Ed Robinson

Writer, Capital Ideas, Chicago Booth

Paid internet search ads, also known as search-engine marketing (SEM), dominate online advertising. According to the latest figures available, advertisers spent $18.4 billion on paid search ads in 2013, or 43 percent of total US internet advertising revenue.

But many of those ad dollars being spent by well-known companies may be going to waste. A study of SEM’s impact suggests that while it might help bring in some new or infrequent customers, it doesn’t appear to have much impact on another important audience: frequent internet users seeking well-known brands.

Debbie Johnson

Did you know that “introducing something new” is the definition of innovation? I would say the term innovation has become ubiquitous/popular/etc, but innovation itself is not recent. It’s what defines us as humans (the wheel, agriculture, steam train, Tesla…).

We admire people and companies that are innovative, from Apple and Google to Uber or Airbnb. So, too, the City of Austin is getting on the bandwagon. They devote resources in the form of a Chief Innovation Officer (Kerry O’Connor) and a small innovation department to tackle some of our most intractable challenges like traffic, affordability and our educational system.

Innovation can take many forms but there are three principles I learned in a recent workshop given by Humantific, the City of Austin’s consultant in this area. (I took some license with their terminology for ease of understanding.)

Vikas A. Aggarwal

Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD

Bringing people from different backgrounds together to work in teams can help generate new ideas, but creating diversity across teams can unlock even greater innovation.

Organisations in today’s era of hyper-competition are increasingly reliant on innovation to sustain a competitive advantage. This is particularly true for newly established start-ups, where ongoing innovation is fundamental to effective product market competition.

An important precursor to innovation is the ability to take knowledge from different areas and to recombine it in new and impactful ways. Teams are an important aspect of this process. Having people work in teams and sharing ideas can allow firms to create a more sustained pipeline of innovation than the “light-bulb moments of lone genius,” as noted by Aspen Institute CEO, Walter Isaacson. While the need for team-based innovation is widely acknowledged, less well understood is how multiple teams should be organised within a company in order to maximise innovation for the firm as a whole.