McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index (OHI) is an exhaustive assessment of an organization’s effectiveness and its management’s performance based on an organization-wide survey. It’s a tool that numerous public and private sector organizations have leveraged in order to benchmark their company’s health, align around core areas of improvement, and improve overall organizational performance. The survey scores a number of things, including…

At IdeaScale, we’ve learned that diversity combined with equity and inclusion leads to more innovative thinking: businesses that are run by culturally diverse teams are more likely to develop new products, 45% more likely to grow market share, and more likely to have a 2X innovation revenue. Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) isn’t a one-step process, nor one that can be…

I recently participated in a panel session as part of a great conference organised by the Innov8rs group (thanks Hans!), with an amazing set of innovation leaders, including Gina O’Connor, John Metselaar, and Andrea Kates. During the one-hour session we covered a wide range of innovation topics, where we uncovered some divergent perspectives, which I’ve been reflecting on since. You…

Hardly no one will regret 2020, it seems. Yet, 2021 ahead is hard to predict. There are hopeful signs that pave the way for a better, stronger future, but as we have now the experience, our world can go upside down almost overnight. In this paper, we propose to explore why and how a company needs to embrace an ecosystem…

Problem-solving is an essential skill as an innovator. If problems stump your employees, how can your organization ever innovate for customers? Luckily, problem-solving skills can be learned, and as a leader you can create a team of master problem solvers and innovators. Most employees already apply some problem-solving skills every day. They just do so to varying degrees of success…

By: Ross A. McIntyre Results-only innovation is an exploration of what is viable and pragmatic. This can help produce additional value for businesses and end users. Every business wants to be innovative, but not all companies understand what innovation is—and isn’t. Large companies with well-funded research and development programs often point to those as evidence of their innovation capability. In…

By: Rob Hoehn The Virginia Department of Transportation created their own Virtual Innovation Lab, where they collaborate to solve problems related to remote work, engineering topics, safety, and more with the help of their entire distributed workforce. Learn more in this December 15th webinar! When you think about the future of transportation, it’s daunting to think of all the different…

By: Dr. Evans Baiya In this article, we will look at how to identify and understand employee contributions, and learn how to work with idea generators, evaluators, and activators. The key to recovering from a business crisis is creating new value—whether it be new products or services, improving processes to be more efficient and save money, or identifying and eliminating…

By: Paul Van Zandt Climate efficiency is key for the future of everyone on this planet. With an issue of such magnitude, you may feel that individual actions cannot make a large impact. While your business by itself cannot solve global warming, the actions you take can inspire others and can have a much bigger impact than you may realize.…

By: Rob Hoehn I love meeting innovators. You meet all types: some of them are blue sky thinkers, some of them are feasibility buffs, some of them are incredible networkers and presenters, and some of them are shy and fascinatingly deep thinkers. Organizations are similar to individual innovators – some of them have a few of the key qualities necessary…