Introduction

Revolution in Innovation: 3 Stages

Reinventing Innovation: Shift to a Wholistic Multidisciplinary Approach

Systemic Approach to Innovation: 7 Interwoven Areas

Lessons from Jack Welch: Constantly Focus of Innovation

Balanced Business Systems  ●  Sustainable Innovation – the Key Success

Intellectual Assets – the Major Value Drivers of Business

Shift from Linear to Systemic Innovations  ●  Synergy

Success Story: Apples' Innovative Business Models and Value Propositions

Harnessing the Power of Diversity

The Tao of Value Innovation

1. Business Innovation

Business Model: 6+1 Components

Changes that Call for a New Business Model

Success Story: Direct Model of Dell Computers Corp.

Success Story: GE  ●  25 Lessons from Jack Welch

Success Story: British Petroleum

Lessons from Jack Welch: Live Speed

Fast Companys  ●  Success Story: Charles Schwab

High-growth Business Development: Launching a Crusade

Owning Your Competitive Advantage

Lessons from Jack Welch: Behave Like a Small Company

Harnessing the Power of Diversity

Creating Cross-functional Teams

2. Organizational Innovation

Shift from Industrial to Knowledge-driven Organization

9 Signs of a Losing Organization

Entrepreneurial Organization: 10 Characteristics and 5 Benefits

10 Steps to Developing Entrepreneurial Staff  ●  Switching Responsibilities

Managing Organizational Change: The Wheel of Business Evolution

Employee Empowerment: 3 Levels  ●  Nourish Entrepreneurial Spirit

Inspiring Cultures  ●  Lessons from Jack Welch: Energize Others

Freedom to Fails  ●  The Fun Factors  ●  Creative Leadership

Lessons from Jack Welch: Create a Learning Culture

Lessons from Jack Welch: Cultivate Leaders

3. Strategy Innovation

The Need for Strategy Innovation

Lessons from Jack Welch: See Change as an Opportunity

Strategy Pyramid vs. Strategy Stretch

Strategic Alliances

4. Technology Innovation

Technology Innovation: 4 Types

Corporate Innovation System: 5+1 Components

Strategic Alignment  ●  Strategic Intent

Radical versus Incremental Innovation

Radical Innovation: Key Uncertainties  ●  Fuzzy Front End

7 Challenges in Managing Radical Innovation

Venture Strategies: Internal and External Ventures

Success Story: Spinouts of Thermo Electron Corporation

Venture Management vs. Corporate Management

Success Story: In-company Ventures by Corning

Best Practices: Measuring Innovation by Silicon Valley Companies

5. Process Innovation

The Tao of Business Process Innovation

Service-Profit Chain

Process Innovation: Shift to Cross-functional Paradigm  ●  Process Thinking

The Jazz of Innovation  ●  The Jazz of Innovation: Key Components

6. Product Innovation

Product Innovation: New Product Types

New Product Development by Cross-functional Teams

Lessons from IDEO: New Product Design

Keys to Successful Market Learning

Radical Innovation: A Different Role of Prototyping

Experimentation – The Key To Discovery

Measuring Innovation: New Product Metrics

7. Marketing Innovation

Synergistic Marketing and Selling

The Tao of Marketing Innovation

Creative Marketing  ●  Creative Marketing: The Key To Explosive Growth

Creative Marketing: Selected Amazing Results

Best Practices: Estee Lauder's Winning Creatinve Marketing Ideas

Lessons from Steve Jobs: Sell Dreams and Emotional Benefits

Success Story: Half.com – Innovative Buzz Marketing

Best Practices: Burger King's Creative Customer Survey and Buzz Marketing

Creative Solving of Customer Problems

Success Story: Xerox Corporation – Innovative Revenue Model

Success Story: Amazon.com – Creating Value and Competitive Advantage

Differentiation Strategies  ●  Positioning

Customer Intimacy

Lessons from Dell Computers: Segmentation by Customer

Lessons from Michael Dell: Turn Your Customers Into Teachers

New Systemic Approach to Innovation

Until recently innovation has been seen principally as the means to turn research results into commercially successful products, but not all research leads to innovation and not all innovation is research-based. Certainly research is a major contributor to innovation, generating a flow of technical ideas and continually renewing the pool of technical skills.  It should be a vital ingredient in your enterprise strategy, particularly over long term, if you are to maintain a stream of competitive products on the market.

Important though research is as the source of invention, innovation encompasses more than the successful application of research results. Innovation can also stem from adopting new technologies or processes from other fields, or from new ways of doing business, or from new ways of marketing products and services. The evolution of the innovation concept – from the linear model having R&D as the starting point to the systemic model in which innovation arises from complex interactions between individuals, organizations and their operating environments – demonstrates that your innovation policies and practices must extend their focus beyond the link with research.

Hard vs. Soft Innovation

• Hard Innovation is organized R&D characterized by strategic investment in innovation, be it high-risk-high-return radical innovation or low-risk-low-return incremental innovation.

• Soft Innovation is the clever, insightful, useful ideas that just anyone in the organization can think up.

Case in Point: Lessons from Jack Welch

At General Electric (GE), the sum is greater than its parts as both business and people diversity is utilized synergistically in a most effective way. "Practice systems thinking and holistic approaches," advised Jack Welch. Seek to improve and optimize the totality of your business rather than the profits of its components. "Everything about this enterprise is doing more with less. It needs rejuvenation all the time. Quality is the next in the learning process. Getting rid of layer. Getting rid of fat. Involving everyone. All that was to get more ideas. The whole thing here is to create a learning organization."

Why Cross-Functional Teams?

Innovation, the source of sustainable competitive advantage for most companies, depends upon the individual and collective expertise of employees. In strategic innovation road-mapping, the starting point for knowledge building and learning about the innovation concept is to establish a shared view of trends, disruptive technologies and other discontinuities, and related events that could shape the future.

To move efforts forward, cross-functional teams, either formal or informal, need to be formed.

Creativity of Groups

In cross-functional teams, individuals from different backgrounds draw upon their pools of tacit, as well as explicit knowledge, to contribute. The tacit dimensions of their knowledge bases make such individuals especially valuable contributors to innovation projects; perspectives based on such knowledge cannot be obtained any other way except through interaction.

This is a reason that intellectually heterogeneous cross-functional teams are more innovative than homogenous functional ones.

Cross-Functional Team Meetings should be held regularly:

• to build a sense of informality, trust, and shared understanding of the future;

• to discuss trends and discontinuities in relation to technologies, customer needs, value creation, and system and product attributes;

• to consider goals of the team members in relation to their resources;

• to develop an implementation strategy and a delivery plan.
   

~ John Seely Brown,
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)