Mark’s Innovation Expertise – 24 Things to Explore

I recently had a follow-up conversation with a judge at the Hult Prize and we got talking about innovation. My current work has been on Scaling, now put into book format (available at startscaling.com). Scaling is highly relevant for innovation. I consider innovation to be the process of developing new things that deliver value. The key is delivering value. […]

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Forrester Update: Poor Use of Idea Management Systems

I was chatting recently with Chris Andrews, an analyst at Forrester Research, on the topic of Innovation Management. We discussed how the industry was evolving, indeed how interest in the area has exploded the last 18 months. At the same time, he shared concern that many of his research clients on the company side complained […]

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Bad Case Study of Open Innovation: Brightidea Customer Feedback Portal

Innovation is all about the process of doing new things that deliver value. Open innovation is about innovation with people outside the firm’s walls. Good Innovation processes are vital. Bad innovation processes – especially for Open Innovation – are deadly. Let’s look at an example: Brightidea. Before I get into the detail, I’d like to […]

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ISPIM Presentation on Crowdsourcing & Complex Systems

ISPIM is the leading academic conference on innovation and product development, with over 200 PhD presentations from over 50 countries. Mark Turrell, CEO of Imaginatik plc (www.imaginatik.com), presented some of the underlying concepts behind collaboration at mass scale, the area of crowdsourcing. This presentation was mainly in pictures – so there is relatively little text […]

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Myth #4: We Need Simple Idea Management Systems

I am a great believer in simple systems. The ideal solution is one that is so elegant, that any complexity is hidden from end users so that they would never know it was there. As an owner of two iPhones (one for Europe, one for the US), I know this to be true at a […]

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Introducing the Sense Gen

I have a swimming pool with a pump that keeps going wrong. Why do I have to go look at the pump to find out it is not working, after it has already failed. And do this while my friend in Berlin has attached the baby monitor for his toddler daughter to an SMS text […]

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Myth #3: “We need lots of ideas”

This is one of the most pervasive of the Top 10 Myths of Idea Management, the notion that in order to get good ideas, you need to start with lots and lots of ideas, good and bad. This myth stems from the work of advertising guru, Alex Osborne, in brainstorming in his 1953 book, Applied […]

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Myth #2 “People need money before they will share their ideas”

Motivation is a critical component of any innovation program, particularly in Enterprise Idea Management. There is a belief, misplaced in my experience, that financial rewards are the primary motivation for contributions, and the absence of any financial reward will lead to poor uptake of a program. Once again, this is one of the Top 10 […]

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Myth #1 “All ideas are good – there is no such thing as a bad idea”

There are several problems with this myth, one of my Top 10 Myths of Idea Management, based on my work at Imaginatik. And it is one of the most common in the field of creativity and innovation. 1) Some ideas are actually bad – they may be illegal, amoral, create liability for the company (for […]

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Top 10 Myths about Idea Management & Why They Are Wrong

  I have worked on Idea Management at Imaginatik since 1998 – I was in the room when the first was first coined as a discipline. During this time, I’ve heard many people, including purported experts, describing how idea management is supposed to work, and in many cases I am sorry to say that their […]

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