Corporates around the world are investing in innovation hubs or labs, hackathons, silicon valley trips, agile trainings and design thinking workshops to innovate, to become more agile, customer-centred, purpose-driven, profitable, efficient or disruptive. I wanted to know how corporates make sense of the sometimes vague topic of innovation, how they manage innovation initiatives and how they allocate funding. Here’s an attempt to craft clarity through a framework for managing innovation in corporates.

In a previous article, I have outlined the specifics of a framework I’ve developed for defining innovation initiatives. In short, the framework differentiates corporate innovation initiatives by focus area (internal vs external) and innovation creation (problem-focused vs opportunity-driven). The resulting 4 quadrants can be labelled as optimise, improve, create, and reinvent. This follow-up blog post focuses on the right team setup, budgeting strategies and return on investment (roi) for each quadrant.

Change is a buzz-word that is connected to a broad spectrum of emotions. You might embrace or resist change or the word simply makes you cringe. You might see the need for change in your organisation or you might be tasked with a specific project that relates to change - I invite you to take a step back and think about your own perspective on change: How do you see change and how is this impacting your work? How does your personal perspective on change differ from your organisations’ perspective? What are the benefits and shortcomings of different perspectives?

Uber Technologies Inc, the world’s largest provider of personal transport has surely made it into the top 10 of water-cooler conversations. Digital, technology, and disruption are frequently used buzzwords when telling the Uber story. Uber was founded in 2009 and is currently present in 60 countries and more than 300 cities. Despite extensive media coverage (mostly about countries that are trying to ban Uber), few people actually understand what makes Uber successful. Even most conventional taxi drivers fail to understand how Uber manages to offer a service to drivers who don’t have a taxi license. Many believe it is innovative digital technology that allowed Uber to disrupt the taxi industry. It is not!