Innovation

Below are four different kinds of innovative personalities. Do you represent one or several?

Innovation is encouraged at IFS Labs – the opportunity to run with an idea and to see where it leads. IFS Labs are exploring many new and exciting developments that bring huge practical benefits IFS users. David Andersson, Director of IFS Labs, shared six philosophies at our IFS World Conference that we’re basing our future product on.

In this post I want to share seven things to remember when you prepare and perform a presentation. I called it “The 7-up speaker technique.”

Looking back over year, I can see how my behavior has completely changed. I have constantly had the radar switched on when it comes to learning and being influenced by my favorite subject—creativity and innovation. Writing blogs is also a fantastic way to process thoughts and ideas as you have to put them into words. I hope we have inspired you through the blogs to think and act differently when it comes to innovation and technology.

My brain does not have the capacity to remember everything I read, so I need to document it, but, it must not take more than 2 seconds, otherwise I won’t do it. Instead I hope I’ll remember…but I know I won’t. But now I have a tool that helps me.

The innovation process includes all stages from generating the idea to developing and selling the idea as a fully fledged product innovation to the market. In your company’s innovation processes, make sure that you stay at the junction where YOU flourish, based on your own personal prerequisites. Don’t waste your energy by assuming you are someone else and end up at a junction that doesn’t suit you.

As individuals and companies, we need to protect ourselves against distractions so as not to lose our focus and commitment to bringing ideas all the way to new innovations. Today, distraction can include the possibilities and opportunities we see around us but also our self-perceived limited skills and experience when we compare ourselves with other people or companies.

Many times I have asked myself why some people and companies seem to be more creative and innovative than others. Do some people have superior DNA or are they blessed with a bigger brain? I read a book during my summer vacation that shed some light on my question. I would like to share it with you here.

In a study of companies in the industrial, technology, and consumer goods sectors, a correlation can been seen between investment ratios and the distribution of innovation returns reflected in the share price. Among high performers that invest in all three levels of innovation, surveys reveal that the return ratio is the inverse of resource allocation. Companies that allocated according to the above investment ratios outperformed their peers, typically realizing a P/E premium of 10% to 20%.

Targeting a healthy balance of core, adjacent, and transformational innovation is a vital step toward managing a complete innovation portfolio. The challenge is that a company must be able to execute at all three levels of ambition. However, few companies are good at all three, and not entirely surprising, companies struggle the most with transformational innovation.

Many times I have asked myself what the best-in-class innovation portfolio would look like. How should you balance the different innovation ambition levels such as incremental innovations with transformational (breaking news) innovations? Are there any numbers you can benchmark against and what ratio will have the most impact on your financial results and share price? What areas of management will boost the different levels of ambition?

My advice is to always have your copycat glasses on and think how you can refine and evolve existing solutions on the market. Please bear in mind that many profitable innovations that have evolved from an existing technology or user behavior.