“What would need to change around here if we really believed that consumers are actually developing, prototyping, use-testing and market-testing some of what will be our most important and novel new products — without us?”
That’s a provocative question for businesses that you’ll find in “The Age of the Consumer-Innovator,” an
It has long been assumed that companies develop products for consumers, while consumers are passive recipients. However, this paradigm is flawed, because consumers are a major source of product innovations. This article suggests a new innovation paradigm, in which consumers and users play a central and active role in developing products. The article also summarizes key findings from studies on consumer product innovation conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.
There’s a problem with most major environmental rankings of businesses: Too often, the ratings fail to incorporate advocacy activities that influence environmental regulation.
New research sheds light on several important dynamics that affect the opinions that customers post about products.
Companies that pursue a number of improvement initiatives at once risk creating information overload for employees.
Senior executives weighing strategies appropriate for today’s global economy will hear contradictory advice. Some say you need to move quickly, before competitors, to establish a worldwide presence; others cite data showing that this approach is often less profitable. The reality is that neither approach is appropriate for every circumstance. Therefore, executives need to understand when to pursue one route and when to pursue the other.
According to innovation expert Eric von Hippel, users are often the first source of new products — and that has important implications for businesses.
The editors of MIT Sloan Management Review are pleased to announce the winner of this year’s Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize, awarded to the author of the most outstanding SMR article on planned change and organizational development published from fall 2009 to summer 2010.
The right open innovation strategy can yield performance benefits — but first your company needs to overcome “not-invented-here” and “not-sold-here” attitudes.
Successful multinationals get that way by finding better ways to leverage operational improvements across the entire company. But developing such superior processes is not easy. New operational ideas fail for many reasons. One of the most common is not that the idea was bad, but that the developers set up a pilot that failed to persuade managers in the units that the process was an improvement. Successful pilots share three qualities: credibility, replicability and feasibility.
Business analytics projects are often characterized by uncertain or changing requirements — and a high implementation risk. So it takes a special breed of project manager to execute and deliver them.
Markets are changing, competition is shifting and businesses are suffering or perhaps thriving. Whatever the immediate circumstances, corporate managers ask the same questions: Where do we go from here, and which strategy will get us there? To figure out when it makes sense to pursue strategies of position, leverage or opportunity, managers must understand their company’s immediate circumstances, take stock of their current resources and determine the relationships among the various resources.
We asked: Are organizations spending more on sustainability? Does it merit more attention from the top? More than 4,700 managers responded. Here’s what they told us.
Companies such as Procter & Gamble, Cisco Systems, Genzyme, General Electric and Intel are often credited with having attained market leadership through open innovation strategies. By tapping into and exploiting the technological knowledge residing beyond their own R&D structures, these companies outmaneuvered rivals. But while other organizations try to follow their example, many are failing because they neglect to ensure that the outside ideas reach the people best equipped to exploit them.
Our new survey suggests that companies experienced in analytics use are increasingly gaining competitive advantage — but their approaches vary.
When 33 Chilean miners were rescued after being trapped underground for 69 days, the world cheered. Here’s what your company can learn from key leadership decisions made during the mine cave-in crisis.
The ability to create strategies and adapt to changing conditions quickly is critical for maintaining a competitive edge, says Christian Rynning-Tønnesen, the CEO of Statkraft, one of the largest power producers in the world. Building the organizational structures to support that demands shared values and solid management.
Students and companies have changing expectations for executive MBA programs. How should business schools respond?