Creativity & Innovation

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

Seeing the results of the post-conference survey, I am pleased, but not surprised, by the activity that got the most positive response. It was the Meet the Expert area. Dear R&D colleagues, feel proud as your contribution to a successful conference is crystal clear.

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.”

The main theme at the IFS World Conference is innovation and how to invent the future of ERP. But innovation doesn’t come easy. Good ideas are often hampered by thoughts like “this is not unique” or “it’s just an idea, I don’t know how to build it”. But why not reward interesting concepts just for being good ideas and leave practical worries for the experts? That was IFS’s idea when launching the IFS Innovation Award a few months ago. The challenge: give IFS an idea for how to apply technology in an innovative way and we’ll give the winner a cash prize and the opportunity to see their idea made into a product prototype. The winning idea turned out to be a smart way of…

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.