In August 2009 PMI had an entire magazine dedicated to Project Management Innovation.

In December 2009 The Harvard Business Review had several articles about Innovation. 

It seems that Innovation is the buzzword.

I would like to review what Innovation means and why everyone is talking about it.

Innovation, according to Webster is the introduction of something new; a new idea, new method or device.  My definition of innovation is an idea that creates value.  I believe that is what everyone is talking about.  Innovation that creates value.  Businesses are taking ideas and creating more value.  That value is show in lower costs.  I am glad that the Economy is recovering with this type of Innovation.  Now the Economy needs to innovate new ways to generate revenue. 

The next 6 months to a year will tell if Innovation will propel the next Economic Cycle.

SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION — the kind that leads to customer engagement and profits — is rare and hard to achieve, or so one might conclude from observing the results of many companies’ innovation efforts. Some have tried investing intensively in research and development. But a recent Booz & Co. study of public companies representing almost 60% of global R&D expenditures found that above a certain minimal level, there is generally no correlation between R&D spending and financial metrics such as sales or profit growth.1 Some have tried to follow prevailing trends such as open innovation — but that, too, doesn’t necessarily lead to higher innovation returns. 2 Many pursue a strategy of tacit benchmarking: They invest near the average amount of R&D spending for their industries, while running development shops that use many of their peers’ best practices. That approach, over time, has led to greater numbers of minor product line extensions with often diminishing returns.

Click here for more –   Which Innovation Effots will pay

He is the author of two bestselling books, Making things happen (Formerly titled The Art of Project Management) and The Myths of Innovation, a book about the true lessons we can learn from the masters on creativity and managing innovation.

How to innovate right now — Essay

The biggest secret of innovation is that anyone can do it. The reason is simple: It’s just not that hard. Look up the word “innovate” in any dictionary and see what it actually means, instead of what you think it means. You’ll find something like this: To innovate is “to introduce something new.” That’s it. It doesn’t say you need to be a creative genius, a workaholic, or even have on clean underwear. It’s just three little words: introduce something new. And I promise that by the end of this essay, you’ll have all the secrets needed to do it yourself.  (more)

– Scott Berkun

Blog – http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/

Mark’s company Imaginatik looks at idea generation and collaboration as the key to innovation.  Brigning together minds to work on problems and create solutions. 

Imaginatik is the leading provider of collaborative innovation and enterprise crowdsourcing solutions. The best organizations in the world use our unique software, processes and insights to tap into their Collective Genius to address challenging problems and gain breakthrough results.

Visit the Imaginatik Open Community at http://community.imaginatik.com.

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” –William Pollard

“The Seven Habits of Highly Innovative Corporations.”

1. From the chief executive on down, the company must be committed to innovation.
2. The corporate culture must be actively maintained.
3. Innovation is impossible without a broad base of technology.
4. Talk, talk, talk. Management at 3M has long encouraged networking.
5. Set individual expectations and reward employees for outstanding work.
6. Quantify efforts. 3M tallies how much of its revenue comes from products introduced in the past four years to judge whether its R&D money is being spent wisely
7. Research must be tied to the customer. Employees spend a lot of time with customers to understand what their needs are so they can go back to the labs to come up with valuable products.

by Jean-Philippe Deschamps and Jean-Philippe Deschamps 

John Wiley & Sons © 2008 (456 pages) Citation

ISBN:9780470515242

 Illustrated by many company examples and case stories from a broad range of industries in the US and Europe, this book is a systematic presentation of innovation drivers and their implications in terms of what leaders need to do to make it work.

This book will help you improve the innovation performance of your organization by:

 §  identifying and recognizing your company’s innovation leaders, both through their behaviour and priorities

 §  encouraging spontaneous innovation initiatives, bottom-up, and steering innovation proactively, top-down

 §  distinguishing between four different types of generic innovation strategies and understanding their different leadership imperatives

 §  realizing that each innovation strategy requires a different style of leadership and different priorities

 §  Assessing and developing your innovation leadership environment and resources.

The debate over who is most likely to innovate dates back to, at least, Schumpeter, who first suggested that small entrepreneurial firms were the sources of most innovations. Later he changed his view and suggested that, for several reasons, large firms with some degree of monopoly power were more likely to be the sources of technological innovation. He argued that large firms have the production and other complementary assets that are necessary to commercialize an invention; have the size to exploit the economies of scale that are prevalent in R&D; are more diversified and therefore more willing to take the kind of risk that is inherent in R&D projects; have better access to capital than smaller firms; and, as monopolists, do not have competitors ready to imitate their innovations and therefore are more likely to invest in them. Empirical studies in search of support for either position have not been able to establish a clear relationship between a firm’s size and market power and its innovative activity. By shifting the focus to the type of innovation, however, some research suggests that whether incumbents or new entrants are able to introduce and exploit innovation is a function of whether the innovation is incremental or radical, that is, a function of how new the new knowledge and the new product (in our definition of innovation) are.

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