Search

In summer 2022, my good friend Jen Rearick, owner of Tiny Little Monster, a custom print shop near St. Louis, came to stay with my family for about a week. [...]

When you need a new product or service that will wow customers, where do you turn? An outside marketing or research and development firm? If you're lucky, you have the [...]

In our last column, we shared several myths about disruption, including this one: The best idea always 'wins.' This week, we want to share more about how and why that [...]

The mentoring component of the American Psychological Association Catalyst Program, and the Pinnacle Model upon which it was built, was derived from Bloom's (1985) model of talent development. According to Bloom and his associates, optimal instruction for talent development takes place in three stages. During the first stage, young people are guided to fall in love with a topic, idea, or discipline. The second stage involves instruction in the skills, knowledge, and values of the domain. In the third and final stage, the talented young person learns to apply his or her passion and technical mastery to create a unique style and message, and to explore original problems. The Catalyst Program is a yearlong program designed to support the transition from the second to the third stage of Bloom's talent development model though instruction by renowned masters in science and the arts and places a premium on the mentor/scholar relationship in guiding participating adolescents in their scientific interests and career aspirations. For the Catalyst Scholars, connecting to their team Master was the thread through which the Scholars integrated their experience with chemistry, creativity, and insider knowledge. Catalyst participants came to the program having already 'used up' any resources they had available to them in their school or in other out-of-school programs, and sought more intense involvement with a career path they had tentatively committed themselves to. In the course of the experience, they refined their goals, learned what it takes to be successful, and made powerful and lasting friendships and contacts that should prepare them optimally to be future innovators., Background on Talent Development Talent Development and Mentoring The mentoring component of the American Psychological Association Catalyst Program, and the Pinnacle Model upon which it was built, was derived from [...]

ON A WARM LATE-SUMMER EVENING, a crowd gathers in the parking lot of the Susan B. Anthony Middle School in Minneapolis, Minn., to watch a man in a navy blue [...]

Health care accounts for a substantial and growing share of national expenditures, and Australia's health-care system faces some unprecedented pressures. This paper examines the contribution of creative expertise and services to Australian health care. They are found to be making a range of contributions to the development and delivery of health-care goods and services, the initial training and ongoing professionalism of doctors and nurses, and the effective functioning of health-care buildings. Creative activities within health-care services are also undertaken by medical professionals and patients. Key functions that creative activities address are innovation and service delivery in information management and analysis, and making complex information comprehensible or more useful, assisting communication and reducing psycho-social and distance-mediated barriers, and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of services.

Businesses tend to focus their attention on innovativeness, neglecting the need to develop strategies on how to communicate innovations to the market. It is observed that many of the new services or products fail in the market and that truly innovative ideas rarely achieve lasting success. Tips on how to evaluate innovative products or services and how to communicate them to the market are given.

'HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM.' This short, declarative statement, tittered by astronaut Jim Lovell aboard the Saturn V rocket during the Apollo XIII mission to the moon, was a levelheaded [...]

A company that can methodically transform itself and allow employees to give unorthodox ideas has a culture that provides the company with a competitive advantage. Companies should drop traditional practices, use slack and liberate ideas. Examples of innovative organizations are given.

This paper analyses the contribution of TQM implementation to the firms' innovative culture and their overall innovation effort in the technical and administrative organizational domains. The research seeks to contribute to a further understanding, under different market turbulence conditions, of the TQM--innovation relationship and the interactions between the organization's innovativeness and the intensity and newness of the innovations adopted. The findings indicate that TQM strongly influences firm's innovative culture and higher administrative innovation levels with a greater degree of incorporated novelty, whereas the mediating role of innovativeness is required for TQM to achieve this impact on technical innovation. These relationships significantly vary under different levels of market turbulence, but results reinforce the consideration of TQM as an appropriate resource to foster innovativeness and organizational innovation. The study provides an unexpected result as innovativeness does not influence administrative innovations, which seem to be ultimately determined by TQM. Finally, the findings provide empirical support regarding the coordinated development in practice of technical and administrative innovations. Keywords: Innovative culture: Technical innovation; Administrative innovation; Radical innovation; Total quality management; Competitive advantage

The effect of the economic constraints of mass entertainment, on the management of creativity and expression of artistic values by videogame developers, is described.

The exploration of the paradoxes arising during the management and organization of creativity in knowledge-based societies is presented.

Structural aspects of design of systems for management of radical innovation by companies, to overcome competition from business rivals, are discussed.

The challenges faced by companies while developing new product or services are discussed. Using a flexible approach for managing innovations is also emphasized.

The impact of product innovativeness on the success of new products is discussed.

A break from their regular work is recommended to clients as a way of realizing their dreams, to get a bigger perspective on their lives, since so much of the work of creatives is about invention and invention relies on revelation. It is concluded that this revelation will definitely show in places least expected.

A study analyzing the impact of certain aspects in top management teams on innovativeness in their teams is presented. The study also examines the effect of other issues like strategic consensus on decision making and innovativeness.

The effectiveness of small steps of change in attaining continuous organizational change and creativity there by leading to organizational success is studied. The Japanese strategy called kaizen is analysed.

80% of the BRW Fast 100 companies attribute their growth to innovation. Innovation in products and methods of doing business is the only thing that keeps them ahead of competition. Some examples have been cited with a listing of attitudes and ideologies of the Fast 100 companies.

The implementation of a Continuous Improvements (CI) program is a non-trivial and actually problematic process, especially if the program is implemented using the hierarchy. Two case studies are presented to illustrate and discuss the problems related to this strategy, showing that the hierarchical approach is not suited for furthering, detailing and implementing the general ideas behind CI.

The concept of continuous innovation, and how to manage and organize for it are discussed. The issue is addressed by, first of all, defining continuous innovation as the ability to combine operational effectiveness and strategic flexibility, and later by exploitation and exploration capabilities that have traditionally been regarded as antithetical.

This article describes how innovation is critical for a company to become/remain competitive. Corning and Xerox are featured to illustrate this point. The article concludes with 7 suggestions to manage innovation.

Creativity is an essential part of new product development (NPD), and NPD teams are required to integrate input from the various group members. This study shows that modest levels of centralized communication and moderate amounts of communication are required for the team creativity process.

A new way of thinking about culture and innovation is put forward. The new approach to innovation conceptualises it as a structural and 'mental' knowledge process. The assumption is made that the capability to produce new ideas and the ability to transform these ideas into a viable proposition contribute to the success of an innovation process.

The author discusses how standard-setting organizations deal with intellectual property rights which may hinder their standard-setting. The organizations can contract around intellectual property rights, which helps remove intellectual property rules that may block innovation.

In this article a framework for a new concept--that of innovation quality--is presented and its relevance for considerations with respect to innovation and strategy is highlighted. The concept of innovation quality allows making a statement regarding the aggregated innovation performance in three different domains within an organization by comparing the result, being it a product, process or service innovation, with the potential and considering the process on how the result has been achieved. The three domains of innovation quality are product/service, process and enterprise. After analyzing the foundation concepts of quality and innovation a short interpretation of the concept of 'innovation quality' in contrast to 'quality innovation' is given. In the second large section of this article the principle of innovation quality is presented, possibilities of determining andrepresenting the concept are shown and a strong link among innovation quality and strategy is suggested. Keywords: Innovation; Quality; Measurement; Strategy; Framework

Seeking increased revenue, lower costs and a sustainable competitive advantage, senior management is rising to the challenge by increasing productivity gains and leveraging assets with the use of innovation. When [...]

Creativity and innovation in the workplace are lofty and worthy aspirations but, in human resources terms, how can they be encouraged through a benefits strategy? Central to this conundrum is [...]

Trying to manage creative individuals in the traditional manner will only result in the creation of structures that stifle creativity. The important factor needed in managing these types of people is to provide a structure such as a deadline., Managing mavericks and mad geniuses Conventional wisdom has dubbed them everything from unconventional to emotional to iconoclasts. Even IBM founder Thomas Watson called them 'wild ducks.' Call them what you [...]

Companies can take a number of steps to stimulate creativity and innovation in the workplace. The first is to eliminate the two major factors that stifle creativity, namely, a culture of fear and employees' lack of passion for their work which results from this fear. Companies must also create an environment that supports information sharing, new ideas and professional and personal development. Other methods to promote creativity are discussed., Companies that create environments inspire employees and help maintain innovative workplaces. Creative thinking can't be turned on and off with the flick of a switch. Yet, this is exactly what [...]

Mary Portas is a retail marketing consultant, founder of agency Portas and Mary's Living & Giving charity shops, an author, broadcaster and campaigner. I was lucky enough to be growing [...]

Thinking of camp as a place of creativity is easy. Kids are naturally creative. Counselors and program staff are busy with ice breakers, activities, games, storytelling, singing, and staff shows […]

We all start at the same spot: a blank space - and with a common goal: to fill that space. But the path we choose from there is completely individual, [...]