Overview: Innovation Strategy

"research into network science has begun to shed light on how synchronization happens and how we can make our enterprises function more effectively.... Great overview. Of particular interest to I-Labs: - "research helps explain why it is so hard for enterprises to adapt to new challenges... leaders need to treat new initiatives not as mere organi…

"With 95% confidence we conclude that an increase in ranking “the intranet search helps me find the information I need” results in a higher valuation of the respondents intranet as a whole. The impact for the same question related to menus was statistically insignificant." Not quite the deathknell for information architects and resellers of stic…

GE's FastWorks is "a framework for entrepreneurs, building on “The Lean Startup” ... an approach to developing new products that came out of “Agile” software development... It’s now being tried in manufacturing since GE and others believe that rapid learning cycles with customers will reduce the risk that you build something you can’t sell." Star…

"Frugal innovation is more than a strategy. It denotes a new frame of mind: one that sees resource constraints not as a liability but as an opportunity — and one that favors agility over efficiency. Frugal organizations ... create good-quality solutions that deliver the greatest value to customers at the lowest cost... we have gleaned five valuab…

Great article on improving intranet UX, and useful inspiration for any website manager: "During the online cardsorting sessions I covered over 1000 content items and got nearly 36,000 individual responses. The first batch ... designed to elicit our main navigation labels. Subsequent tests then checked that the chosen names would suit all the intr…

"we’ve applied econometric principles to the results of over 200 intranet surveys and… statistically pinpointed which intranet attributes most impact a user’s perception of their intranet. This first post... showing what employees prefer to look and find when they view their company’s intranet." Some surprising results, For example, although I'…

"businesses ... can, without realizing it, generate an environment hostile to innovation... frontline business units... are optimized to relatively short-term goals that are anchored in what they are currently doing or selling rather than in what they could be doing differently. As a result, line managers instinctively reject innovations that won…

"On the surface, no single factor seems to set Slack apart from a plethora of other collaboration tools. However, a closer look using the model described the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Product, reveals the user psychology behind the company's success." - The Psychology of a Billion-Dollar Enterprise App: Why Is Slack So Habit-Formi…

"Here's what I've come up with for advice to the 20-year-old version of me on being creative." Particularly like Neil Gaiman's advice: " A lot of times ideas will turn up when you're doing something else. And, most of all, ideas come from confluence - they come from two things flowing together. " Which is why I-Labs is all about bringing peo…

Interesting description of the benefits of being a 'fast follower' by The Economist's Paul Rossi: "instilling a culture across the business where staff are keeping an eye on what's going on ...the editorial side [is] ... actively talking to people about new technologies. How to deliver content, how to deliver video... on the commercial team everbo…

"“Yes, and…” is the closest thing improv comedy has to a cardinal rule. The rule goes like this: When the first performer says something, the next performer has to say “Yes, and…” instead of negating or dropping what the first performer said. It’s a powerful rule because it allows a comedy scene to go in unexpected, delightful directions... Insid…

"Expanding on the “good ideas that look like bad ideas” concept ... what does it take for large companies to innovate? " - How Can Large Companies Innovate? | Andreessen Horowitz

(Editor's note: Ms Swift is apparently a pop star) "The most successful businesses today are movements more than companies. Movements don't market. Movements inspire and engage. They create an emotional connection through storytelling. Not stories to be enjoyed passively but stories we see ourselves in, stories we can actively participate in...…

"movements... seem to self-organize and spread virally, as if they were LOLCats or some other digital meme. So why can’t we get our organizations to act the same way? You would think that with command and incentive structures in place, it would be easier for leaders to set a direction and get things moving, but anyone who’s run an enterprise kno…

Tackling corporate memory loss and innovation failure requires a different paradigm than that offered by social media.

The basic reasons we launched I-Labs are all here: "The most powerful way of learning is ...  to have conversation... the best examples of great insight nearly always come from cases where people shared knowledge or experience.... every organisation is sitting on a wealth of information that potentially contains insight... This information is ly…

"Traditional intranets required someone at the helm with a broad perspective and variety of skills. Newer social intranets, with their greater ability to influence company culture and productivity, have only added to the pile of needed skills. In this article we explain what the core skills are for successful intranet managers, common gaps in exp…

"Ideas represent possibilities for alternate futures. But, ideas are a commodity ... concepts until they’re brought to life. And that takes ... courage, passion, and resilience... Ideapod creates a creative community where people and ideas come together. And by together, I mean we invest in and build an active community where ideas and engagemen…

While aimed at news organisation leaders, a lot of these insights apply to any organisation in the content creation business today: "When your mother lectured you that “actions speak louder than words,” she was giving important advice for culture change... if the leaders aren’t setting an example of change, don’t be surprised if change is slow or…

An organisation which cannot remember cannot learn; an organisation which cannot learn cannot improve.

Th@e new Guardian Visuals team will bring together ... the graphics desk, picture desk, interactive team and parts of the digital design and multimedia teams... it's hard to assemble teams that are cross-disciplinary ... and have the right combination of designers, developers, graphic artists, photographers." - Guardian forms new editorial teams…

"A newsroom typically contains reporters, editors, data journalists, developers, designers … But traditionally they work in separate departments, unable to seamlessly collaborate together. That’s why silos don’t work. Instead, there should be a horizontal of these newsroom archetypes to truly integrate the journalism with the tech." - J-teams, le…

"some skeptics in the organization feel that innovation is an overhyped buzzword that doesn’t justify being a separate function. So, what can you do in your first 100 days to set things off on the right track?" - The Chief Innovation Officer’s 100-Day Plan - Scott Anthony, and Robyn Bolton - Harvard Business Review

"Why is it so hard to get platforms on which people can help each other solve practical challenges or understand strategic directions better to take hold in our organisations? I reckon it comes down to the fear of being judged... Being found wanting by your friends is one thing but being judged by your peers or your boss represents a whole differ…

As I mentioned in my previous post, the past couple of years have seen a lot of innovation in online content strategy, coupled with growing disenchantment with "Big Internet".

Enjoying this excellent guide to ideation by Krysta Curtis. Something for the weekend: admit it, you won't have time for this much fun during the week: - Paint-by-Idea — Medium

"We couldn't understand why people without technical knowledge had to tell programmers "what" to do and, furthermore, they had to supervise "how" programmers did it." At last. Someone said it. And also quite a bit more about the timesucks that are meetings, email and commuting. These guys avoid all of them, work 4 days/week and are growing …

Sounds encouraging, but what would "a leading scholar of labor markets" really know about where IT's headed? "Autor argues that even as computers have gotten better at rote tasks, they have progressed far less in applying common sense... this weakness leaves plenty of opportunities for humans to serve as intermediaries of sorts between incre…

Seeing more stuff on robots & AI this year than in previous 3. "In many cases, their algorithm clearly identifies influences that art experts have already found. For example, ... Klimt is close to Picasso and Braque ... the influence of Delacroix on Bazille, ... Munch’s influence on Beckmann and Degas’ influence on Caillebotte. The algorithm is …

(and why I joined a technology company, not another comms agency): "...organizations that had software engineers and Web enthusiasts in the room when big decisions were made navigated the seas of change more successfully than those that didn’t... When you think about how news and entertainment have been delivered over the internet so far, four m…