European Business Forum - Secrets of the Shower Head Joel Kurtzman, former HBR editor, writes this funny piece that suggests that what countries with a self-confessed 'innovation problem' need is to get a little messier. His contention - that countries like Switzerland and Japan are characterised by their inability to handle conflict and disorder, are also stunted in their innovation capacity because people cannot think beyond the current order. Amusing and short - worth a read!

Give Creative Personalities a Chance Susan Solomon looks at how to deal with 'Creative types' and offers some tips on how to manage them. Full of interesting facts:

For example, The author ranked America's major cities by number of creative workers, innovation, diversity, and several other factors.

- The cities Most Favoured by creatives? San Francisco, San Diego, Austin
- Least Favoured? Norfolk, VA, Memphis, TN, and Las Vegas
The author also contends that creatives are frequently not the kind of people you'd expect but rather thinkers who "acquire their own arcane bodies of knowledge and develop their own unique ways of doing the job.". Imaginatik client Grace Perfomance Chemicals has a group affectionately called 'the crazies' who are people identified as being particularly creative that are now invited to almost every idea capture event to bring their particular brand of creativity to that event!

How to manage that talent? Keep these top tips in mind:

- Creative work takes time - giving impossible deadlines will often yield stunted work

- Creative people are their own worst critics - don't be surprised if they ask for their work back to tweak it some more

-Creative people bend the rules - and you need to allow them the leeway to do so. Enforcing a 9-5 attitude, risks getting you a 9-5 product as a result..

Interesting stuff!


Interesting stuff!

Reuters.com - Is Six Sigma no longer enough? an interesting short article that claims that whilst Six Sigma is a great tool to improve existing business - it cannot create innovation. Although many companies continue to rely on Six Sigma to ensure profitable growth, people like Michael Hammer, founder of Hammer & Co., say that its overemphasis on the bottom line will hinder any innovation efforts.

Personally though, having spoken with several Imaginatik clients who are deeply involved with Six Sigma, I can't see why this has to be an either/or. I would instead say that Six Sigma and Innovation are two major tools for improving a business - and tools that should be given an equal weighting of emphasis to ensure not just an enduring profitable business, but also to ensure a constant supply of new businesses adding to that bottom line.

Raising Your Return on Innovation Investment Authors Alexander Kandybin and Martin Kihn make the observation that simply spending more money on innovation won't make R&D investments pay off - instead (insert breaking news...) you should be trying to raise the effectiveness of that spending.

To that end they have developed 3 pillars of innovation which they believe will improve the return on innovation investment of any company.

1) Understand your Innovation Effectivess Curve - Simply put, their research has found that increased spending on R&D is subjet to the law of diminishing returns - ie, each dollar more you spend gets you less than the previous dollar. Plotting this curve out allows you to then decide upon the point at which to cut off future spend in this area.

2) Master the Entire Innovation Value Chain - According to the authors, an innovation capability requires owning or sourcing 4 critical sets of capabilities - Ideation, Project Selection, Development, and Commercialization. Mastering these 4 elements will raise your Innovation Effectiveness Curve.

3) Don't Do It All Yourself - Superior innovators are learning to outsource segments of the innovation value chain and obtaining ideas and inventions from outside sources - usually smaller companies who have spotted a small niche that is initially too small or not profitable enough for larger companies.

Boston.com / Business / When innovation supersedes short-term results A very interesting review from Globe staffer Robert Weisman on Analog Devices Chairman Ray Stata's recent article in the MIT Sloan Management review. In it, he asks how can managers ready the next generation of products/services whilst still effectively managing the ones that currently generate sales and profits. He suggests that it may be more important for companies to measure their learning rather than focus on short-term financial gains which frequently don't live up to management expectations. As Ray himself says "''The challenge is to balance a culture of accountability in established businesses with a culture of learning in experimental businesses,". With business lifecycles getting shorter every year (current Fortune 500 company lifespan is 40-50 years and falling apparently!) - the companies that succeed are the ones who can transition in and out of new businesses and markets several times. This means accepting that you can't measure all your businesses by the same metrics. Instead, Strata says "''Companies need a system that helps them continuously refine judgments regarding the likelihood and timing of success, and also accelerates learning so that failing strategies can be quickly modified." - a good quick read.

CORDIS: News service: "EU15 Community Innovation Survey" - Funny, it seems almost like someone read my previous post on the NZ survey and went out to address my concerns over the size of company vs innovative actions comments.

In this EU15 survey, looking at data from companies between 1998 - 2000, only 44% of the overall companies undertook some form of innovation activity - with Ireland and Germany leading the back at 65% and 61%, and Greece (28%), Spain (33%) and the UK (36%) surprisingly as the trailers.

With regard to company size however, small companies (10-49 employees) came in at 39%, medium sized companies (50-249 employees) came in at 60%, and apparently a whacking 77% of large companies (250+ emplyees) displayed innovation activity.

However, seeing as the greatest complaint to what most hampered survey participants' innovative performance was that 'innovation costs are too high' - maybe that sheds another reason why larger companies are coming out trumps on these surveys...they have more money to spend on it. Comments anyone?... send an e-mail to research@imaginatik.com