Leadership skills – motivating and influencing others and delegating work.
Entrepreneurship skills – identifying customer needs, technical or market opportunities,
and pursuing opportunities.
Technical skills – expertise in a technical or functional area, developing technically
superior solutions.
Organisational skills – organising resources, coordinating tasks.
Strategy formalisation - the extent to which there are formal processes in place for
planning and setting strategy.
Strategy responsiveness - the extent to which strategic planning is adaptive in response
to new information from a wide variety of sources including employees.
Strategy centralisation - the extent to which strategic planning is conducted by a small
group or an individual.
Human Resource Management best practices – selective staffing, investments in
training, variable compensation, employee ownership, performance management,
information sharing, and employee participation in decision-making.
Source: Leadership and Management Skills in SMEs: Measuring Associations with
Management Practices and Performance
Wednesday 30 March 2016
Tuesday 22 March 2016
Monday 21 March 2016
Big Innovation Spring Sale for Small Biz
Here is just the ticket...
Benefit now from this Spring 2016 Special Offer.
Learn about innovation
Practice innovation
and Succeed
See what the future holds and prepare now for success. You can be part of that amazing innovative future.
Experience an innovative learning experience and benefit from a unique service that goes miles further than conventional training: training with impact!
Benefit from the course How to Innovate Effectively. Push your potential to realise your amazing innovations.
If you need week by week support to become an effective innovator then Innovation Coaching is perfect for you.
Do you want specialist advice, focused reports, and custom tools to stimulate the innovative abilities of your organisation? If so then Innovation Consultancy is what you need.
Benefit from innovative creativity and bright ideas. With this support you will benefit from a unique perspective and receive ideas that go way beyond what your own colleagues produced.
Spring Sale
Welcome to spring! Benefit from any of the above services with this 15% discount off all prices shown on the Innovation Future Specialist website. To claim your discount simply include a reference to this page (bookmark it now), and make your purchase before the end of March 2016. (This discount may not be used with any other discounts or special offers.)
Friday 18 March 2016
Ideas to save the North Sea Industry
A contest supported by Innovate UK wants to see game changing ideas to save the North Sea industry.
Innovate UK, which funds and supports new businesses on behalf of the UK government, is looking to experts in gaming, IT, virtual reality and digital for the “radical” solutions
There are three categories: The first is how to improve inspections without the need to send humans to do high, risk work, the second is about making data smarter and the third is how to engage energy users to drive down energy use and reduce their bills.
There is a blatantly obvious solution to the first challenge. The technology know-how already exists, but it needs modification to withstand being under water at high pressures.
Innovate UK, which funds and supports new businesses on behalf of the UK government, is looking to experts in gaming, IT, virtual reality and digital for the “radical” solutions
There are three categories: The first is how to improve inspections without the need to send humans to do high, risk work, the second is about making data smarter and the third is how to engage energy users to drive down energy use and reduce their bills.
There is a blatantly obvious solution to the first challenge. The technology know-how already exists, but it needs modification to withstand being under water at high pressures.
UK Start-up Competition
Innovate UK’s IC tomorrow programme has launched a competition that will see £180,000 awarded to a number of sharing economy startups.
Six small businesses will be awarded up to £30,000 each to encourage development in the peer-to-peer revolution.
See more details.
Six small businesses will be awarded up to £30,000 each to encourage development in the peer-to-peer revolution.
See more details.
Small teams compete for the $30m Google Lunar X PRIZE
An inspiring set of videos about small teams of people following their dreams and building their own moon rovers. The teams in the competition include people from all backgrounds across the world. A lot of them not only dream about sending something to the moon, they also aim to make the world a better place.
Thursday 17 March 2016
Driving and Sustaining Innovation
It is very important these days that any organisation that wants to thrive and survive has a serious attitude towards embracing innovation, and innovating effectively.
The well written article 4 Unlikely Ways to Spark Transformative Innovation is well worth reading.
The well written article 4 Unlikely Ways to Spark Transformative Innovation is well worth reading.
Free course: What is Innovation?
Wednesday 16 March 2016
What is Innovation?
There is a whole lot of confusion out there about what innovation is. You experience its benefits every day, so you do already know what innovation can achieve. I still find it surprising though that many people, when asked, say that they do not know what innovation is. In the 21st century, surely this is a bizarre situation when innovation is all around us.
Even stranger, some creativity and innovation consultants seem to get confused over what innovation is. I actually saw one such person say on their web site that they didn't really know what it was that they did, or didn't know how to explain it. Some may suspect that consultants deliberately add mystery and complexity to the term innovation in order to try and justify their services and existence. We have seen that consultants generally can become well know for creating a stream of buzzwords and phrases, and publishing an array of complex diagrams and graphs. So perhaps there is some truth in the suspicions about some innovation consultants, who knows?
So, for the benefit of the public, business and any confused consultants, I have presented a simple, yet accurate, definition of innovation in the following quick free course. This focuses on the outcome of innovation (not how to innovate). It also includes some great examples of innovation that have benefited most of us: 11 "impossible ideas" that were turned into reality!
Learn what innovation is for free in just 10 minutes: What is Innovation?
Tuesday 15 March 2016
Pigeons to monitor London air pollution
Thinking outside the box...
Tweet a pigeon to get London air pollution readings...
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/03/15/elite-pigeons-sensor-backpacks-monitor-london-air-pollution
Tweet a pigeon to get London air pollution readings...
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/03/15/elite-pigeons-sensor-backpacks-monitor-london-air-pollution
Monday 14 March 2016
Celebrate failure?
You may have heard it said many times within an innovation context that failure is a good thing and that it should be accepted or even celebrated.
However, it is important to know why something failed.
The failure sometimes indicates how stretching, or pioneering, the attempt was; but it can also indicate an ineffective innovation process.
Perhaps we have to be careful of which failures we "celebrate" :-)
Do you believe this? Click the link below to find out.
Innovation Future Specialist: True or False?
However, it is important to know why something failed.
The failure sometimes indicates how stretching, or pioneering, the attempt was; but it can also indicate an ineffective innovation process.
Perhaps we have to be careful of which failures we "celebrate" :-)
True or False?
Google [X] have celebrated their failures.Do you believe this? Click the link below to find out.
Innovation Future Specialist: True or False?
Friday 11 March 2016
Big Innovations from Small Businesses
Do you know that a great deal of innovation comes from small businesses?
Another example of such a start-up was started by Bill Gates, and a colleague. You may have heard of that corporation too: Microsoft.
The biggest innovations from the smallest start-ups
Some of the biggest innovations can come from smallest of businesses. For example, many start-up businesses pioneer the development of future technologies that years later we all take for granted. All of today's "hi-tec" [high technology] corporations once started as small businesses. Some of these started in back bedrooms or garages and as they innovated they bloomed into massive global corporations, like Google for example.Another example of such a start-up was started by Bill Gates, and a colleague. You may have heard of that corporation too: Microsoft.
UK award winners
The UK has been world famous for scientific achievements, inventions and innovations for centuries, going right back to the seventeenth century. Today many UK businesses continue to lead in science and innovation. Not all of those businesses are large corporations, for example last year Innovate UK celebrated the success of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and gave awards to five SMEs.
Any SME can innovate
However, you do not have to be Bill Gates or an award winning business in order to innovate. Any small or medium sized business can innovate. The chances are, if you have been making improvements of the years then you have been innovating. You can see if this is the case by taking the quick free course What is Innovation right now.
Successful innovation can reduce your costs and increase your impact. That is two ways to increase your bottom line: bigger profits. Learn how to optimise your innovative impact by enrolling on the premium course: How to Innovate Effectively.
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