Top 100 innovation articles for 2012

Happy 2013! I thought I'd start the year by looking back at some of the great innovation content from 2012. Innovation Excellence has profile the 100 best innovation articles from 2012. Click here to read their whole  list.

Suffice to say, there is a wealth of content here for any business wanting to improve, however even just the Top 10 prove interesting reading:

1. Beyond Stage Gate – Repeating Disruptive Innovation – by Jose A. Briones, Ph.D.
2. Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2011
3. The Rise of Social Innovation – by Nicolas Bry
4. Five Tech Trends Impacting Business Innovation in 2012 – by Tim Sweeney
5. Has Microsoft Leapfrogged Apple – by Greg Satell
6. 10 Success Principles of Apple’s Innovation Master Jonathan Ive – by John Webb
7. Tips for Crowdsourcing, Innovation, and Savings – by Jessica Day
8. Boosting Personal Innovation Capacity – Iterate! – by Dennis Stauffer
9. What’s the Difference between Creativity and Innovation? – by Paul Sloane
10. Top 50 Innovation Tweeters

It's great reading I hope you enjoy.

Companies that are terrible at innovation

Tim Kastelle, on his blog, dissects the types of innovation based on an Innovation Matrix that measures companies based on Innovation Commitment and Innovation Competence.

He argues some companies don't need to innovate, i.e.:

well-established firms in stable industries

monopolies and oligopolies

some startups

established firms that have forgotten how to innovate

I like his reference to Schumpeter regarding innovation in startups:

"..all new firms are founded on an innovation, but there are two groups that don’t: startups in bubbles and startups in trouble."

Click here to read the full article.

Middle managers are holding back innovation

So it's the middle managers fault that we aren't innovating! I knew it!!

I'm unfairly framing what is a very good post from Paul Hobcraft on Innovation Excellence. He says that middle managers are often too focused on delivery operational objectives when they are the key to innovation execution. Hobcraft offers a staged approach to remedy this:

1. Core competences need to be changed
2. We need to focus the middle manager on different learning concepts
3. Working the innovation learning ‘muscles’ through the three learning loops
4. Apply a coaching framework
5. Use the ADKAR methodology of change

As with the Theory of Constraints principle, it makes sense to address the constraint of innovation, if in fact it is the middle manager. I suspect this is partly true. The challenge for our clients (SMEs) is the same challenges felt by middle managers, as Hobcraft suggests, is felt across the whole business. Neverthless the approach is still valid.

Click here to read the full article.

Social media for innovators

A blog from the Innovation Excellence site about the importance of social media when it comes to building personal brands. No real surprises there. But author Stefan Lindegaard talks about social media in the context of providing and promoting innovation offerings and constructing the strategy and innovation eco-system supporting this.

Click here toread the full article.