Category: innovation

innovation

How conflict can be a source of creativity: the pioneering work of Mary Parker Follett

There are some very important thinkers who have been forgotten, and we would do well to rediscover them. Such is the case with Mary Parker Follett. She was a pioneer of management in the broadest sense in the 1920s. Many of her innovative ideas were taken up and developed by people who went on to become very famous, such as Peter Drucker, who acknowledged that he owed a great deal to her. In particular, she wrote some very important things about the relationship between conflict and creativity that should be of interest not only to entrepreneurs and innovators, but also to business leaders and, let’s face it, politicians.

(more…)
entrepreneurship, innovation, Management

It’s not R&D, it’s Entrepreneurship: How to Make Sure Your Innovation Unit Won’t Fail

To respond to the disruptions in their business environment, organizations often establish dedicated innovation units. These units, though named differently, often face a common hurdle: their promising ideas fail to translate into impactful market outcomes. This predicament stems from the approach itself and the underlying model.

(more…)
entrepreneurship, innovation, Management, strategy

How innovators negotiate entrenched mental models. Lessons from Thomas Edison

Innovation, the driving force behind progress, often faces a formidable adversary: entrenched mental models. These cognitive frameworks shape our understanding of the world and can become barriers to the acceptance of breakthrough ideas. Managing the dynamic between innovation and prevailing mental models is the innovator’s challenge. Thomas Edison’s promotion of electric lighting over gas provides an example of how this challenge was successfully met.

(more…)
innovation, Management, strategy, transformation

How declining organizations create an imaginary double

Organizations in decline tend to create an imaginary double in which they lock themselves. This double is themselves, but in an idealized version. It is a mask that they create to hide and to insulate themselves from a reality that they refuse, letting the world go without them, even against them. The dissolution of this double, i.e. the acceptance of reality, however unpleasant it may be, is a prerequisite for any recovery. A good illustration of this is provided by the Apple turnaround in 1997.

(more…)
Economy and society, innovation

Why rich peoples’ whims are useful for innovation

What do rich people do when they are bored? They embark on an innovation project. Conquer Mars, cross the Atlantic, extend human life, invent fundamental artificial intelligence, create a robot, etc. As an expression of their promoters’ ego, these projects are often considered useless and qualified as whims, i.e. a capricious and unreasonable envy. But is it so sure? What if (some of) the whims of today were the useful innovations of tomorrow? What if we should be careful not to pass moral judgment on both what is being done (useless!) and on those who are doing it (the rich and their whims)?

(more…)
innovation

Is Google Victim of the Innovator’s Dilemma with ChatGPT?

ChatGPT, an “intelligent” chatbot, represents a major breakthrough. One would have expected that Google, the leader in search engines for the last twenty years, which has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence, would have been at the origin of it, but it is not the case. Is Google the new victim of the innovator’s dilemma, a syndrome often observed when a leader is overtaken by a new entrant?

(more…)