I have been reading and enjoying the IdeaFlow blog by Renee Hopkins Callahan for some time. Renee is an excellent writer and she is truly an expert in the creativity and innovation area.
Lately, Renee Hopkins Callahan and her colleagues presented a heuristic framework in the article "What Drives Innovation". I would recommend that article as a check-list for every organisation that is / will be planning innovation strategy. The article is very easy to read, very concrete and it includes planning tools to spot weaknesses in the innovation process. The open innovation aspect is addressed as well: "Can we build it ourselves? Do we need to partner with some other company in order to produce it?"
Still, there is something I could add to that framework. First, the support of employees' (and customers') problem-finding is not very clearly targeted. I see that the 'Fuzzy Front-End' could be supported better. 
For a organisation it would be beneficial if its employees and workgroups would have better mental and technical tools to prepare their idea suggestions. Submitting idea in a form is not enough ;-) When the 'Fuzzy Front-End' is better supported, maybe employees have then better skills to recognise a good idea from bad ones? Jakob Rabinow sees this as one of the most important skills of an innovator. I tried to address this earlier in my (clumsy) Frontiers of eBusiness Research -paper and in my and Antti Syvänen's Mobile Learning 2006 IdeaPortfolio -paper. Secondly, the innovation process should let those ideas live that do not immediately pass those evaluation gates. Andrew Hargadon and Robert (Bob) Sutton claim:
"Valuable solutions seldom arrive at the same time as the problems they solve, they seldom arrive at the same time as the problems they solve, they seldom arrive to the people working on those problems, and they seldom arrive in forms that are readily recognizable or easily adaptable.”
What a challenge for all developers of Innovation Strategies and Innovation Management Information Systems !
P.S. Check also Renee's and Corante's Innovation Hub
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