The Games Of Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

In a comment to my recent Are Engineers Really Good For Innovation? blog post, Paul Hobcraft made a great reference to an article by Patrick Lambe he had read some years ago. The article is about the concerns on the engineer dominated mindset within innovation. Paul gave us this piece from Lambe’s article.

“When it comes to innovation, let’s consider the analogy of two games.

Golf is an engineer’s game. It’s a problem-solving game. You have a problem, the hole, and in theory, getting your ball into the hole is entirely calculable: if you can measure the wind speed, the atmospherics, the inclines and friction of the surface, and if you can control the weight, angle and velocity of the swing, you’ll...

Engineers And Innovation: A Few Lessons

by Stefan Lindegaard

Two weeks ago, I raised the question whether engineers are that good for innovation. Not surprisingly, this attracted a lot of interesting comments that focused on topics such as:

• Know the difference between invention and innovation. Jackie Hutter wrote that “the post (and the referenced comment) highlights a common misconception. This engineer, as well as most engineering-types, think that inventiveness which clearly is part of a good engineer’s toolbox–necessarily equates with innovation. In fact, invention often has very little to do with innovation. Innovation is at its core “profitable invention.”

I agree. We constantly need to be reminded of this very important difference of two related terms.

• Be aware of the pitfalls of stereotyping others. Sergei Dovgodko raised the question whether there...

Nokia And Open Innovation: A Good Match?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have always respected Nokia which I consider to be a quite innovative company. Lately, I have been wondering how they approach open innovation so I did some research on their activities.

First, let’s take a look at how Nokia defined open innovation in a presentation given by Kari-Pekka Estola, VP, Nokia Research Center in 2007.

“The sourcing, integration, and development of product and business system innovations through win-win external partnerships to capture maximum commercial value for R&D investment.”

Kari-Pekka Estola also argued that open innovation is a critical trend and not yet another management fad due to these reasons:

• Innovation happens in smaller companies, global innovation hotspots and increasingly influential user communities.

• Several factors such as workforce mobility and venture capital...

Good Reads On Innovation #6

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here comes a list of reads, videos and podcasts on innovation that I have enjoyed and re-tweeted in the last couple of weeks. I hope you will enjoy this as well.

You can follow me on Twitter: @lindegaard

30% of companies already use open innovation to a large degree and other great facts by Alexander Schroll: http://bit.ly/4jjMgo

Examples of how big companies can play well with others by Francine Gordon: http://ad.vu/w77k

IBM and intrapreneurship – interview with Sharon Nunes, head of IBM Big Green Innovation: http://bit.ly/4Fd4ab

Free download of “How GE Is Disrupting Itself” – HBR article by Immelt, Govindarajan and Trimble: http://bit.ly/kz4iw

Innovation Perspectives – Should Marketing or R&D lead? by Drew Boyd: http://retwt.me/fco6

Unleash Your Inner Genius by...

One Cannot Think If One Is Sure To Be Right

by Stefan Lindegaard

The Danish communications agency Mensch runs some interesting and thought-provoking text-based ads. The last one was titled One Cannot Think If One Is Sure To Be Right. It was a great read and since most of you do not speak Danish I translated part of the text.

It goes like this:

“Have you ever wondered why some people insist in hairstyles, eyeglasses or clothing that went out of fashion at least 20 years ago? They do so not because they are indifferent. Or cannot see that the world is moving. They do it because they want to stand still. They want to maintain time and their own appearance from a time when they felt on top.

We all experience a certain period in our lives...

More Happiness Tips For Tough Times

by Stefan Lindegaard

I recently posted six happiness tips from Tal Ben-Shahar which generated a lot of comments appreciating the value of the words from Tal Ben-Shahar. The response made me reflect on what actually makes me happy. It goes like this:

• Identify and nurture the 20% that brings true joy. Many people say that we should live in the now and get the best out of the situation we are in. I think this is a cliché. Why else do so many people continue to spend considerable time doing things they just need to get done or even dread?

I believe we can apply the 80/20 rule here as well by saying that 20% of our time brings us 80% of the true joy we...

Work Approaches: Rude Or Effective?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Another week just flew by and once again I had several issues that I did not get to attend. One particularly nagging example is the lack of my responses to the many great comments given on my blog last week.

Unfortunately, trips to Las Vegas and New York took away the time needed for this and suddenly I am facing a dilemma. Should I focus on the past and spend quite some time on the many comments on my blog and on LinkedIn? Or should I focus on the new ideas that springs up and hopefully are capable of inspiring others and starting some discussions in the innovation community?

Of course, the right answer is to strike a proper balance. This is most likely also...

URGENT: The Time Box We Live In And Why This Is So

by Stefan Lindegaard

I am pondering on what to do when I get stretched out and run out of time for the many things I would like to get done both on the business as well as the private side of life. I will get into my thoughts on this in a later post this week, but first I would like to share some insights on time management.

I think we can agree that working with innovation you are bound to have time issues. This career is time-consuming. You are being pulled from all directions, and no matter how many items you cross off your to-do list, the number of tasks just seems to keep increasing.

Time—or more likely the lack of it—is something we often get into...

Are Engineers Really That Good For Innovation?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have been pondering on this since I had some comments on my The Faces Of Open Innovation post where I expressed some concern that most of the profiles working with open innovation had an engineering background.

In the blog post, I mentioned that engineers do add value to innovation, but we need to get a broader focus in the overall innovation process by giving room to other functions and competences as well. Innovation should be about much more than just technology and products for which many engineers have a tendency to over-focus on.

Two comments in particular caught my interest. The first one went like this:

“Why so surprised at the preponderance of engineers in the open innovation community? Good engineers are, by...

Startups Are Overrated: Intrapreneurs Are Better Bets

by Stefan Lindegaard

Startups are great because they create growth and lots of jobs so let’s pour lots of private and government money into programs that create more startups. Entrepreneurs and startups kick ass!

This is the common wisdom in most countries. Does it hold? I do not think so and an article in Borsen, a leading business daily in Denmark provided some interesting facts that support my view on this.

In short, the article argued that gazelle companies – defined as companies that have created growth each of the last four years and in total have more than doubled their revenues in that time span – create more jobs than other company categories. This is not much of a surprise as growth companies almost per definition need...