Managing innovation - creating value from ideas
115 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago -Innovation doesn't just happen. It's not like the cartoons - a lightbulb flashes on above someone's head and that's it. No - it's a journey and we need to understand how best to prepare for that journey, whatever kind of value we are trying to create. This podcast is about some useful lessons we might take on board to help develop our capabilities.For more, see my website:https://johnbessant.org
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Episodes
AI is a no-brainer...
May 23, 2024 09:00 - 18 minutes - 12.6 MBLong fuse, big bang. A great descriptor which Andrew Hargadon uses to describe the way some major innovations arrive and have impact. For a long time they exist but we hardly notice them, they are confined to limited application, there are constraints on what the technology can do and so on. But suddenly, almost as if by magic they move centre stage and seem to have impact everywhere we look. Which is pretty much the story we now face with the wonderful world of AI. While there is plent...
Irrelevant innovation
April 27, 2024 11:00 - 18 minutes - 12.7 MBWe spend so much of our time thinking about important innovation but maybe we should spare a thought for what might be called ‘irrelevant innovation’? And explore round the edges of this phenomenon — is it all wacky stuff or are there circumstances where it has more to offer? Is it a matter of framing, are we missing an innovation trick or two by dismissing such ideas too early? This podcast offers a suggested outline typology, a first shot at mapping the territory — feel free to add your o...
It's not (only) what you know...
April 02, 2024 10:00 - 15 minutes - 10.8 MBInnovation is a multi-player game. The image of the lone hero innovator is a myth. Even celebrated soloists like Thomas Edison or James Watt had their army of assistants working behind the scenes. Alexander Bell wouldn’t have been able to bring the telephone to the world without being able to demonstrate the device by having Mr Watson on the other end of the line when he famously told him to come in from the next room…. Ask any entrepreneur and they’ll tell you about the networks they neede...
Beating the scaling innovation blues
March 13, 2024 11:00 - 4 minutes - 3.15 MBAnother innovation song.... Last week I was helping run a series of workshops supporting social innovators from across the United Nations system in thinking through how they were going to scale their great innovations now that they had successfully piloted them and proved their value. Scaling innovation isn’t easy but it’s increasingly important if we’re to have real impact with our ideas. It’s got a lot in common with mountain climbing — a visible goal but a long journey through very unc...
Changing the world, one innovation at a time
February 22, 2024 16:00 - 18 minutes - 12.8 MBNecessity may the mother of invention — but in today’s world she’s a pretty fraught mum, trying to deal with thousands of kids tugging at her skirts, pulling at her arms and wrapping themselves around her legs. All screaming out for attention. We’re not short of challenges which affect the very basics of trying to live our lives — getting enough to eat, clean water to drink, a roof over our heads and some peace to allow us to sleep at night. It might look neat and tidy to package these up in...
Innovation lessons - from a skateboard!
January 25, 2024 16:00 - 17 minutes - 11.9 MBWhat have ollies, decks, trucks, popsicles, cruisers and kicktails got in common? If you’d asked me that back in December I would have quietly assumed you were from another planet. But now I’m happy to say I’m in a good position to enlighten you… They are all terms used in skateboarding, a subiect in which I;ve had a crash course courtesy of taking my daughter to lessons in the art at our local skateboard park. Turned out to be an education for me too; while sheltering from the noise of ki...
Innovation is rubbish!
January 14, 2024 17:00 - 17 minutes - 12 MBWhy waste recycling and reuse may represent a valuable entrepreneurial opportunity… There's a well-known piece of Yorkshire wisdom, ‘where there’s muck, there’s brass’. Waste needn’t be a problem to be hidden away — buried or burnt to get rid of it. Instead there are real opportunities in waste — as plenty of innovators have already found out. Think for example of Earl Tupper whose efforts to turn the black sludge emerging from 1940s oil refineries paid off when he created the bright shiny ...
A Christmas innovation fairytale
December 22, 2023 10:00 - 7 minutes - 5.33 MBSome seasonal thoughts to accompany all good wishes....! (You can find the transcript here) If you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access a wide range of resources to help work with innovation, then please visit my website here. You can find a rich variety of cases, tools, videos, activities and other resources - as well as my innovation blog. Or subscribe to my YouTube channel here
Start-up success - an interview with Faisal Abid, Co-founder and CTO of Eirene Cremations
December 06, 2023 11:00 - 35 minutes - 24.2 MBStart-up success - or not? Faisal Abid shares some fascinating insights into the do's - and don't's of trying to launch and grow a new venture, drawing in particular on his experience in founding and growing a number of businesses including AI start-up zoom.ai and his current work with Eirene Cremations where he is trying to disrupt a long-established and very traditional industry. You can find a video version of this podcast here. And more about Faisal here If you'd like to explore mo...
Pathways to scale
November 25, 2023 13:00 - 19 minutes - 13.1 MBTaking an innovation from a small-sized success story to something which delivers value at scale is not an easy one. The Holy Grail of impact has a lot in common with that elusive quest pursued by King Arthur’s knights, taking them along strange paths, meeting with dragons and disasters and lasting a long time. Similar odds of success too. Having spent a long time focused on the challenges facing start-ups the innovation spotlight is now moving to the question of scaling – and there’s a ...
Growing up fast
November 09, 2023 11:00 - 30 minutes - 20.6 MBWe talk a lot about learning by doing in the agile innovation process, especially in the context of start-ups. But it’s hard to capture that learning as you go along when so much else is happening as you desperately try to find your way through the fog of uncertainty. Which is why it’s really valuable to have someone who runs a successful start-up which is now scaling well to share their insights . And even more so if they’ve managed to capture it in the form of a book which carries s...
Tell 'em a story - another innovation song
October 31, 2023 15:00 - 4 minutes - 3.23 MBInnovation is all about trying to convince others — people to help develop your idea, sponsors to back you, markets to buy in to your great new thing. So it makes sense to spend time and effort crafting a tale which will draw them in, intrigue them, capture their attention. Of course you don't want to oversell but as long as you've done your homework and the foundations are firm you’ll benefit from creating your particular version of a castle in the air…. Which is the message I’m trying to ...
Prove it to me!
October 16, 2023 10:00 - 19 minutes - 13.1 MBWhy evidence is so important for scaling innovation A good idea will sell itself, right? Unfortunately not – Emerson was spectacularly wrong when he suggested that all you needed to do was build that better mousetrap to have the world beating a path to your door. History is full of examples of innovations that, whilst being good and proven solutions, more than just a gleam in their inventor’s eye, stubbornly refused to scale. There are plenty of them in the world of commercial innovation...
The entrepreneur's journey - another song
October 04, 2023 11:00 - 4 minutes - 3.37 MBI'm running a course on entrepreneurship and was looking for a way to help students remember some key milestones on the journey - value proposition, minimum viable product, prototyping, business model development, etc. So trying it out in the form of a song.... You can watch it on my YouTube channel here, complete with lyrics If you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access a wide range of resources to help work with innovation, then please visit my website here. You can find ...
Unlocking creativity
September 07, 2023 10:00 - 20 minutes - 14.3 MBFor our ancestors, creativity was a matter of survival. Not being big, strong or fast meant that if we couldn’t think our way out of a problem (like an approaching predator), then we’d not be around for long! Dealing with the daily struggle to survive required us to be innovative, and the key to that was the ability to imagine and explore different possibilities. And it’s pretty clear that creativity — the ability to come up with novel solutions to problems — is going to be even more in dem...
The power of position innovation
August 14, 2023 15:00 - 16 minutes - 11.4 MBHow creating experiences for underserved markets can be a key innovation strategy It’s summertime, at least here in the northern hemisphere and chances are that August is a holiday month. Which might well see you sitting somewhere and watching an exotic sunset, glass of something suitably refreshing in your hand. As you see that golden disc slip below the horizon and the wonderful display of red shifting colour begins to settle towards nightfall you might spare a thought for the memory of...
Crystallising the spirit of innovation
August 07, 2023 09:00 - 21 minutes - 14.6 MBAn interview with Hannes Erler, Strategic Director for Innovation Ecosystems, Swarovski This wide-ranging interview looks back at how a major European company grew over a hundred-plus years from a small engineering start-up to become a global player in the fashion, jewellery and accessories business through constant attention to innovation. If you'd like to explore more innovation stories, or access a wide range of resources to help work with innovation, then please visit my website here. ...
Why value networks matter in scaling innovation
July 16, 2023 17:00 - 20 minutes - 14 MBThere comes a time in innovation when you realise you might have taken on something a bit too big. No matter how hard you throw yourself into the challenge, creating value from your idea is going to need a little help. Changing the world, or even a small piece of it, takes a lot of push. That’s the moment when you realise you need ‘complementary assets’ – the ‘who else?’ and ‘what else?’ pieces of your innovation jigsaw puzzle. It's a challenge at the very beginning – how to put together a ...
Cracking the innovation code - an interview with Robyn Bolton
June 28, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutes - 17.8 MBIt's hard to disagree with the idea that innovation-led growth is of paramount importance, but how often do we associate it with taking risks and learning? This episode offers an enlightening conversation with Robyn Bolton, founder and ‘Chief Navigator’ of Milezero, a consultancy specialising in helping organizations think through their innovation challenges. Her core beliefs capture their approach well: Innovation is something different that creates value Innovation requires curio...
Time for innovation
June 14, 2023 10:00 - 17 minutes - 12.3 MBTime plays a surprisingly important role in innovation, both as an enabler and as a shaper of the process and its outcomes. For example, the early development of reliable timepieces allowed accurate navigation which opened up the possibilities of global trade; without that the whole Industrial Revolution might have been a much smaller affair because the 'workshop of the world' would only have been able to trade in local markets. Or the role played by time-and-motion studies which underpin...
Cooking up some innovation magic
May 20, 2023 10:00 - 20 minutes - 14.1 MBThese days innovation spaces have become something of a fashion accessory; no large organization can afford not to be seen without having one. And start-up spaces have followed a similar trend; there’s been an explosion of support to try and tap into this potential source of local economic growth. On the surface these look like a welcome developments, innovation finally moving centre stage. But the reality is that very often these ‘adventures’ are little more than physical spaces with a slog...
Underground innovation - how giving people space can amplify innovation efforts
April 25, 2023 09:00 - 20 minutes - 14.2 MBWe know today that smart companies who care about innovation invest in the capacity for innovation — R&D and market research, future scoping, etc. Organized innovation, buying themselves options on the future. All good — but maybe only focusing on the formal means potentially missing out on what might be happening underground. Because by their nature people are innovators, prone to experiment and tinker around, frustrated with aspects of their work which they think a little hacking around t...
IMPACT - Building values-based innovation cultures for sustainable business impact – an interview with Prof. Dr. Henning Breuer
April 12, 2023 11:00 - 26 minutes - 18 MBSustainability matters - of course. You'd have to be living in a bubble not to be aware of the wide-ranging conversation on this theme. But how to translate the rhetoric - whether it be the UN or EU's sustainable development goals or the aspirational strategies of businesses - into something practical? That's the focus of the IMPACT project which is exploring new ways of putting stakeholders’ values into action and showing how sustainability challenges can unlock innovation. This podcast...
A flop is not a failure...
March 22, 2023 12:00 - 11 minutes - 7.79 MBMexico City, Olympic Games, 1968. The stadium is packed, the wider world looks on via TV coverage. Everywhere there’s an air of expectancy but also an awareness that at such high altitude it’s going to be hard for athletes to beat their best. Records are there to be broken, you have to hope for something special. And in the high jump event they weren’t disappointed. The record for men’s high jump had hovered around 2.23 m for several years. But a young 21-year-old was about to change that; ...
Innovation - we've got it taped!
March 06, 2023 14:00 - 20 minutes - 14.3 MBClose your eyes and imagine for a moment a computer room in the early days of the industry. Chances are you'll picture large wardrobe-sized metal cabinets whirring away with white-coated attendants tending to the machines. And it won't be long before your gaze lands on the ubiquitous spools of tape being loaded and unloaded. Which might give us a smug feeling as we look at the storage options for our current generation of computers - probably based on some incredibly fast access high-capacit...
I'm in love with Chat-GPT - another innovation song
February 20, 2023 11:00 - 6 minutes - 4.46 MBI'm in love with Chat-GPT Another innovation song, inspired by an article in the Journal of Product Innovation Management by Frank Piller and colleagues, in which they put Chat-GPT through its paces as an innovation assistant. It performed surprisingly well at diverse tasks including search and analysis, trend spotting and idea generation. Their conclusion was that this technology would work best in hybrid mode - in other words, in a human/AI partnership. Hence this song! You can fi...
An innovation love song
February 20, 2023 11:00 - 6 minutes - 4.46 MBI'm in love with Chat-GPT Another innovation song, inspired by an article in the Journal of Product Innovation Management by Frank Piller and colleagues, in which they put Chat-GPT through its paces as an innovation assistant. It performed surprisingly well at diverse tasks including search and analysis, trend spotting and idea generation. Their conclusion was that this technology would work best in hybrid mode - in other words, in a human/AI partnership. Hence this song! You can fi...
Innovating innovation
February 01, 2023 16:00 - 13 minutes - 9.41 MBHow machine learning is transforming the innovation game Machine learning has its roots back in experiments with ‘artificial intelligence’ in the 1970s but has come to represent a powerful technological trajectory as the idea of mimicking human neural networks and their learning capabilities has been explored. And now we have generative AI, which does what it says on the tin — generates something new. And this brings the uncomfortable challenge to our perception of ourselves as the only o...
If at first you don't succeed...
January 20, 2023 10:00 - 12 minutes - 8.58 MBWhat do Mickey Mouse, vacuum cleaners, air travel and light-bulbs have in common? More than you’d think, especially if you look to the originators of those widely different things. All of their innovators spent a great deal of time being knocked back, living through failures and generally struggling to take their ideas forward. None of them have a history of instant success- it was hard work and persistence. So one of the key skills in managing innovation, whether at a personal level or emb...
Delivering innovation
January 10, 2023 09:00 - 18 minutes - 12.7 MB2022 was a record year for home delivery of parcels and packages. After the Covid-19 lockdowns the idea of remote shopping became an even bigger reality and changed the behaviour patterns of millions. It’s a habit which is hard to break — even when there are increasing disturbances in the delivery end of things like strikes and negative publicity surrounding how packages are actually handled and delivered. Estimates of the market size for this activity vary widely but suggest that it is wort...
A letter to (Innovation) Santa....
November 27, 2022 13:00 - 12 minutes - 8.86 MBChristmas, as my 6 year old never tires of reminding me, is coming. Never mind that technically it’s a month away and forget the efforts I make, Scrooge-like, not to allow any trace of the season to cross our threshold until at least 1st December. She excitedly points out that everywhere — the TV and online adverts, the shop decorations, even some of our early bird neighbours with their flashing light displays — everywhere the signals are unmistakable. ‘It’s nearly here!’ Which prompts her ...
Playing the innovation game
October 20, 2022 13:00 - 16 minutes - 11 MBBirds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it….. Well, I’m not sure about the last one but someone somewhere has probably done some research on the topic. We humans certainly do it, especially when we’re young. I’m not talking about falling in love but about extending Cole Porter’s observations to a different world, something up there in terms of importance — playing. Play is a basic animal behaviour and it’s worth asking the evolutionary psychology question of why? Wasting time and en...
Ice cream dreams
October 04, 2022 14:00 - 23 minutes - 15.9 MBSeason of mists, mellow fruitfulness — and those rare but wonderful days when the sun smiles down benignly. I was strolling in the park, absorbing the warmth, my attention was taken by an ice cream. Or rather, to the face of a toddler who was very happily getting himself around an eminently lickable cone, with the usual results. We probably don’t really have to worry too much about the dietary impact of ice cream in situations like these because 80% of the foodstuff was being liberally spre...
Don't kick the copier!
September 15, 2022 09:00 - 14 minutes - 9.97 MBHave you ever felt the urge to kick the photocopier? Or worse? That time when you desperately needed to make sixty copies of a workshop handout five minutes before your session begins. Or when you needed a single copy of your passport or driving licence, it’s the only way you can prove your identity to the man behind the desk about not to approve your visa application? Remember the awful day when you were struggling to print your boarding passes for the long-overdue holiday; that incident me...
Don't kick the copier!
September 15, 2022 09:00 - 14 minutes - 9.97 MBHave you ever felt the urge to kick the photocopier? Or worse? That time when you desperately needed to make sixty copies of a workshop handout five minutes before your session begins. Or when you needed a single copy of your passport or driving licence, it’s the only way you can prove your identity to the man behind the desk about not to approve your visa application? Remember the awful day when you were struggling to print your boarding passes for the long-overdue holiday; that incident me...
Open innovation - another innovation song
August 09, 2022 18:00 - 5 minutes - 3.74 MBThis one was written in part as a contribution to the retirement celebrations of the Father of Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough ...... Here are the lyrics: Open innovation 1. We’ve been innovating now for quite a long time It’s the big thing that has helped us to survive Find new ways to do things, keep on learning down the line It’s what keeps you and me – and companies – alive We’ve learned how we can manage it, how to repeat the trick ...
Two timing innovation
July 28, 2022 08:00 - 17 minutes - 12 MBMultiple independent invention is surprisingly common — there have been many research studies highlighting the pattern. Examples include the blast furnace (invented independently in China, Europe and Africa) and the crossbow (invented independently in China, Greece, Africa, northern Canada, and the Baltic countries). And they reveal an important home truth about how innovation actually happens. It’s not the Archimedes moment, a flash of inspiration given by the Gods at bath time. I...
Digital is different?
June 21, 2022 08:00 - 19 minutes - 13.2 MBHow innovation management is changing and why we still need strategy There’s no shortage of scary headlines reminding us of the looming challenge of digital transformation. The message is clear. On the one hand if we don’t climb aboard the digital bandwagon we’ll be left behind in a kind of late Stone Age, slowly crumbling to dust while the winds of change blow all around us. On the other we’re facing some really big questions — about employment, skills, structures, the whole business model...
Why creative conflict matters in innovation
May 17, 2022 10:00 - 12 minutes - 8.7 MBOne of the huge cast of characters created by the wonderful humorous writer P. G. Wodehouse was Wilmot Mulliner. Perhaps not so well known as Jeeves and Wooster he’s nevertheless an interesting subject. We’re introduced to him at a difficult time in his life; he’s employed in the burgeoning film industry, working for Mr Schnellenhamer, the head of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Corporation, a film studio. And he’s not a happy man. His role is that of a ‘Nodder’ and, as Wodehouse explains, this is si...
Managing knowledge spaghetti
April 24, 2022 12:00 - 18 minutes - 13.1 MBInnovation is all about knowledge spaghetti. Just like a plate of pasta innovation involves many different strands. Only this time we are talking about knowledge - technical knowledge, market knowledge, legal knowledge, financial knowledge and so on. They need to be woven together to create value. And these knowledge strands are held by different people, inside and outside the organization. We have to find them and connect them, link them together to enable us to innovate. Whilst we can s...
Releasing the power of users - why healthcare innovation is going to depend increasingly on the insights of patients
April 06, 2022 10:00 - 14 minutes - 9.72 MBThese days there are very few certainties but this is one of them. We’re all going to depend increasingly on healthcare innovation for the quality of our future lives. Keeping ourselves healthy, coping with chronic ailments, living into old age with dignity and independence. We all want this — and we’re going to need all the help we can find to help us get there. Which helps explain the huge and growing healthcare industry and the explosion of start-ups in this space. Healthcare innovation ...
The suggestion box strikes back
March 17, 2022 15:00 - 18 minutes - 13 MBThe suggestion box sounds like a very old approach to the challenge of high involvement innovation - how to engage the majority of people in an organization in the innovation agenda. It conjures images of dusty boxes tucked away in the corner into which people have long since given up posting ideas. But its successors - collaboration platforms for innovation - carry out essentially the same task. The difference is that they do so in highly interactive fashion, and act not only as a ...
At the Innovation Ball - another innovation song..
February 27, 2022 13:00 - 4 minutes - 3.31 MBInnovation is all about uncertainty - no-one knows quite what's around the corner. So there's a limit to how far we can plan to work with it - and instead we need to develop the skills of agility. As this song suggests, it’s a bit like learning to dance.... Dancing at the Innovation Ball The thing with innovation, this is something you will learn It never goes the way you want, you’ve got to twist and turn The road ahead’s uneven, one way streets and plain dead ends And there’s al...
At the Innovation Ball - another innovation song..
February 27, 2022 13:00 - 4 minutes - 3.31 MBInnovation is all about uncertainty - no-one knows quite what's around the corner. So there's a limit to how far we can plan to work with it - and instead we need to develop the skills of agility. As this song suggests, it’s a bit like learning to dance.... Dancing at the Innovation Ball The thing with innovation, this is something you will learn It never goes the way you want, you’ve got to twist and turn The road ahead’s uneven, one way streets and plain dead ends And there’s al...
Making innovation count - why measurement matters
February 03, 2022 11:00 - 17 minutes - 12.2 MBThe great management writer W. Edwards Deming had a powerful introduction to his talks on quality management. Pulling out a dollar bill and waving it in front of the audience he would point out the wording: ‘In God we trust’ — and then go on to comment that in business life the same principle could be applied, but with the afterthought ‘…everything else we should measure’. His argument was simple; if we want to control something we need to make sure we measure it. And that’s as true of ...
Not invented here? Why letting go is sometimes the hardest part of innovation
January 20, 2022 10:00 - 22 minutes - 15.2 MBHistory is full of examples of innovations which, despite their promise, have been resisted by established players – the ‘not invented here’ effect. And although we’re familiar with the problem it doesn’t seem to have gone away; there are still plenty of examples to be found across today’s innovation landscape. One candidate might be UAVs – unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. They’ve changed the face of aviation-based services in a wide range of industries from agriculture to zoo-kee...
Everyday entrepreneurs
January 10, 2022 12:00 - 18 minutes - 12.6 MBHere’s a challenge. Close your eyes and try to visualise an entrepreneur. There’s a good chance that what you’ve come up with will be one of the usual suspects — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, perhaps some of the older versions like Steve Jobs or even Thomas Edison. Hopefully there’s a fair number of women represented, players like Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce or Ariana Huffington; after all statistics show that 252 million entrepreneurs out of approximately 582 million in the world are female. ...
Learning to create the digital future
December 20, 2021 13:00 - 32 minutes - 22.5 MBWhat kinds of skills are going to be needed in organizations as they move towards an increasingly ‘phygital’ (= hybrid physical and digital) world of operations? Why are the skills of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship becoming so important? And how might people be trained on a continuing basis to acquire and deploy these skills inside a large international organization? In this podcast we speak with Dietmar Schloesser, responsible for digital innovation within the TÜV NORD...
Delivering digital transformation - an interview with Alan Brown
December 10, 2021 08:00 - 27 minutes - 18.8 MBThe challenge of digital innovation is everywhere. It’s hard to escape the talk of ‘revolutionary impact’ or ‘digital disruption’ or the need for new strategies to cope with ‘digital transformation’. But what’s really going on, where are the big questions we should be addressing and how might this affect our approach to innovation management? This podcast features an interview with Alan Brown, Professor of Digital Economy at the University of Exeter, author of the influential book ‘Delive...
Moving to an online world of innovation training
December 06, 2021 10:00 - 14 minutes - 9.81 MBPodcasts are a bit like London buses. You wait a long time and then three come along all at once! This week we feature more in the series around the challenges to education and training in innovation , creativity and entrepreneurship - the main theme of the VISION project. We’ve already seen that there are likely to be significant shifts across the landscape in terms of technology, expectations, curriculum, evaluation and overall student experience. But how will this play out in the live...