Corporate leaders have so much to loose. This is why they are so reluctant to tear down those walls of bureaucracy.
21st century corporate innovation tools
Familiar with the fear of failure or lack of speed in corporations? Although hard to accept, as a corporate innovator you can learn tremendously from startups. Here is why. Corporation vs. startup A corporation is a permanent organization designed to execute a repeatable and scalable business model that they have built over time. In a corporation ‘fear of failure’ inhibits …
Next gen Entrepreneurs: Get high on agility
The sustainability – short-termism paradox As we have entered the post credit crunch era, entrepreneurs face new challenges demanding a move away from short-termism to a sustainable social, environmental and financial performance (cf. the triple bottom line), and face the uncomfortable tension between the long term focus needed for sustainable development and the prevalent short-termism (investors returns on investment requirements, …
Not copycat. Not tropicalisation. But sound venture capital
The Economist describes in it’s article ‘VC clone home‘ venture capitalists who are making money by bringing old ideas emerging markets – and states that such a copycat business is not the real spirit of venture capital, which is supposed to ferret out and fund new ideas, not imitations. I disagree… Venture capital is supposed to create shareholder and stakeholder returns …
Sense of personal power – a venture capital pitfall
Innovation is driven by open-mindedness, inputs from diverse groups of sources, fostering collaboration across functions, processes, ecosystems, etc. In most cases, the final decision to bet on an idea is taken by one or few executives. Recent research from USC’s Marshall School of Business in collaboration with the London Business School, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University reveals alarming findings compromising …
Top ten lies of entrepreneurs
We get pitched dozens of times every year, and every pitch contains at least three or four of these lies. We provide them not because we believe we can increase the level of honesty of entrepreneurs as much as to help entrepreneurs come up with new lies. At least new lies indicate a modicum of creativity: “Our projections are conservative.” …
Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide
Senior managers can apply practical insights from neuroscience … …. to make themselves – and their teams – more creative. The key is to focus on perception, which leading neuroscientists, such as Emory University’s Gregory Berns, find is intrinsically linked to creativity in the human brain. To perceive things differently, Berns maintains, we must bombard our brains with things it …
Everyone wants to be innovative; most fail!
Innovation: Corporate culture is not the answer Everyone wants to be innovative. In fact, I can’t remember when any organization last came to IMD and pronounced themselves as being innovation indifferent. Yet, the sad truth is that while everyone dreams of becoming Apple, most linger in the same innovation-lite purgatories that we associate with today’s RIM, Kodak, even Sony, …
Rethinking the financial drivers in innovation culture
Recent reports in the Harvard Business Review question the efficiency of the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital innovation funding model and more emphasis is now being placed on how to manage the innovation process in a low finance environment. Japan as an innovation culture for example impacted the world market in the 1980s but then peaked and declined.