The Innovation Ecosystem: Built from Your Intangible Capital

Innovation does not happen in a vacuum. It happens inside your existing business. The ideas you develop will arise out of the competencies or experience of your employees and your external network. They will build on your existing strengths to perfect something you already do or to apply your knowledge in a new direction. There will almost always be a connection with your core competencies. There’s nothing wrong with that, who better to compete in an arena that needs your organization’s skills than you, who already have significant expertise?

As our research with Chief Innovation Officers found, it is not enough to just have an innovation process. The process needs to be supported by an ecosystem that has the right people, knowledge, culture, and external relationships, in other words, the right intangible capital. What are the right components for your innovation ecosystem? Let’s look at each component in more detail. Read more

The Dual Challenges of Innovation Management

A number of years ago, a manager in charge of implementing a balanced scorecard system shared his organization’s strategy map with us. One of the organization’s “learning and growth” goals was “to become a more innovative organization.” We asked how he was going to do that. He had no idea.

This was one of the catalysts that got us interested in the field of innovation. We actually did a research project where we interviewed Chief Innovation Officers (CIOs) in American companies. The project, in late 2006, was one of the earliest research projects of this group. We did it because we were curious about the people taking on this task. We were also trying to understand the intersection between innovation and intangible capital. Read more

Five Steps to Building a Regional Innovation Ecosystem

Our firm recently participated in the Regional Innovation & Jobs Summit hosted by the Washington Economic Development Commission. Kudos to Egils Milberg and Noreen Hobin for a very full day of content and conversation. The full day was webcast, including the intro to our session.  Also thanks to our colleague from the WA-based Ingenesist Project, Dan Robles, who took great photos of our session.

Our session came at the end of the day. After a day of talking, our role was to get people engaged and active in improving specific ecosystems for the state.  Read more