Grand Unification Theory of Business

Michael S. Slocum

Physicists have been searching for that single formula (or set of formulas) that could explain all observances in the universe. This has been described as the search for a Grand Unified Theory (GUT, Nanopoulus, Harvard, 1978). It is … Read More

Uncle Sam Wants You!

Katie Barry

The United States Department of Commerce is seeking the public’s help for the Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy Advisory Committee.

All comments are welcome, but they expect comments to mainly fall under the following four categories:

TRIZ on YouTube

Katie Barry

Now you, too, can learn from the father of TRIZ – YouTube.com has four videos of Russian scientist Genrich Altshuller teaching TRIZ (The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving).

For TRIZ newbies – Altshuller (and his colleagues) developed this innovation methodology … Read More

Welcome to Our New Commentator!

Katie Barry

As you may have noticed, Real Innovation added a new commentator to our team last week – Praveen Gupta.

A business innovation teacher at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Praveen brings a fresh perspective to sharing the methods … Read More

Teaching Innovation

Praveen Gupta

Institutionalizing Innovation

Cass Pursell

In my experience, you have to get someone’s attention if you want what you have to say to sink in; I make this next statement in that spirit. Two-thirds of the organizations currently listed on the world’s stock exchanges … Read More

The Wired List

Ellen Domb

Real Innovation Commentary fans (that’s everybody, right?) know that I get obsessive about lists of the most innovative–Business Week’s design awards, Popular Science’s 100 best new things of the year, Technology Review’s editors’ choice for the 10 innovations that … Read More

Innovation Payback

Ellen Domb

A persistent trend in the growing literature on innovation is the drawing of lines: various authors draw the line between creativity and innovation in various ways and at various points, but the usual mode is to put creativity on … Read More

Back to the Bias-Sphere

Michael S. Slocum

A couple of weeks have passed since I challenged you to make note of when you acted based on bias. I suggested that you record events where your bias or the minimum had too much influence on your actions … Read More

Innovation Survey

Katie Barry

(March 27, 2007 – The survey is closed. Thank you for your participation!)

Some of you may have noticed a new link on our navigation menu to an Innovation survey being conducted by our sister website, iSixSigma. This survey … Read More

300- Only Part of the Story

Michael S. Slocum

King Leonidas and a small Spartan contingent attempted to defend Thermopylae and all of Greece against the Persian invasion leads by the god-king Xerxes (480 BC). The recent movie, 300, depicts the stand these Spartans made against the … Read More

Innovation or Evolution?

Michael Cyger

I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “All Companies Need Innovation; Hasbro Finds a New Magic” (2/26/07, page B1). I immediately got excited to read that title because a) most of my formidable years were … Read More

Why is Systematic Innovation So Hard?

Michael Cyger

Jessica Harper, managing editor of iSixSigma Magazine, and I have been discussing the upcoming July/August issue of the magazine focused on innovation. We had what we thought was a simple idea for the cover story: find a company that … Read More

Beginning At the End

Cass Pursell

Sometimes the end is the beginning. I recently changed jobs and changed cities, leaving behind truncated plans and plunging ahead into the chaos of the new. Information Technology, always central to my life but in the background like … Read More

The Bias-Sphere and the Lowest Energy State: Bathed in Mediocrity

Michael S. Slocum

Each one of us operates within a set of constraints that is defined by a complex intersection of biases that we have accumulated. Let’s call this space our Bias-Sphere. These biases come from various sources: our educational background, … Read More

Think You Have What It Takes to be a Chief Innovation Officer?

Michael Cyger

Companies like Humana, Coca-Cola, AMD, Citigroup and Cargill are all establishing the position of Chief Innovation Officer (CIO - unfortunately, confusingly similar to Chief Information Officer). It appears that companies are recognizing that the development of new ideas, new products, … Read More

Ideality and Idealized Design

Ellen Domb

The concept of the ideal final result is pervasive in TRIZ. Whether you are doing problem solving or technology forecasting, the ideal final result tells you the direction of the simplest possible solution to the problem. If you use … Read More

Soliciting External Inspiration

Katie Barry

Dell just launched Ideastorm, a website for stimulating and gathering the brainstormed ideas of its customers – and anyone else interested in furthering Dell’s success.

Site visitors can submit ideas, vote on a particular idea’s value and comment on … Read More

Now for Something Completely Different

Michael S. Slocum

Nothing could be worse than having your market share taken by a new product or service. After all the hard work and effort you have invested in bringing your idea to market, establishing the market, educating the users, … Read More

Surveying Innovation Activity

Katie Barry

InnovationLabs released results of its Permanent Innovation survey this week. Particularly noteworthy responses include:

• Only 13% of those surveyed felt that their company/organization understands the innovation process.
• More than half of the respondents felt that “lack … Read More