If we take a look at Management Presentations today, there will for sure use one slide where the word “innovation” would appear in different variations. This is very often used, but it is important to know what innovation means and how to enable the innovation. We need to understand that developing or enhancing the product or service is not an innovation, but an enhancement. Most of us may be struggling to interpret Joseph Schumpeter’s definition of innovation. Many of us are still not able to distinguish between evolutionary innovations which could be radical versus an incremental and disruptive innovation.
But this blog post is not about the definition of innovation it is about enabling innovation in an Organization and in helping others understanding that innovation is not a “word in a presentation”. Look at the questions below and ask yourself how this is handled in your Organization:
- Is there a Budget allocated for innovation in every Team e.g 10% of the overall Budget can be used for innovative concepts?
- Are your employees allowed to work on “own” projects during the working hours, to be a part of company’s innovation efforts?
- Do you have innovation events on a quarterly base where employees are able to present new concepts and ideas in which everyone is invited to participate?
- Are there dedicated Innovation Management trainings?
- Do you have a “Venture Capital” Department in your organization equally applied?
- Do you motivate your Team to challenge the current status?
- Do you measure your innovation?
- Do you have Innovation Management Consultants in your organization?
- Is there a dedicated Innovation Management Framework in use?
After reading these questions we should evaluate how many of them would be able to answer with “Yes” affirmative answers? Let us think about it.
If Organizations would like to see more innovative, they can’t expect to leverage employees after working hours’ time to share the benefits of such innovation. They cannot continue to acquire new innovative companies and think that they could profit from such innovation if the transition to innovate was not planned to occur. Companies should challenge the current status and enable every team in their organization to be more innovative during their working hours.
I would like to close this blog with a quote from Joel Parker from Future Edge
“What do I believe is impossible to do in my field, but, if it could be done, would fundamentally change my business?"
kind regards
Daniel Brunnett
Business Transformation Services PCI&T
Innovation and Product Development
