Посты с тэгом: corporate innovation

Master the Method: Innovation Suite #18

Published date: August 11, 2015 в 3:13 am

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I invite you to join the upcoming Innovation Suite  in San Francisco, November 16-18, 2015.
Innovation Suite brings together executives from around the world to share their business innovation experiences and to learn how to embed a culture of innovation within their teams and organizations.
This time around, the event will have two specialized tracks: one for Innovation Users, and another for Innovation Architects. In the Innovation User track, participants will learn how to develop an innovative mindset and learn practical tools for approaching routine work differently.
In the Innovation Architect track, participants will learn how to set up the right structure, gather the right people, and develop the right processes and mechanisms in order to embed innovation in their team, department or whole organization.
Register before August 20 to receive a 10% discount Please contact SIT LLC with any questions.
 

Academic Focus: John Hauser and the MIT Team

Published date: October 24, 2011 в 3:00 am

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This month’s Academic Focus features Professor John Hauser and the highly-regarded team at MIT.  Perhaps no other university in the world stands for innovation as much as this one.  MIT is an innovation powerhouse because of the way the faculty looks at innovation through multiple lens and collaborative approaches.  MIT is a great blend of innovation research, technology research, and commercialization research.

From his online biography:

The LAB: Innovating a Party with P.I.G. (March 2010)

Published date: March 22, 2010 в 2:00 am

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Here is a new iPhone application that uses the structured innovation method, S.I.T., to create ideas for your next party.  The Party Idea Generator, P.I.G., leads you through a series of steps to trigger original party ideas.  It has ten different ways to start inventing, and you can add more.  It also has over 150 pre-generated triggers and ideas to get you moving.  My favorite feature is the special “Huh?” button in case you get stuck.  If you want to learn the essence of structured innovation, try this app.  It is both fun and useful.
Here is a description on YouTube:

For this month’s LAB, we will use P.I.G. to create ideas for my next party.  Here are five ideas, each described by the Component of the party, the “valve” that I selected (either “Less” or “More”), and the Trigger Statement.  Then I try to describe potential benefits of each hypothetical “solution.”

Component:  Dancing

  • Valve:  “Less.”
  • Trigger:  “You will have a dinner party with no dance floor; your guests can dance but only in their seats.  If you’re not sitting, no dancing is allowed.”
  • Potential benefits:  This would be useful for people with limited mobility.  Having people dance while sitting next to each other might promote more intimacy.  Another benefit is that people can eat and drink more efficiently if they are seated.

Component:  Music

  • Valve:  “More”
  • Trigger:  “Imagine the DJ changes music in the middle of the song.  What would be the influence of this change?”
  • Potential benefits:  Perhaps this sudden change is a signal to guests to do something such as find another partner.  Perhaps it is a game of some sort where only certain people can dance to certain music.

Component:  Restroom

  • Valve:  “Less
  • Trigger:  “Can you imagine a party where there are no restrooms?  What can you do so that you and your guests won’t have to hold it?”
  • Potential benefits:  I had to hit the “Huh?” button on this one, and here are the questions it posed:  “Can you think of variations of this idea?”  What is so interesting about this idea?”  “Is this idea to crazy for you?  Tone it down to suit your style.”  What is interesting about this idea is that it might limit how much alcohol people drink and how long they stay at the party.  For certain events where you want to celebrate in a short period of time, this would be really useful.

Component:  Drink

  • Valve:  “More”
  • Trigger:  “At your party, drinking is not taken lightly.  When your guest orders a drink, they will get a second drink with a higher proof of alcohol that the one they ordered.  It is their choice to drink it or give it to a friend.”
  • Potential Benefits:  This will certainly accelerate the social lubrication aspect of drinking alcohol.  Perhaps it is a way for guest to try different cocktails.  Perhaps there is a theme to each drink around the main theme of the party.  Perhaps it is just an efficient way to make sure everyone has a fresh drink in their hand by having guests take the extra drink to someone who is empty.

Component:  Gifts

  • Valve:  “Less”
  • Trigger:  “At your party, you are not receiving tangible gifts, but you are still getting something that you can benefit from.  How is this possible?  What can you get instead of a gift?”
  • Potential benefits:  Non-tangible gifts could include advice, referrals, feedback, encouragement, cheerfulness, laughter, information, insight, and compliments.

Reinventing the Newspaper

Published date: October 20, 2009 в 12:54 pm

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Newspapers are dying.  Their business model is burning to the ground.  They cannot fend off the Internet and other threats despite their virtual monopoly and economies of scale in printing and distribution.  Advertisers are moving on.  Yet while traditional newsrooms are shrinking, journalism is thriving and the consumption of news is skyrocketing.  Why are newspapers shutting down?  As Clay Shirky describes it:

“If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the most salient fact is this: Printing presses are terrifically expensive to set up and to run. This bit of economics, normal since Gutenberg, limits competition while creating positive returns to scale for the press owner, a happy pair of economic effects that feed on each other.”

“With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.”

“Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.“

Perhaps it is not the newspaper model, per se, that needs replaced.  Perhaps it is the components of that model that need innovation: printing, distribution, and journalism.  Let’s examine how.

The LAB: Innovating Health Care with S.I.T. (August 2009)

Published date: August 24, 2009 в 1:38 pm

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Lab_2

Health Care Reform, as the U.S. government sees it, promises lower costs, better access, and improved quality for all.  Let’s apply a structured innovation method to health care to see if we can achieve some of these goals.  For this month’s LAB, we will apply Systematic Inventive Thinking to the hospital discharge process.

Discharging patients from the hospital is a critical aspect of health care delivery.  It is a time of transition where one group of care givers stops treating the patient and another group starts.  The most frequent type of transition occurs when patients go from hospital to home, happening nearly 40 million times each year in the U.S.. Studies show that about 20 percent of discharged patients have an adverse event – a preventable emergency department visit or re-admission – within 30 days following hospitalization.  The discharge process is so important that a cottage industry is emerging around it.  Some  consultants, software products, best practices, training, and research studies focus just on discharging patients.

To use S.I.T., we start by listing the components of the service (process):

Innovation Internships

Published date: July 12, 2009 в 4:16 pm

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Business schools and companies need to create more internships dedicated to innovation.  Most MBA internships continue to focus on traditional core functions like marketing, finance, and strategy.  A few schools have innovation internships, but they focus on the technical  and design points-of-view.  The mainstream, non-technical B-School programs are missing an opportunity.

Innovation internships are a great way to infuse an organization with innovation process and techniques. The best internships allow the intern to
learn from the company and the company to learn from the
intern. The key success factors are:  Selection, Sponsorship, and Structure.

  • Selection means picking the right student for the internship as well as picking the right company.  Not all students or companies are suitable for this type of program.  The intern needs to have advanced innovation training.  This should include both innovation method training as well as organizational aspects of innovation.  The sponsoring company needs to have a commitment to innovation and see it as a competency worth developing.
  • Sponsorship of the intern is essential.  Without resources, focus, networking, and guidance from an engaged sponsor, the intern will flounder.  Sponsors need to work closely with business school faculty to make sure the program is set up correctly, and that the intern is brought on board smoothly and effectively.  Good sponsors keep projects on track.
  • Structuring the internship around the needs of the business as well as the needs of the intern is the final piece of the puzzle.  Interns need to tackle relevant and difficult innovation problems within the business if they are to learn from the experience and create value for the company.

Here is an outstanding example of how to structure an innovation internship and select candidates for the position, from Sears:

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