Nice article on best practices within innovation. Essentially, we've spent almost $5 trillion on R&D and higher education, the key contributors to innovation. Yet we don't know what has worked and what hasn't.
Innovation economics aims to solve this question. Economists are studying what are the best practices in innovation and how companies can use this information to become more efficient at innovation.
Initial findings:
1. Offer incentives for innovations
2. Seek solutions from from a wide variety of people, including researchers and outside sources
3. Encourage collaboration by offering tax credits
4. Encourage outside participation from overseas
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_38/b4100052741280_page_3.htm
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Japeri- Do you agree with the four recommendations presented by the article?
While the article suggests that we should offer financial incentives and tax breaks for innovation, will this solve the problem? Or simply throw good money after bad? Literature suggests that the naturally creative people driving innovation are not always entrepreneurially-minded; they are inquisitive and driven by problems and questioning accepted norms. I suggest that instead of dangling a cash carrot in front of R&D departments, we find a way to identify and enlist the assistance of these solution seekers.
The article’s additional recommendations to go overseas and ask outside sources could restart America’s creative development. This requires a shift from our traditional model of hiring and consulting with “experts” to work on problems. Curious generalists (both overseas and outside sources) provide new problem solving approaches and knowledge while category experts may not be able to see potential possibilities. As Matt O’Hern’s research shows, participation in just one additional project has a positive impact on project success.
Seeing this issue in national media is a step towards increasing our innovation output. However, we must make sure that our offered incentives align with our desired outcomes.
Interesting post.
I might further ask the question, though, of innovation with what purpose?
Any number of things over time have been labeled innovation, and generally speaking people and companies believe innovation is good and look for innovation to drive future growth. But it is such a broad and sweeping categorizatioin and generalization.
I would say if we want to measure the impact of innovation, we should take it further and ask two key questions: What do we mean by innovation, and what do we hope to accomplish from innovation?
Nailing down those questions are critical to effectively measuring and benchmarking innovation. Otherwise we're establishing a correlation that may or may not be a causality.
What is innovation? the defination of different points of view makes it puzzled and sometimes hard to make a judgement...espcailly in different industies...