Innovation

Domains in this track

Creativity

Creativity is the element of innovation that deals with the production of novel and useful ideas. Where innovation will continue to the implementation of the creative ideas, creativity focuses entirely on the creation of something original and worthwhile, regardless of its implementation or if its is made available for use by other parties, firms, individuals or organizations.

Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovations tend to be produced by outsiders and entrepreneurs in startups, rather than existing market-leading companies. The business environment of market leaders does not allow them to pursue disruptive innovations when they first arise, because they are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition). Small teams are more likely to create disruptive innovations than large teams. A disruptive process can take longer to develop than by the conventional approach and the risk associated to it is higher than the other more incremental or evolutionary forms of innovations, but once it is deployed in the market, it achieves a much faster penetration and higher degree of impact on the established markets.

Experimentation

The lean-agile model reinvents the concept of planning. It shifts the focus of planning from predicting to the measurement of actual effects. The mentality is to "plan your tests and test your plans", where the plan does not enumerate the precise tactics to follow as no one knows in advance which ones will be successful. Instead, best guesses guide multiple small tests and efforts are adjusted after discovering what works (and what doesn't work).

Related Resources Show Summaries

Innovation

What Kids Taught Me About Being Agile

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Maxime Castera

Jun 19, 2017 • 3 min read

Even if that means starting again, they reach the finish line quickly and iterate successfully.

In this article a parallel is drawn between the agile mindset in adults and in children. The author, both a software engineer and a kids' robotics teacher, argues that the drive towards agile "transformation" or "transition" is nothing more that an attempt to get back what we have lost from childhood - the ability to learn from activities, drop them once the learning is over, and re-engage into another activity from which to learn from.

The author indicates that: 1) kids often start with a plan, and are willing to change them once it is understood it leads nowhere. A plan always exist, and is acted onto completion and if starting again is necessary a new iteration begins. 2) Kids ask why with the intention of understanding, often asking questions until there are no questions left to be answered. Adults tend to be paralyzed by self-guessing, and are blocked by our culture, pride and fear of judgement. 3) Kids call things out as they are, without associating criticism with a negative meaning. While direct, they often give honest and constructive feedback. 4) Kids are willing to drop their own project to work on a joint project with a friend, helping a playmate realize their task. In a professional setting a culture of individual goals and target-setting prevents true collaboration.

Lean Startup

Lean startup is a methodology for developing businesses and products that aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable; this is achieved by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning. Central to the lean startup methodology is the assumption that when startup companies invest their time into iteratively building products or services to meet the needs of early customers, the company can reduce market risks and sidestep the need for large amounts of initial project funding and expensive product launches and failures.

Related Resources

Innovation

Lean Startup has Changed Nothing!

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Pete Behrens

Aug 16, 2017 • 4 min read

The Lean Startup mentality is at odds with institutionalized corporate culture.

Steve Blank, author of the pivotal HBR article "Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything" (HBR, 2013) has spent the last decade witnessing innovative Silicon Valley startup mindset unable to penetrate the traditional corporate cultures. Mr. Blank shares that "...after three or four years of watching corporations try to adopt a lean methodology, it hasn’t affected the top or bottom line for reasons that are a lot more cultural and organizational than they are about whether you have an incubator, an accelerator, or a chief innovation officer...". Pete Behrens explains that corporate cultures and organizational structures resist the Lean Startup mindset just as the body resists a virus, with institutionalized defense systems to prevent the spread of the contagion. These institutionalized defense systems are reinforced if the agile transformation is top-down, or "outside-in" instead of "inside-out".

Lifecycles and Phases

Organizations experience a sequence of advancements that are common to all enterprises. Though the exact steps or phases a business goes through is subject of debate, they all include conception, periods of expansion and eventually, termination. All organizations adhere to a certain path of uniformity in their course of expansion.

Value Creation Models

Applying the Business Model Canvas