Inspiring Innovation-From Small Startups to World Leadership Organizations Innovation is a Must for Business to Thrive and Perpetuate
September 24, 2009
How can your organization inspire Innovation? With long-term commitment to progress of the process, leaders must drive the journey from start through finish. Clearly-defined expectations towards the progress, as well as a definitive end-result are imperative elements involved. As a leader, one must inspire and drive the team. Regular meetings and dedication to touching on progress week-by-week are mandatory, and a clearly-outlined definition of the desired culture of the company helps each member of an organization understand innovative patterns, inspiring them to work together towards the success of innovation.
As a perfect and current example, the Fifth Annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Meeting attracted top CEOs and world leaders this week in New York; this year’s theme heavily focusing on Innovation as a top priority and driver towards worldwide economic recovery and growth. Setting the tone, President Barack Obama opened on Tuesday with a speech, mentioning “We need new businesses to unleash new innovations. We need new collaborations to advance prosperity.” Those words were spoken just a day following the White House’s release of a white paper that outlined a national innovation strategy.
Founded as a nonprofit, nonpartisan sector of the William J. Clinton Foundation, this year’s organization event held 960 guests from 84 countries. The key themes included harnessing innovation, strengthening infrastructure, building human capital, and financing an equitable future. Climate change, women’s rights, and health care are some of the topics guests were to assess in brainstorming targeted and profitable ways to improve each situation.
A panel on “Approaches to Innovation” was moderated by a BusinessWeek editor, and organized by John Kao, founder of the Institute of Large Scale Innovation at consultancy Deloitte offered an “innovation boot camp” to attendees. Kao stated that Innovation is “not just creativity. It is specifically about creativity that has value.”
When Inspiring Innovation, key elements in defining the desired culture within your organization and perpetuating Innovation within your organization include:
Understanding the goal and what it will take to reach it. Whether it’s a new product per year or a dollar amount in sales, setting goals and knowing what it will take to reach it helps your company plan out the resources and budgets needed. Identifying key players and leaders within your organization is crucial to building your innovation team, as their roles and attitudes will trickle down and affect their teams as well, and your leaders can make or break the innovation process.
As a leader, you must create motivation and proactively push for a successful Innovation program. Leadership by example creates both material and emotional support for your team to push towards the goal. Stay simple and focused on constant communication in regards to Innovation visions. Allow for open communication to be a two-way street and knock down barriers keeping silos apart by creating teams that are cross functional amongst departments that don’t usually interact. In doing so, creativity, cooperation and change will remain at an all-time high.
The New Age of Innovation
September 8, 2009
Author: C.K. Prahalad
Date Published: 4/08/2008
Price: $29.95
Description: Prahalad and Krishnan show us how innovation will be driven by the seamless integration of strategy, business processes, technology, and people. While this may seem an insurmountable task, the authors delight the reader by creating an architectural framework for business transformation. I have yet to come across a book that offers such a clear roadmap.”-S. Ramadorai CEO Tata Consultancy Services
Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean
September 8, 2009
Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean
Author: Roberto Verganti
Date Published: 8/03/2009
Price: $35.00
Description: Until now, the literature on innovation has focused either on radical innovation pushed by technology or incremental innovation pulled by the market. In “Design-Driven Innovation: How to Compete by Radically Innovating What Things Means”, Roberto Verganti introduces a third strategy, a radical shift in perspective that introduces a bold new way of competing. Design-driven innovations do not come from the market; they create new markets. They don’t push new technologies; they push new meanings. It’s about having a vision, and taking that vision to your customers. Think of game-changers like Nintendo’s Wii or Apple’s iPod. They overturned our understanding of what a video game means and how we listen to music. Customers had not asked for these new meanings, but once they experienced them, it was love at first sight. But where does the vision come from? With fascinating examples from leading European and American companies, Verganti shows that for truly breakthrough products and services, we must look beyond customers and users to those he calls ‘interpreters’ - the experts who deeply understand and shape the markets they work in. “Design-Driven Innovation” offers a provocative new view of innovation thinking and practice.
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