Adi Gaskell, Author at Disruptor League

Innovation is something that everyone says they want to do, but it seems increasingly clear that this desire is often rather superficial. For instance, recently I wrote about a new study from Harvard Business School showing that innovation is rarely a top priority for executives. Indeed, just 30% placed it in their top 3 issues…

The past few decades have seen the world become an ever more interconnected place, with the problems we face increasingly complex. The latest Global Risks Report from the World Economic Forum highlights the need for collective action to help tackle crises ranging from climate change to cyber attacks. One such challenge is that of plastic…

The importance of recombination is something I’ve touched upon numerous times over the years. Indeed, research suggests that innovations today are much more likely to apply an existing innovation in new ways than to invent something truly unique. The study highlights that 40% of all patents submitted throughout the history of the USPTO are refinements…

Last summer I wrote about an interesting report exploring the extent of open innovation around Europe. The study, conducted by the European Academic Network for Open Innovation, showed the growth in open innovation, with the majority of organizations practising it in some form or other. This was helping companies to bring new, more novel products…

Over the years I’ve written numerous times about not only the growth in crowdsourcing and other methods of open innovation, but the various studies seeking to understand how we can do so effectively. It probably reached peak popularity a few years ago, when numerous studies emerged looking at everything from Innocentive style challenges to GalaxyZoo…

A recent paper reveals that whilst many companies are using open innovation to access new ideas and skills, a lack of talent internally makes succeeding difficult. As such, it’s perhaps no surprise to see the gig economy as perhaps an easier entry point.

A new study from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research suggests that truly novel ideas are not only harder and harder to come by, but they tend to be ever more expensive to explore.

With a lot of public money going into such pure research having strong ROI metrics attached to it, being able to see the value in work at such an early stage of the innovation process is key.

Patented innovations line shelves as shown in the patent library above, and over the years I’ve written a number of times about the increasingly recombinative nature of innovation. This posits that new innovations are often a combination of existing innovations rather than truly novel ones. A paper from a few years ago found that…

I’ve always had mixed feelings towards hackathons, as whilst they undoubtedly bring a lot of focused energy, they often lack any real follow-up, rendering the progress made during the weekend rather isolated. A recent paper in Cell Systems highlights how the MIT Hacking Medicine events do better. The events, which are open to all, but…

Posts by Adi Gaskell

Companies Are Failing To Get Value From Innovation

Creating Systemic Change In An Age Of Dwindling Cooperation

How Universities Support Recombinative Innovation

The State of Open Innovation Today

How To Get The Most Out Of Crowdsourcing

Talent Management in the Gig Economy

Are All the Best Ideas Used Up?

Linking Basic Research and Innovation

Using AI To Support Recombination

MIT Shows How To Run Hackathons