Ambidexterity
In general: if a person can use their left and right hand equally well. In a business context: the ability of an organization to balance exploitation and exploration, i.e. improving and keeping alive today’s core business while simultaneously creating a portfolio of future products, services, and business models. [ » read more ]
Ambidextrous Organization
An organization, which demonstrably balances today’s business demands (exploitation) whilst being adaptive to changes in the external environment by innovating towards new products, services, and business models, which break with old industry logic and transcend industry boundaries (exploration). [ » read more ]
BDUF (Big Design Up Front)
A term used ironically by programmers. It describes the documentation required in advance of building something when projects are run in a waterfall project management mode. [ » read more ]
Business Model
A narrative of how a business works and makes money: it describes how it creates and delivers value to its customers at an appropriate cost and how it captures its share of value in turn. [ » read more ]
Business Model Fit
The inflection a startup reaches when it has gathered enough evidence to demonstrate that it is able to deliver its value proposition with an optimal profit, based on a scalable business model. [ » read more ]
Co-Creation
The collaborative development of concepts, products and services together with customers, business partners, domain experts, and other stakeholders. [ » read more ]
Collaboration
A kind of teamwork in which a group of people works synchronously towards a shared goal. [ » read more ]
Cooperation
A kind of teamwork towards a shared goal characterized by short phases of task allocation (e.g. planning a customer interview together) and longer phases of individual work packages in sub-groups (e.g. doing the interview fieldwork). [ » read more ]
Coordination
A kind of teamwork in which a group collectively agrees on work packages to be done, which each sub-group or person will then carry out on their own. [ » read more ]
Corporate Culture
The ideas and ways of working that are typical of an organization and that affect how it does business and how its employees behave (Cambridge Business English) [ » read more ]
Culture Hack
The act of finding a mistake in an organization’s operating system and ‘helping to improve it’ by going against the usual way things are done. [ » read more ]
Design Sprint
A time-constrained, multi-day or week-long process based on design thinking which aims to reduce the risk of bringing a new product, service or feature to the market. [ » read more ]
Design Thinking
Generally speaking, design thinking is a set of procedures and problem-solving behaviors of (industrial) designers and the mindset they bring along with. In today’s business context it often describes a team-based methodology to the creation of user-centric innovation concepts. [ » read more ]
Digital Transformation
A fundamental change in how an organization uses digital technologies to deliver value to its customers and possibly reinvent itself in the process. [ » read more ]
Dual Transformation
Two simultaneous transformations which mutually reinforce each other. Typically one focuses on the core business (Transformation A) and one on new business opportunities at the edges (Transformation B). [ » read more ]
Ecosystem
A complex network or interconnected system of participants collectively generating an output. The ‘whole’ of an ecosystem is more than the ‘sum of its parts’ through network effects. [ » read more ]
Empathy
Practicing empathy means listening to another person unreservedly and free of judgement with the intention of understanding their perspective from their specific point of view. [ » read more ]
Experience Mapping
A method used to visualize and illustrate an individual’s product/service experience as a customer of an organization. [ » read more ]
Frugal Innovation
The process of developing products, services and business models that are simple, affordable and accessible to low-income and underserved communities, with the goal of improving their lives and creating new markets and opportunities. [ » read more ]
Hackathon
“An event, typically lasting several days, in which a large number of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming.” (Oxford Dictionary) [ » read more ]
HIPPO
“Highest Paid Person’s Opinion” — The term makes fun of a serious phenomenon in command-control environments: when final decisions are not made through experimentation at the edges by agile teams, but rather by a person with high power and ‘authority’ who has the least data about the matter at hand. [ » read more ]
Innovation
We follow a very basic formula here: creativity + implementation = innovation. In non-commercial environments, this would be an idea that creates value because it got implemented. In commercial environments, it would be the introduction of something new to the market, or if you will, an invention that is commercialized. [ » read more ]
Innovation Barrier
Innovation barriers are organization-specific obstacles that internal innovators or intrapreneurs will run into when trying to push their idea or venture to implementation or market. [ » read more ]
Innovation Capability
The skills and knowledge required to bring innovation forward through the stages of discovery, incubation and acceleration, while managing their interfaces with the core organization with as little unproductive friction as possible. [ » read more ]
Innovation Ecosystem
This term is often used synonymously for ‘innovation system’ and can mean many different things at different levels. For more information, refer to the levels of an ‘ecosystem’. [ » read more ]
Innovation Fatigue
A phenomenon occurring with managers who have already tried different approaches or management ideas to innovation that didn’t produce the desired results. That experience makes them hesitant to try ‘new approaches’. [ » read more ]
Innovation Management
How an organization organizes for, allocates resources, supports and leads teams, and decides along the pathway from the initial inception of a business opportunity or idea until it has become a fully-fledged product, service, or business model so that it eventually will find a »happy home« in or outside the organization. [ » read more ]
Innovation Practice
The customary, habitual, or ‘expected’ procedure or way of doing innovation in an organization. Often driven by underlying management ideas, beliefs, or method(ologie)s. [ » read more ]
Innovation Strategy
The set of interrelated choices an organization makes on how to use innovation to win in the market. [ » read more ]
Innovation System
An innovation system, as understood at a company-level, designates the infrastructures for finding, developing, evaluating, and implementing new ideas and business models within an organization. It is the organization’s ‘operating system’ for innovation. [ » read more ]
Innovation System Design
The application of design and lean innovation thinking and proven change management approaches to the design of interventions to create a sustainable innovation system. [ » read more ]
Innovation Theater
Any episodic, PR-guided, or underfunded ‘innovation work’ which is staged to show people (investors, talent, general public) that innovation is happening, even though no tangible outcomes can be expected. [ » read more ]
Innovation Thesis
A broad statement about where we are as a business (purpose and maturity), where we think the world is going (business environment), what sorts of ideas we think will succeed in that world (trends) and how we are going to use innovation to respond. [ » read more ]
Innovation Tourist
Low-performing (read: not intrinsically motivated) people from the core organization who are sent by their superiors into labs or innovation programs for several months, just ‘to get rid of them’ for a while. [ » read more ]
Innovation Vehicle
An entity or program in an organization's innovation support infrastructure (innovation system) which removes innovation barriers and helps innovation teams get certain jobs done. The jobs of the vehicles are often related to a certain phase in a product, service, or technology innovation life cycle. [ » read more ]
Innovation Zoo
A situation where resources are spread too thinly across too many ideas and there is not enough commitment to really double-down on investment in selecting the most promising options. [ » read more ]
Intrapreneurship
The act of behaving like/running a business like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization. [ » read more ]
Invention
According to U.S. Patent Law an invention is “a new, useful process, machine, improvement, etc., that did not exist previously and that is recognized as the product of some unique intuition or genius, as distinguished from ordinary mechanical skill or craftsmanship.” [ » read more ]
Lean Innovation
A combination of discovery, creation, and value delivery approaches in an organization’s innovation process. The goal is to reduce ‘waste’ in the pipeline of new business exploration projects. To name but a few examples of waste in this context: untested customer/problem/value proposition or business model assumptions, insufficient validation of prototypes/experiments with customers, or, even carrying forward political and zombie projects. Usually, three main methodologies are used in lean innovation: design thinking, Lean Startup, and ‘Lean processes’. [ » read more ]
Lean Startup
A methodology that supports startups in their search for a product or service that customers value, and a viable business model to go with it. Lean Startup emphasizes validated learning through the performance of hypothesis-driven experimentation with customers in short development cycles. [ » read more ]
Lens
A specific way to view, comprehend and discuss the world guided by principles and an underlying philosophy. [ » read more ]
Management Innovation
When management subscribes to a new way of thinking and (radically) alters its own decision-making, organizational structures and processes to pave the way for wider organizational change. [ » read more ]
Method
We say: it’s a way of carrying out a particular task, which often comes as a detailed set of step-by-step instructions on what to do. The Oxford Dictionary says: it’s “a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one.” [ » read more ]
Method(ology) Misfit
The application of a methodology or method which was created for a particular context in a situation or environment to which it is poorly adapted to, or not applicable at all. [ » read more ]
Methodology
A largely codified set of processes and methods with an underpinning paradigm and theory which guides action. Often used in a particular area of study or activity. [ » read more ]
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
A very early version of a product with a specific value proposition and set of features: primarily built for learning and to (in)validate hypotheses with early adopters. [ » read more ]
Moonlighting
The act of working (often in secret) on an innovation (side) project without telling your employer or colleagues. [ » read more ]
Operating Model
An abstraction and visualization of how an organization delivers value to its customers or beneficiaries and how it runs itself. [ » read more ]
Organization Design
Organization design is the deliberate formation process of aligning an organization's structure, systems, and processes to its strategy and goals, in order to achieve optimal performance and effectiveness. [ » read more ]
Organizational Architecture
The formal and informal organizational structures and processes as well as the (decision-making) culture of an organization, which is permanently (re)shaped by its people. [ » read more ]
Participant Fatigue
When users don’t want to participate in market or design research anymore due to a repeated overstraining of their ‘services’ and time. [ » read more ]
Phenomenology
The study of how people experience life. [ » read more ]
Pivot
The strategic course correction of a startup without a major change to the founders’ underlying vision. Often in the form of changes to one or more, but not all, elements of a new venture: product, team, business model or engine of growth. [ » read more ]
Platform
A platform is a set of solutions to problems that is made available to the members of an ecosystem through a set of access points or interfaces. [ » read more ]
Political Innovation
Political ‘innovations’ are predominantly inventions whose market potential for commercialization was validated insufficiently (or not at all) during the customer discovery phase. They therefore gain no market traction, or too little to be considered a commercial success. They are nevertheless internally communicated as such and are kept alive with shadow budgets in order to avoid the people involved ‘losing face’ (often influential persons within the organization’s hierarchy). [ » read more ]
Problem-Solution Fit
A problem-solution-fit occurs if a startup has proved both: 1) that there is a 'problem worth solving' for one or more clearly defined customer groups, and 2) that there is evidence that these customer groups would consider the value proposition of the solution the firm proposes. [ » read more ]
Product-Market Fit
Product-market fit means: you have collected evidence that your solution solves your customers' problem(s) in a way that they prefer over current alternative solutions; you have proof that they are willing to pay for it; and your service demonstrably gains its first traction in the market. [ » read more ]
Prosumer
A customer who simultaneously ‘consumes’ and co-produces the product or service [ » read more ]
Sensemaking
A collaborative process of creating shared awareness and understanding out of different individuals' perspectives and varied interests. Or in short, the process by which people give meaning to experience. [ » read more ]
Service Design
The application of design thinking to the improvement or creation of services. [ » read more ]
Startup
A startup is a temporary organization used to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. — Steve Blank [ » read more ]
Strategic Innovation
Pursuing ‘innovation as a discipline’ with a clear innovation strategy in place, and an innovation system derived from it. [ » read more ]
Strategy Fit
The inflection point a corporate startup reaches when it obtains certainty that the new value proposition and business model it designed aligns with its parent company’s business and/or innovation strategy. [ » read more ]
Sustainable Innovation
Innovation that creates economic benefit within the boundaries of social and environmental capital. [ » read more ]
Synthesis (Design Thinking)
Synthesis is a mode in design thinking where a team makes sense of the data it collected during user research. The team creates "models of reality" (e.g. affinity diagrams, journey maps, personas, etc.) to gain a better understanding of the (research) problem at hand and uses them in both internal and external communication. [ » read more ]
Technique
A way of carrying out a particular task. Often comes as a detailed set of step-by-step instructions on what to do. Often used as a synonym for ‘method’. [ » read more ]
Toolhead
A person who prefers and practises a mechanistic application of tools (canvases!) and prescriptive processes (the ‘six stages’ of design thinking!) instead of embracing adapting systems and letting teams think for themselves. [ » read more ]
Transformation
A profound or even radical change to an organization's form and structure, which supports a departure towards a new future direction. [ » read more ]
Types of Innovation
In simple terms, there are different areas or subjects one can ‘innovate upon’: 1) on operations and internal processes; 2) on products and services; 3) on business model and strategy; and 4) on the organizational design and its management systems. [ » read more ]