Tag: Innovation Coach
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Strengthening the absorptive capacity of your organisation
This post is about the concept of absorptive capacity. When you are trying to improve a company, an industry, or promote innovation and learning in a region, this concept is very important. It is often poorly understood. My clients in the education sector always relate absorptive capacity to education levels. While this is true, it…
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Four functions of innovation and technology management
This article is meant for my business clients and colleagues managing technology transfer and innovation extension services. In the past I have written much about the professionals and organisations who are responsible for helping entrepreneurs to improve and strengthen their innovation portfolios on my personal blog site. To recapitulate: I believe that many industries are…
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The importance of the middle management layer for innovation
I love reading material and listening to podcasts about innovation and organisational change. One thing that strikes me is that a lot of the material focuses on the role of the leadership at the top of the organisation. This is at odds with my daily experience of working in small and medium-sized organisations. In most…
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Revised: Industry 4.0, IoT, 3D printing and more. Why some technologies diffuse so quickly and others don’t
I wrote this article yesterday on my thinking-out-loud site and was pleasantly surprised at the interest it sparked. My language guru Linton helped me to fix many grammar errors, so here is the revised version. I receive questions daily about the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, 3D printing and many other technologies and whether and…
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Innovation as culture rather than as a technique or function
No tool or technique will improve the innovation culture of your company – it is a relationship thing and leadership is central to success. I share some thoughts in this weeks Thought Thursdays newsletter of the USB Executive Development. Click here for the article on the USB-ED website,
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Innovation strategy metaphors: building bridges or strengthening bases
I have been inspired by some of the metaphors developed by Sonja Blignaut in her blog. She uses these metaphors to help leaders understand polarities, balance and strategic fit. I therefore thought that I should write up two metaphors that I often use when helping leaders to decide where to focus their strategic innovation attempts.…
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How to recognise 3 kinds of innovation in your organisation
When I am asked to help a team with their innovation strategy, I always ask about their past innovation activities. Often I am told that they are not yet innovating, or that they innovate infrequently, or that they are planning to innovate more in the future. However, if you ask the team to think about…
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A resource for leaders trying to unlock knowledge
This is one of my favourite topics to write, read and talk about. How knowledge can be leveraged to enable innovation in organisations. Even if it is tacit, or people don’t even know they posses valuable knowledge, leaders can create an environment where these ideas can be surfaced, explored and leveraged. The pdf here contains…
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Instigating innovation inside organisations and networks
For the last four years I have been working on this idea of catalysing or instigating innovation (take a look at my “thinking out loud blog“). It is about what leaders at different points in organisations or networks can do to improve their systems, products, environments and structures. Central to innovation is the generation, recognition…
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Unlocking knowledge in organisations to unlock innovation
In 2016 I wrote an article for the University of Stellenbosch Business Schools Thought Thursdays newsletter about how leaders can unlock knowledge intheir organisations to enable innovation. This article has lead to many interesting presentations, speeches and conversations. I also wrote several follow on articles on the cunningham.org.za that can all be accessed from this…