Posts by Adi Gaskell
Companies Are Failing To Get Value From Innovation
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…
Read MoreCreating Systemic Change In An Age Of Dwindling Cooperation
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…
Read MoreHow Universities Support Recombinative Innovation
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…
Read MoreThe State of Open Innovation Today
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…
Read MoreHow To Get The Most Out Of Crowdsourcing
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…
Read MoreTalent Management in the Gig Economy
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.
Read MoreAre All the Best Ideas Used Up?
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.
Read MoreLinking Basic Research and Innovation
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.
Read MoreUsing AI To Support Recombination
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…
Read MoreMIT Shows How To Run Hackathons
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…
Read More