A firm that manages golf courses in 26 US states wanted to streamline its operational costs in support of its M&A business model. To address that, its CEO envisioned a virtual "library" serving as a data repository with unlimited shelves of business information. How that vision became reality is the subject of this Executive Update.

Social media represents an incredibly important opportunity to leverage new (and existing) technology onto internal and external strategic and operational business objectives of all shapes and sizes. Who, for example, would have suspected that new product lifecycles could be affected by wikis, blogs, file sharing, and opinions? That focus group in Peoria is forever gone, replaced by blogs open to customers from Illinois to California to New York to Paris to Shanghai. Innovation is now a contact sport played by a globally distributed team. Customer service can be location-aware and in real time. Due diligence can be conducted remotely with bookmarks. You can track what customers, vendors, suppliers, and partners really think about your company whenever you want. All in all, you have the opportunity to engage in continuous conversations about everything that happens inside and outside the company.

In the first three parts of this Executive Update series about Cutter's annual survey on innovation practices, we described the enterprise innovation chain (value innovation, management innovation, business model innovation, and invention), identified key findings of the research, and presented additional detailed characteristics of organizations that assess themselves as successful innovators. Here in Part IV, we will examine the innovation scorecard in detail, including actual metrics used to measure the outcome and efficiency of innovation. We will also summarize overall results of our 2008 survey on enterprise innovation.

Paul Robertson, founder and former leader for 34 years of the world-renowned Medici String Quartet, Visiting Professor in Music and Medicine at one of the UK's leading medical universities, and an authority on music and the brain, draws upon his personal leadership experiences and highlights the paradoxes and conflicts inherent in effective leadership. In this Summit 2007 keynote, He demonstrates the art of leadership and reveals how you can learn to enjoy a leadership process that harnesses uncertainty to stimulate the vital creative energy your organization needs to be innovative and remain competitive. You'll also discover new cognitive and emotional markers that can make the difference between leadership success and failure.

Cutter Innovation employs the unique Innovation Mapping methodology developed by Cutter Fellow, Harvard Business School Professor, Rob Austin. Innovation Mapping compares organizations, teams, and people along a number of dimensions that impact innovation performance... Learn More