Ok, so I’m not looking for one just at the moment - but I’m pretty sure that in no less than three years, the job of innovation manager will be just as acceptable and desirable as that of marketing manager, product development manager and sales manager.
Even today, I personally know 15 innovation managers, working in a variety of companies and organizations – the title on their business cards actually reads “Innovation Manager”. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
I’m interested in knowing what kind of characteristics go into making a good innovation manager. You could say it depends on the nature of the role, of course, though we haven’t discussed that yet. Here, I’ll stick with my original question: what type of person or personality is suitable for managing innovation?
From my experience, I offer the following profile:
·Managerial ability
·Initiative mind
·Hard-headedness, persistency—like the engineer in the story of the Post-it™ note
·Good understanding of how marketing and new product development work—although you don’t need to be an expert
·A strong ability to both learn from people around you and teach them
·A non-controversial personality—at the end of the day, a good innovation manager needs to be able to create bridges across marketing, development, products, sales, operations and more)
Can you think of anything else?
Do you know someone suitable?
How about Change Management capabilities? Or would you like to encompass it within the first quality?
Networking skills also help.
Also, this seemed a pretty good description too: http://www.nzte.govt.nz/common/files/br13-innovation-jd.pdf
Hi All,
I’ll do some cut and paste from a nice book I’ve just read yesterday called Pasion por Innovar (Passion to Innovate), by to guys from Spain called Franc Ponti and Xavier Ferras, when they make a list of the competences of the creative person. Some or all of them could serve to describe the Innovation Manager required competences as well. I’ll leave this comparison to you all:
Quote:
PSYCHOLOGICAL
Have the belief of being creative.
Self knowledge
Rich inner world, introspection ability
Mental curiosity
Logic and Lateral thinking
Intuition and rationality
BEHAVIORAL
Sorry, pressed the wrong button before. Here goes the rest:
BEHAVIORAL
Perform a correct problem formulation and make them become into creative foci.
Regular search of ideas.
Be a transgressor.
Be an adventurer.
Creative leadership.
Ingenuity.
TECHNICAL
Command of creative methods
Command of innovation processes.
End of Quote
What do you think? I believe this list is pretty comprehensive but of course many more could be elicited.
Cheers,
Fabian.
I would add
Visual and systemic thinker
Facilitation skills
Balances discipline with imagination
Fabian.
Thank you!
I read the article linked by scorpfromhell, and I tend to agree with the ‘job description’ for innovation mangers.
I think that Fabian addition add some other challenge that I had in mind - Does an innovation manager have to be innovative and creative himself, or not necessarily?
I believe she shouldn’t. She must be a good facilitator and he or she should have an open mind - but the ideas themselves - they better come from the entire organization that enjoys the benefits of someone that can manage the process.
Another characteristic I thought about is not having a ‘huge ego’ and I want to explain - sometimes an innovation manager may face a situation when he or she does a great job but someone else “picks up” the fruits. People that have a big ego and must get the credit may find this position frustrating. What do you think?
Hi All,
I believe that another distinction should be made between Innovation Manager and Innovation Leader.
In my opinion, both should posess facilitation skills, and a small ego.
Three good capabilities for both would also be:
Being able to give without expecting reciprocity.
“Let go”
Flow
And I think that the main difference between Management and Leadership would be in this case, that the Innovation Manager would be more concerned about the innovation process itself, while the Innovation Leader (may we call s/he Chief Innovation Officer?) would be concerned about formulating a vision, transmiting passion, formulating provocative questions and providing an “innovation adequate” organizational structure.
Sorry if I’ve expanded the discussion a little bit
Comments?
Fabian.
Thank you Fabian
You made a very smart distinction!
I have never thought about it before and now I can actually see the two types in the Innovation Managers I personally know.
Is it possible to have one person with both types of abilities?
Maybe we sometimes make the mistake of looking for one type of innovation manager when actually what we need is the other one.
Your insight brings me to the idea of designing a questionnaire for companies (maybe a self-exam) that can help companies in deciding what kind of Innovation manager the company needs, and therefore what type of innovation manager the company may want to look for.
Idit,
Sometimes when a manager is promoted to leadership, s/he arrives to the maximum level of incompetence (Peter’s principle?). It could be possible to have one person with both sets of skills, but I think that just a small fraction of managers would be “ambidextrous”.
This is thinking in general, for any role in the organization.
Would my thoughts be valid also for Innovation Managers and Leaders?
Be well,
Fabian.
I guess Fabian has hit on something here.
The PDF that I linked describes an Innovation Manager & states as a primary requirement that the person should know ‘management’.
Also, management & leadership are qualities that are present together in most, shall we say, ’supervisors’. But the ratio varies greatly between the two & that’s when some people come across as managers & some as leaders, where as the reality is that these are “more” managers or “more” leaders.
I look at my current job as an ‘Innovation Enabler’, but not necessarily an ‘Innovation Manager’. I need to know how to get things done from people as well as may be define “who needs to do what by when”. That’s a granted, but the difference lies in ‘how’ I get things done from people.
I aspire to be known more for my ability to ingrain ‘innovation culture’ into the organization rather than enforce innovation processes’.
And for that, I myself need to understand how people get ‘creative’. It is not mandatory for a person to know how to ‘Innovate’ in order to manager ‘Innovation’, but as with any other field, it is good to know what it takes to get ‘creative’ or ‘innovate’.
1/ UNDERSTANDING of the Process of Creative thinking
2/ Skill as a facilitator of other people
3/ Networking ability, to learn how things get done inside a company, and how new products can get pushed through
4/ Political savy, to knwo how to retain support for such a nebulous and ill-defined activity as “innovation”
Thanks guys for this forum.
Having an experience of more than 22 years in the field of prepress I am still confused as to what should my next post be.
It was ‘QC manager’ till date but to get to the higher ranking I am still a bit confused. As what should I market myself in the present advanced tech world.
Just a short description of my work……..
From designing of mags to quality control to innovative ideas to photo manupulating on advanced softwares and ofcourse managing a small team of designers is what I have been doing all these years.
Do I fit in the above role?
Any help?????????????
Hello! I just stump upon your blog via Yahoo. What a wonderful blog you have! I like it very much! since you got this wonderful blog, why not turn it into steady income? Thank you for putting out such valuable information to the entire internet world!