:00 I am running a one day Master Class on Innovation for Competitive Advantage for the BQF on Sept 15th in central London. It is guaranteed to give you great techniques for generating innovative ideas. More details here: Paul Sloane
Next Meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit ? Nov 3
2009-08-11 17:19:00 Date: 3 November 2009 Theme: Delivering innovation in a highly commercial and competitive environment Venue: Kindly hosted by GSK, Weybridge, Surrey Time: 0930 – 13.15 followed by a sandwich lunch Includes: Site Tour. Weybridge is a site where all parties (ideation, new product research and development, scale-up and commercial functions) involved in delivery of innovation are co-located and utilise collaborative ... More About: Innovation , Meeting
An Interview with Eric Schmidt, Google CEO
2009-08-05 16:06:00 There is an interesting interview with Google ’s CEO, Eric Schmidt , in the McKinsey Quarterly. Here are a couple of snippets: The Quarterly: Could you tell us about how Google innovates? Eric Schmidt: Innovation always has been driven by a person or a small team that has the luxury of thinking of a new idea and pursuing it. There ... More About: Interview
Dilbert?s take on Anger Management
2009-07-28 13:05:00 For a lateral look at life in the modern office it is hard to beat Dilbert . Sometimes it is too close for comfort! I liked this one so much I had to share it. Paul Sloane More About: Management , Innovation , Anger Management , Anger
A Creative Workshop Idea ? the Elevator Pitch
2009-07-22 18:02:00 I ran a short workshop session today after the BQF Annual General Meeting. The first thing we did was to construct a new elevator pitch. Each delegate had to write down how they would currently describe their organisation in one sentence. We got a lot of short mission statements and advertising tag lines. Then people designed ... More About: Creative , Workshop , Idea , Pitch , Elevator
Metrics for Innovation
2008-12-29 18:41:00 Let’s return to a topic we have discussed before - How do you measure the return on innovation? Here is an interesting article by Chris Pentilla. ‘Eight months ago, employees at Handango had tons of concepts and plans but only few completed projects. “Very little was actually getting out to the consumer,” says Bill Stone, 40, CEO ... More About: Innovation , Metrics
Organising for Innovation
2008-12-20 11:48:00 I am speaking on Organising for Innovation at an event for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Construction Industry Group, on Jan 29th 2009. http://www.cimcig.org/events.php?id=211 It starts at 6.30 at the Building Centre on Store Street, WC1. Non-members are welcome though there is a small charge. If you are free after work that evening why not pop along ...
Innovating in a Recession - Special Report
2008-12-14 21:24:00 Chuck Frey and Rennee Hopkins Callahan have put together an impressive report. They recently contacted a diverse collection of innovation experts and practitioners to learn more about the strategies they recommend for maintaining innovation during these challenging times. Respondents include some of the best and brightest innovation authors, bloggers, consultants, and practitioners. You can download the ... More About: Report , Special , Recession , Special Report
We need to Challenge our Children
2008-12-08 12:23:00 A Personal Story I went to a Catholic boys grammar school in Blackpool, in the North of England. In my first year in the senior school I was a nerdy kid, with spectacles and short trousers. For one hour a week the class had elocution lessons from an old, portly teacher called Mr Priestley. He had a ... More About: Children , Challenge
Resistance to Change
2008-12-03 10:17:00 We had a lively meeting of the BQF Innovation Group yesterday. It was kindly hosted by MITIE at their offices in the Counting House near London Bridge. They presented a case study on overcoming resistance to change in a major corporate outsourcing project. We then had a workshop session where we discussed change initiatives and ... More About: Events , Change , Resistance
An Idea is Salvation by Imagination
2008-11-19 18:21:00 Here is an interesting article on the BBC site featuring Martha Lane Fox. She addresses the question how can we survive a global downturn? And she quotes Frank Lloyd Wright’s marvellous words, ‘An idea is salvation by imagination.’ She says, ‘All the headlines talk of businesses cutting enormous numbers of jobs and scaling back investments. Although ... More About: Salvation , Idea , Imagination
Creating a Culture of Innovation
2008-11-14 15:11:00 What are the key characteristics of a corporate culture that promotes innovation? And those that inhibit innovation? These were the topics we discussed in a workshop I facilitated yesterday for the Global Business Partnership Alliance. We discussed a number of issues. We conducted a survey among attendees and these were the main issues in the ... More About: Culture , Innovation , Creating
What the Government can do to boost innovation.
2008-11-03 10:51:00 In this article in Businessweek Sami Mahroum says that ‘during economic downturns, innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity’. He argues for active government intervention to boost innovation. ‘In the short term, governments need to provide support to small companies to help them manage the crisis and continue to ... More About: Government , Innovation , Boost
The Three Commonest Sales Mistakes in a Recession
2008-10-22 16:32:00 In a downturn everyone is involved in sales. I chaired the Successful Selling Conference in Birmingham last week and we had a fantastic line-up of speakers on sales and motivation. The Sales Guru, Neil Rackham, who conceived the Spin method in the 1970s, was one of the presenters. He asked what are the three most ... More About: Recession
Brainstorming - which approach works best?
2008-10-19 12:02:00 There is an interesting post on some research on Brainstorming here on the Innovation Tools site. Josh Hyatt of the Sloan Management Review discusses some research by Karan Girotra, a professor at INSEAD, and Christian Terwiesh and Karl T. Ulrich, both professors at the University of Pennsylvania. Two types of groups generated ideas. One followed a ... More About: Works
Overcoming Resistance to Change - Next Meeting
2008-10-08 16:16:00 The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will take place on the morning of Tuesday December 2nd in London. It is kindly hosted by MITIE and will be at their offices at 1st Floor, Counting House, London. SE1 2QN (nearest Tube is London Bridge). It starts at 9.15 and finishes at 12 noon. Keith Philips, ... More About: Change , Resistance , Meeting
Innovation Funnel Survey
2008-10-04 13:55:00 How’s the health of your innovation funnel? If new ideas are a primary driver of future growth, in today’s uncertain economic climate, it could become a survival issue for your organization. Chuck Frey from Innovation Tools.com and Hitendra Patel from the Center for Innovation Excellence & Leadership at the Hult International School of Business are conducting ... More About: Survey
Conceive a Different Business Model
2008-09-27 15:29:00 Is there a completely different way to operate in your business? If all your competitors are using a broadly similar approach, is there an entirely separate approach that could deliver what your customers want? In the early 1980s the leading manufacturers of Personal Computers were companies such as IBM, Compaq, Toshiba, Hewlett Packard and Olivetti. They ... More About: Business , Model
A Bike Stand and a Tire Pump
2008-09-18 16:28:00 What do you need when you cycle into town? Perhaps somewhere to park your bicycle and a way to inflate your tires. Trust the Dutch to come up with an innovation that combines solutions for these two customer needs. I saw it on the excellent Springwise site and there are more details on the Heklucht site. ... More About: Bike , Stand , Pump , Tire
Note to Innovators - Re-use Previous
2008-09-12 14:57:00 If you hold a brainstorm meeting and generate 90 ideas then the chances are that you whittle those down to a dozen promising ideas and then action the two or three best. What happens to the other promising ideas that don’t make it onto the to-do list? Ideally you should capture them in a database of ... More About: Note
SCAMPER - a powerful product innovation tool
2008-09-03 20:03:00 One of the methods I teach on my Ideas Workshops is SCAMPER. It is a productive and versatile technique for examining a product or service from differing angles and for generating plenty of strongly innovative ideas. SCAMPER is an acronym and you ask the following types of question when you use this tool: SUBSTITUTE - What ... More About: Product , Innovation , Tool
Collaboration Tips
2008-08-28 12:27:00 On his blog at Think for a Change, Paul Williams lists some useful advice on how to get the most from collaborative innovation efforts. They include: Understand that there are different personalities in every group Understand the differences Use the differences to your advantage instead of as fuel for disagreement Understand that on top of differing personalities ... More About: Tips , Collaboration
Using Innovation in a Recession
2008-08-20 11:27:00 We tend to think of innovation as a tool for inventing and marketing new products and services. This is certainly its main thrust. However, as Jeffrey Baumgartner points out in this article on Innovation Tools, you can use innovation for streamlining business processes, eliminating steps, reducing waste and cutting out costs. When times are tough we ... More About: Recession
Sports and Innovation
2008-08-13 18:14:00 Watching the Olympics leads me to comment on the lessons that sport has for business. I believe that the benefits of sporting lessons for business are exaggerated. Business success is based on more than motivation, discipline and hard work. It depends heavily on innovation - and sport is a very poor guide to that. In sport ... More About: Sports , Innovation
Book Review - The Future of Management
More articles from this author:2008-08-11 20:10:00 In this significant new work, Gary Hamel challenges our thinking about management. He argues that the management methods used in most organisations are relics of systems designed over 100 years ago to control and command. They are inappropriate, inadequate and obstructive for knowledge-based 21st century organisations that want to be agile and innovative. He gives detailed ... More About: Management , Book Review , Web 2 , Future , Review 1, 2, 3, 4 |
|
 |
|
 |
