Each week I scour articles, wading through the dogs, and bringing you the best insights to help product managers, developers, and innovators be heroes.

Collective Intelligence – The science that makes teams effective. “The researchers then asked the most important question: If individual intelligence doesn’t explain a group’s effectiveness, what does? They investigated some popular candidates: group cohesion, motivation, and satisfaction. None of them meant a thing… What meant a lot, however, was social sensitivity.” Read more from Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/3049524/know-it-all/the-science-behind-team-intelligence

Use scenario planning to select the best R&D initiatives. “With so many competing factors, and multiple stakeholders involved in the process, along with only a limited set of resources, how does one select the R&D investments that could have the greatest likelihood of success? It requires scenario planning. A recent study by Ventana research showed if a company can explore all scenarios around a given problem, 89% were able to choose the right initiatives to invest in. When they can only explore a limited number of scenarios, the probability of success falls precipitously to 55%.” Read more at R&D http://www.rdmag.com/articles/2015/08/r-d-planning-and-selection-silver-bullet-fallacy-and-use-scenarios

When it comes time to kill the innovation project. “Any time you commission an innovative project, failing to achieve your commercial objectives is a real possibility. The more innovative the idea, the more it by definition rests on assumptions that may or may not pan out. The tools and techniques developed over the past decade around managing those assumptions, coupled with dramatic decreases in the cost of developing and testing ideas means you can learn much more efficiently than before, but that doesn’t change the fact that a good idea in theory might not be a good idea in reality.” Read more from Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2015/08/how-to-break-up-with-an-innovation-project

Examples of companies implementing innovation via incubation and scaling. “A smart way of implementing innovations is to add to the search for ideas as well as to the incubator and the accelerator, and then look at proven business models or technologies, adapt them, and scale them to the existing organization.” Read more at ESMT Knowledge https://knowledge.esmt.org/article/competing-with-new-forms-innovation

Innovation center trend data. “If you take a step back and look at the topline trends, the main focus of these innovation centers is also examining the deeper understanding of customer needs [35%]. That’s wonderful as people should always come first. It also seems to me that these innovation centers have things backwards. It should never be technology first.” Read more at Brand Innovators http://brand-innovators.com/blog/2015/08/10/innovation-is-the-future-of-marketing-and-customer-experience-new-research/

Examples of developing an innovation lab / center. “In the context of my report, an innovation lab is an a in-house space for designing, experimenting, piloting, and deploying device-based innovation projects. Done right, an innovation lab can differentiate your business’s digital business efforts in impressive ways. Take, for example, Lowes’ robotic retail associate, OSHBot.” Read more at Forrester http://blogs.forrester.com/jp_gownder/15-08-12-differentiate_your_digital_business_with_an_innovation_lab

How product managers and engineers can work best together. “From an engineer’s perspective, though, here is some simple advice for how to stay in the good graces of the engineers you work with… Do your job first…Place twice, doce once…Admit your mistakes. “ Read more at Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-de-haaff/how-engineers-want-to-wor_b_7968130.html

Why Big Tech has lost their innovation and what they should do – don’t make the same mistakes as you scale. ‘’What’s changed is that many big technology firms no longer even try to invent the Next Big Thing. Instead, they buy it, using their multi-billion-dollar cash hoards. The result, noted Malone, is an ‘innovation slowdown’ among the technology industry’s leading companies.” Read more at Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2015/08/12/innovation-ecosystem-future-of-work/

4 tips to foster a culture of innovation. “Companies, like humans, gain comfort in patterns — doing what they’ve always done because it’s considered safe. They’re afraid to enter a new industry, offer a product outside their specialty or try a new approach to marketing because failing could be costly. Here are four tips to help your company foster a culture of innovation.” Read more at Mashable http://mashable.com/2015/08/12/company-culture-innovation/