We’ve covered some essential ground
to help you prepare your innovation journey, and now it’s time to
put these concepts into action. The innovation formula addresses the
very specific tasks that have to be accomplished for innovation to
emerge from your organization not only as a matter of luck or at
random, but through a concentrated effort that results in sustained
innovation performance. Here you will find the Taking Action steps
along with 25 additional suggestions that we hope will help you to
think and plan creatively and productively about how to make
innovation a reality in your organization.
Change and complexity, the
external world that seems to be different nearly every day.
Risk and the need to come up with
great ideas, and to balance potential rewards with the risks that
come with striving to attain them.
Speed, the imperative to go fast
because the external world isn’t waiting around for you or your
organization, and your competitors would be happy to seize your
market share and make it their own.
Engagement, because it takes the
observations, expertise, and insights of many people working
effectively together to come up with great ideas, and then transform
them into working solutions to problems that your customers really
do want to solve.
Leadership, because no innovations
happen without courage, commitment, support, and often resources,
and these are elements that you, as leader, must provide in highly
visible and emphatic ways.
- And then tools, which can make the path much easier and
faster even if they’re not fancy.
Your Innovation Team
This will be a dynamic group of people from many different
backgrounds who have vital roles to play in support of your firm’s
innovation management
objectives. Without knowing the specifics of your situation, your
organization, and the unique challenges you’re facing, please
consider the following as a suggestion and a general set of jobs or
roles that are useful to the successful pursuit of innovation in a
small organization, that is, your company.
Complexity and Change: The Strategy Manager
We began the discussion of your innovation needs, requirements,
and opportunities by exploring the driving forces of change that are
shaping the world of tomorrow. We talked about technology, science,
culture, the population, and climate change, and these broad trends
as well as some that may be specific to your industry or your
organization present a continually changing panorama that you need to
be paying close attention to, for there’s no telling when an
external change will lead to a specific requirement or challenge for
you.
Getting Started
As you recruit the best people you can find to participate on your
innovation team, and work to engage with them as your teammates,
colleagues, and fellow travelers on the innovation journey, one of
the most important things to remember is that innovation is driven by
divergent thinking, which we also know as lateral thinking, and as a
leader you must specifically encourage, promote, and indeed insist on
the necessity of divergent thinking across all aspects of the work,
from the design and management of your innovation efforts, to the
conduct of the many ongoing innovation projects.
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