Innovation

Viewing technology as a set of solutions misses opportunities to innovate in bigger, bolder ways.

Leadership Collection Changing the direction of a company or a project can be a harrowing process, because it often means changing management practices and methods. Many people resist change, particularly if it challenges their day-to-day work life. This collection of articles from MIT Sloan Management Review examines strategies around how to do change right, from agile management processes to creating new cultures as an intentional effort to starting the implementation in areas of the organization with the highest cultural readiness.

Leadership Collection What does it take to make an organization truly innovative? This collection of articles from MIT Sloan Management Review examines the deliberate processes managers can take to nurture innovation and the importance of being able to translate the language of innovators to the executive office.

Practical advice from experts on how to create, manage, measure, and improve innovation in and for today's digital markets.

The art of bian lian [CA1] — or “face changing” — is integral to Sichuan opera: A main character changes masks to avoid capture by foes. The transformation is quick and surprising, the new face clearly different. In the theater of business, Chinese performers are undergoing a rapid transformation of their own as they seek to evolve from backroom producers to the world’s leading face of innovation.

As digital disruption expands, many legacy businesses seek partnerships with tech companies to maintain competitiveness in the digital sphere. But instead of a centralized “hub” partnership, some companies find greater success through an adaptive ecosystem model, where partners develop significant projects or innovations together. This type of strategy requires imagination and flexibility.

Giving people time and resources to pursue innovation projects can produce extraordinary outcomes — but only if you match your “slack strategy” to employee type. The authors found that different types of employees respond in different ways to slack innovation programs; that different kinds of slack resources are better suited to certain types of employees than others; and that different kinds of slack innovation programs produce different kinds of innovation.

Companies used to spend years clarifying business requirements before they would even think of launching new software. Today, cheaper cloud-based apps mean that implementation decisions are made on the fly — and there’s no going back.

Creating innovative products and services that disrupt the status quo requires creativity, and creativity involves thinking differently about constraints. But too much of a “the rules don’t apply to us” attitude can lead to ethical crises. That’s what’s happened at Uber, where a string of controversies led to a mass exodus of executives, including the company’s president and CEO. Organizations intent on innovating need to understand ahead of time the consequences of breaking certain rules.

Too often, companies with products that have alternative potential markets miss their opportunity: Either they fail to see the possibility of alternative markets, or they simply lack the will to do the necessary groundwork to explore the opportunity. Leveraging existing technology for new uses can be tricky, but the return is greater profit and a revitalized business model.