A great post from Paul Williams @ Think for a Change:
The Top Ten List of Making Innovation Happen Every Day…
Innovation MUST be tied to the organizational strategy
Innovation MUST be on the leadership agenda and discussed at every leadership meeting
Innovation MUST be led by at least one C-Level or SVP-Level person
Ideas (from ANY source) MUST have a path/process to follow
Customers/Consumer MUST have a voice
Resources (People, Money & Time) MUST be made available for innovation
A culture of risk taking, fast failure, experimentation and imagination MUST exist and be supported/protected
The organization MUST be made up of skilled and diverse individuals who are set “free”
The organization MUST seek to be a leader of “next practices” not a follower of “best practices”
The organization MUST have the courage to KILL projects, ideas, lines of business, etc. that don’t work
Once you have these ten “MUST’s” in place, I think you will find that your employees, front-line managers, middle managers and senior leaders will be innovating…everyday…all day…
Oh, that this would be wide spread…what is their fear of implementing this and more?
I suggest a contrarian view.
Becoming more innovative is an innovation in itself. You can’t mandate it. You have to learn how to do it. (Innovation = Learning)
The big learning is how to make innovation win the battles for money and management attention — and you shouldn’t mandate it. It wouldn’t be fair to shareholders. (For evidence, look at the average risk-adjusted returns of venture capital firms — who only invest in innovations.)
There is always money and management attention available in your organization. If your idea — innovation — is not getting money and attention, it is because your proposals are not as good as others. You are not winning in the marketplace of ideas.
What would my list be?
1. Have a clear language for innovation based on a grounded, evidence-based theory of innovation. (I recommend the work of Clayton Christiansen and Michael Raynor).
2. Use it and prove it in your organization — more than once.
3. Use that learning to create a compelling, evidence-based case for organization-wide change.
3. Take that evidence to create a compelling case for organization-wide change — taking into account that it will happen in stages and be adopted differently in different parts of the organization.
However, your company has to be receptive, set up to listen, in order to provide the platform and ‘hope’ that you will be heard. I have obviously worked in the wrong companies!
Decision-makers are the customers for your ideas.
Yes, organizations differ widely in receptivity to new ideas, and individual decision-makers differ widely, too. Decision-makers usually respond to innovations that match one of the top few things that they wish was working better — where there is a gap between current performance and desired performance. The decision-maker is the “customer” for your idea — so just as in any other market, you need to understand what the customer will “buy”. Try focusing the I in IDEA Huting on what your customer is interested in. At least it’ll improve the odds.