You can't innovate if..., Jeffrey Phillips
8 common reasons why innovation fails in companies. Leadership is #1 and Culture is #2.
An excellent metaphor for innovation portfolios, Innovation Weblog
Points to a blog entry by Scott Anthony and Matt Eyring: Innovation Lessons From the Baseball Draft. Interesting way to look at it, unfortunately when innovation means launching products or businesses the metrics aren't quite as real-time as baseball statistics are. A good quote from that article:
As you look at your innovation portfolio, think of yourself as general manager approaching the draft. Place a lot of well-informed bets, using a variety of qualitative and quantitative inputs. Expose those bets to the market as quickly as possible. Recognize that not every bet is going to pan out. Accelerate the development path of the best resources, and shut down the rest.
Three Search Spaces for New Ideas, Graham
Discusses some findings on how ideas are created or how we arrive at these new ideas. The three areas mentioned are: Rational, Creative and Hidden. Interesting read, mentions a few thing I hadn't thought about but make sense. A good quote from the entry:
The diagram makes it very clear why well-designed idea production techniques are so important: they provide access to a much larger space of ideas. It also explains why classical brainstorming and the many related methods which do not use stimuli perform so weakly: they do not support the expert in leaving his or her existing idea space.
AWAKE AT THE WHEEL: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world), Mitch Ditkoff
New book by Mitchell Lewis Ditkoff named AWAKE AT THE WHEEL: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world)
and some of the things being said about it. He has a 2 minute interview about the book and a free chapter on the site at: http://www.ideachampions.com/awake_at_the_wheel.shtml. A good quote from the page with the free chapter:
If you are looking for a powerful way to jump start innovation and get your creative juices flowing, Awake at the Wheel is for you. Written by Mitch Ditkoff, Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions, Awake at the Wheel is a book about BIG IDEAS — where they come from, how to attract them, and what you can do to radically increase your chances or manifesting them in a world not always ready for the new and the different.
Innovation metrics: Which are the best ones?, Innovation Weblog
Points to another good innovation link (where do they find all these good links?) from Paul Sloane: Innovation Metrics - which are the best ones?. The entry talks about 3 different categories of metrics: Input, Process and Output. The content of the entry is based on a session in which the attendees reviewed (what looks to be a good read) some research done by Boston Consulting in 2007: Measuring Innovation 2007: A BCG Senior Management Survey as well as another online survey at destination innovation: http://www.destination-innovation.com/page.cfm?WebpageID=19
Google's Schmidt Says More U.S. Innovation Needed, Grant Gross
This is a short article about some of Eric Schmidt's discussion at the Economic Club of Washington recently, some of which you have probably already heard (like the 20 percent projects). He mentions an interesting stat about the one (and only) company that has been in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1905 but doesn't name the company ... I'm guessing GE. An interesting quote from the article:
"It is possible to build a culture around innovation, it is possible to build a culture around leadership, and it is possible to build a culture around optimism," Schmidt said.