There are very few companies that lack innovation programs. Innovation programs are often bigger than innovation projects and will house more than one innovation project. There are many different examples of corporate innovation programs including idea competitions, corporate incubators, innovation boards and corporate venture capital. The main challenge with corporate…

A majority of leaders now view innovation as one of the top drivers of growth for their company. This means that company leaders can no longer treat innovation as a side show. To ensure that innovation succeeds in driving growth, it has to be accorded equal status to the core…

Without leadership support, most corporate innovation programs are dead on arrival. Grassroots movements can have some early success. However, if they remain within the grassroots, their long term prospects are poor. The corporate antibodies that attack innovation programs are just too strong. Within established companies, the long term success of…

Innovation success is, to a great extent, driven by having value propositions that resonate with customers and business models that are scalable and profitable. However, having cool breakthrough ideas is an important ingredient of the innovation process. To drive transformative innovation, you need to have people that can think outside…

In November 2015, Sony finally announced that it would stop selling Betamax video cassettes. By this time, its battle for dominance with the rival VHS format from rival JVC was already lost. The story of the rivalry between Betamax and JVC, and how JVC eventually won, is an example of…

It is virtually impossible for leaders to pick the winning ideas on day one. This is particularly the case when it comes to novel ideas that the company has never worked on before. The business world is filled with examples of business ideas that leaders passed on that later become…

Dr Samuel West, the psychologist who created The Museum Of Failure, argues that the best way to drive innovation within organizations is to remove the fear of failure. The fear of failure can lead corporate innovation teams to only pursue safe bets. When innovation teams work on safe bets, it…

Without leadership support, corporate innovation projects are dead on arrival. Leadership support is so important that this is the first thing I ask for when I am working with innovation teams. I have worked with several teams that have tried to avoid getting leadership support for their projects. However, they…

One of the most sensitive conversations to have with leaders is when I try to convince them that they cannot pick the winning ideas on day one. At one workshop, a regional leader kept insisting that the innovation teams need to bring her some ‘10X’ ideas. What she meant was…