Category: Innovation Examples & Lessons

Everything that can be made can be made better.

Every man-made thing you use or see can be redesigned.  Every design can be improved upon.   The force and benefits of innovation can be applied to every thing, process, method or product that you can imagine. Take the humble egg carton that we are all familiar with.  It was designed 100 years ago by Joseph Coyle and it is such a good and practical design that we take it for granted.  The BBC... Read More--

Innovation’s Three Good Friends and Three Deadly Enemies

For most organizations innovation is a struggle. The natural thing to do is to stay in the current state. The CEO preaches the need for innovation but people further down know that it involves risk, time, effort, cost, disruption and potential failure. In this contest innovation has some powerful friends and some dangerous enemies. Let’s start with three of its most important friends, the VCC. 1.... Read More--

An Innovative HR Policy to Attract Staff – Unlimited Vacation!

Evernote is a Californian company that sells a popular note-taking software package.  It offers its people unmetered time off for holidays.  Phil Libin, CEO, made this comment in the FT, ’Getting a job at Evernote is tough and people want to be here.  If you take the attitude that being in the office isn’t a punishment then spending days outside the office is not a reward.’   Similarly the... Read More--

Incrovation and Radovation

Francisco González Bree, Academic Director for the Master of Business Innovation (MBI) course at the University of Deusto in Spain says, ‘ The term “innovation” is losing its genuine meaning because many companies are using it to convey change when the progress they are describing is no more than ordinary.’ He is right. Just as the government describes every piece of spending as an ‘investment’... Read More--

Why bring manufacturing and services back home? To improve agility and innovation.

A recent special report in the Economist highlights a growing trend among American and European companies; they are bringing back work which was previously offshored or outsourced to cheaper locations.   Offshoring means moving work and jobs outside of the country in which the company is based; outsourcing means giving work to outside companies.  The process of bringing the work back is known as... Read More--

Boost your New Product Development with an Innovation Incubator

The toy company Mattel is renowned for its Barbie doll brand.  The company needs a constant stream of internal innovations to build on this success.  So Ivy Ross, Senior VP of Girls Toy Design set up something she called Project Platypus.  The idea is based on the description of a platypus as an uncommon mix of different species.  The 12 members of the project team are a rotating group drawn from... Read More--

Never Underestimate the Power of Innovation

I recommend that you spend a moment reading this now notorious article which appeared in Newsweek in 1995. It is entitled ‘The Internet? Bah!’ and is written by the eminent astronomer and scientist Clifford Stoll .  In the article and in his book , Silicon Snake Oil, Stoll pours scorn on the prospects for the internet and e-commerce.  He made a number of predictions which were wrong on... Read More--

What will be the impact of the Driverless Car?

The light bulb did not replace the candle.  It replaced going to bed early.  The motor car did not replace the horse.  It replaced staying at home.  Every major innovation has primary consequences and secondary consequences.  The secondary consequences look obvious in hindsight but they were not obvious at inception.   Who in 1985 would have anticipated that the internet meant that music downloads... Read More--

A Phantom Innovation can still be a Winner

On 1st April 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing an innovative new product, the “Left-Handed Whopper.”  The advertisement stated that the new whopper had the same ingredients as the original Whopper (bun, lettuce, tomato, hamburger etc.).   However, the left-handed whopper had “all condiments rotated 180 degrees. ”  The resulting... Read More--

Keep trying – the Virgin Ice Cream Story

Chris Moss I spoke at the Like Minds conference in London. One of the other speakers was Chris Moss. He was the Chief Marketing Officer at Virgin Atlantic, CEO of 118118 and the creator of the Orange Brand. He told an interesting story about innovation at Virgin. In the early days of Virgin Atlantic they were seeking ways of improving the passenger experience. The question he asked was, ‘We show... Read More--