May 2003 - Innovation Management has a new Standard Bearer: Imaginatik's Idea Central wins Basex Excellence Award 2003 Imaginatik's Idea Central has won this year's Basex Excellence Awards and is recognized by BaseX as the "leading Idea and Innovation Management package on the market" - Read the full press release

Sun-Sentinel:To Rejuvenate your staff, encourage new ideas Marcia Heroux Pounds talks to Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak about their new book "What's the Big Idea" which looks at the importance of Ideas and the benefits to be had by reaping this untapped well of knowledge.

HBS Working Knowledge: Innovation: How Bank of America Turned Branches into Service-Development Laboratories - Stefan Thomke details how Bank of America's Innovation & Development Team exploited employee ideas and conducted live experiments using their Atlanta branches in order to innovate their branch system. Interesting stuff.

Chicago Sun Times - May 5 2003 - Firms mustn't ignore innovation as they strive to survive - Author and Consultant Thomas D. Kuczmarski, puts forth a good arguement for not putting aside innovation during this period of economic survival being played out by corporations.

Strategy+Business - April 30 2003 - Reinventing R&D Through Open Innovation To increase the return on their R&D, successful innovation companies are finding they must complement their in-house R&D with external technologies, and offer up their own technologies to outsiders. R&D at large companies is shifting from its traditional inward focus to more outward-looking management — open innovation — that draws on technologies from networks of universities, startups, suppliers, and competitors.

Optimize Magazine - May 2003 - "A Formula For Sustained Success" - written by William Joyce, Nitin Nohria, and Bruce Roberson - the authors of the forthcoming book "What Really Works" - This article summarises the findings of a 5 year project undertaken by 50 leading consultants and academics. It's aim was to conduct a systematic analysis of the practices that create business winners.

The team analyzed the experiences of 160 companies over a 10-year period, from 1986 to 1996, in search of the management practices that directly correlate with superior corporate performance as measured by total return to shareholders.

Their results were that 8 practices - 4 primary and 4 secondary - were largely responsible for the success of the winning companies, who excelled at all 4 of the primary practices and bizaarely, any combination ofat least 2 of the secondary practices (4+2 model)

The 4 Primary Practices are:
1) Devise and maintain a clearly stated, focused strategy - ideally focussed on growing the core business
2) Develop and maintain flawless operational execution
3) Develop and maintain a performance-oriented culture
4) Maintain a fast, flexible, flat organisation - one that reduces bureaucracy and simplifies work.

The 4 Secondary Practices are:
1) Hold onto talented employees and find more.
2) Make industry-transforming innovations.
3) Make growth happen with mergers and partnerships.
4) Keep leaders and directors committed to the business.

Interestingly, the authors also note that less than 5% of all the publicly traded companies in their study maintained a total return to shareholders greater than their industry peers for more than 10 years. Well written and interesting reading this.

25 Ways to Innovate in Your Business April 2003 - Entrepreneur magazine comes up with this fun list of ways in which to improve your creative abilities by getting your creative juices flowing - both individually and as a group. Nothing groundbreaking here - but certainly a decent read for those looking at creativity techniques.

Innovation Stats seen on the Web : 77% of CEOs at America's fastest-growing companies say they are more innovative than their competitors. Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers