In our previous post we wrote about how talking about innovation is not enough: you also have to act on it. In this post we will give you our insights on how to translate the innovation and creativity talk into real action.
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.
SIT is a great tool to make innovation happen. But why do we need innovation?
I will skip the obvious: innovation is needed to adapt to an ever changing commercial, social and technological environment.
Apart from the above, innovation is needed to generate something that almost every business needs to survive: attention.
Like any other resource that businesses need (e.g. energy, employees, row materials etc.) attention can be purchased in the market in the form of advertising, public relations or even search engine optimization. The problem is that its price is going up every day.
With more than 1000 commercial messages (explicit and implicit) any individual in developed countries is exposed to each day, it’s getting harder and harder to get the message through. .
Innovation can lower the price of getting attention:
Apocalyptic newspaper headlines cause panic. Panic induces paralysis. The media is overloading us with evermore information and commentaries about “the situation”: poorer quality of life, higher unemployment, pay cuts, zero real growth, etc. Most companies in the market usually react alike. Companies start operating on ‘automatic pilot,’ or, in the worst-case scenario, they act on impulse, adopting clichés which are not necessarily rational, like laying off workers, cutting wages, putting trainings on halt and such.
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.
Watch a short talk between Amnon Levav, SIT’s managing director, and Alexander Haig.
The show was televised on CNBC, Fox Business News, and local stations nationwide.
A few weeks ago I spoke to a high level manager in a financial institution. We talked about his (truly) impressive activities in the field of innovation, and then he surprised me somewhat by saying: “In 2009 we plan to freeze innovation activities.”
Since the company is not a client of ours, I wasn’t directly affected by this decision, but still, I was curious to understand what stood behind it. Another victim of “the Situation”, I said to myself, but to my surprise he went on to explain: “We have so many good ideas now that we need to pause with innovation and focus on implementation.”
This approach is, in my eyes, a symptom of one of the biggest and most common misconceptions in the field; that innovation is all about coming up with ideas of what to do (products, services, whatever it is you do). The corollary is, obviously, that once you have these ideas you don’t need to be bothered with innovation any longer, all you need is to “just” implement.
A week ago I started teaching an SIT course in the Bar-Ilan University. After an interesting discussion on the value of innovation, one of the students asked the most basic academic question: “what is your definition of innovation?”
Well … What is my definition of innovation? I suddenly realized that in 10 years of teaching innovation & facilitating innovation processes I have never thought of a definition for the darn thing …
Our latest Innovation Community meeting focused on Sustainability and Innovation.
The Israeli Innovation Community brings together, for networking and enrichment, top managers and individuals with an interest in innovation. The meetings are interactive, informal and down to earth, and always include discussions among the participants and with the lecturers.
The recent cancellation of Columbia University’s planned December session of its Executive Education course, “INNOVATION AND MARKETING“, came as no surprise.It is common wisdom in the business world that in times of recession, one must first cut the Training budget and then the Innovation budget.So this course received a double-whammy.
This phenomenon is quite logical. Innovation’s ultimate goal in any organization is to spur growth.In a period when growth is pretty much out of the question, investment in innovation seems capricious.Companies need to become more insular, stop the bleeding, cut the “luxuries” they have become accustomed to in times of plenty, and weather the storm.Not to mention the shareholders breathing down the Board’s neck to show some sort of profit margin, even if it means letting go a few hundred or thousand “salaries” or “headcount” that they will inevitably rehire a few months later once the R-word has passed.
