“Thought leaders from academia and inside companies have argued repeatedly in recent years that opening the firm to outside innovation is an important path to sustained growth. Berkeleyís Henry Chesbrough calls this model ‘open innovation.’ C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy of the University of Michigan argue that companies and their customers should innovate together, to ‘co-create value.’î

“The recipe for a successful business includes leadership that fosters strong connections between peers and across organizational functions and levels. Are your leadership skills up to the challenge?”

“One of the things I’ve learned of late is that, despite being a wonderful, generous community of truly warm-hearted people, sometimes the blog world likes nothing more than a good old-fashioned pile-on. I thought about this looking at the (totally justified) hard time that Cory gave Fast Company over their dumb linking policy. If you look at the conversation, people act as if some lawyer gleefully rubbed his hands together and said, ‘How do we get this periodical to be an isolated island of unlinked misery on the web?’ I’m guessing that’s not the case.”

“Shades of our recent conversation with Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder, authors of Ideas Are Free, a white paper released by Imaginatik last summer goes far to address the ROI of idea management. In the 17-page PDF, Mark Turrell, the research firm’s director, outlines the costs of idea management, as well as its benefits.”