I had the honor of keynoting last year at the Imaginatik Innovation Leaders Forum at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City. But, I also had the privilege of hearing great innovation leaders speak from a diverse set of organizations including: Chubb, NYSE, Bombardier, Medco, and the General Services Administration (GSA).

When it comes to innovation, people are always talking about organizations like Apple and Google, but there are a lot of other organizations working hard to achieve innovation excellence.

Fighting for Innovation

Jon Bidwell, Chief Innovation Officer at Chubb, shared some interesting research from the Desai Group that found that 75 percent of successful innovation efforts came as the result of unplanned activities (either internal or external), and only 5 percent of innovation successes were the result of internal, planned innovation activities. This of course would lead you to believe that while diligently pursuing innovation is important, most successful innovations are going to bubble up outside your normal, formal new product development processes.

Insight to remember: You have to choose which fights to pick. We celebrate George Washington’s victories, but at the same time, lesser known is that he was an expert at retreating. This allowed him to save his best army personnel for battles he thought he could win.

Continue reading this article on the American Express OPEN Forum.

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.