With company priorities changing seemingly overnight, innovation teams must find the best approaches to creating value in challenging times. To supplement our own reporting on innovation during COVID-19, we asked our strategic partners and sponsors to share the resources, reports, and articles they’ve created recently.
Find out how to grow your initiative, use software to manage remote teams, and pivot quickly to prove your value. You can learn more about our strategic partners and sponsors in our Directory of Innovation Firms.
Growth in the Low Touch Economy
The era after COVID-19 will have an economy shaped by new habits and regulations based on reduced close-contact interaction and tighter travel and hygiene restrictions. In this slide deck from Board of Innovation, their team explains why the pandemic will change how we eat, work, shop, exercise, manage our health, socialize, and spend our free time — with unprecedented speed. Download the deck.
Business as Unusual
In the midst of the daily, hourly, and even minute-by-minute pressures affecting everyone, it may feel safest to wait for things to settle. But instead, this is the moment for corporate innovators to lead, contends the team at KPMG. Corporate innovators can bring different ways of thinking to the table to help transform how companies think and do business, find new ways to support co-workers, and bring stability to an organization in the midst of the chaos. Here are some ideas for where to start.
Five Questions to Ask to Avoid Overcorrecting in a Downturn
Given the unprecedented nature of recent market disruptions, companies will no doubt need to scale back their investments in new growth opportunities. However, the focus should not be pitting stability against new growth, but rather finding the right balance to avoid overcorrecting. Read this piece from Innosight for five questions you should ask while setting strategy. See the five questions.
Six Ways Innovation Software Can Help You Thrive During Remote Work
Innovation often happens at moments of crisis or significant market changes. At a time where we should be closely collaborating with others to address challenges, edison365 offers six tips on collaborating to meet goals and deal with new opportunities and threats, all while working remotely. Read their blog.
Shifting the Focus of Your Idea Challenges During COVID-19
In the past two months, there has been a significant increase in awareness of the business challenges associated with responding to COVID-19 effectively. Governments, companies, and institutions are all wrestling to find an appropriate way to respond. Read this blog post from HYPE to find out how idea challenges can help your team react to this shift and support employees. Learn more.
Seeing Beyond this Tipping Point: Utilizing an Innovator’s Approach to Strategy
Companies need to be thinking about their immediate survival and life after the coronavirus. But this is also a time when thinking about the world beyond the immediate aftermath can make your company stronger, more resilient, and anti-fragile – becoming stronger, not weaker, in the face of stress. In this resource, The Inovo Group shares a “dual-path” strategy that includes both “Today-for-Today” and “Today-for-Tomorrow” strategies. Read more.
Collaborating On The Front Line Against Coronavirus
As new disruptive technologies emerge and the number of competitors increases exponentially, staying ahead of the curve in the business world can get quite challenging. When it comes to corporate innovation, this highly creative and collaborative process is best managed using a deliberate step-by-step approach. In this comprehensive guide from Planbox, you will learn how your organization can start innovating systematically and cost-effectively. Get the guide.
COVID-19: How R&D Responded & What We Learned For Future Outbreaks
Collecting information on coronavirus, how it changes, and how it acts will be crucial to understanding how to develop strategies to manage the outbreak and ultimately tackle the virus. This resource from PreScouter takes a look into strategies and tools that fueled the identification of new therapies. Read more.
Strategic Innovation in Times of Crisis
How can you preserve what you’ve built during these trying times? Babson College recommends using this time to prepare for the new world after this pandemic. In a LinkedIn post, Gina O’Connor explains why making progress in building your organization’s capability for strategic innovation is so important in this moment. Read the post.
The Biggest Asset to Your Company During Uncertain Times
When asked for advice for corporate innovators, the team at Planview emphasizes the importance of employees. They write, “In uncertain times, your employees are the greatest asset you have. This goes beyond leveraging your employees to spark your innovation efforts and crosses into enabling your virtual workforce to be connected to strategy. It means empowering employees to connect with each other in the context of work that matters – not just over video calls and with communication apps, but by using purpose-built, work management software. When it’s difficult for employees to align with a hyper-dynamic strategy, give them a voice in helping to drive your vision forward. By providing employees with a sense of ownership over company goals, you’ll enable your organization to dynamically plan and re-prioritize their work to ensure they are delivering the highest value to the business.” Learn more about Planview.
Use Open Innovation Tools to Pivot
yet2 suggests using open innovation as a tool to pivot to meet short-term needs. For example, yet2 has supported Ford, as they join forces with 3M and GE Healthcare and lend their manufacturing and engineering expertise to expand production of urgently needed medical equipment and supplies to fight the pandemic. yet2 has assembled a proactive team to submit technologies to Ford via their open innovation portal to try and help accelerate their efforts and continue to submit technologies to other clients looking to meet production needs of medical or protective equipment. Learn more about yet2.
