Innovative Companies

Innovative companies consistently integrate novel ideas and technologies to create market-leading products or services.

More Innovation Glossaries

Cognitive Diversity

Cognitive Diversity refers to the inclusion of varied thinking styles and perspectives in a team or organization.

Tailored

Adaptation of products and services to individual customer needs. Features of product are modified to meet specific requirements.

Dynamic Capabilities

A company’s capacity to adapt to an evolving market through change, innovation, and learning. A firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external resources to address rapidly changing environments.

Top Innovative Companies Resources

Innovator Dilemma vs. Innovator Phenomena: The Theory of the Firm’s Phenomena

Established firms struggle with mastering the economics of choosing. The integration of technical-technological, economic, and social aspects within firms leads to unresolved relationships. The article proposes the unification of the Innovator Dilemma and Innovator Phenomena to reconcile candidate innovation methods.

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Innovate on Purpose: What's remarkable about innovation

Innovation success factors are rather unremarkable, yet difficult to achieve due to passion, vision, and intestinal fortitude.

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Elon Musk and SpaceX Want Your ideas

Elon Musk’s Hyperloop idea is set to revolutionize transportation, with plans to build a test track and an Open Competition to collect design ideas for the capsule.

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Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise [interview]

Peter Cook's book "Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise" discusses the shift from BrawnBasedIndustries to BrainBasedEnterprises and the importance of creativity and innovation in staying ahead. The book features interviews with Sir Richard Branson, Sir James Dyson, and other thought leaders in the field, and offers opportunities to practice the strategies and skills presented.

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Is Your Personal Brand Portable to Another Job?

Learn about the portability of personal brands as Mike Brown discusses its potential impact on job prospects.

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Lessons From Silicon Valley

A team of innovators from the UAE government went on a discovery trip to Silicon Valley and San Francisco to learn about the highly dynamic innovation environment there. Here are the 5 key take-aways our group of innovators gained.

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The need for Transformational Innovation

Transformational innovation is necessary for organizations to find a new or repositioned value proposition. It requires bold leadership and a compelling narrative.

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The Memorability of Creative Job Titles - Guest Post by Misty Stocksdale

Creative job titles can make individuals and businesses stand out in crowded industries, as they evoke curiosity and provide a window into a company's attitude.

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Tweeting and UNLearning

A group live-tweeted the Business Marketing Association conference and shared takeaways from notable speakers, including David Meerman Scott and Andy Sernovitz.

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Unleash Creative Possibilities with Bob Thacker

Bob Thacker's presentation at the BMA conference on Unleash Your Creativity provides insights on how challenges can unleash creative possibilities, pushing for big creative opportunities, and incorporating creative "Thackerisms" in team settings.

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Design Thinking for Educators | InnovationTraining.org

Design thinking can be a useful process for educators to teach critical thinking and creativity skills to students. Here are five resources to help implement design thinking in the classroom: Ideo’s toolkit, Business Innovation Factory, Stanford d.school, readings on design thinking, and Edutopia’s video collection.

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Design Thinking Mindsets for Human-Centered Design

Design thinking requires a certain mindset for innovation. Here are some design thinking mindsets from leaders in the field to inspire innovative thinking.

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Knowledge Taxonomies That Every Executive Needs To Consider

Executives should consider individual and collective knowledge and create a trustful atmosphere for open exchange of ideas to enhance their company's commercial knowledge.

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Meaning Making – How the Innovation-Driven Organization Imparts Purpose & Meaning

Real, meaningful innovation is a form of meaning-making that empowers organizations to deeply evaluate their place in the world and express purpose and meaning through compelling new forms of customer experience.

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Our Favourite Innovation Blogs

Discover the best blogs to learn about innovation management in order to get inspired and come up with new, game-changing ideas for your business.

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Philips study reveals that most North Americans think they are sitting on the “next big thing”

Philips North America has launched its second innovation fellows competition that awards mentoring and $100,000 cash prizes to would-be entrepreneurs.

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Searching for innovative opportunities? These 7 sources will boost your creativity

Understanding the sources of innovative ideas is crucial for successful innovation management. Peter F. Drucker proposed Seven Sources of Innovative Opportunity which provide inspiration and direction for companies to leverage innovation in their business.

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The Rise of the Smart Creative (Lessons from Google)

Google identifies "smart creatives" as key to success in the internet age, with technical know-how, business savvy and creative flair.

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The Seven Essential Characteristics of Innovative Companies

Innovation is not just about having an initiative, it requires a set of key characteristics. Check out the seven essential traits of an innovative company.

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The Top 5 Brand Strategy Trends of 2015

Brands need to connect with their consumers, think mobile, give their customers the power, create a culture of innovation and listen to the people.

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What Do Top Corporate Innovators Get Right?

Top innovators have certain patterns in their innovation practices that result in sustainable innovation, strong corporate culture, and better decision making. Innovation is a necessity for organizations that want to survive in the coming decades.

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What Innovators can Learn from the Fidget Spinner Craze

The fidget spinner craze took the world by storm, becoming a top-selling toy on Amazon within months. Marketers and innovators can learn from how peer pressure and social media drove demand and success.

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What is Creativity and Innovation Management?

Creativity and innovation management are vital tools for business success. Follow the five pillars of management to encourage a thriving creative workplace.

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What Makes Up Your Innovation Capital?

Understanding and leveraging innovation capital is essential for driving future growth and sustaining business performance.

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Who are my best innovators?

Identifying the best innovators in an organization is not an easy task, as there are no universal attributes of innovation. However, there are several methods that can help, including assessments and surveys.

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Why innovation makes executives uncomfortable

Executives are uncomfortable with innovation because it requires different skill sets, is unpredictable, and can result in loss of control.

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Why Is Innovative Intelligence Vital to Success-TallyFox

Innovative Intelligence is a new construct that emphasizes the importance of innovation for business success. It involves observation, insights, and abstraction, as well as collaborative competency.

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Why is this company giving $1,000 to anyone with an idea?

Adobe's Kickbox program gives every employee with an idea the opportunity to experiment on it with a red box that includes $1,000 on a pre-paid credit card. The company trusts its employees to spend the money wisely, and even if the idea fails, it actively measures what went wrong to learn from its mistakes.

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Why The Cloud Just Might Be The Most Disruptive Innovation Ever

The cloud approach to technology is changing the way we do business. Semantria's cloud-based software and Xero's intuitive online accounting software demonstrate how disruptive innovation can transform traditional industries.

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Why your business needs more innovation

This article discusses why more innovation is necessary, especially with the entry of new competitors, increasing buyer power, and the availability of substitutes.

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Will you shape innovation, or will it shape you?

Are we losing sight of the power of innovation? This article warns against complacency and suggests we need to encourage creativity and innovation in order to unlock new possibilities.

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You Can Teach Old Dogs New Tricks — With Innovation

Innovation is essential for businesses to avoid becoming commodities. Here are six steps to spark innovation in your company.

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How Steve Jobs predicted what would cause Apple to lose its innovative edge

Steve Jobs predicted that companies focused on sales and marketing will lose their innovative edge. Recent criticism of Apple shows this may be happening to them.

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Lessons from Apple on Why Aesthetic Innovation is Important

Apple's success is attributed to its innovative designs that are aesthetically pleasing and carefully branded.

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The Orange Socks Story I've Never Written Before

Mike Brown, vice president of Yellow Transportation, has been wearing orange socks to work every day since presenting the company's first strategic market plan in 1997.

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The Top Three Don'ts of Brand Building by Julie Cottineau

Discover the three don'ts of brand building, according to Julie Cottineau, founder of BrandTwist.

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Business Innovation Quotes and the Message Behind the Words

Learn about the message behind five popular innovation quotes in the business world.

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Business Social Networking - 11 Steps to Starting Mid-Career

Adding a social media presence to mid-career business networking can have a high-yielding impact on career goals, increasing visibility to skills and connections that can help advance a career.

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Cant Afford To Wait for 2021 Start Your Innovation Program

Don't wait till 2021 to start your innovation program! Learn why now is the best time to build a culture of innovation to protect against disruption and disengaged employees.

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Entering (Not Leaving) Corporate Life - 5 Observations

Moving from entrepreneurship to corporate life can be challenging. Here are 5 observations to keep in mind when making the switch.

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Find Your Innovation Rheticus

Innovation practitioners can learn from the story of Nicolaus Copernicus and his revolutionary theory, which was published thanks to the intervention of Georg Joachim Rheticus.

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Getting to Yes Quickly: How Amazon Out-Innovates the Competition

Amazon's secret to out-innovating its competition is their "yes mentality" - being open to new ideas and implementing anything that benefits customers and the business.

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Innovate on Purpose: Thinkers versus Doers

Balancing Thinkers and Doers is necessary for innovation. Thinkers generate creative ideas, while Doers bring them to market. Both skill sets are needed in any business.

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Innovating Every Day

Innovation is essential to stay ahead in today's rapidly evolving world. To be truly innovative, you must challenge conventional thinking, create new products and ideas, and try different approaches to challenges. Key actions you can take include examining your assumptions, asking the right questions, considering different perspectives, staging your vision, and connecting the dots in new ways.

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Top 10 Innovation Drivers

Innovation is mainly driven by people. This article highlights the top 10 factors that drive successful innovation and how they are all centered around individuals, teams, and organizations.

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Fluid Intelligence - Are you getting enough sleep to innovate?

Innovators need good sleep to come up with innovative ideas. Two studies have shown that lack of sleep can hinder creativity and decision-making abilities.

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Executing on Innovation – The Required Key Ingredients

Innovation requires a mix of creativity and execution to push the edge of effective management. This article discusses key ingredients that are required to innovate in an organization.

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Failure Forums: Learning from Best Buy Media Label 'Redline Entertainment'

Best Buy's unsuccessful foray into entertainment media led to the creation of the Redline Whitepaper, which emphasized the importance of sharing innovation results, including failures.

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Good Business Is the Best Art

Businesses should embrace the concept of being an artist in order to provide their customers with exceptional experiences with their products or services.

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Innovation Inspiration: Why Your Expert May be No Better than a Monkey

Experts may not be better at predicting than dart-throwing primates, so don’t hire them for their guesses. Instead, utilize their knowledge to help improve and critique your own guesses.

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Eight Things Winning Innovation Teams Do Differently

Innovation Leader has launched a new report that examines the traits shared by successful innovation programs. It is based on input from 270 executives who analyzed several innovation programs delivering tangible results.

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Innovators Challenge Orthodoxies: Elon Musk

This article discusses Elon Musk's success as an innovator and his ability to challenge industry orthodoxies.

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Rankings: The Most Innovative Companies in the World Today

Discover the most innovative companies in the world today, from Solugen to Watershed, and learn the essential characteristics of an innovative organization.

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Remember the Renegades - Guest Post by Paula White

Encouraging students to think boldly and unusually can lead to great new ideas. It's important to respect and honor differences in thinking to co-exist on this planet.

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The most innovative man in the world

Imagine the most innovative person in the world. What would they be like? This article explores the characteristics such a person might have.

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Can you teach people to innovate?

Innovation cannot be learned through education and training alone, as it requires the right mindset, experience and courage to break free from constraints.

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Innovation in Practice: Seven Years Strong

Celebrating the seventh year anniversary, the Innovation in Practice blog focuses on teaching innovation as a skill, linking it to strategy, and its two-way phenomena.

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Innovation Lessons: Why Amazon Is Crushing The Innovation Game

Learn the innovation lessons from Amazon, the fifth most innovative company of 2018, with their customer-focused approach, failure as an asset mindset, and diversity-driven innovation.

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Innovation Perspectives - Social Media Return Dilemma

The author discusses the challenges of using social media for innovation and the need for a clear strategy.

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Innovation Stigma

Executives have a bias against innovation and believe it is soft and frivolous compared to other business activities, which prevent them from investing in serious innovation initiatives.

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Innovation Trumped

The surprising election of Donald Trump can teach innovators valuable lessons. Accuracy of market research, simple messages, and outsider success should be considered.

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Creative Ideas - Are too many bold ideas killing your creativity?

Creative Ideas - Are too many bold ideas killing your creativity?

A new objective creativity metric suggests that the percent of time you are told to pull back your creative ideas because they are too big and bold may determine the creativity in an organization.

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Creative Inspiration Clicks via the Gal Friday - Marianne's Memes

Creative Inspiration Clicks via the Gal Friday - Marianne's Memes

A blog writer shares their thoughts on a range of innovation-related articles and topics, including ways to boost creativity and thought-provoking ideas.

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Creative Inspirations from the Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012

Creative Inspirations from the Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012

Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012 list features people who apply creativity globally, and we've distilled the list into 100 creative inspirations, ideas, lessons, and tips.

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How Can Failures Fuel Learning? - InnoLead

How Can Failures Fuel Learning? - InnoLead

Innovation failure is common but can be used as a learning opportunity by companies to determine the value created from every failure. , CEO of Planbox, highlights five lenses for assessing and upgrading a failing grade to a satisfactory one.

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Language and Innovation

Language and Innovation

Language and innovation go hand in hand. Learn how to improve your innovation process by understanding how language is used in the ideation process.

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Role of Creativity and Innovation in Entrepreneurship

Role of Creativity and Innovation in Entrepreneurship

Creativity and innovation are essential for long-term success in any organization. MIT ID Innovation offers courses to develop innovative leaders of the future.

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The Greatest Idea Campaign Ever Run

The Greatest Idea Campaign Ever Run

The Longitude Act of 1714 was a breakthrough campaign that changed the course of history, attracting diverse participants and ultimately resulted in John Harrison creating a clock that solved the problem of seafaring navigation.

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Creative Ideas - What Are Your Best and Worst Ideas?

Creative Ideas - What Are Your Best and Worst Ideas?

InNOvation can yield both great and terrible ideas. Fostering creativity, becoming more open to opportunities and being flexible can lead to unexpected successful outcomes.

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Creative Success - A 7 Lesson Guide to Creating by Jessica James

Creative Success - A 7 Lesson Guide to Creating by Jessica James

Seven lessons for creative success include taking notes, reading all the time, focusing on fixing problems, staying organized, doing things you hate, consulting others, and embracing failure.

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The Myths of Innovation

The Myths of Innovation

Learn about where ideas come from the true history of ideas, why most people dont like ideas, how great managers make ideas thrive and the importance of problem finding.

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The Ten Faces of Innovation

The Ten Faces of Innovation

IDEOs Strategies for Beating the Devils Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization

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60 Leaders on Innovation

60 Leaders on Innovation

Free copy of the ’60 Leaders on innovation’ e-book - a unique collection of thought leadership and actionable insights on innovation.

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Average Joe: Be the Silicon Valley Tech Genius

Average Joe: Be the Silicon Valley Tech Genius

Average Joe: Be the Silicon Valley Tech Genius - The book covers numerous tech entrepreneurial founders and software developers, and the exciting brands or products that they created.

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Exponential Organizations

Exponential Organizations

Learn how any company, from a startup to a multinational, can become an Exponential Organization and grow to the next level.

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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don’t

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don’t

How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

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Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

This Journal publishes multidisciplinary papers on innovation in language learning and teaching exploring new approaches from a learner-centered perspective.

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Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly Kindle Edition

Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly Kindle Edition

Our ideas fly when we show others their wings. Jiwa explains a whole new way to innovate and change the world.

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The Art of Innovation

The Art of Innovation

A story about a wildly imaginative company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit.

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The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

The Innovation Stack Review: From the cofounder of Square, an inspiring and entertaining account of what it means to be a true entrepreneur.

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The Innovator’s DNA

The Innovator’s DNA

Master the five skills of disruptive innovators and move progressively from idea to impact by looking at the best innovators.

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The Innovator’s Solution

The Innovator’s Solution

An innovation classic. Clay Christensen’s work continues to underpin today’s most innovative leaders and organizations.

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Value Proposition Canvas

Value Proposition Canvas

Develop a thorough understanding of your customers, of what value proposition you offer them, and how the two parts fit.

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