Employees are great idea generators, and innovators – but only when freed by management. I get this because I am right in the middle of it as we continue to find more ways to be innovative and more ways to “re-invent” ourselves for the future. One thing I have found to be for sure –… Continue Reading
Tag Archives: Culture
Three Lessons Learned from Open Innovation
As we continue to build more around being an innovative company, it is interesting to learn from others what works and where companies stumble along the path to being effectively innovative. One recent blog post from Andy Zynga of Harvard Business Review, “Where Open Innovation Stumbles,” talks exactly about this issue. I wanted to share… Continue Reading
Apple just THINKS different when it comes to products
I was thinking about our own company over the holidays and looking at who we were and where we are going in the coming year. We have been quite successful and to me, being the competitive person I am, this is when we should really accelerate our innovation. While others might sit back, I want… Continue Reading
The Road to Innovation at EJ Bartells – part two…
So the last time we left off in Part One of our story, we had just left the management team of the Mountain States Region in a room for two days to work as a team to come up with innovative and creative ways to surpass what we were forecasting for growth. They were stumped… Continue Reading
“War-Games” might just help your Innovation efforts
For those of you who know me personally, you realize that I enjoy reading books from a variety of perspectives. One of these is from some of our most successful and strategic military leaders over our history as a country. Many of their principles in that area of preparation and execution are extremely transferable to… Continue Reading
Want the “Unexpected” – Create a Process
In talking with various people and reading stories about how companies have been successful and being more innovative than their competitors, one thing clearly stands out – they have a process. But here’s the interesting twist – the standard, routine, everyday process is what generally creates the unusual, unexpected, revolutionary discoveries and innovations in their… Continue Reading
Innovation Competition yields some interesting Results
I was reading an interesting article the other day on the Smart Planet blog about a contest that Harvard Business Review and McKinsey – two powerhouses in the area of new thinking. They launched a contest called “M-Prize Competition” where they are taking on what I think is a great approach to helping others innovate… Continue Reading
Is Innovation part of your DNA (culture)?
This is probably the biggest and most complex question I have about innovation – creating and establishing innovation into our culture or making it part of the DNA of EJ Bartells. I recently attended our CEOtoCEO Innovation Team session and this was also a key issue/question among the leaders part of our group as well. … Continue Reading
The ITW Innovation Process – Steps to Success…
As you have probably read about in one of my earlier posts, ITW is one of those companies in our industry that is a leader in Innovation and has really set the bar high for any of their competitors. But how exactly do they do this and what is at the core of their process?… Continue Reading
5 Strategies to making Open Innovation is a reality…
Open Innovation is a very interesting idea, especially for small and mid-sized companies, like us, because to me it isn’t an intuitive concept to grasp. Understanding the concepts behind it is pretty interesting and can help us as we look for more ways to be innovative. Basically “Open Innovation” means you should use external ideas… Continue Reading