Tag Archives: innovation leadership

Eight Innovation Executive Types

Eight Innovation Executive Types

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

Don’t put your leaders in boxes, but don’t ignore the signs neither. Look for traits, behaviors and action – or lack there or. Use the insight to make your leaders and executive teams – and thus your organization – even better at shaping the future.

1. No problem

‪The best scenario = executives who understand, get personally involved‬. Hint: Influence, upgrade other executives, key people together

2. No need

If someone really thinks innovation is not needed, you’re in trouble. Hint: Analyze reasons, consider actions – if any (just walk away?)

3. No results

Been there. It’s not worth it. Hint: Get small wins, back up with data, build credibility

4. No time

Sorry, but day-to-day activities are more important. Hint: Align initiatives, everyone wins w/o extra time needed

5. No money

Minimum budgets for execution, corporate capabilities. Hint: Focus on people, show ROI

6. Talk but no walk

Many talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. Hint: Proof there is more talk than walk, constructive confrontation

7. No responsibility

Talk with Sandra. That’s why she’s our CIO. Hint: It’s is everyone’s responsibility, align initiatives

8. No clue

Sorry, no training on this. I don’t know how it works. Hint: You can work with this, upgrade and support

Thoughts?

Stefan Lindegaard Eight Innovation Executive Types

Image Credit: Stefan Lindegaard, Pexels

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of August 2023

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of August 2023Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are August’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. The Paradox of Innovation Leadership — by Janet Sernack
  2. Why Most Corporate Innovation Programs Fail — by Greg Satell
  3. A Top-Down Open Innovation Approach — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  4. Innovation Management ISO 56000 Series Explained — by Diana Porumboiu
  5. Scale Your Innovation by Mapping Your Value Network — by John Bessant
  6. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Future Employment — by Chateau G Pato
  7. Leaders Avoid Doing This One Thing — by Robyn Bolton
  8. Navigating the Unpredictable Terrain of Modern Business — by Teresa Spangler
  9. Imagination versus Knowledge — by Janet Sernack
  10. Productive Disagreement Requires Trust — by Mike Shipulski

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in July that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last three years:

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of March 2023

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of March 2023Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are March’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Taking Care of Yourself is Not Impossible — by Mike Shipulski
  2. Rise of the Prompt Engineer — by Art Inteligencia
  3. A Guide to Effective Brainstorming — by Diana Porumboiu
  4. What Disruptive Innovation Really Is — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  5. The 6 Building Blocks of Great Teams — by David Burkus
  6. Take Charge of Your Mind to Reclaim Your Potential — by Janet Sernack
  7. Ten Reasons You Must Deliver Amazing Customer Experiences — by Shep Hyken
  8. Deciding You Have Enough Opens Up New Frontiers — by Mike Shipulski
  9. The AI Apocalypse is Here – 3 Reasons You Should Celebrate! — by Robyn Bolton
  10. Artificial Intelligence is Forcing Us to Answer Some Very Human Questions — by Greg Satell

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in February that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last three years:

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

How to Lead Innovation and Embrace Innovative Leadership

How to Lead Innovation and Embrace Innovative Leadership

GUEST POST from Diana Porumboiu

Leaders are bombarded from all directions with advice on how to behave as leaders. It seems like we all know what it takes to lead innovation, at least in theory, yet the attention is mostly focused on famous innovators who oftentimes are the exceptions, rather than the rule.

What’s more, we tend to forget that the greatest, most famous innovators, with all their qualities and contributions to the world, are not necessarily the best of leaders. Great leaders who rarely make the headlines, if they ever do, are usually less controversial.

However, their lack of fame doesn’t diminish their innovativeness. That’s why this article wants to provide some insights into what it takes to lead innovation with the practices, methods, behaviors, and mindsets of successful innovation leaders.

As our previous article focused on nurturing innovative behaviors in employees, this time we’re down to some practical aspects of leading innovation at an organizational level.

Innovative leadership and commitment

McKinsey research sheds some light on what successful innovators get right, and how their organizations become high performing by committing to a set of essential practices.

In short, their survey revealed that the bar is rising among innovators, and during the past five years they have become more successful at innovation as they committed to a larger array of operating models. In 2016 high performing innovators focused mostly on vision and strategy. But In 2021 they pulled further away from competitors by extending their focus to new business models and to scaling their innovations faster and more effectively.

These are all interesting insights into how innovation practices support the growth of organizations. But what are they telling us about specific abilities and behaviors required to lead innovation? To better understand this, let’s look into some of the research conducted by Linda A. Hill, top expert on leadership, change and innovation, who paints a clearer picture of the specific qualities.

  • Adaptability

In times filled with ambiguity and uncertainty, it’s becoming more difficult to make decisions and guide others on the right path. Adaptability might come natural to some people, but others need to cultivate it through practice, exposure to different circumstances and activities. Developing adaptive behavior helps in taking bolder decisions, an essential aspect for innovation.

We’ve seen in other cases how innovators with strong convictions on their vision or new ideas are not very open to new data. This is tough to balance: maintaining your confidence and showing the way for the team, while remaining adaptable.

Practical tip: Instead of building a detailed project plan for an innovation project, try building a plan based around clear goals and time framed milestones, but leave room for the team to figure out the path to get to them.

  • Comfort with ambiguity

This is closely linked to the previous point because to become comfortable with ambiguity you also have to adapt and operate in a somehow hazy and confusing reality. This is very important especially in the early beginnings of innovation, when the fuzzy front-end stage of the innovation process creates a lot of ambiguity.

But as you might know, innovation means to dive in the unknown from time to time. As a leader you need to navigate the tough road of visualizing the goals for the team while admitting that you might not always know the way. At the same time, you want to get the team on the same journey and help them feel comfortable with that ambiguity.

Practical tip: Managing innovation is one way of becoming more comfortable with ambiguity. We created a free, in-depth guide on how to manage innovation which you might find useful. This is a comprehensive toolkit that can help you plan your strategy, build your processes, and drive more innovation in the oganization. You can find it here.

  • Curiosity

Curiosity pushes innovators to new discoveries. It’s also what fuels learning and change. As a leader you need to be able to learn and prepare for the future. Sure, curiosity, even more than adaptability can’t be easily measured or taught. But curious leaders should always ask questions, and not just any questions.

The best innovators understand things deeply and address root problems, not just surface level symptoms.

Practical tip: Whether you are naturally curious or trying to boost curiosity in the team, the five whys is an effective technique for getting to the root of underlying problems. The idea behind this technique is to ask “why” five times in a row, whether you think you previously received a good answer or not.

Viima Five Whys

  • Creativity

Creativity plays an important role in innovation, whether it fosters novel ideas or ingenious solutions. However, being creative is not enough to make innovation happen. Many leaders consider creativity an important skill for leading innovation. This begs the question: should leaders be the most creative ones, or should they work to enable creativity in others?

The answer lies somewhere in the middle, as creative leadership is essential in bringing clarity and purpose to the team. A creative leader can change perceptions and show the way. However, the strength of leaders who lead for innovation lies in managing for creativity. So as a leader you don’t have to be the source of all genius ideas but engage people at the right time to do the creative work.

To sum this up, there is a role for leaders in creative work, but not in the traditional sense of generating ideas and asking others to implement them.

Practical tip: If you want to spur creativity in your team try setting constraints and challenge the team to come up with solutions despite perceived challenges. Inevitably, the environment in which you operate will come with some constraints, whether those are operational, financial, legal or of a different nature.

Don’t look at constraints as negative things. Research shows that innovators usually succeed because of constraints, not despite of them. Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder & CEO believes “constraints create creativity” and without some of those he probably wouldn’t have done half the creative decisions that would lay the foundations for Airbnb’s remarkable success.

Practical steps to lead innovation

If leading innovation were that simple, we’d have more leaders and organizations excelling at it. However, as difficult as it might sound it’s not impossible and luckily, we have plenty of examples to learn from.

survey conducted by Forbes among 100 innovation leaders revealed that their success lies in actively trying to build and shape their organization for the future. This means that they actively challenge the status quo, experiment, ask questions, are keen observers and engage in conversations with people who are very different from them.

This discovery work of observing, learning, and experimenting leads to better decision making on less risky ideas with higher impact.

Start with the big picture…

The best innovation leaders aren’t just visionaries, who set big goals that show the way to the future. They also enable people to work through the challenges by removing barriers and empowering them to hop on the same boat towards that future.

  • Start with the strategy because any innovation program should be anchored to an organization-wide strategy. Just with the vision and without a tangible business case you don’t really have innovation.
  • Come up with a plan that stirs everyone in the same direction.

Many innovators, especially those who disrupt their industry, are not the best executors and sometimes they don’t have to be, if they have the right people on the job. To this end, collaboration and co-creation are essential, just as it is the empowerment of those who are knowledgeable to make important decisions to get to those goals.

A high-level plan which serves as a good example of how innovators set clear, ambitious goals is Elon Musk’s series of Master Plans, from 2006, 2016 and the 2022 one, to be released soon. These plans played an important role in Tesla’s success, giving a clear direction for the future illustrating how they are actually going to move towards fulfilling their mission of accelerating world’s transition to sustainable energy.

Tesla Unsplash

Of course, there’s more to a plan than an ambitious statement, but people need to be inspired, to feel that through their work they can change the world around them. That being said, an ambitious plan still needs to be flexible to some degree to allow for different ways of achieving it.

The cleverness of these master plans lies in their simplicity which makes them easy to understand and remember. They capture the big picture but still leave room for the team to find the best way of accomplishing them.

…then zoom in on the details

  • To achieve those ambitious goals, leaders need innovative teams, and to nurture internal talent.

With internal scouting systems organizations can develop the skills of existing teams. As is the case with innovation, if you can’t buy something, you have to build it yourself.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to talk about the winning strategies in the war for talent, but there should be a stronger focus on nurturing existing talent and creating the capabilities to innovate through talent development programs, learning opportunities, and a positive employee experience.

Innovation can come from various areas of the organization, and it all comes down to how employees are led to innovate. Former Volkswagen CMO, Luca de Meo managed to unify VW’s branding by discovering and nurturing the mutual sense of purpose of the employees.

He achieved this by involving employees in the creation of a centralized brand. For example, one brainstorming workshop was organized as a design lab to prototype, test, analyze and openly discuss ideas with employees from different departments and areas of expertise.

Engaging employees in innovation work can unlock the wealth of knowledge in an organization. Empowering them to innovate it’s even more powerful, as employees become innovators themselves. As Linda Hill also observes, people’s talents are not used to their fullest, but when it eventually happens, the results show up as well. In Volkswagen’s case, de Meo’s approach was fruitful, the brand moving up the global ranks from 55th to 39th.

…and take one step at a time towards that goal

The last piece to the puzzle, and maybe the most important is to take things one at a time while keeping your options open. There’s a lot of emphasis on the bigger picture, planning and strategy, but these won’t eliminate ambiguity.

So, the best way forward is to keep that vision in mind and help the organization move towards it. You don’t need to know each step in your path in advance, as long as you keep up a good pace and keep moving in the right direction, one step at a time.

Like with all innovative work, you’ll encounter challenges and things won’t ever go as planned, so be prepared to alter the initial plan. That’s why it’s not advised to put all your eggs in one basket. As John Carter explains, you need two interlinked systems that can help you select and grow the best products or ideas.

  • An annualsystematic portfolio planning process, tied to budgeting, and
  • An ongoing, agile, portfolio management process

Another thing to consider is the modular approach, which helps speed up learning. As Rita McGrath explains in this recent article, making your offerings modular you can begin to generate benefits early in the projects’ life. Put together, these two approaches are very helpful in building capabilities that provide economies of scale while still remaining flexible.

Leading innovation by example

In the following section we didn’t go for single success stories of leaders because systematic innovation doesn’t come down to one person. Instead, we’ll show at a higher level how leadership models enabled everyone in the organization to turn innovation into an everyday habit.

Netflix

Even though Netflix might go through a rough patch, we can’t deny its leading position as an innovator in the entertainment industry. From a DVD sales and rental company to a global streaming service, the current organizational structure at Netflix provides plenty of freedom and responsibility to its employees.

Netflix is divided in three main divisions and is maintaining the principles of total quality management: the functional team (CEO, legal, content communication etc.), geographical teams (in charge of local and international streaming) and the product teams who ensures the effectiveness of operations. This unitary form, the corporate headquarters direct strategies implemented in geographical divisions.

Viima Netflix Org Structure

  • The first division, the functional one, is led by Reed Hastings, CEO and Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO. They meet regularly with the R-staff, the group made of Netflix veterans and the general counsel.
  • The next in line is the E-staff group, made of executives who oversee different teams within the company. They each have a different area of focus, like platform engineering, regional marketing and content.
  • There is also a group of directors, below the vice presidents, who meet to review the current state of the company.

The flat organizational structure at Netflix encourages a culture of independent decision making, openness, high effectiveness, and flexibility. This approach to leadership is based on their business need of staying ahead of the curve by making decisions fast.

Apple

Apple is to this day one of the most innovative companies, and much of its success is attributed to Steve Jobs. However, in this case we won’t focus on his leadership skills, which are rather controversial, but on his legacy and how the company’s structure has evolved over the years.

What makes Apple unique is that it’s organized around expertise, rather than the traditional business units.

This requires open mindedness from senior leaders, to inspire, and influence colleagues to contribute towards the goals. Ultimately, decisions are made in a coordinated manner by the most qualified people. There are no general managers at Apple. Instead, there are expert leaders who need to have 3 main characteristics.

  • Deep expertise.

It’s easier to train an expert to be a manager than to train a manager to be an expert. So, at Apple experts lead experts. They have over 600 experts working on camera hardware technology, and they are led by Graham Townsend (a camera expert himself).

  • Deep immersion in the details.

In Apple’s case leaders should know the details of their organization 3 levels down and be able to push, probe and smell an issue and know which issue is important and where to focus attention. For example, they are very particular with the shape of the corners of their devices. Apple leaders insist on continuous curves, a small difference but executing it demands that they commit to precise manufacturing.

This relentless pursuit of perfection is what differentiates some companies. Even though overdoing it can lead to micromanagement and make feel employees like they are not trusted, you need to strike a balance between the two.

  • Willingness to collaboratively debate.

Having so many teams of experts requires a lot of back and forth and debate. An overly polite culture can hinder creativity, as people might not speak up because they don’t want to upset someone. So, creative abrasion is very important in collaborative work.

To develop the dual lens camera portrait mode, Apple had 40 teams of specialists working together and they disagreed, pushed back, promoted or rejected ideas and build on top of each other’s ideas.

At the same time, leaders should be able to make decisions even when there’s no data available. For this, they first have to listen to everyone. It might be that there is no agreement or reliable information that can help in the decision making, but that’s where good leaders excel and what Jobs did at Apple as well. He used his own judgment to make decisions, even though not everyone was happy about those. Otherwise, debates could go on forever, become bottlenecks or compromises that lead to substandard results.

Apple Unsplash

However, there are also challenges that come with Apple’s managerial structure, which is not very common in other companies. When organizations grow, their leadership also needs to adapt and scale accordingly.

For example, while the number of employees grew eight times, the number of VPs reporting to executives only doubled. To handle all the new responsibilities, they could no longer be immersed in the details. So, they decided to focus on a few core activities that bring most value and those that require less attention are pushed down to people who are trained to handle them. That being said, leadership models need to be flexible in any innovative, growing organization.

Conclusion

With the right leadership, processes and structures in place, innovation can thrive in your organization. As leaders is important to set ambitious goals which can inspire and show the way for your team.

Innovation can seem like an insurmountable task. Even though the details matter and aspiring to excellence is important, you always have to keep focused on the end goal and take one step at a time towards that. At the same time, keep an open mind, stay curious and inspire others to follow suit.

In the end, leading innovation also means building the capabilities, processes and environment that foster innovation and encourage others to become innovators.

This article was originally published in Viima’s blog.

Image credits: Viima, Unsplash, Pexels

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What Can Leaders Do to Have More Innovative Teams?

What Can Leaders Do to Have More Innovative Teams?

GUEST POST from Diana Porumboiu

Talent is one of the main drivers of innovation and its scarcity and high value makes it a frequent cause for concern for leaders from all over the world. And for good reason. Quality talent can make a business up to 800 times more productive.

But some of the biggest managerial challenges of senior leaders are finding the right talent and encouraging innovative behavior in employees. In fact, only 23% of managers and senior leaders believe they have good methods in place to acquire and retain the best talent.

So, how do you find the right people, retain them, and get them to drive more innovation? Putting together innovative teams and making sure that you have the best talent in the organization is not just an HR responsibility. From top executives to managers and leaders, they all have a part to play in the quest for talent that can help the organization drive more innovation.

To this end, we wrote this article for people in large organizations, whether they are innovation managers, leaders, or executives, who want to build talented teams that can actually drive more innovation.

We’ll go through some important points on the characteristics of innovative employees and provide some practical tips on how to get better talent and tap into the potential of current workforce to drive more innovation.

Why organizations need more employees involved in, and trained for, innovation work

We know that at a global level there is a shortage of highly skilled employees, and that even large companies with all their resources, don’t excel at finding and retaining talent.

Even though unemployment is still a big problem in many areas of the world, the rapid pace of change in recent times have showed that there is also an increasing shortage of talent.

Before 2020, a Gallup survey revealed that 73% of respondents were thinking of leaving their job. The pandemic hit, along with a crisis for many workers, but also with a wakeup call for other employees. And the Great Resignation, where 25 million people in the US quit their jobs in the second half of 2021, is proof of these unpredictable changes.

So, maybe now more than ever organizations should make sure that they are prepared and that they have the right workforce to help them thrive in the future.

Finding top talent is difficult, it takes time and it’s expensive. There is no way around it, organizations need more people once they start growing. At the same time, inside most companies there are also huge opportunities to unlock value from the existing workforce.

  • Untapped internal innovation potential

As it’s becoming more difficult to recruit top talent who can make more innovation happen, businesses that lack the knowledge and support for future growth are on shaky grounds.

But the conversations around the war for talent are not enough to provide real solutions on how to get more people involved in innovation work. Of course, as businesses grow, the need for more people to support that growth is obvious. However, when it comes to innovation capabilities, we don’t hear that often discussions around internal scouting and training of the existing workforce who can turn into assets for innovation.

How to tap into the full potential of employees? The approaches can vary, but a good start that works for almost any company, is to include everyone in the conversation, create a sense of belonging and give them a voice. This option is always worth pursuing and for a more in-depth guide on how to do that you can also check our article on collecting ideas from frontline employees.

Include everyone in the conversation, create a sense of belonging and give them a voice.

A second approach is to actually have them implement and drive innovation, but this is more complicated and requires a very structured approach and well implemented innovation management processes.

Either way, employees would benefit from training on innovation as is understood and applied within your organization. A common understanding of what innovation is for you, as a company, and how to achieve it, can reveal more potential than you first imagined you had.

There is still some controversy around the topic, and some believe that not everyone can be an innovator. While that can be true to some extent, innovation comes in different forms and shapes and almost everyone can contribute to innovation in one way or another if the context allows for it. Which takes us to our next point.

  • Innovation can be everyone’s job

While innovation might not come natural to most people, it doesn’t mean that we can’t learn the skills and mindset required for it. Even though not everyone has the curiosity and openness to explore new opportunities and ways of improving their work, they should still be encouraged and incentivized to be more innovative. And we believe it all starts at the top.

Innovation should be approached both top-down and bottom-up, but unless it starts from the top with great leaders who set the tone and support innovation, the chances of success are slim. At the same time, the front-end of innovation is where everyone can and should contribute, while the back-end execution requires more specialized skills and knowledge.

Viima Innovation Management Funnel

The bottom line here is that you can achieve a lot more innovation if you give everyone an opportunity to contribute. Most ideas, especially those that lead to incremental innovation come from the front-line employees, as they are the ones in close contact with your customers, products, and services. Even though most of these won’t necessarily change the trajectory of your business, when you put them together, they can make a huge difference in the performance of the core business.

  • Knowledge — source of innovation and competitive advantage

Speaking of competition, intangible assets, more prominently knowledge, are one of the major competitive advantages for organizations. Even more, tacit knowledge, the know-how, wisdom and experiences of employees which is not codified or explicit, represents an important driver for innovation.

As soon as you start working on harnessing that knowledge by creating the environment that enables transparent communication and flow of information, you will have more people involved in everyday innovation activities like idea challenges.

If you promote an innovation culture

“Even if people themselves might not be innovators, they are still likely to support innovation instead of blocking it by being resistant to change.”

So, if we look at it from this perspective, everyone in the organization can contribute to innovation with the right leaders at the helm, some good skills development programs, and a sound scouting system in place. But for that, we first need to understand what makes an employee innovative and what are the traits that define innovative thinking.

What makes employees innovative?

In simple words, innovation stems from a mix of creativity and action. However, even if creativity is important, it is often overrated compared to execution, which makes change happen and gets things done. To get to execution in the corporate setting, you also need good communication and collaboration.

At a macro level, things seem simple but at the micro level, the individual’s set of skills and traits required for innovation can’t be summed up in a couple of words.

Employee Pondering

So, let’s see what makes someone innovative, what to pay attention to, and what skills innovators should learn and develop. This can help you assess whether some of your team members excel in some areas or if they need to refine other skills or behaviors.

  • Growth Mindset

The road to innovation is paved with uncertainty and risk, so innovators will always need to push into the unfamiliar. This comes natural to those with a growth mindset, who are usually inclined to be more open to change. On the other hand, those with a fixed mindset will be more reluctant to try something new or explore beyond what they are used to.

In short, a growth mindset is compatible with innovation because those who possess it, believe their abilities can be developed through hard work and dedication. Innovation work will most certainly mean that you will fail at some point, or your assumptions will prove to be false. Those with a growth mindset are resilient, curious, and eager to learn, so such failures won’t hold them back.

There is a common misconception that a fixed mindset can’t be transformed, since it is after all, fixed. The good news is that neuroscience has proved the plasticity of our brains, which means that behaviors and mindsets can be changed, even at a more mature age. But more on that, in the next section.

  • Skills

As mentioned earlier, if you want to build an innovation culture and inspire innovative thinking within your organization, it’s not enough to have the most creative people. There are certain skills that encourage the proactive “doers” to act and execute on innovation.

Some of these skills for innovation are critical thinking, which helps with problem solving, curiosity, which allows for exploration and learning, good communication which enables collaboration and teamwork, and of course the hard skills necessary to actually implement innovation.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of skills for innovation, but they can be seen as the basis on which people can build and improve their skills. The key thing to remember is that for some types of innovation, you want people that can move things forward and get them done.

  • Values

Maybe less pragmatic, but just as important in getting more people on the innovation boat, are the personal values. Values guide behavior and explain behavioral patterns. We tend to act instinctively according to our core values and according to empirical studies, certain values foster innovative behavior while others might impede it.

Our previous article on cultural differences and innovation explains more in depth the relation between people’s beliefs and innovation, so we won’t go too much into detail here.

While some theories like the Theory of Basic Human Values of Schwartz or Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory stem from cultural psychology and communication, they have been extended and applied to economics and the corporate world as well.

For example, one of the ten broad personal values identified by Schwartz, self-direction, is defined as someone being independent in thought, inclined to choose, create, and explore. On the other hand, someone that values conformity and security more, will be less inclined to accept change, or challenge the status quo.

Schwartz Theory Basic Values

Source: https://i2s.anu.edu.au/resources/schwartz-theory-basic-values

These can be measured through the Schwartz Value survey and the Portrait Values Questionnaire. Of course, this is just one practical method, and it has its limitation, as it’s not always easy to apply in a corporate context. However, these methods can still be helpful in providing some guidelines on personality traits and values that are more inclined toward innovation.

So, let’s move from theory to practices that can encourage and nurture innovative behaviors in employees.

How to nurture innovative behavior in your organization

Most leaders concerned about the future of the organization they work for have asked themselves at some point how to unlock more innovation potential and it’s not easy to find the right answer. That’s because there is no single correct answer, but rather a mix of strategy, leadership approaches, resources, and practices.

The first noteworthy element that ignites innovation behavior is as simple as having the ambition to pursue specific goals that highlight the role and value of change and innovation.

Having the right goals that provide focus and direction is essential to set the stage and make it explicit that everyone has a role to play in improving the way they, and the company at large, operate and behave.

The next steppingstone that reinforces and support the goals are the processes that can lead to change and innovation. These are essential in strengthening teams that work on those goals and make things happen. Such processes will look different for each organization. Whether it’s a specific time allocation like the 15% or 20% rule for innovation, or idea management processes, these are crucial for long-term success.

Now, there are also other methods that are essential in nurturing an innovative behavior and these are mostly related to leaders’ soft skills and their ability to create the environment where innovation can flourish.

  • Foster a growth mindset

As already mentioned, there is a myth that you either have the growth mindset or you don’t. In fact, brains keep on changing, together with the cognitive abilities, and a fixed mindset can be developed into a growth one. How to achieve this in practice?

Start by identifying the fixed mindset patterns in your employees. Is someone giving up quickly? Maybe they avoid challenges and prefer the comfort zone, or they avoid negative feedback and are always prepared with the answer “It’s not my job” or “I’m not good with words, or creative enough”. These are all signs that point to a fixed mindset.

To change this, set smart goals and offer learning opportunities that are aligned with those goals. People with a fixed mindset usually hang on to old habits because they had success with those, and they’ve been measured based on them. So, create reward systems that encourage new ways of working and challenge people to take risks.

People with a fixed mindset usually hang on to old habits because they had success with those, and they’ve been measured based on them.

For example, Tata Group worked on developing an innovation culture for many years and as part of their initiative they have a prize for the best failed idea. The purpose is not to fail for the sake of failing but to encourage innovation.

Such initiatives should come from leaders who are willing to address the root causes of their employees’ uncertainty and reluctance to novelty. However, to be able to implement similar initiatives, leaders should take a step back and consider another element, which is critical: psychological safety in the workplace.

  • Psychological safety

The concept of psychological safety dates to 1999 and it refers to the belief that one will not be punished or shamed if speaking up or coming up with ideas, questions or concerns. Studies show that when employees feel comfortable to challenge the status quo without fearing negative consequences, organizations can innovate faster and adapt well to change.

Leaders have the greatest impact on team climate, and they have the power to influence internal behaviors more than anyone. A McKinsey survey reveals how leaders should develop their skills through leadership programs that focus on specific skills. Among the skills that have the biggest influence on creating psychologically safe work environments are the open dialogue skills, sponsorship, and situational humility.

While the theory helps us understand the importance of psychological safety in the workplace, it doesn’t provide practical answers. So, let’s briefly look at some concrete examples that leaders can put in practice to inspire more trust, and safety.

A good place to start is Laura Delizonna’s framework for psychological safety, which is based on four key pillars: Care, Courage, Co-elevate, Commitment.

Laura Delizonna Psychological Safety Framework

Care

Care is about empathy and the openness to understand one another even if you don’t agree. Showing care means practicing active listening, showing interest and empathy.

For example, some organizations have team rituals like check-ins. One technique is the PIE check-in when each person in the team takes a few seconds to talk about their Physical, Intellectual and Emotional state.

Another technique you could use is the Rose Bud Thorn, where you ask each person to share a positive of the week (rose), something that emerged (the bud) and something that is challenging (the thorn).

There are other techniques and most of them work well even in remote environments. Also, something as simple as coffee chats, ask me anything sessions, sharing rituals like celebrating birthdays or holidays can all help in showing care and empathy. Leaders should constantly offer their support, assess people’s needs and burnout risk.

Courage

To inspire courage, leaders first have to show courage. They should walk the talk and be open with their vulnerabilities, mistakes, and challenges. So, while it might be difficult for some, true leaders show the way by admitting when they don’t know something, asking questions and showing interest to learn and improve their skills. Owning errors publicly and as soon as they happen has a big impact on team morale and attitude towards failure.

As a leader you can share your learning journey where you include the goal, the adversities you faced, experiments you made and failed and lessons you learned.

Co-elevate

Co-elevate is about inspiring and empowering others to bring their best, not just cooperate. Study shows that leaders think they give recognition 80% of their time, while team members feel they receive recognition 30% of the time. There is a disconnect in how we communicate.

Some best practice to co-elevate is to express appreciation that is frequent and specific. What do you appreciate in someone’s approach? How did their work influence the results and you personally? What specific behaviors can you praise?

Just as important is to solicit input and how you do that makes all the difference. Instead of leaving room at the end of a meeting for people to add something, change the approach to ask opposing views, or what someone would do in your place, etc. Remember to thank those who speak up and give an opposing argument.

As you can see, there are many nuances when communicating, providing, and asking for feedback. Once you create procedure and different pathways that allow for contribution, things will get easier.

Commitment

Commitment is what brings everything together. Leaders need to commit to experiments and to try to do something differently. Set goals for things you want to change. You can start with one experiment every day.

Psychological safety and a growth mindset are essential if you want to unleash the innovation potential of employees. However, nurturing them takes time, so you won’t see results overnight. It’s important to remember that as leaders you set the scene and lead the way. Unless you take baby steps to display the innovative behavior you expect from others, you won’t be able to move the needle in the right direction.

Conclusion

Neuroscience taught us that even as adults, our brains are malleable, so if some employees might seem resistant to change, disengaged or lack creativity, first ask yourself if there is something you can do differently. Maybe they don’t have the environment where they can flourish, or they are not led by people who allow them to shine.

Inevitably, there’s always going to be someone who resists change, who can’t be converted to a growth mindset or innovative thinking. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. Their support can contribute to incremental innovation and continuous improvements. It’s also more cost-efficient to train existing workforce than always looking for something you believe it’s missing.

When you’ll inevitably have to scout externally for new talent to support innovation work, consider a few key elements: the employer brand, innovation culture, leadership training programs, as well as the processes and mechanisms that facilitate innovation.

This article was originally published in Viima’s blog.

Image credits: Viima, Unsplash, Pexels

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Navigating the Challenges of Leading Innovation

Navigating the Challenges of Leading Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the fast-paced world of business today, leading innovation is not just a strategic advantage but a necessity. However, guiding an organization through the complexities of innovation comes with its unique challenges. In this article, we will explore the core challenges leaders face and how they can successfully navigate through them using real-world examples.

Understanding the Innovation Ecosystem

Innovation is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It requires a deep understanding of the ecosystem, including internal dynamics, market competition, and global trends. Leaders must be adept at fostering a culture that supports creativity, risk-taking, and resilience.

Challenge 1: Cultivating an Innovative Culture

One of the foremost challenges is cultivating an environment where innovation can thrive. It involves not only encouraging ingenious ideas but also supporting their development and implementation.

Case Study: Google’s Innovation Culture

Google has long been revered for its innovative culture, credited in no small part to its “20% time” policy, where employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on projects they’re passionate about. This approach has led to the creation of successful products like Gmail, Google News, and AdSense. By allowing teams the freedom to explore and experiment, Google has effectively positioned itself as a leader in innovation.

Lessons Learned: Encourage experimentation and foster a nonjudgmental environment where ideas can bloom without fear of failure. Let passion and curiosity drive development.

Challenge 2: Overcoming Resistance to Change

Resistance to change is a natural human reaction that can stifle innovation if not properly managed. Addressing this resistance calls for intentional communication, highlighting the benefits of innovation, and involving team members in the change process.

Case Study: Procter & Gamble’s Cultural Shift

Procter & Gamble (P&G) faced significant resistance when it attempted to instill a new innovation culture focused on “Connect + Develop.” By seeking ideas from external sources, including consumers and inventors, P&G was able to expand its innovation pipeline. Initially met with skepticism, this approach eventually led to the successful development of Swiffer and other leading products.

Lessons Learned: To combat resistance, leaders must clearly communicate the vision and demonstrate how innovation efforts align with organizational goals. Involving employees in the innovation process can further reduce barriers and create buy-in.

Concluding Thoughts: Stepping into the Future

Leading innovation is no small feat. It demands courage, creativity, and a strategic mindset. By understanding the potential roadblocks and leveraging best practices from successful innovators, leaders can pave the way for transformative change. As we look to the future, the ability to navigate the intricacies of innovation will distinguish the thriving organizations from those that fall behind.

As we embrace the challenges and opportunities that come with leading innovation, remember that it is often the journey — with all its trials and triumphs — that cultivates the most impactful changes.

Bottom line: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Managing Both the Present and the Future

Managing Both the Present and the Future

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our last blog, we described the three characteristics that offer senior executives a “unique unfreezing opportunity” from the disruptive COVID-19 hiatus and the rate of exponential technological change. These involved developing a future-ready company that builds upon pandemic-related accomplishments and re-examines (or even reimagines) the organization’s identity, how it works, and how it grows. This means that every organization, regardless of its size and specialization, requires its leaders, and teams paradoxically, to be both competent and confident and be both human-centered and customer-centric, in effectively managing both the future and the present.

Simultaneously, we all need to ensure that they capture the best of what we’ve all learned to keep the digital momentum going and, at the same time, initiate the shift to quantum –  by exploring, discovering, identifying, and unleashing the possibilities and opportunities of a post-COVID-19 world. To maximize, what McKinsey & Co describes as a “turning point” for economies: where new patterns of consumer and business behavior have emerged at extraordinary speed and can be sustained over long periods of time because digitization has accelerated change faster than many believed previously possible.

Unlearn, relearn, reskill and upskill

Reinforcing that managing both the future and the present requires generating new ways of harnessing and maximizing people’s collective and connective intelligence by:

  • Investing in helping people unlearn, relearn, reskill and upskill to meet the needs of jobs transformed by technologies created by globally accelerated digitization.
  • Helping people create vital new references and landing points for a future that they may not have previously imagined, and by;
  • Supporting them in being comfortable with the discomfort this brings.

Focusing on developing an organizational culture that is more adaptive and innovative, where people operate as a connected, mentally tough, and emotionally agile workforce; and are enabled and empowered to dance at the edge of their comfort zones, co-create value, deliver a great customer experience and succeed in a transforming market.

Both Human and Customer-Centric

Through developing both human-centric and customer-centric relationships that:

  • Enable people to shift from human-centered doing to human-centered being through connecting compassionately, creatively, and courageously through reciprocity and collaboration. Acknowledging that consumers have shifted largely to digital channels and many people are at home “nesting” and at the same time “languishing” in their remote and virtual workplaces.
  • Empower people to become customer-centric by co-creating collective value that customers appreciate and cherish. Acknowledging that the virus has interrupted, accelerated, and even reversed longstanding and conventional consumer and business habits.
  • Engage people in co-creation and in taking collective action to ensure that the rebound is not uneven. Enabling people to reboot creatively by maximizing the opportunities arising from the acceleration in the adoption of digital, automation, and other technologies.

As well as using innovation to add value to the common good in ways that improve humanity, by focusing on people, profit and planet.

Seizing the opportunity – it’s paradoxical

Developing future fitness requires people to not only unlearn, and see the world with fresh eyes, it also involves being able to sense and perceive it through a paradox lens; which helps us shift our focus across polarities of thought, from binary and competitive to critical, conceptual, and complementary thinking.

An often-quoted example is that as humans, we need to both exhale and inhale, we need to both rest and be active, rather than just do one or the other, or simply just either exhale or inhale, either rest or be active.

This means that a paradox is formed by contradictory yet interrelated elements that consistently coexist, and as leaders, teams, and coaches, we need to master this to develop the capability of managing both the future and the present simultaneously.

Embracing paradox

Embracing paradox involves being able to consciously shift cognitively from perceiving a prescriptive “either/or” world, which makes things black and white, right and wrong, mandatory or voluntary.

Towards embracing both poles, or polarities, and finding a balance within the dis-equilibrium.

As leaders, teams, and coaches, to seek equilibrium, by balancing both an ability to maximize and minimize people by exerting both powers over them, and by sharing power with them, to unleash both possibility and necessity thinking.

Dancing with dis-equilibrium

Letting go of an “either/or” perspective creates the safe spaces that allow people to flow with “what is” and to then evoke and provoke our thinking to perceive “what could be” possible.

By leading through dancing with dis-equilibrium to co-create a state of equilibrium to be an effective, agile, and creative leader and team member in a disruptive VUCA world.

In ways that allow people to confront and flow with tension and conflict, scrutinize any inherent contradictions by evoking and provoking creative ways in which the competing and complementary demands can be met in managing both the future and the present simultaneously.

Being both human-centric and customer-centric

Developing future-fitness requires leaders, teams, and coaches to be both human-centric and customer-centric simultaneously – to co-create organizations that integrate the values of human-centered design as a framework to balance the needs of the organizations with the needs of its users, customers, and communities, and for the common good and future of humanity.

Being human-centered

Being human-centered is also defined as being “marked by humanistic values and devotion to human welfare” which means that to create more human-centered leaders, teams, and people – we need to know how to shift the paradigm both from human-centered doingand towards human-centered being by:

  • Helping people explore and embrace their own humanness.
  • Being willing, enabled, and empowered to develop reciprocal and collaborative relationships.
  • Connecting to ourselves and others openly through how we feel, express and tap into our own emotions and those of others we interact with.
  • Being altruistic in serving the common good in ways that potentially add value to the future of humanity.

Being customer-centric

Customer-centricity is a way of doing business that fosters a positive customer experience at every stage of the customer journey. It aims at building customer loyalty and satisfaction leading to referrals for more customers. Anytime a customer-centric business makes a decision, it deeply considers the effect the outcome will have on its customers and users.

To create more customer-centered leaders, teams, and people – we need to shift the paradigm from seeing business as both a source of revenue, wealth, and profit and towards customers being the reason and source of business success, or not, by:

  • Developing a customer-centric purpose, vision, and mission that every leader, team, and team member is aligned to, and has a line of sight to, and is able to contribute towards its achievement.
  • Anticipating customer and potential user needs.
  • Ensuring that there are a rigorous and regular customer and cultural assessment metrics and feedback mechanisms in place.
  • Ensuring that leadership and team capabilities to adapt and grow are aligned to achieve the purpose, vision, mission, and goals.
  • Enabling every leader and team member to connect with, and listen to customers, and then build products that meet customer needs, anticipates customer wants, and provide a level of service that keeps customers coming through the door and advocating for the brand or business.

Harnessing collective and connective intelligence

Reinforcing that managing both the future and the present requires generating new ways of harnessing and mobilizing people’s collective and connective intelligence in ways that ultimately co-create organizations that integrate the values of both innovation and human-centered design as a framework.

This helps balance the needs of the organizations with the needs of its users, customers, and communities, as well as enables leaders, teams, and organizations to collaborate towards contributing to the common good and to the future of humanity.  It will also help people co-create both vital new reference points and landing strips for a future that they may not have previously imagined, and support them in being comfortable with the discomfort this brings.

This is the next blog series of blogs, podcasts, and webinars on Developing a Human-Centric Future-Fitness organization.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about The Coach for Innovators Certified Program, a collaborative, intimate, and deep personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 8-weeks, starting October 19, 2021. It is a blended learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of a human-centered approach to innovation, within your unique context. Find out more.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Developing a Future-Fitness Focus

Developing a Future-Fitness Focus

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In a recent article “Organizing for the future: Nine keys to becoming a future-ready company” McKinsey and Co, suggested that the Covid-19 pandemic has added to the pressure to change that has been growing for many years, which is now at a tipping point. Where the most forward-looking leaders and teams see a larger opportunity – the chance to build on pandemic-related accomplishments and re-examine and reimagine the organisation’s identity, how it works, and how it grows. Referring to new research on the organizational practices of 30 top companies, they highlighted how businesses can best organize for the future – and it is all initiated by developing a human-centric, future-fit focus.

Inquiring as to how might we ensure that we capture the best of what we’ve learned and keep the digital momentum going through developing a future-fit focus within the post-COVID-19 world?

What is a future-ready organization?

The article goes on to state that future-ready companies share three characteristics that offer senior executives a “unique unfreezing opportunity” – oby co-creating new adaptive systems, that are purposeful, organic, and human-centric by:

  • Knowing who they are and what they stand for;
  • Operating with a fixation on speed and simplicity;
  • Growing by scaling up their ability to learn, innovate, and seek good ideas, regardless of their origin.

Seeing the world with fresh eyes – unlearning, re-learning, creativity and innovation

All of which need to be initiated and developed through acquiring a new lens: an ability to see the world with “fresh eyes” by letting go of many of our old mental models and paradigms to:

  • Co-create, with others, new openings and empty spaces for unlearning what may have previously been embraced and worked in the past.
  • Focus on developing a new future-fit focus that unleashes purposeful, speed, simplicity, and growth through unlearning, re-learning, creativity and innovation.

Letting go to let come

In almost every aspect of business, we are operating with mental models, paradigms, and mindsets that have become outdated or obsolete, from strategy to marketing, from organizational design, learning systems to leadership, teams, and even to coaching.

This means that the first and most crucial step in shifting towards a human-centric, future-fitness focus involves “unlearning.”

Because many of our old mental models and paradigms, which are mostly unconsciously embodied in our core mindsets, impact the choices and decisions we make, the behaviors we enact, and the results we get – and it seems, that in 2021 we are getting a lot of results that no-one particularly wants.

What do we mean by “unlearning” and why is it important?

A lot of the mental models and paradigms are embodied in our habitual mindsets, that many of us learned in school, university, or college, and even in 20th century learning programs and built our careers on are now incomplete, ineffective, and irrelevant in adapting, and in serving people to survive, grow and thrive the post-Covid-19 world.

This means that to embrace a future-fit focus we have to first unlearn the old ones.

“Unlearning” is not about forgetting.

It’s about paying deep attention and developing the awareness to see, and step outside of our old mental models or paradigms and pay attention, and be consciously aware of the:

  • Mindsets we are embodying;
  • Behaviors we are enacting;
  • and the results we are manifesting.

Either because reality has changed or because current approaches are based on flawed or rigid thinking, faulty premises, and assumptions, or via a different consumer or technological landscape.

To then consciously choose, experiment, make distinctions, and bravely re-learn how to shift towards developing different, diverse, and more resourceful future-readiness.

The good news is that practicing “unlearning” will make it easier and quicker to make the necessary future-fit shifts as our brains become adaptive, through the process of neuroplasticity.

What are the key steps in “unlearning”?

  1. Being fully present, composed, and detached in adopting a beginner’s mind involving periodically challenging, questioning, and reassessing deeply held theories, archetypes, and conventions to provoke and evoke creative new ideas and innovative solutions.
  2. Allowing things to be and not needing to be in control, or in charge, being comfortable with being uncomfortable and willing to explore uncertainty, constraints, and threats as opportunities from a whole person and whole systems perspective.
  3. Wandering into wonder in the unknown to bravely adopt a “not knowing” stance and be more open-hearted, childlike and joyful, by bringing in awe, curiosity, and playfulness into your space.
  4. Recognizing and discerning that some of your old mental models, paradigms, and mindsets are no longer relevant or effective and be open-minded, through being inquisitive, curious, and creative in experimenting with new ones.
  5. Imagining, finding, or creating new mental models, paradigms, and mindsets that can help you adapt, innovate and better achieve your goals and growth objectives and focus on developing your capacity, confidence, and competence in being agile: the ability to create intentional shifts in different and changing contexts to re-program the mind.
  6. Ingraining the new future-fit mindsets as emotional and mental habits through attending and observing, being empathic and compassionate, questioning and inquiring, generative listening and debate, experimenting, smart risk-taking, and networking across boundaries.

What gets in the way of “unlearning”?

At ImagineNation™ we specialize in designing and delivering bespoke adult learning solutions that embrace a range of future fit mindsets, behaviors, and skills.

Whilst we have found that many leaders, teams, executives, and coaches are willing to unlearn, and re-learn, many are not.

Requiring our coaches, trainers, and facilitators to effectively resolve some of the key human-centric blockers to unlearning and re-learning including some peoples’:

  • Rigidity and fixedness in their own points of view and need to be “right” and in control of the situation.
  • Need to always appear to know, and their hesitancy around not wanting to look like they don’t actually know the answers or solutions, and are therefore incompetent.
  • Busyness, where they are too task focussed to make the time to hit their pause buttons, retreat and reflect, to review options for being more effective, productive, and creative, by thinking and doing things differently.
  • Fear of loss, or lack of safety and permission to set aside the status quo to challenge assumptions and explore new possibilities and play with the art of the possible

Towards  a human-centric, future-fit focus

For most of us, the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath have upended our lives as we knew them,  and according to McKinsey & Co – the resulting pain, grief, and economic dislocation will be felt long into the future.

Reinforcing that the first priority for leaders and teams, therefore, is to become more purposeful and human-centric, to lead and role model a future-fit focus.

Aimed at increasing speed and improving simplicity and by strategically scaling up people’s ability to unlearn, relearn, innovate, and seek good ideas regardless of their origin.

By being curious and creative, connected, empathic and compassionate, confident and courageous, to revitalize, and reenergize, exhausted people, teams, and organizations, currently languishing in 2021.

This is the first of a series of blogs, podcasts, and webinars on Developing a Human-Centric Future-Fitness organisation.

More about us

Find out about The Coach for Innovators Certified Program, a collaborative, intimate, and deep personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 8-weeks, starting October 19, 2021. It is a blended learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of a human-centered approach to innovation, within your unique context. Find out more.

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How can I create continuous innovation in my organization? – EPISODE TWO – Ask the Consultant

Live from the Innovation Studio comes EPISODE TWO of a new ‘Ask the Consultant’ series of short form videos. EPISODE TWO tackles the second most commonly asked question of me:

“How can I create continuous innovation in my organization?”

Hint: It starts with getting a copy of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire because I detail in the book how to overcome the key barriers to innovation.

Together in this episode we’ll explore how to create continuous innovation in your organization, why I wrote Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, and how it can make a great course book for innovation courses at universities, executive education, and corporate training programs.

“Innovation is never easy — and not always welcome. This book is dedicated to the men and women who dedicate their lives to pushing our organizations to make more efficient use of our human capital and natural resources and to make the world a better place.”

Grab a great deal on Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on Amazon while they last!

What question should I tackle in the next video episode of “Ask the Consultant” live from my innovation studio?

Contact me with your question

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Below are the previous episodes of ‘Ask the Consultant’:

  1. EPISODE ONE – What is innovation?
  2. All other episodes of Ask the Consultant


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Get Social with Your Innovation

Get Social with Your InnovationIf your organization is struggling to sustain its innovation efforts, then I hope you will do the following things.

  • Find the purpose and passion that everyone can rally around.
  • Create the flexibility necessary to deal with the constant change that a focus on innovation requires for both customers and the organization.
  • Make innovation the social activity it truly must be for you to become successful.

If your organization has lost the courage to move innovation to its center and has gotten stuck in a project – focused, reactive innovation approach, then now is your chance to regain the higher ground and to refocus, not on having an innovation success but on building an innovation capability. Are you up to the challenge?

There is a great article “ Passion versus Obsession ” by John Hagel that explores the differences between passion and obsession. This is an important distinction to understand in order to make sure you are hiring people to power your innovation efforts who are passionate and not obsessive. Here are a few key quotes from the article:

“The first significant difference between passion and obsession is the role free will plays in each disposition: passionate people fight their way willingly to the edge to find places where they can pursue their passions more freely, while obsessive people (at best) passively drift there or (at worst) are exiled there.”

“It’s not an accident that we speak of an “object of obsession,” but the “subject of passion.” That’s because obsession tends towards highly specific focal points or goals, whereas passion is oriented toward networked, diversified spaces.”

More quotes from the John Hagel article:

“The subjects of passion invite and even demand connections with others who share the passion.”

“Because passionate people are driven to create as a way to grow and achieve their potential, they are constantly seeking out others who share their passion in a quest for collaboration, friction and inspiration . . . . The key difference between passion and obsession is fundamentally social: passion helps build relationships and obsession inhibits them.”

“It has been a long journey and it is far from over, but it has taught me that obsession confines while passion liberates.”

These quotes from John Hagel’s article are important because they reinforce the notion that innovation is a social activity. While many people give Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the modern-day equivalent, Dean Kamen, credit for being lone inventors, the fact is that the lone inventor myth is just that — a myth, one which caused me to create The Nine Innovation Roles.

The fact is that all of these gentlemen had labs full of people who shared their passion for creative pursuits. Innovation requires collaboration, either publicly or privately, and is realized as an outcome of three social activities.

1. Social Inputs

From the very beginning when an organization is seeking to identify key insights to base an innovation strategy or project on, organizations often use ethnographic research, focus groups, or other very social methods to get at the insights. Great innovators also make connections to other industries and other disciplines to help create the great in sights that inspire great solutions.

2. Social Evolution

We usually have innovation teams in organizations, not sole inventors, and so the activity of transforming the seeds of useful invention into a solution valued above every existing alternative is very social. It takes a village of passionate villagers to transform an idea into an innovation in the marketplace. Great innovators make connections inside the organization to the people who can ask the right questions, uncover the most important weaknesses, help solve the most difficult challenges, and help break down internal barriers within the organization — all in support of creating a better solution.

3. Social Execution

The same customer group that you may have spent time with, seeking to understand, now requires education to show them that they really need the solution that all of their actions and behaviors indicated they needed at the beginning of the process. This social execution includes social outputs like trials, beta programs, trade show booths, and more. Great innovators have the patience to allow a new market space to mature, and they know how to grow the demand while also identifying the key shortcomings with customers who are holding the solution back from mass acceptance.

Conclusion

When it comes to insights, these three activities are not completely discrete. Insights do not expose themselves only in the social inputs phase, but can also expose themselves in other phases — if you’re paying attention.

Flickr famously started out as a company producing a video game in the social inputs phase, but was astute enough during the social execution phase to recognize that the most used feature was one that allowed people to share photos. Recognizing that there was an unmet market need amongst customers for easy sharing of photos, Flickr reoriented its market solution from video game to photo sharing site and reaped millions of dollars in the process when they ultimately sold their site to Yahoo!.

Ultimately, action is more important than intent, and so as an innovator you must always be listening and watching to see what people do and not just what they say. Build your solution on the wrong insight and nobody will be beating a path to your door.

NOTE: This article is an adaptation of some of the great content in my five-star book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire (available in many local libraries and fine booksellers everywhere).

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