Category: Innovation Examples & Lessons

Innovation Lessons from Fashion Leader, Zara

Zara is the well-known face of one the world’s most innovative retail groups. It is part of Inditex which is one of the world’s largest fashion and clothing companies. Inditex has over 5500 stores in 82 countries. Its leading brand is Zara and its other store formats include Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho and Uterqüe.  Inditex has grown quickly.  Its founder,... Read More--

How to get your customers to help you innovate.

An increasingly popular route to innovation is co-creating with customers. Threadless is a fashion company that’s had great success asking people to upload T-shirt designs that site visitors then rate each week. Winning submissions get printed in limited editions, and the creators are rewarded with cash and site credits. The prizes aren’t going to make anyone rich, except maybe Threadless,... Read More--

You can be too close to your own products. Bring in an outsider for a fresh view.

How can you break out of the group-think that affects most large organizations? How can you escape from the corporate frameworks that shape discussions and ideas? Philips is moving from a high-volume electronics manufacturere to a design-led, lifestyle technology company. It needs help to get there so it set up a ‘simplicity board’. Philips reckoned it needed a fresh perspective from creative... Read More--

Innovation means Creating the Best Practices of Tomorrow

Leaders constantly strive to increase efficiency, improve quality, implement best practice and deliver increased performance. Their goal is make the current business model work better. They seek to improve profitability through efficiencies of scale and cost reductions. But there are limits to cost saving. In a global economy your competitors in lower-cost countries can beat you at that game. The best... Read More--

21 Great Ways to Innovate

How hard is it to innovate?  Not once but over and over?  How can you repeatedly implement great new products, processes or services?  Continuous innovation is not easy and if you keep using the same method you will experience diminishing results.  Try innovating how you innovate by employing some of these ideas.   Copy someone else’s idea.  One of the best ways to innovate is to pinch an... Read More--

How receptive are you to New Ideas?

We carried out a survey to assess attitudes towards receptiveness to new ideas within organizations. There were 203 respondents of whom 82% were from private sector companies and 18% from the public sector. The results indicate that most people consider themselves to be much more receptive to new ideas than their bosses are. So whereas 95% of people think that they would welcome or consider ideas from... Read More--

What mix of skills is needed for innovation to succeed?

Innovation is a team activity, a contact sport. One person may have a great idea but normally the implementation of the idea requires a team. That team needs a mix of skills and attributes in order overcome all the obstacles that get in the way. In a corporate environment the people who are best at conceiving bright ideas are often not the best at making them happen. So what skills do you need in your... Read More--

We need to fail more if we are to succeed. That’s why tennis champions serve double faults.

Nadal Why does Roger Federer or Raphael Nadal or any other great tennis player serve double faults? Every double fault is a failure – it gives a precious point to his opponent. He could easily cut out all double faults by slowing down his second serve to ensure that it lands safely in the service box. Yet in most long matches Federer, like most other top players, will serve at least 3 double... Read More--

What does innovation cost? Not always a lot.

How can companies afford to allocate scarce resources to innovation in these unprecedented times. When every extraneous expenditure is cut back to preserve cash flow how can it be justified to lavish money on experiments that might fail? You do not get innovation for free – you have to allocate time, money and people to the search for new products, services, methods etc. However, innovation can... Read More--

How can you meet the needs that your customers cannot even express?

Most successful innovations look obvious once they are established but were not so beforehand.  Who needed an ipad before it was invented?  We already had smart phones and netbook computers.  There was no demand for a hybrid product in this sector yet the new product took the world by storm. I went for a walk in the park and noticed that most of the people who were walking their dogs were using... Read More--