Innovation

With appropriate processes, virtual teams can even outperform their colocated counterparts.

How does Toyota solve problems, create plans, and get new things done? Company managers credit a tool called the A3.

Clayton Christensen is best known for his ideas about how disruptive innovations can transform markets. In this wide-ranging interview, he discusses topics ranging from the downturn's effect on innovation to opportunities to improve the U.S. health care system. Christensen thinks the economic downturn will be good for innovation, because downturns force innovators to adapt their strategies to the market quickly and inexpensively. What's more, he notes that resource constraints stimulate breakthrough thinking. And, despite the recent problems in the financial markets, Christensen believes that, overall, innovation has been beneficial in financial services. He cites historical financial innovations, such as no-load mutual funds and index funds, as examples of the way disruptive innovations in financial services have benefited consumers. However, he also notes that there are markets in which regulation is necessary--and the securities industry is one. Christensen, who is the coauthor of a new book on health care, The Innovator's Prescription, also discussed how disruptive innovation might improve the U.S. health care system. He explains how disruptive innovation helps make goods and services inexpensive and accessible.

R&;D employees who find intellectual challenge motivating tend to be more productive.

A new book highlights the role of communities in the diffusion of radical innovations.

In his book Remix, Stanford"s Lawrence Lessig argues for a new approach.

The IBM Innovation Jam was the largest-ever event to promote networked idea generation. More than 150,000 IBM employees, stakeholders and vendors participated in two three-day online events to foster innovation and help IBM bring products to market faster. Using Web sites, wikis, forums and other online tools, Jam participants generated literally hundreds of thousands of new business ideas. From those ideas, IBM focused on several major topics for the second part of the Jam and invited its employees to build on the ideas within those topics. As a result of this process, 10 distinct businesses were funded. However, it wasn’t these successes that make the Jam interesting, argue the authors; it was the difficulties that IBM faced in implementing the Jam. Given unique access to the Jam, the authors discuss the complications inherent in collaborating with so many people. In particular, it was hard to sustain individual “conversations” in the collaborative process. Rather than building on each other’s ideas, many participants & #8212; because of excitement about their own ideas & #8212; would “hijack” a thread or take it in an unintended direction. Some great ideas were left to wither on the vine. The authors discuss other attempts at large-scale collaboration, including some by Dell and Starbucks. These include the use of promotion tools to ensure that “good” ideas are seen and captured by as many eyes as possible. The pros and cons of these methods are discussed as well, and the authors provide a framework for thinking about how an organization can collaborate with its stakeholders.

Innovators are more likely to achieve commercial success if they have strong networks.

Group brainstorming excels at generating both very good and very bad ideas.