During the long recruiting process and gazillion interviews I went through way back then, I spent quite some time in the SIT reception area. Having recently left a corporate career at that time, I came to the interview wearing what I thought was an appropriate interview outfit: buttoned up shirt, dress pants and high-heeled stiletto-like sandals. The first indication that I may have gotten it wrong happened as I was riding the elevator up to the SIT offices and was asked: “are you going to see the weirdoes on the third floor?”

Pretty quickly I understood what it meant. The first thing I noticed going in was the shoes or in most cases, the lack thereof. Most of the people in the office were walking around barefoot. This was accompanied, what else, by short cargo pants and plain T-shirts. As I was digesting what I was seeing, examining my own outfit all over again and feeling oh so inadequate, I thought I spotted a woman with shoes on. As she approached, I looked more carefully and realized the one real pair of shoes I managed to spot, except for flip-flops and comfort footwear, was of a bright yellow color.

Once I joined the company, I got to know its routine that includes yoga in the office on Wednesdays which the managing director religiously attends; lunch for all the company together on Mondays; photography classes initiated and taught by one of our very own; learning days dedicated to expanding and deepening our knowledge by learning from each other about facilitation, the application (and constant development) of our own methodology etc.

As time went by I also got to know my colleagues: the one that fools you into thinking he speaks Russian fluently whereas he actually speaks fluent Gibberish with a perfect Russian accent, the one that roams the offices looking for company when he needs inspiration, the one that while eating lunch one day is already securing lunch for the next day, the one that speaks backwards, the one that travels with his miniature guitar to projects, the one that gives a loud chirp known as “koolooloo” to mark the receipt of good news, the one that organizes traditional bi-annual theme parties etc.

I also discovered that everybody certainly knows how to dress up appropriately, from head to toe, when meeting with clients and facilitating workshops.

I don’t know if this is what one would imagine when thinking of a company in the innovation area but along my 15-year career, I met all kinds of characters along the way. What stands out where I now work is that once I look beyond the shoes, I see people that have a spring in their step. It could very well be the freedom of walking barefoot…but probably it’s simply the privilege of enjoying what one does and each other’s company.

I am a couple of years at SIT now and you will still not catch me walking barefoot around the office but I do show up with the occasional flip-flops and Capri pants. While it is quite a relief to be able to dress down for work, I have to admit I still occasionally stare with a bit of nostalgia at the suits hanging in my closet. But I guess, I’ve probably become one of the weirdoes on the third floor…

If you are the kind of leader with the insight that innovation is important, and you also do not accept that relying on chance or unpredictable events are valid leadership qualities; if you are the proactive, hard worker who wants to create innovation, what can you do?

Here’s a suggestion for a good start:

* Acquire knowledge – Learn about how you can implement effective innovation through systematic and focused efforts. There are many good training programs and tons of literature for this. Start with a simple test, by asking your associates how they define innovation. If you can agree on this, you have a base to build on. Then move on to gaining more knowledge about principles and models for systematic innovation.

* Create a strategic plan for innovation – Integrate a long-term plan for innovation into your overall business strategy. The plan should answer five basic questions:

1. First, what are your goals for innovation and how do these help you fulfil your overall strategic business objectives?

2. Where do you see opportunities for innovation? By revamping your products, services, processes, your business model, marketing message or maybe even your overall business strategy. What segment of your business needs renewing?

3. How radical do you need to be with innovation, and what risks can you take? Is it enough to take small incremental steps forward or do you need to do something more radical to differentiate, add value, and gain the competitive edge?

4. How can innovation be organised and managed? That is, what processes do you need to implement and what tools, competencies, skills and resources—human and financial—are necessary to effectively run these processes?

5. How is innovation measured and controlled? Which metrics do you need to obtain information for good decision-making about innovation? How are these metrics integrated into your overall business scorecard and how are they linked to your management processes and incentive system?

* Put innovation on the agenda – Innovation should be a regular item on the agenda for your senior management meetings. It should be given the same status and time for discussion and decision-making as with any other business-critical activity.

These points are just the beginning, but beginnings are important. Make sure your senior management leads these activities.

Managers who want to invest in innovation and work to overcome structural and cultural obstacles in the organisation also need support. That’s why it’s important that initiatives like the ‘Nordic Innovation Leaders’ and ‘Innovation for Growth’ get encouraged to grow and strengthen.

For example, the industry-wide Nordic Innovation Leaders(N I L) was initiated two years ago, and is already the largest Nordic network of managers who lead innovation. Its vision is for Scandinavia to become a global leader in innovation. It is an action-oriented forum for sharing and developing practical knowledge and experiences.

The Innovation for Growth program was announced in the Dagens Industri, the Swedish daily business newspaper, on September 10. This program brings together industry, academics and other institutions such as IVA.

The most important result these initiatives can bring is immediately providing concrete support to managers who want to work with innovation. And they should be prevented from becoming simply another institutional talking forum that leads nowhere.

Consider carefully, is renewal and innovation important for your organisation? Do you regularly discuss the importance of innovation, and is it integrated in your business strategy? Does your organisation just hope for innovation to happen, or do you work proactively and systematically to bring innovation about, as you do with other mission-critical activities in your business? Do you walk the talk?

This post is based on an article that was originally published at InnovationManagement.se

Orren Shalit is the founder of SIT Scandinavia.

Gunnar Storfeldt is the CEO and a partner in SIT Scandinavia.

Orren, Gunnar and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation.

Click here to contact us

The center in Sderot is now part of the “Tachlit Center“, which serves over 70 youth at risk that have dropped out of conventional educational establishments, and through this work exerts positive influence on the entire community in various ways.

SIT was the prime facilitator for this innovation camp.

May Amiel is an account manager and a senior SIT facilitator.

May works with companies to create and deploy programs for enhancing innovation throughout the organization.

May and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation.

Click here to contact us

Most everyone strongly feels a need to continuously renew their commercial offering and working methods to keep competitive in the market. They follow the modern mantra of ‘differentiate and create value’ and to achieve this, everyone wants to be more innovative.

Indeed they all like to talk the creativity and innovation talk. Most managers agree that innovation is the last stronghold for competing in a global economy. Moreover, they are interested and fascinated by the thought of working systematically with innovation in order to gain a breakthrough to create growth and profitability for their organizations.

We all agree about all this… intellectually. But very few translate this talk into action.

Senior business managers spend much time on creating their business visions, objectives and strategies. These strategies get implemented through a process of taking these important goals for areas like R&D, HR, IT, QA, finance, and production and breaking them down into operative objectives that are delegated, measured and tracked.

But what about innovation?

Most often innovation stays as a fuzzy formulation contained in business or strategy planning. Often these same formulations are then communicated to the market.

Sure, everyone wants to be seen as innovative and pioneering! Obviously, many understand the importance of being able to adapt, innovate and renew. But the gap between cheering and actually doing is just too broad!

That’s the issue – Why so much talk and so little action?

There are exceptions. Electrolux has set up an ‘Innovation Office’ to develop the company’s innovation capability in order to create new commercial opportunities. But again, this is an exception.

If you’re interested, you can do a quick survey yourself: Pick 10 companies who advertise themselves as innovative or creative. Do this the easy way and look at their market communication and their annual reports. Call up to their headquarters’ receptionist and ask to talk to their innovation manager.

You can be sure that few will be able to find someone directly responsible for innovation. They might try sending you to someone at product development, business development or marketing. Very few have a specific person in a role that actively addresses innovation issues throughout the corporation.

Why then, is there such a gap between clear intellectual acceptance of how important innovation really is and actually proactively and systematically working for innovation?

Our experience is that this comes from the basic structures and business cultures in our society.

Just look at some of the major obstacles to innovation:

* Short-sighted business objectives – Blinding focus on quarterly results makes any greater innovation effort too risky. By definition, innovation is uncertain and anyone working on innovation risks missing their quarterly financial objectives – and being disqualified as a leader.

* Standard budgeting procedures – Setting annual budgets prevents companies from taking advantage of new ideas that come up during the fiscal year. Standard budgeting models restrain applying resources and financing for any opportunities that are not planned long in advance.

* Innovation is too vague – People still think of innovation and creativity as something almost mystical, where ‘lightning strikes’ or you have to ‘think outside the box’. Do you say ‘Getting an idea’ or ‘Creating an idea’? In the worst case, you’ve been part of a woolly, embarrassing creative exercise that didn’t lead to anything concrete. As long as you think about innovation and creativity as something fuzzy and uncontrollable, that you can’t direct or do systematically, then you will find it difficult to ‘do’ innovation.

* Lack of knowledge – People don’t know how to run innovation and leaders are educated to be ‘Masters of Business Administration (MBA)’ as opposed to ‘Masters of Business Innovation’. Regardless of how much they talk or write about it, most organizations lack a basic understanding of what innovation really means. This lack of knowledge makes misunderstanding more common. As in ‘Innovation can’t be measured or controlled’; ‘Great innovations can’t result from goal-oriented processes, since they are unpredictable events’; ‘Innovation depends on the right kind of culture instead of the right kind of processes, methods and tools’.

* Consensus – Managers in the certain companies are not allowed to make individual decisions about new investments or high-risk projects. Rather, they have to seek consensus and support among many others. This slows innovative efforts and creates resistance. For example, there is a significant difference between Germany and Sweden about the kind of decision a manager can take in relation to ideas that are not fully spread and supported.

In our next post we will present our suggestions for things that can be done in order to translate the innovation talk into real actions.

This post is based on an article that was originally published at InnovationManagement.se

Orren Shalit is the founder of SIT Scandinavia.

Gunnar Storfeldt is the CEO and a partner in SIT Scandinavia.

Orren, Gunnar and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation.

Click here to contact us

B. How many innovation books have you read over the last year?
1. They write books on this stuff?
2. 1-3
3. 2-6
4. I lose count

C. How many Innovation companies are you familiar with?
1. Ooh, an innovation company!  What’s that?
2. 1
3. 5
4. All of them

D. How many innovation conferences did you attend over the last 2 years?
1. I’m sure I’ll visit one some time soon…
2. 1
3. 2
4. Attend… or speak at?

E. What’s the most effective way to encourage innovation in your organization?
1. Reward it
2. Make it “ok” to try and fail
3. Provide management backing
4. All of the above

F. What’s your preferred approach for coming up with new ideas?
1. Wait for a good idea to spark
2. Sit with a few colleagues and brainstorm
3. Use systematic tools for innovation
4. Call in the professionals innovation facilitators

G. What is the best reason for kicking off an innovation initiative?
1. There’s never a good reason to change existing successful practices
2. When there’s time and money
3. Only in a crisis situation
4. Innovation can always help me find better ways to reach any organizational goals

H. What does an organization need to do for it to become more innovative?
1. Create a constant pipeline of new products
2. Provide skills for innovative thinking for many employees
3. Put organizational support structures in place (steering committee, clear criteria for success in innovations, etc.)
4. All of the above

I. What is your reaction when you hear the term “innovation”?
1. Last year’s buzzword
2. Show me the money
3. I’m about to hear something exciting
4. Motivation to ask “What can we be doing differently and better?”

J. How many innovation blogs do you subscribe to?
1. What’s a blog?
2. 1
3. 3
4. Everything that I can get my hands on

K. What do you do to overcome your mental fixedness?
1. What’s fixedness?
2. Brainstorm
3. Try and challenge my assumptions
4. Fixed, moi?

L. What is the greatest barrier to organizational innovation?
1. My refusal to share my ingenious ideas?
2. Different kinds of fixedness
3. No clear method of measuring innovation efforts
4. Seeing innovation as separate from day-to-day business

M. What, in your opinion, is the most effective way to secure your company’s long-term future?
1. Keep on doing what we know works
2. Copy our hottest competitors
3. Re-think and improve our business model, products and practices
4. Make me CEO

How You Scored

13-25
You sound like you put the “no” in Innovation… 
Playing it safe, sticking to good, common-sense business practices, you are dependable and a steady performer.  However, keeping an open mind can help you improve your company’s performance.  Innovation is more than last year’s “buzzord” – you can come up with new ideas that can make you more competitive in an ever-changing world.  It might actually be your safest bet.

Tip for your type:
You’ve made a good start by visiting our innovation blog, keep reading and we’re sure innovation will soon become a habit.

26-38
You’re clearly an innovation champion.
You have a well-rounded, holistic view of Innovation and are clearly already using it to your advantage.  Although you realize that your individual contribution plays a major role, you know that it’s a team’s innovation effort that delivers the most effective results.

Tip for your type:
Experience a systematic, counter-intuitive approach to innovation that challenges conventional methods, learn more by reading the Harvard Business Review article: “Finding Your Innovation Sweet Spot?” (available from the HBR website or info@SITsite.com)

39-52
You’re an innovation master and mentor
You implicitly understand innovation to be a key driver of your business success – and experience has proven to you that it’s a vehicle to achieving a host of top business objectives, like organic growth, cost-cutting, and becoming more sustainable.  You’re consulted by peers and colleagues looking for someone to champion their cause to do things a little differently – and you’ll fight in their corner, safe in the knowledge that it’s the innovators who are reshaping the world.

Tip for your type:
When they make you CEO, be sure to call us in for an organizational innovation project – we have much to learn from you. info@SITsite.com

Join our free inventive thinking webinar. For additional info and registration click here

How do you know if the efforts that your organization is investing in innovation are delivering the expected results? And what results were you actually expecting? The question of indicators and metrics is, in my experience, the biggest barrier that companies face when deciding to engage in an innovation effort, as well as one of the major causes of failure in these attempts.

The trouble starts with a reasonable assumption, i.e. that if you want to control a process and assess its results, you need to measure some aspects of it.  But in the case of innovation it is not totally obvious what exactly should be measured, nor how.

Opinions differ widely, but all of them can be roughly placed on a scale running between two extreme views that we can call “business-is-business” and “just do it“.

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BiB says, in effect, that an innovation initiative is no different than any other effort or investment, and therefore, the only kind of results that can justify such a program are its impact on the company’s KPIs, whether they be profit, market share, revenues or any other. Note that holders of this view do not necessarily demand that innovation be measured exclusively in financial terms. In principle, if an organization’s main objective is, say, to spread happiness, then according to this view, the indicator one should use to assess the success of an innovation initiative is the amount of happiness created. There is a very strong rationale for this approach: an innovation initiative does not change the company’s goals, rather, the company engages in innovation in order to further these goals. The indicator for the innovation effort’s success, therefore, must be its impact on these very goals.

Although this argument is hard to refute, adopting this approach is probably a guarantee that your innovation effort will fail.

The reason is simple. Although your innovation effort must eventually impact your business objectives, these objectives cannot be used to monitor the process, since: a) it will usually take months, and in some cases more, for the effects to cascade all the way down (or up) to sales, growth, or profit, and in the meantime there will be no indication of what should be changed or adapted in the program; b) there are so many other factors at play that isolating the net contribution of an innovation initiative on business goals is nearly impossible, and even more so when trying to isolate the contribution of specific elements of such a process.

The other extreme of the scale, “just do it“, recognizes the difficulties mentioned above and, in response, takes the exact opposite view: since we know that innovation is necessary, and as we are aware of the types of actions we have to take, why not  just go for it, and measure the inputs rather than wait for vaguely correlated outputs. For example, if we know that training is a necessary condition for innovation, let’s measure direct parameters of the training effort, such as number of people trained, number of hours spent on training, amount of tools and methods taught, and the like. The downside of this approach is clearly evident as well. Who says we need this specific type of training rather than another? How do we know whether trainees understood, and more importantly, to what extent they are utilizing what they learned?  What is the optimum number or percentage of personnel trained (and can we suffer from too much training)? And, most importantly, what impact is this training having on performance?

These questions and doubts do indeed challenge the “just do it” approach, but, at the same time, they are already pointing to the solution to the measurement problem, or at least to a combination of approaches that, although not perfect, allows an organization to avoid paralysis and set out on an innovation path:

1) As a rule, start on the JDI pole of the axis, and move along slowly towards BiB. At the outset, any expectation of an immediate business result will just cause frustration, draining the effort of its energy. Measure only that you are indeed performing all the actions that you set out to do and ignore the effects;

2) Even as you start to JDI, remember to talk about and define your ultimate goals. Yes, they are not relevant for the moment, and will not be for a while, but still, it is important to keep in mind that they are the raison d’être of the entire operation;

3) While you measure inputs, try as quickly as you can to also measure some kind of outputs, even if at a very tactical or even technical level. There are many ways to test the success of a training program (feedback forms being one of the least reliable). Try some, such as assigning a specific task to graduates and monitoring their success at performing it; counting the number of ideation sessions that are being held; gauging the number of people that have been “touched” by the innovation initiative around the organization, etc.;

4) Combine quantity with quality. Quantitative measures tend to give a more “objective” feeling, but beware the common mistake of objectively measuring irrelevance. A prime example: number of ideas generated in an innovation session. More often than not, a large number of ideas correlates with poor quality, sloppy filtering and therefore, a low rate of implementation;

5) Measure constantly, but let people work in peace. At least in the first few months, measurement should be used mainly to compliment and encourage, and to make relatively small adaptations to the program, but never to put the entire endeavor in question. Otherwise, no one will have the guts to do anything really useful for fear of: a) being found to fail, and b) being associated with a venture that was “closed down”;

6) When moving closer to the business side of the scale, use a variety of business measures rather than a small number. For example: money saved on restructured processes, number of new products on the market, impact on customers’ perception of your brand as the leader, percentage of revenues due to newly introduced products or services, speed of response in crises or to customers’ complaints etc.

In sum: Yes, innovation is hard to measure, but so is any other deep and meaningful organizational process. And yes, despite the pitfalls, there are quite a few feasible and relevant measures that can allow one to monitor an innovation initiative, enabling course corrections when and where necessary, and providing sufficient parameters to assess success.

Inventive thought and innovation are usually seen as a prerogative reserved for markets in times of growth, while, in fact, during slowdowns and recessions, there are plenty of good reasons to be creative, to invest in innovation, develop innovative strategies and even launch new products.

Past recessions have proven themselves as times of opportunity for growth and new product launching (Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s Pull-Ups Training Pants, Axe body spray, Crest Whitestrips, the soap opera genre, etc.). In previous posts we explained why it is worthwhile to implement creative thought (and actions), especially in turbulent times. Moreover, during slowdowns and recessions, there are plenty of good reasons to apply SYSTEMATIC inventive thinking. After all, thought-specific guidelines help us overcome our fixednesses and eliminate knee-jerk reactions, creating products that differ from what we have become accustomed to.

The steps companies take during economic crises tend to be, as mentioned, instinctive. If we were to display the common responses on a graph where the X axis is the severity of the crisis and the Y axis is the intensity of our instinctive actions, we would get something that looks like this:

As the recession worsens, more layoffs are evident, wages are cut, welfare benefits are withheld, training is put on hold etc. But what would happen if we would artificially create or visualize a graph displaying the opposite trend, or with a straight line?

If we try to change the graph, and even if it is only for the exercise, it would force us to think in a different way and be more creative. In reality, this would possibly make us think and, in turn, act differently. Let us take, for example, the action: “employee layoffs”. The reverse line depicts a reality in which as the crisis worsens, fewer employees are laid off, and manpower might even be recruited; the straight line depicts a situation where the severity of the crisis has no affect on manpower. It is true that such a reality is not always possible, but could we imagine a reality in which a company recruits more workers as the slowdown becomes more severe (and I am not talking about a company that specializes in going bankrupt)?

Let us imagine that we own a somewhat exclusive chain of cafés with average distribution of branches. Intuitively, our brains tell us not to open more branches during a recession. That is to say, as the crisis worsens, fewer branches are opened and, possibly, existing branches are closed. But let’s force ourselves to imagine the opposite scenario. The more severe the crisis, the more branches we open. Of course this is not always possible, but would it be to our advantage?

We could open new branches that do not share the same chain characteristics as the existing branches. Instead, we could use mobile coffee stands, functioning each a mini branch of the chain. What would the advantages of such a move be? We could significantly improve chain distribution, at a much lower cost than opening new branches that stand up to the elegant standards of the chain. We thereby increase customers’ awareness of the brand. Another idea could be to limit the move and declare that stands are positioned in each neighborhood for as long as the recession continues, suggesting that quality coffee is a necessity and not a luxury for our customers. We would probably not be able to afford such a step in normal times as it damages the stylish branding of the chain. But the time limitation as well as linking it to the recession and identifying with the customers’ needs, enables us to implement the idea. We could reinforce the idea by hiring people who have lost their jobs in the current crisis, thereby boosting our brand’s image and esteem.

The entire concept - mobile stands, the time limit, and employing ‘victims’ of the crisis—is not trivial for turbulent times. Like many good ideas, it is specific: it is a good idea for the time, during the recession and for the specific industry – coffee chains. It does not mean that any business owner should open more branches during a recession. For this reason, when trying to think of non-trivial solutions to a problem, it is important to be specific and not to think of generic solutions which need to be right perpetually and across the board.

The thinking tool used here is called Attribute Dependency. The idea is to force us to imagine a different – sometimes opposite – relationship between the variables. In this case we reversed the relationship between the variable “severity of crisis” and the variable “number of layoffs”. Can you come up with non-trivial solutions for the economic crisis in a specific field? Can you think of other variables whose relationship should be reversed to come up with non-trivial ways of surviving the situation?