Investing effectively in innovation Innovation needs resources: time, people, passion … and budgets. Many innovators do not need large amounts of money. Certainly not in the early stages, when ideas are run by a few customers and key assumptions are checked. In my experience, budgets for these early stage experiments were easily provided by local (operational, country) management. In some cases, local management didn’t have the resources, or didn’t want to invest in the innovation. This could be because the the innovation was not addressing a priority issue for their part of the organization. However, some of those innovations did have potential value for the broader corporation. In that case,…
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Gamification
Innovative scientific education One challenge all marketers face is how to engage customers in a relevant and impactful way. Think doctors at large congresses. One can only attract or keep customers engaged at a booth for a while with publication reprints, videos or offering a cup of coffee. Inspiration can come from the game industry. For a doctors audience, you need to integrate of course relevant medical-scientific content. Two applied gamification examples: POKÉMON GO- inspired. The diabetes team in Ireland created an educational concept, based on this game. Congress attendees downloaded an app on their smartphone. Then they had to locate and “capture” about 30 signs within the massive congress…
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So far and still so close
Innovating with remote customers You are an innovator in a global corporation. Your customers are spread all over the world. How do you engage with them to come up with innovative solutions for their needs? Of course, it’s best to work through colleagues that are located close to where the customer lives. But there are occasions where it’s hard to meet with customers, like those that live in remote geographies. Travel costs may limit the number of times you can run innovative ideas by those customers. I recall an innovation session with about 30 global veterinary colleagues in the Netherlands. They had received the assignment to quickly come up with…
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Regarding silos
Collaboration for innovation across divisions Many wars have been won through “divide and rule”. Successful innovation in corporations is just the opposite: “collaborate and win”. When employees from different departments meet and bring together their expertise and networks, magic can happen. In practice, it’s a bit more complicated. How to find the right collaborators in the corporate maze? How to secure sponsorship from leaders in other divisions? How to reward collaboration across divisions? An example. The IT organization had created a small team (3 people) in the IT hub in the Czech Republic. Their assignment was to create innovative, structured IT experiments in healthcare, based on cutting edge technologies. They…