6 Components to Building Innovation Momentum

Rob Berman — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 14:00:00 GMT

Our research and experience has led us to identify six components of building momentum and change to help you accelerate your innovation journey and lift off.

Develop your innovation story. Develop a compelling case for innovation, what innovation is, and why the company is pursuing the innovation journey now. Include how it will benefit everyone.
Evoke change leadership. No one likes change. During the uncertainties of a change process, people don't hang onto concepts, they hang onto people. Create a sense of urgency and build awareness and excitement about innovation for your key sponsors and change agents.
Identify innovation leaders and best talent. Identify the natural intrapreneurs, innovation champions, and innovation igniters along with your key innovation leaders, advisors, and mentors. This talent pool will help you build the required innovation capability.
Communicate, communicate, and communicate. Go for fast and small wins and tell everyone about it. Collect momentum data showing progress, and implement and integrate a solid public relations strategy using any and all resources at your disposal.
Build awareness--educate everyone. In many ways an innovation change initiative begins and ends with education. It is the primary method of advancing and improving organizational knowledge and acceleration for desired changes in the hearts and minds of everyone involved.
Protect the momentum. Vigilantly protect innovation principles. Many will want to go back to status quo and forget the agreements, processes, and principles in the playbook. Every small win is a huge step toward the future and part of the foundation-building process. Protect the foundation.

The Takeaway

Innovation momentum is created, not decreed by senior management. Use your momentum to establish your innovation objectives and goal.

Over to you. Please comment below.

What steps would you add to the list?
How do you motivate your innovators?
Please share an anecdote about innovation momentum.

15 Components of Innovation Culture

Jatin Desai — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Our insight, at The DeSai Group, from working with global customers since 1983 is that leadership readiness is the most essential factor for success. Leaders may want innovation, but it is entirely possible that the midlevel managers are not ready, meaning they have no time and no resources and lack the mind-set, motivation, and skills. It is also possible that the current organizational structures are too bureaucratic to welcome innovation thinking.

Let’s look at the 15 factors in the categories of Alignment, Insights and Mobilization

that control innovation readiness and improve innovation propensity at your company.

Alignment

Five alignment factors are related to a business’s ability to recognize, specify, clarify and commit to the purpose of innovation and help achieve predefined business value—your target destination. There is no need to waste time and money on innovation unless it is critically linked to the business strategy.

Alignment is about strategically sponsoring, engaging, monitoring, and supporting all innovation activities at every level of the business structure. If alignment is properly executed and adjusted as the organization matures, the result will be a climate and culture of innovation for long-term sustainable business growth.

Alignment Success Factors	Definition
Innovation Mandate	At the top, innovation is seen as critical to the future of our organization.
Leader readiness	Leaders are prepared to guide the organization’s innovation efforts.
Employee engagement	Individuals throughout the organization are motivated to contribute to innovation.
Innovation support	Organization has effective systems and processes to support innovation.
Systematic approach	There is a clear framework, common language, along with a systematic and well-understood approach to innovation.

What are the signs of an aligned organization for innovation? When alignment is present, you will see focus and collaboration at the right levels for the purpose of achieving organizational and individual goals for both the business leaders and for individuals. True alignment will show up in the form of employees’ desire to engage at work and be effective contributors to the organization, continually looking for new ways to support the overall vision, mission, and purpose of the organization as a whole.

Alignment means that each business unit, department, team, and individual sees and understands its role and how it contributes to the overall innovation mandate of the organization. It gives them confidence that their work is valuable.

Insights

Insights reflect the importance of discovering new ideas—with art and science rather than as matter of luck. It begins with the recognition that information from many sources is essential to developing unique insights that will allow your business to achieve strategic targets.

To develop deep insights about what is possible, you must involve people from all levels of the organization, including partners, suppliers, customers, and regulators. The larger the field of information and ideas, the more dramatic, sustainable, and unique will be your pool of insights. Here we capture a collection of ideas and knowledge, connected or not to each other, for potential exploitation.

Once captured, the ideas must be organized and easily shared with others so they can be enhanced; the result becomes your idea bank. You need a disciplined process to keep the idea bank alive or, like anything else, the ideas will quickly die due to inertia.

Insights Success Factors	Definition
Diverse perspectives	We incorporate a wide range of perspectives in the idea- generation process.
External orientation	We actively engage with the external environment.
Climate/Culture	Our organizational climate and culture support the generation of ideas/insights.
Idea flow	We have strong flow of creative ideas.
Idea selection	We select the best ideas from those that are generated on a timely basis.

How does a company develop this competency for deep insights? In most organizations, to gain insight into projects, market positioning, and corporate performance, they develop and study performance charts, two-by-two matrices, and Balanced Scorecards, respectively. Looking at data in such a way, we are able to develop certain forms of business insights.

Similarly, innovation insight depends on finding (sometimes through visualization and highly diverse group exercises) new knowledge that leads to practical ideas for consideration. When executed well, insights enable creation of innovation platforms (a plethora of ideas to pursue a large multiyear business opportunity) and fresh ideas. This helps managers quickly make investment decisions to accelerate new and novel discoveries.

What is required for an idea pipeline to get fatter and mightier? The most important is to establish climate of trust and openness that support the creative process. You will also need tools for individuals and teams to find incremental and breakthrough ideas.

Mobilization

The focus here is strictly on innovation execution. Our data show that most organizations are weakest in this area. Mobilization reflects the reality that even with strong alignment and a good flow of insights, innovation is only valuable when it is translated into results—that is, executed. The organization with the best idea is not always the winner. Rather, the organization with the ability to execute the best idea is the winner. Especially in today’s competitive and fast-paced environment where maturation from unique idea to commodity is very swift, execution in the early stages of innovation is critical for success.

Mobilization Success Factors	Definition
Resources	The organization allocates sufficient resources to innovation.
Governance	There are effective governance structures and processes for innovation.
Portfolio	Through a structured process, the company effectively manages a portfolio of innovations selected for implementation.
Change management	Leaders create the adjustments required to ensure all innovations achieve full realization.
Execution	The company has a clear process for successfully bringing projects through the pipeline to achieve positive results.

Mobilizing also means you must capture the maximum value of an innovation before it is duplicated, continually improving that product of service to stay ahead of the competition. Effective mobilization calls for sufficient resources; quick and effective decisions; clear thinking about the human impact of new approaches; and continuous learning about how to translate innovations into reality faster and successfully over time.

In summary, mobilization is a set of processes, methods, tools, and structures that will allow employees and managers to operationalize ideas for implementation and venturing in an informed way to achieve targeted business outcomes.

Alignment + Insights + Mobilization = Success

Alignment, insights, and mobilization are all happening at the same time. All three play critical roles in the success of innovation and therefore, the long-term sustainability of your organization. To be successful, you must manage each of them and the trade-offs between them. An idea that has great merit but would struggle to be mobilized in your organization may not be as valuable as an idea with less merit that can quickly be tested and mobilized. A fantastic idea that would be great for your consumer but does not align with your organizational purpose will struggle to receive funding and support over the long term. A great idea for the market but without strong leadership alignment will stay dormant.

The Takeaway

As your organization builds the innovation muscle and the innovation engine continues to grow, you will need to adjust the integration points as a part of the overall business planning conversations and activities at the top.

Your turn. Please comment below.

Do you feel that Alignment, Insights and Mobilizing should receive equal weight in the process?
What have you done to commercialize your idea pipeline?
Which of the 15 factors do you find most important?

You Can Build Your Own Innovation Engine

Jatin Desai — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Yes, You Can Build Your Own Innovation Engine

Jatin Desai was interviewed for the Propelling Marketing Ideas blog about different aspects of Innovation. He answers these questions.

1. What is innovation?

2. Can innovation be measured? If so, how?

3. Besides product innovation, where else can a company innovate?

4. How does a company link innovation to their current business strategy?

5. How can a company innovate together with their customers?

Click here to read the interview.

8 Innovation Culture Books Worth Reading

Jatin Desai — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 13:00:00 GMT

I have spent most of my career involved in the Innovation arena. For long-term sustainable and continuous growth, a company must build a climate and culture of innovation. The recommended books in this category covers topics such as the role of leaders, how to design organizational structures and inspire teams to reach for the very best solutions.

Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity by Bettina Von Stamm

Innovation is the major driving force in organizations today. With the rise of truly global markets and the intensifying competition for customers, employees and other critical resources, the ability to continuously develop successful innovative products, services, processes and strategies is essential. While creativity is the starting point for any kind of innovation, design is the process through which a creative idea or concept is translated into reality. Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity, 2nd Edition brings these three strands together in a discussion built around a collection of up-to-date case studies.

Positive Turbulence: Developing Climates for Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal (J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership)) by Stanley S. Gryskiewicz)

Can your company manage even encourage turbulence in ways that actually strengthen its competitive stance? Absolutely. In this work, top organizational psychologist Stanley Gryskiewicz argues that challenges to the status quo can be catalysts for creativity, innovation, and renewal and shows leaders how they can keep their company on the competitive edge by embracing a process he calls Positive Turbulence. Developed through the author's work with many of the world's leading companies over the course of thirty years, Positive Turbulence delivers proven methods for creating an organization that continuously renews itself through the committed pursuit of new ideas, products, and processes.

Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy by Judy Estrin

Named one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine

Does innovation come about by luck or hard work? Is it a flash of inspiration or the result of careful management? Are innovators born or taught? In Closing the Innovation Gap, Judith Estrin provides the answers to these and other questions critical to our future. A technology pioneer and business leader, Estrin describes what will be required to reignite the spark of innovation in business, education, and government ensuring our long-term success in the global economy.

Innovation does not occur in a vacuum. It grows from the interplay of three drivers of creative change research, development, and application. Estrin calls this dynamic the “Innovation Ecosystem,” explaining how these communities work together to create sustainable innovation.

The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation by Matthew E. May and Kevin Roberts

One million. That's how many new ideas the Toyota organization receives from its employees every year. These ideas come from every level of the organization from the factory floors to the corporate suites. And organizations all over the world want to learn how they do it. Now Matthew May, Senior Advisor to the University of Toyota, reveals how any company can create an environment of every day innovation and achieve the elegant solutions found only on the far side of complexity. A tactical guide for team-based innovation, THE ELEGANT SOLUTION delivers the formula to the three principles and ten practices that drive business creativity. Innovation isn't just about technology it's about value, opportunity and impact. When a company embeds a real discipline around the pursuit of perfection, the sky is the limit. Dozens of case studies (from Toyota and other companies) illustrate the power and universality of these concepts; a unique 'clamshell strategy' prepares managers to ensure organizational success. At once a thought-shaper, a playmaker, and a taskmaster, THE ELEGANT SOLUTION is a practical field manual for everyone in corporate life.

Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage through Collaborative Innovation Networks by Peter A. Gloor

Swarm Creativity introduces a powerful new concept-Collaborative Innovation Networks, or COINs. Its aim is to make the concept of COINs as ubiquitous among business managers as any methodology to enhance quality and competitive advantage. The difference though is that COINs are nothing like other methodologies. A COIN is a cyber-team of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by technology to collaborate in achieving a common goal n innovation-by sharing ideas, information, and work. It is no exaggeration to state that COINs are the most productive engines of innovation ever. COINs have been around for hundreds of years. Many of us have already been a part of one without knowing it. What makes COINs so relevant today, though is that the concept has reached its tipping point-thanks to the Internet and the World Wide Web. This book explores why COINS are so important to business success in the new century. It explains the traits that characterize COIN members and COIN behavior. It makes the case for why businesses ought to be rushing to uncover their COINs and nurture them, and provides tools for building organizations that are more creative, productive and efficient by applying principles of creative collaboration, knowledge sharing and social networking. Through real-life examples in several business sectors, the book shows how to leverage COINs to develop successful products in R & D, grow better customer relationships, establish better project management, and build higher-performing teams. In short, this book answers four key questions: Why are COINs better at innovation? What are the key elements of COINs? Who are the people that participate in COINs and how do they become members? And how does an organization transform itself into a Collaborative Innovation Network?

Leadership for Innovation: How to Organize Team Creativity and Harvest Ideas by John Eric Adair

New ideas and new ways of doing things are one of the main ingredients in sustained business success, but how does one create the right conditions for innovation?

Leadership for Innovation will help readers create an innovative climate that encourages the development of new products and services. Drawing upon real-life examples including Google, Honda and 3M, John Adair sets out practical ways for bringing about change in organizations. As well as identifying the characteristics of an innovative organization, he discusses key topics such as organizing for team creativity; motivating creative people, how to build on ideas and how to be a creative leader and team member.

Leadership for Innovation shows how to inspire teams to go one step further and generate the kind of ideas that are the foundations of future success.

The Leader's Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills: Unlocking the Creativity and Innovation in You and Your Team by Paul Sloane

In this lively, energetic guide to leadership, highly acclaimed author, trainer and presenter Paul Sloane shares dynamic techniques that are sure to unleash creative energy and lateral thinking. Packed with real-life examples, practical methods and lateral thinking exercises, the book encourages you to question your assumptions and develop new ideas with a variety of techniques. Lateral thinking puzzles at the end of each chapter illustrate the importance of thinking outside the box.

Giant Steps in Management: Innovations that change the way you work by Julian
Birkinshaw and Michael J. Mol

Succinctly but completely describing 50 of the most important management innovations in the past 150 years, Mol and Birkinshaw educate us on where and how managerial innovations arise. An amazing overview of the management practice landscape, Giant Steps in Management provides invaluable insights for organizations seeking better performance. Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University Never has it been more important for managers to innovate the way they manage. As this book so powerfully shows management innovation advances in how we manage is a secret weapon in the search for competitive advantage. With a fantastic compendium of the 50 most crucial management innovations this book will surprise, inform and inspire any manager who believes that they need to innovate the way they manage. Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice, London Business School Author of Hot Spots; why some teams, workplaces and organisations buzz with energy and other's don't. "This book might be called 'Everything you wanted to know about management, but were afraid to ask'. It's an invaluable quick guide to the entire arsenal of techniques and models, and I recommend it to anyone who takes the job of management seriously. It is typical of the authors work, in that it is clear, crisp, and useful." Tim Brooks, Managing Director, Guardian News & Media Limited INNOVATION IS AT THE HEART OF GREAT MANAGEMENT How do you manage? What skills, ideas, tools and techniques do you use? Have you always used them? Think about it: how we manage organizations and ourselves is in a constant state of evolution. Nothing about the way you work today is forever. Managers are always trying new things, different approaches. There are management innovations underway all the time in large organizations. Many fail. Some work. A few make history. The most valuable ones are picked up and absorbed across entire industries and countries. These are the ones this book will tell you about. Giant Steps in Management presents a thought provoking selection of the 50 most important management innovations of the last 150 years and describes the impact they have on management today. Some of the innovations will be familiar to you; others will be new, different, surprising. Together, they form a fascinating compendium of the ideas, techniques and practices that have rocked the world of management. If you want to be on the right side of innovation, keep this book to hand.

The Takeaway

Growing your climate and culture or innovation can be jumpstarted by reading the books featured above. The authors explore and outline many of the areas necessary to succeed.

Your turn. Tell me what you think. Please comment below.

What other books would you recommend be included on the list?
What is your favorite book on the topic of Innovation Culture?
Who is your favorite Innovation writer?

Microsoft Innovative - YES according to AD in WSJ

Jatin Desai — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Microsoft is famous for its back story of a couple of nerds who changed personal computing for the entire world. They went from a few thousand dollars in revenue to$70 billion in revenue each year. They must have been innovative to accomplish such a feat and have $77 billion in the bank. They just spent $7 billion of that hard earned cash to buy Nokia’s Devices & Services business.

READ MY LIPS – WE ARE INNOVATIVE

Then, why did they have to point out not once, but twice about innovation in their full page ad on the back page of Section A in the Wall Street Journal? Here are the two quotes with emphasis and commentary added by me.

“By bringing together these great teams together, Microsoft will be able to deliver more choices and faster innovation to consumers in phones and smart devices of all kinds”

I thought a couple of years ago that Microsoft gave billions of dollars to Nokia and its CEO Stephen Elop (a former Microsoft executive) to accomplish the task already. Microsoft and Nokia were already joined at the hip as partners when Nokia gave up its own operating system in favor of Windows.

Staples has the “Easy Button.” Perhaps, Mr. Elop has the “Innovation Button.”

“Together, we will create more unified development, manufacturing, and marketing efforts to bring innovation to market with greater efficiency and speed.”

The market did not think so, and erased 4.6% of Microsoft’s share price after the announcement. That decline in share price pretty much wiped out the nice bump in Microsoft shares after CEO Steve Ballmer indicated he would retire within 12 months.

A THIRD EXAMPLE OF PUTTING YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS

Ballmer went on to say in a Wall Street Journal story on the same day,“For us to really fulfill the vision for what we can do for our customers, we have evolved our thinking.”

Very recently Ballmer announced the “devices and services” approach at Microsoft after a major reorganization of the 100,000 person company (now 132,000 after Nokia acquisition). Sounds like he is going all in for devices. Other than the X Box gaming device, Microsoft does not have a successful record creating hardware. See Surface Tablet and Microsoft’s recent $900 million write off for unsold inventory.

The Takeaway

You need an Innovation Engine to help create an ecosystem of innovation. You cannot decree it, you must work hard to create it.

Your turn. Tell me what you think. Please comment below.

Does your business have a culture and climate of innovation?
What is the most innovative new product or service your company has created in the last 5 years?
Do you feel that Microsoft and Nokia can out innovate Google’s Android platform and Apple’s iPhone platform?

Role of HR in Innovation

Jatin DeSai — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:19:00 GMT

Innovation is the catch word for our generation. Everywhere we look at, we find innovation. There was a time in history when invention was innovation. At the brink of inventing all, innovation is invention. The bottle of beverage is redefining its shape. Every communication device is undergoing metamorphosis. 2G to 3G, rectangular to modular technologies, the world is experiencing change through break neck innovation.

We wonder about the soul of innovation! Is it a collective mind frame which innovates? Do innovation leads to more innovation? Or there is an innovator behind every innovation?

Innovation is definitely a social mind frame. If not initiated participated by all. Whenever something new hits the town and if dubbed happening by a group of people, like a shoal of fish, we run after it to part of the experience. That means innovation is started by an innovator and followed by the masses. Innovation leads to further innovation! That is true but there has to be some innovator to start this chain reaction. Thus innovation is all about the innovator.

Innovator is no one but someone among you and me. It is the human brain which innovates. Finding such brains is the real job of our HR Dept. A successful HR professional is always an innovator who identifies the resource who can do trendsetting innovation.

Unfortunately the industry is swarmed by unsuccessful HR techniques which fail to identify the real innovator. What is the relevance of totemistic queries like, “How experienced you are? And tell us about yourself? How about your achievements and breakthroughs? Who are your clients?” And all statistical queries far removed from finding the real innovator with innovation mind. We are not proposing these queries are irrelevant at the time of selecting candidates however we are questioning its relevance in terms of the context of innovation.

An ideal HR professional shouldn’t be task master or recruitment software. Beyond the plastic smile he/she should have a sensibility to understand the processes one practice to understand and implement business techniques. One should delve in detail to understand the outlook of an interviewee when it comes to innovation.

However no HR is born with these skills. An integrated HR innovation package can help them tremendously in recruiting innovative personnel in the managerial wire frame of an organization.

Innovation Q&A with Rob Berman

Jatin DeSai — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:38:00 GMT

My friend Rob Berman had lots of questions about Innovation. He discussed these questions with me and had put together this discussion in his blog.

For all questions and answers of this discussion please visit Rob Berman's blog.

-Jatin Desai

How Innovative is your Organization?

Jatin DeSai — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:00:00 GMT

You must be having certain parameters or yardsticks to judge the performance of your organization and exactly calculate the return on investment (ROI) vis-à-vis the planning, the performance and the potential. Despite all the available mechanisms of analysis, most leaders fail to understand the immeasurable gap between speculations and reality. The root cause of this immeasurable gap can certainly be tracked down to a few intangible factors. Primary among them is the capacity to innovate for a particular brand, organization or a corporate entity.

Innovation Obstacles

The major problem faced by an organization is the absence of a clear directive or formula to innovate. The work force, which is a major decider of innovation, largely works as a cog in the machine rather than a radical unit intelligent enough to innovate as hierarchical processes are better preferred by a linear human resource.

Another area which makes innovation a difficult process to be imbibed by your workforce is lack of liberty to express in a highly structured system. Whenever there is lack of liberty at an individual level, an organization fails to innovate on the whole. More structured-driven the culture, harder it is to embrace innovation; which by its nature, is somewhat unstructured.

Organizational culture is a result of inherited and tolerated past behaviors of the staff; especially the leaders at the top. Organization suffers from lack of innovation due to contemporary business practices and the nearby environment it operates in. Thus, innovation as a process should begin at the level of an individual with full support of the leaders. This can lend a character to an organization where performance, profit and potential grow manifold by significant innovation on intangible, impromptu research, and management decisions.

How ready is the culture for innovation?

How adept your workforce is with a dynamic knowledge system or how porous they are with circumstance fluctuation are simple questions which help you to approximately understand how innovative your organization is. However, to ensure that your organization is ready for such innovation trials you need to first make sure that your organization is innovation-ready.

At The DeSai Group, our innovation consulting processes are deliberate and drastic. They are designed to be transformative in nature. We believe in a sustained innovation strategy instead of piecemeal innovation. This means that our consulting techniques rely heavily on a dramatic change to completely undermine forces of resistance and new growth opportunities. As necessity is the mother of invention, we facilitate an environment in your organization where necessity is induced to alter psychological performance and create a climate of innovation. The process makes your workforce rehearse find measures of self-innovation. This means there are real entrepreneurs working on their passions in an environment that promotes experimentation, risk-taking, and future thinking.

The right brand image within insiders of an organization is a necessary precondition for any kind of innovation. If a nagging employee has a negative attitude toward the organization’s optimism the result is not only affecting the performance of the concerned individual but the overall environment as well. Such individuals can be motivated through vigorous team-building and venturing skills.

The process of innovation is largely a psycho-social process wherein knowledge transfer and experiential methods are largely employed to achieve the goal. We, here at The DeSai Group, clinically approach the intangibility quotient of innovation through hard-core rational, analytical science we call “Innovation Execution Methodology”, while keeping in mind that innovation is also very much a form of art and it is the artistic and unpredictability that actually gives rise to new ideas for commercialization and value generation.

Help your organization with Leadership development programs – critical ingredient for innovation and growth.

Jatin DeSai — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:50:00 GMT

Leaders are not created leaders are born; is a partly flawed argument. In our experience working with Fortune clients since 1983, born leaders are mostly charismatic but they have a tendency to topple organizational values, principles and sometime ethics. That is, they are not true leaders, they are greedy managers. In the short run they can be unprecedented but for a sustained long term growth such charismatic leaders can be detrimental.

Various reasons can support the argument.

Any above average charismatic leader in a short span makes an impact and convinces the top line management to believe in his convictions. The team assigned to the leader soon follows the diktats of the concerned leader and get used to her or his way of conduct. Failures, misappropriations and disapprovals in such circumstances affect the nerve of the organization heavily because of over reliance on the leader. Same goes true with success stories. The flip side of such methods of leadership is clear devaluation of potential of the large work force. Such leadership tendencies are hierarchical and in most cases create a rift of ideology between large sets of people.

In case the leader quits the organization, the entire team crumbles and suffers from a confidence crisis. The situation becomes so worse that newer measures are often treated in comparison to the last leader. In extreme cases employees quit the organization and seek to join their old leader.

Thus every leadership development training program should make leaders out of ordinary employees based on their loyalty, potential and dedication. Leadership programs should focus within the parameters laid by the organization so that never the will of the leader challenges the authority of the organization. Such systematic leadership creates a deep respect for the organization and not the leader only. Innovation best happens under such circumstances of equality of law. In fact all successful organizations of today in any format of business create organizational leadership over personal leadership.

Leadership development programs from The DeSai Group, are targeted towards building pipeline of leaders from within by developing existing employees. Every leader should be groomed and customized to outperform. We believe that best leaders are those who are pushed beyond their current capacity, it is only then the person can tap into the undiscovered capability and the reservoir of potential within. These types of leaders should be taught to stretch their thinking beyond their comfort zone and assure never to endanger the will of the organization at large. Rather the leadership development workshops would stabilize the vision of the organization through proto organizations in the form of leaders. That is, true leaders walk the talk everyday.They should be the ideal role models for leadership for everyone.

The DeSai Group engages with clients to build leaders that can drive performance but also innovation. Too many leadership programs only focus on developing expected outcomes. That mindset cannot work any longer. Organizations must demand leaders to go beyond just the left-brain metrics of performance to whole-brain approach for strategic growth and value creation. It is imperative to build leaders that can out-perform but also out-compete in the turbulent markets.

The DeSai Group’s leadership programs are highly constructed with balance of science and art. These programs focuses on leadership performance bereaved of emotional impact. The psychological effect of a leader will be minimized and a leader would lead simply because he is not better than others but by the fact that he has tested leadership skill acknowledged by colleagues and employees.

What Will Happen in 2011?

Jatin DeSai — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:18:00 GMT

Wow, another new year! Where does the time go?

We have seen another turbulent year filled with uncertainty, threats, and opportunities.

So, here is our attempt at sharing our favorite 20 Global Insights for 2011 and beyond.

What is inside this free report? Read on....

Did you know you have a Social Signature on the internet? What is Group Buying? Is this going to be the year for PC Tablets? What about Facebook? What should you plan for? How will Social Media impact your business? Home Banking and Home Medicine? Digital-only classes? And have you heard of Surprise Marketing? plus much more...

Here is a free report to download to find trends and innovations in technology, consumerism, society, and products. Enjoy. http://bit.ly/gI0Vmb

Driver for Adoption of an Innovation: Technology or Market?

Jatin DeSai — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:30:00 GMT

What is the driver for new innovations? Does technology drive new innovations or does the Market dictate need for new innovation?

In many ways we are speaking about the two sides of a coin. So the question is, what is the coin made of? (sorry to get too philosophical, but allow me to please).

Technology is something that gets created by technologists because:
1) It is Human Nature to Create and Solve - the passion and desire to solve something far greater then one’s self (Human Spirit as the driver). There are many who simply create because they want to serve. There is nothing in it for them, but to experiment and create.

2) Motivated by raw Discovery and Inquiry – just to see what can happen (Academic Personal Brand as the driver – in most cases). Of course academia is far removed in many cases so piles of patents/technologies are created without a home for applications.

3) Marketers ‘tells’ the technologist what the market demands are and they go off and innovate (Market Driven). Of course we know how often the product actually generates the indented impact – not very good (and both the marketer and the technologist gets ‘restructured’…lol).

4) As the recent new Hollywood movie “Wall Street” depicts and as the Mortgage Crises occurred here in USA, we also see Financial Performance as the driver for new innovation at the cost of societal damage (Greed as the driver)

5) I also think technologist stay busy because of fear. Either they or someone else in their organization is fearful of losing to competition, losing their job, losing their reputation or losing their personal belongings. (Fear Driven)

I believe that Market Driven has two definitions: 1) There is an unmet Market need in the current market and 2) There is a new market being developed that is un-harvested.

If we assume the Fortune 1000s or Global 2000s as the context, I think that most innovation is driven (funding) by the “Current Market Conditions” and the “Adjacent(near future) Market Conditions” of those markets.

-Jatin

Part-4: For CEOs, what are the FOUR critical innovation barriers that must be addressed?(Part 4 of 4)

Jatin DeSai — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:33:00 GMT

In this four part series, I mentioned that every CEO and business executives who intends to lead innovation as a strategic agenda will need to address four critical barriers to innovation.

First barrier is the mindset to harvest ideas and manage those ideas as Venture Capitalists does not exist, second barrier is the inability to recognize how to align the abundance of resources available to large organizations for investment in innovation, the third barrier is to recognize the sheer size of the human capital assets that are under-utilized and disengaged from an organization’s creative capacity. The opportunity for most organizations is to dedicate talented “New Game Teams”, focused on harvesting the creative ideas and leadership competencies, to build new top-line growth capacity.

The fourth and final barrier relates to the broad product and delivery capabilities that large-scale organizations possess.

For example, since the mid-1980’s in the financial services industry, the typical company has gone from handful of delivery channels (Branches, Relationship Managers) to literally 15-20 channels (Branches, Direct Mail, Internet, National Sales Force, Business ATMs, Corporate Cards, Affinity Marketing, Wireless, etc.); all the while expanding its product offerings by ten-fold. “Anytime, Anywhere” banking has become the price of entry across the industry as providers strive to meet the need of large and diverse customer bases.

This has created a huge challenge, since those dedicated assets to serve the wide variety of customers are not fully leveraged for new innovation. The complexity of providing the right product to the right customer through the right delivery channel in real-time – in a way that doesn’t destroy the economics of the company – becomes a monumental challenge with each new innovation. Add to this, the overwhelming issue of tying the employment brand to the product brand in the marketplace and the various components of talent acquisition.

The bottom line: the accomplishment of end-to-end alignment between products, channels, and talent acquisition (employment offers) is the single largest challenge facing large companies today. The best organizations that can create smaller more nimble organizations while retaining to leverage strength of larger institution will be in the best position to out-compete in the future, enter emerging markets quickly, and adjust to external fast-pace factors.

For complete details, please download full 23 page whitepaper on “Mastering Innovation – Roadmap to Sustainable Value Creation by Mr. Jatin DeSai”

Part-3: For CEOs, what are the FOUR critical innovation barriers that must be addressed?(Part 3 of 4)

Jatin DeSai — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:40:00 GMT

In my last post, I mentioned that every CEO and business executives who intends to lead innovation as a strategic agenda will need to address four critical barriers to innovation.

First barrier is the mindset to harvest ideas and manage those ideas as Venture Capitalists does not exist. This requires demonstrated confidence to consciously fail, experiment often, and win occasionally. Goal is to do more of it, so you can out-compete the markets.

Second barrier I mentioned in the previous post was the inability to recognize how to align the abundance of resources available to large organizations for investment in innovation. Smaller and less nimble competition cannot, physically, out-compete you if you can leverage the resources you have. This is the primary reason for new entrants who win big against existing mature businesses; example: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Skype, etc.

The third barrier is to recognize the sheer size of the human capital assets that are under-utilized and disengaged from an organization’s creative capacity. The opportunity for most organizations is to dedicate talented “New Game Teams”, focused on harvesting the creative ideas and leadership competencies, to build new top-line growth capacity. Proctor and Gamble’s global research and development organization back in 2008, employed over 7,500 scientists; GE used to train 10,000 managers every year and performed over 5,000 detail performance reviews of its senior-most employees; and Cisco increased its engineering workforce by 300% since 2000 to 2008.

The bottom line: developing a holistic and integrated human capital strategy for innovation is critical so it promotes “value creators” and rewards them to continue to create value while staying in workable compensation systems. Remember, innovation comes from ideas, ideas come from engaged employees, partners, and suppliers.

For complete details, please download full 23 page whitepaper on “Mastering Innovation – Roadmap to Sustainable Value Creation by Mr. Jatin DeSai”

Part-2: For CEOs, what are the FOUR critical innovation barriers that must be addressed?(Part 2 of 4)

Jatin DeSai — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:30:00 GMT

In my last post, I mentioned that every CEO and business executives who intends to lead innovation as a strategic agenda will need to address four critical barriers to innovation.

The second barrier is not recognizing and then not aligning the abundance of resources available to large organizations for investment in innovation. Even when overwhelming evidence shows that the companies who invest in innovation consistently outperform their peer groups, why haven’t most organizations taken innovation seriously?

The challenge is not that an organization does not have resources to invest in innovation; rather it’s where to most effectively funnel those resources, and how to do it.

Innovation in most organizations should be a mandate that cuts across functional areas. Problem with that in most organizations is the current organizational structures makes effective resource allocation decisions very difficult - which no one has time to deal with. It requires tremendous top-down courage and political savvy.

The few common themes that arise are: prioritizing effectively for the same competing resources across business units, designing solutions that may be ideal for a single business unit but not for the corporation as a whole, and balancing between the need to build markets while servicing existing customers.

The bottom line: resources are available, but the allocation and ownership for innovation is fragmented responsibility across most companies. There are three options to quickly overcome this barrier:

1) Develop a central innovation structure – including funding to help internal businesses quickly welcome innovation in their areas. Once initial ideas

2) Develop a hybrid innovation structure – which centralize core capabilities, but shares accountability and risks between corporate and lines of business.

3) Develop a Center of Excellence structure – centralizes core innovation capabilities and resources for business areas based on their respective needs.

For complete details, please download full 23 page whitepaper on “Mastering Innovation – Roadmap to Sustainable Value Creation by Mr. Jatin DeSai”

Part-1: For CEOs, what are the FOUR critical innovation barriers that must be addressed? (Part 1 of 4)

Jatin DeSai — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:25:00 GMT

In our experience working with other CEOs and senior executives, they have realized that the markets are very unforgiving and will always continue to be unfriendly, and that embracing innovation is not an option, the next logical question they generally pose may be obvious.

What must CEOs do to embrace innovation while managing the associated risk and overcoming the barriers?

Before I share with you the four barriers, let me say that the answer lies in developing a clear Innovation Mandate - a strategic statement that describes innovation in the context of your business, the value it promises to generate for growth and disciplined process by which to get there.

Innovation Mandate must be vividly clear for everyone in your organization; it must be concise to help drive alignment to business unit initiatives, and it must help articulate specific employee behaviors necessary at all levels for innovation climate to take root. When designed correctly, it is clearly linked and driven by the business strategy.

Additionally, keys to become innovative are highly dependent on your ability to address four critical barriers that are incumbent in most organizations. When not addressed together, the journey towards sustainability and value creation invites a higher risk of failure, potentially minimizing the results of innovation investments.

The first barrier is that most organizations do not have the mindset to harvest ideas and manage those ideas as Venture Capitalists do. This requires demonstrated confidence to consciously fail, experiment often, and win occasionally. Goal is to do more of it, so you can out-compete the markets.

The sole role of Silicon Valley was to quickly take the best ideas and apply entrepreneurship and agility to turn those ideas into commercial ventures. Silicon Valley did this because they recognized that large corporations are unwilling to abandon the tightly-knit safety net of resource allocation.

It is clear that the amount of “innovation opportunities” available to large companies dwarfs the potential available to small companies. So the myth that only small, nimble businesses can be most agile and innovative is completely false. In fact, here’s case in point (not to mention hundreds of other such examples): Medtronic, a Fortune 500 Minneapolis based global leader in medical technology, on average used to earn 70% of its sales from products introduced in the previous two years alone. This resulted in long term sustainable growth of 20% and created a high barrier for its competition to enter into Medtronic’s markets.

The bottom line: new ideas are easy to find in every corporation; it’s the distinctive capability of turning them into commercial ventures that most companies fall short on. This requires leaders to role-model what innovation means to them and the company. First step to address this barrier would be to develop an appropriate funding strategy and structure that will quickly demonstrate your commitment to innovation.

For complete details, please download full 23 page whitepaper on “Mastering Innovation – Roadmap to Sustainable Value Creation by Mr. Jatin DeSai”.

Innovation Tatva(Truth) #2: Put a ceiling on time.

Jatin DeSai — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:01:00 GMT

By setting time limits, things get done. Time is one of five most critical resource. Protect it with passion - no matter the size of the challenge.

Put a large clock in every meeting room and make it your team's best friend for every meeting. Some of our client's estimate that they spend almost 75% of their time in meetings - and half of them are unproductive and not needed.

In our work, we have found innovators who love to experiment all day, just for the sake of learning and broadening their insights. This is a critical activity, but when compounded with other innovators who also love to learn, the team may collect lots of insights and new knowledge, but no results.

Make sure all innovation is tied to strategic results - hard or soft. Hard being financials such as revenue, profit, EBITDA, etc. Soft goals can be customer satisfaction, knowledge of new technology, lessons learned from a pilot project, market variables that worked or did not work, etc.

Increasing Profits by Changing the Game

Jatin DeSai — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:07:00 GMT

Businesses today run on a ‘profit engine'. Everything in business is about profits only. Wall Street rewards profits. Executive compensation is tied to profits. Unless corporate profits increase, shareholders are not happy. Boards are motivated to make sure their companies are profitable.

This is a ferocious engine that has created the current financial crisis. The U.S. Government (and many other countries) are bailing out the very same engine that has brought this crisis in the first place. - without solving the real problem. It is impossible to improve the future with only historical thinking. We cannot use existing thinking(rooted in the past experience only) and use it to create future. That is like an engineering teacher certifying a group of students as excellent engineers, but then asking the same teacher to suggest that all the students should also learn American History and Business Management. This type of thinking would be incomplete. In fact, we never notice how incomplete and inadequate it is.

This suggests that most of our societal thinking(and other types of thinking) is completely wrong if the only way we think is from the past.

For businesses, they think, the easiest way to increase profits is to increase efficiency and to reduce costs. They generally do this by reducing employment and laying off workers, instead of driving innovation and grow the top-line (much harder to do). So, they resort to making ‘quick profits'. Why? Because that is how they are incented. This ‘underground' motivation - to gain personal profits have driven business leaders to be greedy - the fundamental root cause of the world's sad situation today - in all sectors, in all issues.

So what can be done? What can be done in our thinking?

We need a new more humanistic approach and out of the box radical thinking to this problem. I don't know of anyone thinking along these lines. Why? Maybe because it is too hard? Of course.

Solution I propose is to change the rules of the game. What if a corporation is allowed a specific profit per head for everyone employed? There would now be an incentive to employ as many people as possible. These people would still need to be employed productively because otherwise there would be no profit. The skill and thinking of executives would now be used to increase employment rather than to decrease employment.

What do you think?

-Jatin DeSai

The global financial crisis has led many companies to slice payrolls, but many employers are staying loyal. Meet 9 of this year's Best Companies that, as of mid-January, have never had a layoff. Click here to read more.

Forget "Creativity",embrace "Creativeness" A strategy for the future!

Jatin DeSai — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:06:00 GMT

Today's managers and leaders think of "creativity" rather than"creativeness". Our corporate culture has trained us to immediately think of results rather than seeking to be the kind of people who achieve them, which is little like putting the cart before the horse. We, too often, look for something which can be measured and therefore controlled. We use the word "Creativity" with the underlying intent that it can be a measurable quantity, whereas creativeness is not. It is a quality of the person.

Creativeness is something entirely natural, like the budding of a plant from a seed. Because it is natural, it cannot be forced to produce, commanded or demanded.

There are no recipes for creativeness. It happens in one's presence at the spur of a moment.

For organizations to compete for the critical "talent war" ahead of us, they must rethink cultivating creativity, but more importantly creating an environment for people to naturally bring out their latent creativeness -which exists in all human beings. Organizations who figure out how to do that will be able to attract and retain the best talent.

So how can one develop this competency of "creativeness" in day-to-day work?

Develop greater awareness of situations and problems, viewing them with bare attention. In this way they will be seen with clarity.

Look at situations with sincerity and detachment (very hard to do). This means recognizing and admitting to yourself your own involvement.
When you have observed the problem in this way, do not put it on one side, but bear it in mind for however long is necessary. Don't force to seek the solution- let it come to you.
Take care to notice the intuitive signals, whatever these happen to be in your case. Eventually a solution will occur to you - anytime, anywhere.
Look at the solution you have discovered with clear comprehension of purpose and suitability. Not all intuitive and creative ideas you get are necessarily right or practical.
Validate its value if it was realized, shop it around, lens it from varieties of perspectives - customers, peers, leaders, suppliers, markets, etc.
Finally, act on it. Ideas and solutions are of no use, if they are only confined to private realities.

Thanks,

-Jatin

Recommended books on creativity (accessible online):

- Handbook of creativity - Robert J. Sternberg

- Cracking Creativity: The secrets of Creative Genius - Michael Michalko

- Creativity: Unleashing the forces within - Osho

What is Innovation?

Jatin DeSai — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:07:00 GMT

In our findings for the last 25 years in business, we have discovered that innovation, at a personal level, is as different as the definition of spirituality. It can be very personal for people. Within organizations, our play arena, most of our customers have no idea about what innovation is, and most cannot agree on a definition.

For me, Creativity is generating original, novel ideas. Innovation is putting those ideas to work and getting results.

There is significant difference between creativity, invention, and innovation. Creativity arises from deep personal beliefs. Beliefs are shaped by one's character and values. We use creativity, rooted in our beliefs, assumptions, and passions, to find meaning in our work. When an organized group, with the same passion and beliefs work together for something much larger than themselves, they are capable of generating ideas that can be ventured for commercialization and help grow the top-line or impact the bottom-line of the group/business - that is Innovation. The actual product or service brought to a market, that makes a difference in the marketplace or in people's life, is Invention.

Therefore, Innovation is all about "Harvesting the deep insights of an organization's human spirit and knowledge, generating a pipeline of ideas that can be evaluated, selected, and ventured using disciplined tools, methods and processes that advances growth objectives for an organization."

Finally, for a business to succeed and thrive, a business cannot accidentally or occasionally be innovative. It must innovate at a rate faster than current (or future) competitors - with a high degree of predictability. So, in that sense, innovation must be positioned as a strategic tool to improve organizational agility to stay alive and grow. There are only 3 companies still in business on the DOW list from 70's - and soon maybe even less.

For organizations, Innovation is no longer a choice - it should be the primary goal.

Here are some latest articles on Innovation:

- Click here to read the article 'Innovation in America- A gathering storm' from Economist.com

- Click here to read what Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has to say about Innovation.

Thanks,

- Jatin

P.S. If you want to download our latest paper on innovation, feel free to go to http://www.desai.com/Resources and download the whitepaper on "Strategy-Driven Innovation". Enjoy.

Significant Innovation since Internet is Social Networking & Web 2.0

Jatin DeSai — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:24:00 GMT

If you want to see a real disruptive innovation since the Internet, get ready for Social Networking and Web 2.0

If you are completely new to Social Networking , go check it out now. If you are a visual learner like me, then you can watch this simple video on YouTube as well:

For example Linked-In is one of my favorite Social Networking sites. There are plenty of others such as FaceBook, MySpace, etc. You will be surprised how many Fortune 1000 companies have pages on these sites. These trends are currently turning the industrial marketing complex upside down. If you have not figured out a way to leverage these new innovations to grow your business, to find talent, to generate leads, your business is about to hit the wall in a very near future.

For example Linked-In is one of my favorite Social Network. I spend hours and hours on it every week. Here is a post from a great Blogger Mickael Nadeau who has summarized the benefits of LinkedIn on his Blog:

LinkedIn is a social network where you can interact freely with millions of people;
Like other social networks, it relies on viral marketing to grow: you basically invite your contacts to join your network and are, in return, granted to contact theirs;
What differentiates LinkedIn from other platforms is that it is primarily intended for businessmen and professionals, recruiters and job seekers… So, you won’t be able to post a picture of your dog there;
You can think of it as a virtual board of commerce;
It is very straightforward and easy to use.

And some advantages…

o It’s quicker. You don’t have to travel the country to attend conferences, lunches and never ending meetings to get acquainted with people. It is there and full of activity 24/7, no matter why you need it.

o It’s international. Want to speak with a decision maker in India, China or London? No problem: it’s just a matter of a few clicks. A lot of people around the world will learn about you and what you do without ever spending a dime.

o It’s useful. On LinkedIn, you have access to many of the best experts on any given subject. I have had some of my questions answered very intelligently within 2 minutes. In fact, that is how I came to use WordPress for this Blog.

o It’s profitable. There are a lot of leads and opportunities to be discovered on this network. Build your business and your connections at the same time!

o It’s free. Most of us wouldn’t invest in our own personal branding. Because of its scale and because its free, this tool could give you a real competitive advantage when branding your name and accomplishments.

Once you create a LinkedIn account, the best way of grow it is to leverage your current network (which should be growing everyday if you are looking at your new connections everyday already) with the capacity of time and resources you have to devote to growing it. If you are a recruiter for a firm, it might be ok to grow it for the sake of growing it. But if you are like me, using LinkedIn to find leads or find knowledge, quality of contacts are much more important.

So, I suggest you declare your ‘network growth strategy’ first. Once you know this, do everything possible to find update your profile to support that strategy, then answer every questions and pose every question that supports that strategy, and then to open meaningful conversations using external tools (your CRM system, Outlook, Blogs, Company Website, etc.). More qualitative conversations you are having in Linked-In and outside of Linked-In, you will grow your network and achieve your ‘network growth strategy’.

How do we identify the “invisible patterns” right under our nose?

Jatin DeSai — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Many organizations are spending a fortune to help predict the future for them and their surroundings. Having a competitive position and sustainable growth requires such investments. As obvious as this seems, in our innovation work at The DeSai Group, we find most organizations lack the art and the discipline to do this well. Most organizations rely on expensive research from outside, or rely on a more recent trend such as “Voice of The Customer” to help predict the future. Most organizations follow the same basic research and analytical resources (such as McKenzie, or Gartner Group, or IDC, etc.) as if that was the only truth to the future. I am not saying these resources and the reports they generate are of no value - on the contrary. They have value, but it is not enough. In fact, it might create negative patterns and limit your window to the future. Most leaders have relegated the tough task of predicting the future to someone else. That is poor leadership. That is not being innovative and lacks true sponsorship for innovation.

Let me take a seemingly trivial example. I’ve been going to a health club since 1985 and was an avid tennis player before that - until I had few operations on my left knee about ten years ago. I remember jogging to stay fit back then, as I still do today. Back then, it seemed that I was mostly alone when jogging. Today if you go to a health club, a local jogging track, Hyde Park in London, or The Jogger’s Park in Mumbai, you could run into a stampede. Trivial, but not so if you are Nike. Today, running shoe category is one of the fastest growth line in the shoe business.

Reflecting on my experience, this signal was about a change in values and attitudes. This is a startling reality and an eye-opener for me. I asked myself, how come I didn’t see this inner-shift in people’s value system sooner? Not only do we have trouble forecasting economic and political change like the oil crisis, but we also treat values and attitudes as if they never change.

Therefore, the $64,000 question is “What is invisible that is invisible?” How many of these patterns are around us today that cannot be seen and are unknown, but right under our nose? How do we identify them before they reach the center of the bell curve, where it ultimately lands on a Commodity Island?

Innovation Prompt #1: How can you and your organization bring early attention to weak signals – weak signals that are about to double in frequency and amplitude, before someone else in your industry does? At The DeSai Group, we call this developing “Deep Insights”. Deep Insights can reveal knowledge that can build differentiated innovation platforms – group of ideas that can either grow the top-line or improve efficiencies. Deep Insights can also reveal potentially disastrous situations to avoid as well. There are disciplined tools and methods, just like any other process, to help you see these unknown patterns – right under your nose!

Innovation Prompt#2: Other strategic question to explore is “What is known now that was previously unknown? Thus, trying to uncover concepts and descriptors, as in this case, “values, beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes”. How are values created? What are the difference between individual’s values, organizational values, societal values, human values, and moral values? How are these related? How are they created? What impacts changes to individual values within your constituencies – leaders, employees, customers, and other stakeholders? To what extent do they change or stay the same? What are their effects on our dynamic and evolving future? How do they link to the new climate and culture you want to build for your organization?

Got ideas or a Deep Insight? Let’s Talk.

-Jatin

Three Lanes on the Road to Innovation

Jatin DeSai — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:38:00 GMT

In our experience at The DeSai Group, we have discovered three critical lanes on the highway of innovation. If you maneuver correctly across all three lanes, managing your navigation, the car, and the environment, you will succeed in your journey.

If you decide to manage the journey in an informal way, without clear intent on your destination, health of the automobile, or taking the environmental factors for granted, the risks of failure will increase.

If you decide to manage the journey, as you go along, you will ge there, just not fast enough or in the most efficient way possible.

The three lanes on the journey are: Alignment, Insights, and Mobilization.

First is "Alignment". In this lane, the business must specify, clarify and commit to specific innovation vision and mission that will help achieve pre-defined business value – your target destination.

Alignment is about strategically sponsoring, aligning, monitoring, and supporting all innovation activities at every level of the business structure. If properly executed and adjusted as the organization matures, result will be climate and culture of innovation for long-term sustainable business growth.

Second lane is called "Insights". In this lane, the company builds collection of ideas and knowledge, connected or not to each other, for potential implementation. Insights is about analyzing and understanding your efforts to innovate, including the people involved, the processes used and the outcomes achieved. To gain insight into projects, market positioning and corporate performance, you can view Gantt charts, two-by-two matrices and balanced scorecards, respectively. Like these other forms of business insights, Innovation Insight depends on finding (sometimes through visualization and highly diverse breakdown exercises) new knowledge that leads to practical ideas for consideration. What arises from Insights are "Innovation Platforms" and "Fresh Ideas". This helps managers see the state of current initiatives and to tweak and tune those efforts, along with discovery new and novel.

Finally, the last lane on the journey is called "Mobilize". In this lane, it is all about strategic innovation execution. Mobilize is set of processes, methods, tools, and structures that will allow employees and managers (in informed way) to operationalize ideas for implementation/venturing.

It is critical to know that, all three lanes are always at work. The leaders must integrate all three lanes across the portfolio of innovation activities – we call this Strategy-Driven Innovation.

As your organization builds the innovation muscle and the innovation-engine continues to grow, you will need to adjust the integration points as part of the overall business planning conversations and activities at the top.

Would love to here your thoughts as well.

CEO Talk: Relationship between Innovation and Innovators

Jatin DeSai — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:41:00 GMT

As a 25 year veteran in business and being an entrepreneur (I started our first family business with my father in 1983 – last year of my college at University of Connecticut), I have always wondered why so many businesses fail and disappear, and why others succeed. Same is true about thousands of people that I have met – how do some people make lot of money (anything they touch seems to turn into Gold), while others always suck-up more resources and generate very little value (ROI, wealth, brand, reputation, etc.).

I have now concluded that some people are “wired” to make money, and others are just not.

To take it further, I think real definition of "innovator" is those who generate value more then they consume resources - simple. Not only once, but almost every single time at bat.

So, as a CEO, if you are committed to innovation as the instrument of choice to help you create a sustainable growth (and profit) engine, put real “innovators” in charge of innovation in your organization. Probability of success will be very high. And your risk will decrease.

Additionally, make sure you are clear on these critical questions as well, before you invest into innovation programs and infrastructure expenses:

How can your organization improve the probability to enhance your organization’s financial performance – particularly relative to that of competing organizations?
Do you know if your team can generate real wealth – high value using minimal resources?
Do you have the right team makeup you need to create value and wealth – based on your organizations’ current life-cycle situation?
Within your team:
- Do you know who will utilize the most resources and who will utilize the least?
- Who will generate the most value and who will deliver the least?
- Who may have the required mental agility and who will need a lot of help?

By answering these questions, you will be able to optimize and direct innovation correctly.

Innovation is the responsibility of the Top-Team. Do not relegate it off to Product Development, or Human Resources, or R&D. Those tactics don’t work anymore alone. More about this issue, later…

Primary role of innovation is to grow revenue - period.

Jatin DeSai — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:31:00 GMT

It is not a surprise that revenue growth is the primary driver of shareholder value and the number one challenge for every business sector around the world. Yet today, growth objectives for most industries are tempered by a continuing focus on cost containment.

For U.S. companies, after tremendous focus on "optimizing the bottom line" and losing the competitive edge to other parts of the world, it is time to reclaim the innovation edge. Only way to achieve this, is to point innovation activities to growing the Top-Line (revenue).

Revenue doesn't mean focus on product development alone. That isn't the sole answer either. For example, financial institutions looking for a competitive edge generally focus on product innovation, but most have little sustainable competitive advantage. Many new products never generate a profit. And those that do are often quickly copied by the competition – negating any long-term advantage. The result? Massive investment in product development, without a commensurate improvement in market share.

To achieve sustainable growth, companies must better integrate product innovation with process and service innovation – finding new ways to improve efficiency and customer service. That’s the kind of innovation customers want. And it’s the kind of innovation your competitors will find hard to duplicate. Yet some financial services companies have focused on product innovation for so long they don’t know how to innovate any other way.

Transforming a company into an innovative enterprise is a major challenge that generally requires new strategies, new tools and new behaviors – as well as a dedicated process for nurturing and commercializing good ideas. That deep commitment to innovation is the surest way to achieve meaningful and lasting differentiation.

Institutions with broad-based innovation capabilities enjoy higher customer satisfaction, greater loyalty, faster revenue growth, stronger earnings, and ultimately, dramatic lifts in investor returns.

Do you agree?