2Dec2019
The Invincible Company: Closing the Innovation Culture Gap with Alex Osterwalder
by: Nordic Business Forum
Alex Osterwalder, the inventor behind the Business Model Canvas and Co-founder of Strategyzer, is an expert at helping people and companies push their innovative thinking and expand their business prowess. However, this process is not something that can be done intrinsically–it has to come from the upper management in a strategic way.
To begin to think about how you can improve your company’s chances of staying on top of the game and to keep your company innovative, it is a good idea to look at examples from other companies. How do companies similar to your company succeed in their business practices? What caused a rival company to drop out of the competition? Thinking like this can help you begin to consider what your company has to offer in the changing business landscape.
Osterwalder brought up Kodak as an example of a business that had around 800,000 employees in the 1990s. It helped invent the digital camera, but rejected the technology once it realized that it would not be profitable for its current business model. Instead of choosing to adapt, Kodak went out of business. To ensure that something like this does not happen, you need to make sure that you have the correct business model and value propositions.
What are some ways that a company can change its behavior to ensure a continued success? Osterwalder has some ideas. He lists four major points that you can use to tell the “characteristics of an innovative company.” They are: culture, leadership, organisation design and support, and innovative practices. To hear more about how to use these four ideas to assess innovation and to expand your innovation environment, check out Alex Osterwalder’s talk in our Executive Summary!
