Posts Tagged ‘robert’s rules of innovation’

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If ideas are the seeds of innovation…

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013

Innovation is a product of human activity. Innovation keeps life interesting, yet it begins first, with ideation. The creation of a new thought or idea.

If ideas are the seeds of innovation, idea management  is the formalization of the processes involved in gathering, sharing, analyzing and executing the ideas generated within an organization and its collaborative networks.

Ideation and idea management pack the front end of the New Product Development (NPD) funnel with a wealth of viable concepts. Since only a fraction of ideas actually reach fruition, ideation should be harnessed by a process with dedicated resources and with both NPD & LTD (Long Term Development) teams working together.

Ideations can take many different forms. They can be solutions; where there is a problem, there is a solution waiting to be found. They can be evolutionary by modifying an existing product or adding a feature to it. Ideations can be symbiotic; combining multiple ideas, using different elements of each to make a whole. They can be revolutionary (a brand new perspective). Ideations can be serendipitous; where the intended idea is generated by the unexpected. They can be targeted; dealing with a direct and planned path to discovery, or they can be artistic, disregarding practicality and allowing ideas to flow without constraints.

Whichever form your ideas take, how you manage them dictates the outcome of each endeavor. Frequent and intelligently facilitated ideation sessions lead to successful new products… and the much sought after AHA! or Eureka! moment.

Here’s a fun little side fact for you: The Eureka moment is said to be named after the myth that the Greek mathematician Archimedes, having discovered how to measure the volume of an irregular object, leaped out of a public bath, shouting “Eureka! Eureka!” Or, translated: “I’ve found it! I’ve found it!”

Now, getting back to the business of ideation, here are some idea management tips:

  1. Tear down the walls or create dedicated ideation space – Break up teams into people who know each other but are not “that friendly” with each other in order to minimize group think.
  2. Provide a framework to capture ideas – Accept ALL ideas and get them written down on the board. You never know when a concept can be recycled for future use.
  3. Setting and Location – Create a positive environment to delivery pitches, but vary the format as well as locations and times of ideation sessions. Predictability can kill ideation. Mix it up to get people out of their comfort zones.
  4. Info Alchemy – Create and maintain your idea inventory & review it regularly. Build a database of ideas from which new combinations and solutions can be derived.
  5. Include a diverse group of people – In addition to your team, include members such as the sales team, people who interact directly with customers, and maybe even a few select customers themselves to offer their insight into the meeting.
  6. Establish rules of engagement – At some point during the ideation process you will need to inform your team what you are, and are not looking for. Communicate what the overall process will look like, and how ideas will be evaluated.
  7. Recognize and reward contributors – Instill a sense of urgency in every employee about what needs to be done; give them the support they need to feel their good efforts will be rewarded.
  8. Encourage the creative process – The Challenge sponsor must promise that the crowd’s efforts will not be for nothing and that the ideas will all be taken seriously and some will be further developed.

Last but not least start with White Boarding or Brain writing versus just Brainstorming that should follow… ask your Innovation Coach about this.

For additional Tips on Idea Management, see Robert’s Rules of Innovation ™ by Wiley, Spring, 2010.

 

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2013 Innovation Resolution: Make Mistakes

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

At the beginning of every year, I pick one solid quote to live by for the year. This year, my quote comes from Neil Gaiman. Gaiman himself never graduated from college. He never even enrolled in college. Yet, today, he is one of the most celebrated and prolific writers working today.

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.” – Neil Gaiman

 

Innovation is impossible to achieve without taking a necessary amount of risk. To increase initiative and innovation, you have to encourage and even embrace failures and mistakes.

At its core, innovation is an experiment of sorts. It requires a culture of risk, opportunity and challenge.  For every innovative product that comes out of the NPD process, there are plenty of ideas that don’t. There are plenty of failures and plenty of mistakes. What’s important is that companies have a tolerance for failure and encourage risk taking.  It is not enough to encourage employees to take risks. Your organization’s culture must clearly communicate how you will support innovators who take intelligent risks.

No Risk = No Innovation; one of the ten Imperatives to Robert’s Rules of Innovation. Rather than view failure as inherently bad, successful innovation requires that executives and teams commit to learning from each experiment gone bad – and incorporate those teachings into the next endeavor.

For your 2013 New Year’s Resolution, I encourage you to make mistakes!  Do not be afraid of failure.

 

Here are some tips to get you started:

- Encourage.  Promote well-reasoned risk taking. The pursuit of innovation isn’t some fool-hardy flight of fancy. Insist upon a plan to be presented first to ensure understanding and buy-in across the affected organization. Know your tolerance for risk and failure in the pursuit of innovation. Clearly communicate the risk profile you are asking your people to adopt and state why it is important to the organization’s success.

- Test.  In order to develop and test ideas, innovators need robust and consistent, processes and frameworks. True innovation requires thorough testing in pursuit of success. Testing, measurement, and an accounting of what’s been learned – even in failure – brings measurable outcomes from successes and failures alike.

- Trust. Do you – as a CEO or team leader – trust your people to pursue new ideas on behalf of the company? Build a culture of trust in the individual’s pursuits – so long as safety measures are in place to safe guard against failure damaging the organization.

 

Adopt Failure as a Learning Experience!

 

The most successful companies today strive to be entrepreneurial and innovative. However, It is not enough to create a one-time “aha” moment. To get results in Innovation, a structured, repeatable process is essential. Look to all imperatives of Robert’s Rules of Innovation.

 

Here’s to a New Year of Innovation!

 

 

 

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Stay inspired this Holiday Season – The 12 Days of innovation

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

Robert’s Rules of Innovation wishes you and yours a wonderful Holiday Season.

May you stay inspired in 2013!

 

Tis’ the Season for harrowing crowds, spiked eggnog, and delicious holiday feasts. It’s also the time of year for distraction, procrastination, and a lull in business productivity.

Many companies see a lag in productivity and innovation during the holidays. According to a study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, 70% of organizations regard interruption of workflow as their top concern during the holidays. However, the key to business success in the long run, is to create a sustainable culture of innovation. With a little help from the 10 imperatives of Roberts Rules of Innovation, and a fun little jingle inspired by Doblin, may your holiday be both innovative and productive.

For many years, innovation was seen as the development of new products. However, creating new products is only one way to innovate. “Initially developed in 1998, the Ten Types of Innovation showed that companies that integrate multiple types of innovation will develop offerings that are more difficult to copy and that generate higher returns.” – Doblin Group, http://www.doblin.com/thinking/

Without further ado, the 12 Days of “Holiday Innovations” (taken from Doblin), with a few extra inspiring points to make the full 12 days.

 

On the first day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • A Profit Model Innovation: An innovation in the way in which you make money.

Spotify uses the “freemium” model, where the software is provided free of charge, but a premium is charged for advanced features.

 

On the second day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Network Innovation: An innovation using connections with others to create value.

Target works with renowned external designers to differentiate itself.

 

On the third day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Structure Innovation: An innovation in the alignment of your talent and assets.

Whole Foods has built a robust feedback system for internal teams.

 

On the fourth day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Process Innovation: An innovation in superior methods for doing your work.

Zara’s “fast fashion” strategy moves its clothing from sketch to shelf in record time.

 

On the fifth day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Product Performance Innovation: An innovation in distinguishing features and functionality.

Airspray’s instant foam dispensers.

 

On the sixth day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Product System Innovation: Complementary products and services

Mini Cooper’s complementary flatbed pickup and annual oil change.

 

On the seventh day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Service Innovation: Support and enhancements that surround your offerings

“Deliver WOW through service” is Zappos’ #1 internal core value

 

On the eight day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Channel Innovation: How your offerings are delivered to customers and users.

Costco provides it’s members with low-price, quality, and brand-name merchandise.

 

On the ninth day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Brand Innovation: Representation of your offerings and business.

Virgin extends its brand into sectors ranging from soft drinks to space travel

 

On the tenth day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Customer Engagement Innovation: Distinctive interactions you foster.

Wii’s experience draws more from the interactions in the room than on the screen

 

On the eleventh day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

  • Sustainable innovation: Innovate or die – Sustaining success means ongoing renewal of your IP portfolio. Innovation restarts the product life cycle.

Apple’s ipad, ipod, iphone, ihome etc.

 

And finally…

 

On the twelfth day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me:

 

 

 

 

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What drives Innovation and who owns it?

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

Ownership is one of the key imperatives of Robert’s Rules of Innovation. Most would agree that innovation is everyone’s responsibility, but employees can’t innovate unless their leaders empower them to do so. Innovation needs a champion within the organization to push them to take calculated risks, and to step outside their own comfort zone. Without ownership, positive results are almost impossible to achieve.

To find out if you are on track in your companies’ innovation ownership; ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Do you have champions that own projects?
  2. Is there an ownership culture in your company?
  3. Do NPD teams have champions, and at what level of the organization?
  4. Is it clear where the “go to” resource is for innovation?
  5. Is there a central and unified picture of your innovation efforts?

In a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Oliver Wyman (in which 300 senior executives across 17 different industries were interviewed) the greatest challenge in creating a culture of innovation and delivering business results is “leaders creating a climate for innovation”.

The ideal innovation team is knowledgeable, resourceful, and motivated to drive ideation and product development. Every participant along the innovation process’s chain must embrace accountability as a champion of the idea, the development process, the success, and alternatively it’s failure (without risk, there would be no reward). However, it is the team leader/Chief Innovation Officer’s job to marshal forces, and to transform team members into stakeholders. In short, to create a climate for innovation, and encourage a spirit of ownership .

To get some real world insight, on April 26th of this year the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) announced the winners of its 2012 Innovations in Employee Ownership Award, sponsored by TEOCO.

According to their website: “The Innovations in Employee Ownership Award (IEO) seeks to recognize the innovative practices that result from having an engaged workforce of employee-owners, as well as ideas that tie stock to improved company culture or performance.”

While the award recognizes companies in which employees hold company stock options, even companies without such plans can benefit from creating a culture which puts the employee front and center by giving team members ownership in the success of the idea or project.

IEO award winner Lloyd Skinner of Environmental Science Associates explains, “The challenge was how best to integrate the overall firm vision into our every day. We recognized the need to ensure widespread ownership of the vision, values and strategies. It had to be a living process and document- one that everyone could embrace.” To accomplish that, the NCEO notes, the company conducted a business-wide survey, used the feedback to develop the company’s strategic plan, and continued to engage employees through meetings and communication.

Another winner, n-Link, created an animated film that described their innovation and commitment to their ownership culture: “The key to n-Link’s success is our company culture symbolized by our logo, an upside-down organizational chart. Our employee owners think, lead, support, and act like owners to innovate and increase cost saving for our customers.”*

In creating a culture of ownership, maintaining regular organized team meetings with clearly defined objectives is crucial. Key points to remember:

  • Keep a regular date, time, and duration
  • Clearly state meeting objectives in a written, pre-distribution agenda.
  • Include cross-functional teams: marketing, sourcing, purchasing, sales, etc.
  • Review NDP priority levels (high/medium/low).

To learn more about the above ownership points, and for more real-world inspiration read Robert’s Rules of Innovation. Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman, published by Wiley.

*Descriptions and accounts from IEOA awards taken from http://www.nceo.org/Innovations-Employee-Ownership-Award/id/17/

 

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3 Strategies for Efficient and Effective Teamwork

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

 

You’ve just asked your employees to collaborate on an important group project. After taking time to photocopy a stack of handouts about the project, the group waits for a conference room to become available.

Finally seated around the table, the group stares down at their paperwork until the meeting disperses, not to meet again for days or weeks. At its bare essentials, the group project appears to be tedious and inefficient. But, by making a few simple changes, you can promote a creative and results-oriented teamwork process. We say, out with the rickety copiers and cubicles and in with efficient technology for easy and effective collaboration.

Save Time with Scheduling

If multiple groups and projects are using a single conference room or other space, put a room scheduling system in place so that everyone has an equal opportunity to utilize the space. Less time is wasted waiting for the room to become available and more time is devoted to getting work done.

  • If conference rooms are unavailable, consider using portable office partitions to temporarily sequester a part of the office for group work. You don’t have to permanently re-design the entire office; it takes little effort making the setup more flexible and conducive to a group environment.
  • Groups work better when they have a dedicated space to regularly meet. As an added bonus, the freedom to leave meeting notes, work samples, and project ideas in the space can “help teammates maintain a shared project mindset,” according to HBR.org.

Save Money with Technology

With the right technology in your office, you can increase group creativity, cost effectiveness, and productivity. Printing presentations and photocopying enough for the group costs time and money and creates waste. Using a projector to display a power point or presentation saves trees and changes the atmosphere of the meeting.

  • Projectors come in a wide variety of types and prices, from low-end laptop peripherals to high-end ceiling-mounted units. Choose the type that best fits the needs of your office, and it will pay for itself in increased productivity and efficiency.
  • With a projector in use, team members focus together on a single point of attention, emphasizing the collaborative nature of the project.
  • With the entire team focusing on the same information, questions and discussions quickly result. Discussing the presentation as a group “enhances the learning experience,” says one expert from E-How.com.

Promote Sharing with Software

Team members need to keep collaborating after the meeting is over. Tens or hundreds of documents and files can be emailed back and forth amongst members as changes are made, resulting in frustration and confusion over which file is the “right” one. Document sharing software keeps inboxes organized and final products safe.

Many document sharing programs are available for free and can be easily downloaded to your computer.

  • If already using Google, you can take advantage of their free Google Drive. In addition to sharing amongst a large group, Google Drive includes free file editing software. Group members can read and real-time edit files at the same time from different computers with no confusion over finding the “final version.”

When it comes to teamwork, it’s out with the old and in with the new. With the right tools and attitude, you can make employee teamwork more productive, creative, and easier than ever.

Megan Webb-Morgan is a web content writer for Resource Nation. She writes about small business, focusing on topics such as VoIP providers.

 

 

 

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Innovation Balancing Act

Monday, November 12th, 2012

 

On June 15th of this year, Nik Wallenda became the first person ever to walk across the roaring Niagra Falls on a 2-inch wire.

After battling wind swells, and thick mist, Wallenda completed his walk crossing from the United States into Canada.

 

 

He was greeted by a Canadian customs agent who asked, “What is the purpose of your trip sir?”  Wallenda’s response: “To inspire people around the world to follow their dreams and never give up”.

There are many possible roads to innovation. Successful innovation means defining your own road. Much like Nik Wallenda’s walk across Niagra Falls, some of the best innovations come from stepping outside your own comfort zone and balancing the many different facets of innovation.

The formula for success in innovation is about finding the middle ground, walking the tightrope between risk and innovation; between ideation and value creation. The Innovation Balancing Act.

Successfully managing the process of innovation ensures the outcome results in a superior return on investment (ROI).

Risk/Innovation

It’s safe to say that companies are not naturally inclined to try new approaches without clear evidence that those approaches are likely to work. Like many innovators, you may find yourself struggling to innovate in advance of an anticipated economic recovery, while still working to keep costs down in a decidedly uncertain business arena. To increase initiative and innovation, you have to encourage and even embrace failure. You must have a willingness to invest without ROI assurance (see Innovation is Creativity X Risk Taking).

Keep in mind:

  • Milton Hershey started three unsuccessful companies before Hershey’s Chocolate.
  • Michael Jordan was told he was too short to play on his high school varsity basketball team.
  • The Beatles were originally rejected by Decca Recording studios, who said “we don’t like their sound” and “they have no future in show business”.
  • At age 30, Apple’s Board of Directors decided to take the business in a different direction, and Steve Jobs was fired from the company he created. Not only did Jobs go back to his former company, but he changed the market in an astounding way. Jobs claims that his career success and his strong relationship with his family are both results of his termination from Apple.

Are you creating the next Hershey’s or Apple?

 Ideation/Value Creation

The key to optimizing sustainable Innovation programs is value creation. While the creation of the idea is important, the creation of value for the customer is equally paramount. Adding perceived value to a new product or service will drive ROI. The value proposition is the key to successful innovation.
Customer value can be created through the actual value-added of the new product, once you find that delicate balance between cost, price and return. Balance is found, in part, by seeking stakeholder input and customer feedback during development of any innovation process (see Value Creation).Remember:

  • A means to an end – Think of innovation as a process that uses intellectual capital to generate positive business results, new findings and as a result, even more innovation.
  • Key Considerations – Remember to monitor start-up costs, speed to market, scale to volume and other metrics.
  • Customer is king – develop an innovation with high perceived value and strong sales will follow.
  • IP Protection – IP and Patent protection lock in your competitive advantage and support sales results and market share.

You can learn more about the above points, including how to protect your ideas, by reading  Robert’s Rules of Innovation. Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman, published by Wiley.

 

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I.N.N.O.V.A.T.I.O.N : Creating a Culture of Innovation

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Innovation in business is the development of new customer value through solutions that meet new needs, inarticulate needs, or current needs in new ways. Innovation in and of itself is the key to a company’s survival. It is the lifeblood of a company.

That said, innovation is not always easy, and it does not come by itself. It requires a culture and desire to deliver that needs to be nurtured and reinforced by its leadership and a backed by a structured process approach.

The ten imperatives in Robert’s Rules of Innovation (RROI) serve as a guide for starting, nurturing and profiting from a culture of sustained innovation in the workplace. RROI gives easy-to-implement and immediately useful ideas for setting and reaching goals like bringing “at least one new product per year to market.”

There are three key steps to achieve the type of Innovation culture that inspires and creates intra-organization cohesion:

1.    Lead by Example: Since the best business outcomes are achieved by satisfied employees, Management buy-in and support of innovation and ideation is critical. Innovation certainly starts from the people at the top, who must take the responsibility into their own hands to become a champion for change. A strong leader in innovation must think creatively, understand the market, and not only endorse, but push for innovation within their team. Innovation leaders need to provide the right support, both material, time and emotional, to stimulate new product development (NPD).

2.    (Over-)Communicate:  One big corporate myth repeated time and time again, is that over-communication is somehow unhelpful, or ineffective. I am convinced that you can almost never over-communicate.  For leaders it is not enough to just know what to say—but how to say it in a way that persuades people to act. Articulate your grand vision and provide the compelling case for change. Keep it real. Keep it simple. When in doubt, communicate. Where there is a lack of clarity, ask for more clarity.  When you have completed something, send out a progress report. When something is falling behind, let the team know. How are you’re communication skills? Mindtools.com offers a quick quiz to test your communication know-how, and also provides tips to improve: take the quiz!

3.    Silo Demolition: Organization Silos are when individual people, departments, or companies, conduct business in a vacuum without taking into consideration the impact their actions have on the entire organization. The best way to stimulate innovation is to take team members out of their regular comfort zones.  Knock down the barriers that keep silos apart by creating cross-functional teams between groups that don’t typically interact. Dr. Harlan Weisman, chief science and technology officer of Medical Devices & Diagnostics at Johnson & Johnson advocates connecting people who wouldn’t normally work together* to foster innovation. This kind of rich diversity, this mix of communities, leads to unexpected innovation in new and exciting ways.

Here are two great  www.InnovationCoach.com ® suggested resources to aid in building a business culture of innovation:

(Be sure to check out Robert’s Rules of Innovation  as well!)

JournalEngine™  provides your business with its very own, internal social network, and merges that with an online journal for each community member and a built in elearning platform that can deliver any content – in any media format – to your members automatically. Now you can provide ongoing training of employees to sustain the learning process, share best practices real-time, and provide instant, virtual coaching to team members world wide!

Brightidea’s product offerings include WebStorm, Switchboard & Pipeline, as well as the traditional Brightidea Platform. With WebStorm, companies gather and manage ideas from your customers and employees, even the general public. Switchboard is a high powered idea scorecarding application. And, Pipeline is simply the most powerful innovation project management software available.

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Supporting the “R” in R&D

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

When it comes to Research and Development (R&D), a majority of the new product development process involves the “D” from concept to launch. However, the “R” is where most breakthroughs come from – and it is in jeopardy due to recessionary cuts and the short-term pressure for monthly and quarterly results. When companies are laser focused on delivering monthly bottomline goals, research can be left on the back burner.

What are you doing to support research? Are you investing enough time, resources and money? What is your organization’s percentage of R&D spending? Although a high percentage of spending is no guarantee for success, a company needs to dedicate enough energy towards Research. It is, after all, the seed to long-term sustained Innovation.

In some companies, independent research has given way to Open Innovation. We have seen a pattern of organizations that become overly reliant on Open Innovation (see Challenging Open Innovation and Innovation is Creativity X Risk Taking). Although companies are gaining ideas from outside organizations, breakthrough innovations still have to come from within the company through hard work and consistent efforts. The result of over reliance on Open Innovation is smaller, incremental innovations versus market-changing breakthroughs. Efforts become more closely tied to immediate profit concerns when R&D departments are decentralized.

Research ensures companies are making strides towards achieving breakthrough innovations in the long run. Without this kind of “R” attitude there would be no light bulb. Through research, Thomas Edison learned 5,999 times how NOT to do it! There would be no Dyson ball vacuum cleaner, nor would we have made it to the moon or made any other truly game changing Innovation. Supporting the “R” in R&D means investing in your company’s long term goals.

Examine your organization’s:

* R&D spending as a percentage of sales

* Total R&D headcount

* Total patents filed/pending/awarded/rejected

* Number of new products released

* Current-year percentage sales due to new products

For more tips on supporting a culture of sustained Innovation, see “Robert’s Rules of Innovation: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival.”

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Challenging Open Innovation

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

Open Innovation is an effective method for gaining ideas from outside an organization, but in order to achieve long term sustained Innovation, companies need to establish a structured repeatable process. Breakthrough innovations still have to come from within the company through hard work and consistent efforts.

A great example of this is Procter & Gamble Co., which successfully introduced its Open Innovation program to seek help from outside partners in everything from product design to packaging. Collaborating with outside partners increased P&G’s rate of product development, but at the same time it decentralized the company’s research and development (R&D) department. As a result, R&D spending became more closely tied to immediate profit concerns – meaning short term results and smaller, incremental inventions over market-changing breakthroughs. A focus of Concept to Launch.

P&G spent 2.4% of sales on R&D in fiscal year ending 2012 – the same as in the previous year and down from 3% of sales in 2006. Sales of new products also shrank by half between 2003 and 2008. Although high percentages of R&D spending is no guarantee for success in Innovation, P&G cut spending and hoped enough innovation would come from the outside in. The lesson learned? That while Open Innovation is a part of the formula to Innovation success, it cannot “be and tell all” in the process to sustained Innovation. BusinessWeek just covered the challenge on Sept 7, 2012 in “ P&G’s 1000 PhDs Not Enough to Crank Up New Blockbusters.” Companies need an internal structured repeatable innovation process. It’s the dedicated long term R&D efforts that create breakthrough innovations.

Today, P&G is attempting to centralize its R&D efforts to achieve new business creations and innovations – just as it had decades ago. After all, in the company’s 175-year history, it was blockbusters like the first fluoride toothpaste and the first synthetic detergent that made P&G the consumer product giant it is today.

Companies should be weary of the hype and over-reliance on Open Innovation. By creating a structured repeatable process as described in “Robert’s Rules of Innovation,” an organization’s short term results will not overshadow its long term development. The deficiency of Open Innovation is it is not the “be and tell all” in Innovation…but rather one component of the whole.

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Innovation Myths Debunked

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

true-or-falseInnovation is key to a company’s survival, regardless of the size or type of organization. But there are many myths and common misconceptions when it comes to how innovation is achieved. Many people think innovation is all about generating ideas, or ideation. While it’s true that every innovation must start with an idea, it is actually the delivery and execution of processes that lead to sustained Innovation. In fact, when it comes to achieving a culture of innovation, execution may be the biggest challenge.

This Forbes articles offers some food for thought regarding other common myths about innovation:

1. A great leader never fails at innovation. This is certainly a myth because without risk, there can be no innovation and that means failures will inevitably come along the way. Innovation is too much for one leader to tackle alone, so in turn leaders should practice a tolerance for failure and an enthusiasm for risk taking throughout the organization. Make failure a learning experience!

2. Real innovation happens bottoms-up. Innovation efforts require a formal commitment of time and resources. Innovation needs ownership – a champion within the organization – to convince others to step up to the plate. Ideally, the innovation champion should be an officer or executive/management member with respect, authority and the time and passion to drive the project forward.

3. Initiating innovation requires wholesale organizational change. Actually, innovation only requires targeted change and it can be effective to use dedicated teams to take on the task. With the proper training and coaching, designated team members can structure innovative efforts.

Now that we’ve debunked some innovation myths, you may have some questions surrounding how to get started.

  • How do you set the policy?
  • How do you build a quality team and an environment that fosters teamwork?
  • How can you make organizational changes needed to facilitate your efforts?

The ten imperatives in Robert’s Rules of Innovation serve as a guide for starting, nurturing and profiting from a culture of sustained innovation in the workplace. Robert’s Rules of Innovation gives easy-to-implement and immediately useful ideas for setting and reaching goals like bringing “at least one new product per year to market.”

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