Innovation doesn't just happen…it comes from awesome intrapreneurial teams. Are you or your company guilty of killing good ideas?

Yes, everyone at the top is interested in innovation. It has become a business mandate in many organizations. But are the leaders serious? We find that plenty of companies are not walking the talk. They want innovation, but also don’t want to recalibrate the organizational systems. These systems are where a good idea has as much opportunity to succeed as me going to the moon. Why so?

For starters, organizations do not have an internal muscle for a creative process. The creative process is not well understood and it is truly a fragile process. This situation promotes uncertainty; something most leaders do not want to spend time on. Additionally, there are very few internal experts who can support it and nurture it like there are for project management processes, customer service processes, budgeting processes, etc. This is very tough in today’s short-term focus surrounded by the fear-inducing environment of rapid technological change and dynamic markets—but this also makes innovation essential.

So what to do? First, kill the innovation killers. Here is our list of innovation killers that will need significant moderation if not surgical removal. You can discover for yourself if you have an environment that is crushing good ideas or allowing growth and change to be welcomed.

1. Clear(?) and cumbersome approval processes, rules, regulations for every action at every level within the organization. Making decisions takes forever and when they are made, they take forever to implement. Too much process everywhere.
2. Silos are promoted. The organization loves to allow departments and individuals to compete against one another for resources and protect their areas.
3. The truth is one-sided the truth comes mostly in the form of criticism without praise. The glass is always half-empty. The focus is so much on execution, that the culture often forgets the impact on human spirit.
4. Don’t trust new ideas. All ideas are evaluated with great suspicion and ‘yes, but’. When someone contributes a new idea, the first thing someone says is ‘yes but…’ followed by ‘not sure if we can do that, or we have never done that before, or management will not approve it, etc.’ Moving away from the status quo is very difficult and not often welcomed.
5. Control and calibrate everything. The organization is very systematic, dashboard driven, precise, and project managed. Although all of that is very essential, the system does not allow for any quick experimentation of new ideas or technologies with spontaneity. Missing target goals is frowned upon more than the lessons gathered through failure.
6. Organization is very secretive. Restructuring, product launches, competitive news, and executive changes all occur in a secretive manner. Leaders believe that “the less people know, the better they can stay focused on the day-to-day job.” The firm does not like to share bad news with employees until the last minute. 
7. Promote class-based relationships. There are seniors and inferiors. Seniority and tenure are heavily used to promote fear-based execution. The culture perpetuates the idea that seniors know everything and they should get the best of everything. The higher you are up in the ladder, the more you are allowed to look down at others. Unpleasant duties can be delegated to inferiors.
8. The pyramid is inverted. The higher-ups know everything important about the business, and the bottom does not need to know how the business should be conducted; as long as they do what they are trained to do.
9. Leadership is invisible. Leaders are not able to connect to employees. Employees do not have confidence in the leaders based on their action and those of the top management team.

In my last post I talked about organizations tapping into the collective pool of Design Thinking to unleash the Intrapreneurship in everyone.  Through this process I strongly recommended to learn to see “with a new lens” Here are 11 practical ideas that I believe will spark innovation! .

Here are my suggestions on how to come up with some great new ideas and build your new lens: 

1.    Think when you are not thinking. For example, going on a run or a walk, cooking at home, cleaning the house, doing the yard work, etc. Asking questions to stimulate curiosity and creativity has proven helpful for all kinds of endeavors, whether problem solving, product development, inventing, or communication. Begin by The Journalistic Six:

1.1 Who? (Actor or Agent) Who is involved? What are the people aspects of the problem? Who did it, will do it? Who uses it, wants it? Who will benefit, will be injured, will be included, or will be excluded?

1.2 What? (Act) What should happen? What is it? What was done, ought to be done, and was not done? What will be done if X happens? What went or could go wrong? What resulted in success?

1.3 When? (Time or Timing) When will, did, should this occur or be performed? Can it be hurried or delayed? Is a sooner or later time preferable? When should the time be if X happens?

1.4 Where? (Scene or Source) Where did, will, should this occur or be performed? Where else is a possibility? Where else did the same thing happen, should the same thing happen? Are other places affected, endangered, protected, and aided by this location? Effect of this location on actors, actions?

1.5 Why? (Purpose) Why was or is this done, avoided, permitted? Why should it be done, avoided, permitted? Why did or should the actor do it? Different for another actor, act, time, place? Why that particular action, rule, idea, solution, problem, disaster, and not another? Why that actor, time, location, and not another?

1.6 How? (Agency or Method) How was it, could it be, should it be done, prevented, destroyed, made, improved, altered? How can it be described, understood? How did the beginning lead to this conclusion?

2.    Listen to classical music. Go to a concert or a play or sit quietly in the park to daydream. Scientists at Stanford University, in California, have recently revealed a molecular basis for the "Mozart Effect", but not other music. Dr. Rauscher and her colleague H. Li, a geneticist, have discovered that humans perform better on learning and memory tests after listening to a specific Mozart's sonata. Recently, a Book called The Mozart Effect by Don Campbell, has condensed the world's research on all the beneficial effects of certain types of music.  According to the research outlined in the book, musical pieces, such as those of Mozart, can relieve stress, improve communication and increase efficiency. Creativity scores soar when listening to Mozart. In 1996, the College Entrance Exam Board Service conducted a study on all students taking their SAT exams. Students who sang or played a musical instrument scored 51 points higher on the verbal portion of the test and an average of 39 points higher on math.

3.    Read periodicals you would not typically read - a scientific magazine, for example, if you are more interested in business; or books outside your typical genre. In order to generate Diverse Thinking. Diverse Thinking has proven to be a critical competency in the creative process. Howard Gardner notes in Creating Minds (1993): "In contrast [to convergent thinkers], when given a stimulus or a puzzle, creative people tend to come up with many different associations, at least some of which are idiosyncratic and possibly unique. Prototypical items on a creativity test ask for as many uses as possible for a brick, a range of titles for a story, or a slew of possible interpretations of an abstract line drawing: a psychometrically creative individual can habitually issue a spectrum of divergent responses to each item, at least some of which are rarely encountered in the responses of others." If you really want to be inspired, here are top 50 inspirational website.

4.    Attend a conference or a meeting outside your field. By learning about other fields, you will develop some knowledge that eventually connects to other ‘dots’ in your life. Every sector is changing at a great pace. Be open to learning about how another industry works. Conferences and networking groups are the perfect forum to help you accelerate in a new subject. There are countless stories of how someone invented something because they were in a totally neutral environment. Being ‘away’ from your daily routine is a sure bet to help find creative solutions for your existing challenges. One of my favorites learning venue is the TED Conferences, along with the Discovery Channel when I cannot travel but still want to get away.

5.    Surround yourself with creative thinkers. Most organizations do not hire creative people. They hire for skill and “fit for task”. The hiring process is designed to improve predictability, reliability, and conforming to organizational culture. So, the chances are there are more ‘alike’ people in your area than there are ‘different’. This does not mean people are not creative. It means most working people do not practice tapping in to their natural creativity. According to Wall Street Journal, Mr. Marc Parker, current CEO of Nike, loves to look for that creative edge in unusual places and with unusual people, a perfect example of how to do this. So, it is up to you to bring out your own because others are not likely to help you, especially your manger. So, find some creative thinkers who are comfortable looking at things through a different lens, or are not afraid to challenge assumptions, or who naturally love to explore ‘newness’ in everything. Find people who love to doodle, draw often, or who are exceptional storytellers. 

6.    Immerse yourself in a ‘real’ problem. Ask questions, investigate possible outcomes. Nothing really can be explored without asking great questions. Most of us have never attended a course on ‘how to ask questions’. But, we know, without questions, there can be no new answers. Many people focus on results first and not enough on understanding the problem first. In our training workshops, we often teach a technique called State-Restate. In this exercise, the student starts with writing a current challenge they are working on; in an open-ended question format.  We then teach them to restate the questions in eight different ways. By the time they are done with the entire exercise, 100% of the people experience much greater clarity of their ‘problem statement’ than before. This exercise clearly illustrates how people often attempt to solve something that really was not the actual problem needing a solution. Once the problem is clear and concise, then dive in. Most likely, you will want to jump to a solution fast. Don’t. Follow these ‘innovation process’ steps instead: 

1. First, find a small team (3-5 people) to work with you on this problem for an hour.
2. Second, diverge – without judgment, without limitation, without constraints. Do not converge or select ideas yet. Look at your problem from 360 degrees (we call this Lensing); from everyone’s perspective – your boss, your colleagues, customers, suppliers, intra-company stakeholders, etc. Do not be ‘biased’ by your own thinking. Keep diverging until you are exhausted. If it is a small challenge, you should have at least 20 ideas to consider. If it is medium or a large challenge, you should have at least 100 ideas to pick from. We have generated over 400 ideas in 15 minutes when we have worked with groups of 30 or more.
3. Finally, converge and select the few best ideas needing further nurturing. There are many voting techniques you can use. Contact us, and we can send you some ideas.

7.    Keep an idea journal.  Find your strong hour of the day and have your journal ready (maybe AM). What is an Idea Journal? An idea journal is accomplished when we take the time to commit our ideas to paper. It makes no difference whether it's done with a notepad or a fancy journal. The effect is the same. All your ideas need to be recorded. Why is it important? Throughout the course of any given day countless ideas come and go our way -- even though many of them may appear to be unrealistic to us at the time. For most of us, we simply discard them as a passing thought. The problem with this is that what we previously believed to be unachievable can change drastically as our minds are expanded with each new success that comes our way.

My best hour is from about 5:00am-6:00am. Some days it extends through the 30 minute car commute to the office. That is the time I have the most coherent concepts and feel a flow of what next actions are ready to get done. If you have a smart phone such as BlackBerry, iPhone, or Droid, you can use one of many ‘idea’ recording applications, such as from Dragon Software, where you speak your idea into the phone and it will transcribe as text. Then email it back to yourself or to someone else, to record into your journal. This is an excellent way to use technology to capture any ideas, anywhere, anytime. 

8.    Take a course to learn a new language or some other skill outside your expertise. Across the world, the emphasis these days is on a multicultural working environment. If you are in the US or in India the chances of you getting a job in Europe has increased, if you speak at least one European language. Companies place premium on communication globally and if you are able to communicate in the local language of the company, you already have a lead. It is also proven that people who speak and write in multiple languages seem to score better in life. In the US, The College Board, the primary testing authority for college admissions, calculated correlations between length of study of certain subjects, including English, math, biological sciences, physical sciences, and social studies, and Scholastic Aptitude Test(SAT) scores, and found that in almost all cases the longer a student studied one of these subjects, the higher were the scores. However, the verbal scores of students who had taken four or five years of a foreign language were higher than verbal scores of students who had studied any other subject for an equal length of time. Similar results have been obtained by other researchers who have examined foreign language study and SAT scores. 

9.    Be curious and experiment. Curiosity leading to innovation has been a hallmark of American society and was provided for in Article 1 of the Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." President Obama reminded us in his inaugural speech by saying "upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism...” In today’s no-nonsense environment, where everything is on a ‘machine-like’ pace, those who can stand out will rise to the top faster. Those who demonstrate curiosity and tenacity to experiment will become visible.

In our experience, we have noticed that leaders value people who display a never-ending curiosity for the many facets of the business. Similarly, successful employees as intrapreneurs display a never-ending curiosity that emerges as "passion" in a meeting room filled with people. What better measure of passion than curiosity? You can see its presence or absence in interviews, meetings, telephone conversations, or luncheon chatter. You can display it and you can discern it. Be curious about everything with everyone, and in every part of your life. If anything seems ‘boring’ to you, you have not been curious about it.  

10.  Articulate your idea, seek feedback from co-creative’s, or other people you trust. Put structure on it, harvest it. Everyone thinks they have the next big idea, just ask a venture capitalist. Over 95% of new small businesses fail because the owner had an idea that he thought was great. The problem was no one else thought it was great. Since the early days of modern commerce, there have been plenty of ideas to exploit in every sector across the globe. According to the TRIZ theory, there is no such thing as a ‘new’ idea. TRIZ says, all ideas and innovations follow one of 36 patterns of possibilities. So practically speaking, real innovation ideas are those that solve an unmet need in the market. So it is not about having new ideas or not, but it is about getting them out there first and fast. If you have an idea, quickly test it within your network, especially with those who have no affiliation with your idea. Testing an idea with your coworker is one thing, but testing it with your customer or with people who are not current customers will give you the best insights on the applicability of the idea. You will get more precise feedback about the need and impact of your idea without too much effort. If you keep finding ideas and testing them with the same people every time, you will get the same results you get today. Seek feedback from collaborators and creative’s. 

11.  Create a Greenhouse for your ideas. Young ideas need a Greenhouse for protection. In most cases, environmental forces within an organization will kill the idea before it becomes real in the explicit world. Locate who or what brings down your energy level. There are four primary negative forces designed to kill your ideas immediately. The first is time, the second is money, the third is people around you, and the fourth is yourself. For each, identify how to reduce the negative influence on the fresh ideas that desperately need ‘Greenhousing’; some attention, protection, nurturing, and growing. Greenhousing means keeping the ideas safe, then growing them naturally by being more curious, researching the elements and finding possibilities for impact. Don’t force them to sprout too early; that is, don’t tell others or discard them. Give these early ideas timely attention in the Greenhouse until they have some viability. Once you have confidence in the idea, share it with others for further discovery and testing. 

How can you add some of these to your list of ways to find inspiration and problem solve?

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I believe that innovation arises from ideas. Ideas show up when one applies a process of being creative. Creativity is shaped by an individual's engagement. Engagement and commitment to one's work is directly linked to clarity of Personal Values and the Organizational Values of an institution for which one works. Personal Values are molded based on one's Spiritual Integrity (alignment of thoughts, words, and actions). Spiritual Integrity is the expression of one's deep self-awareness of their inherent Human Values. Human Values are the same in all human beings. One's ability to unearth the Human Values distinguishes one's moral compass vs. that of another - sometimes we call that Character.

Therefore, if an organization wants to create a climate and culture of innovation, the best possible lasting solution is to help every employee and leader become more self-aware; more in touch with who they are and what they personally value. And I don't simply mean the definition of personal values but rather the expression of those values; i.e. how do those values show up in their work? - In their projects, in their email communications, in writing a proposal, in negotiating terms with a vendor or a customer? This self-awareness will allow everyone to 'tap into' their inner source where very powerful ideas are sitting dormant.

Great innovation leaders figured this out a long time ago - i.e. innovation arises from one's (or the team's) deep passion for something much bigger than themselves. These leaders have learned how to create ‘drive’ (as Daniel Pink describes in his recent book with the same name) for themselves as well as for their teams. We call this Design Thinking. When an organization taps into the collective pool of Design Thinking, they unleash Intrapreneurship for all.

Practicing Intrapreneurs, using Design Thinking, are the best source for Innovation.

The problem: It is difficult to find such leaders. Even if you do, it is harder to find organizations that practice Design Thinking and Innovation as a core expertise. So, how does one become an Intrapreneur inside an organization irrespective of corporate culture?

The first step we strongly recommend is to learn to see “with a new lens” – which is easier said than done. (My next post will include 11 Practical Ways to Open Your Innovation Lens!) 

Chuck Palus and David Horth, authors of The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges, speak about the need to “see with new eyes”. Human beings are magnificent, imperfect, and predictable, and do not like change. That is why the entire Change Management field was born – to help organizations adapt to a constantly changing world. Since the days of Adam and Eve, Man has learned to lead his life through habits; looking at things with the same eyes, analyzing it with the same logic and creating the same perceptions. It is easy to get used to this routine. Most managers act the same way. According to the authors, most managers “act on what they expect to see”, take shortcuts, do not spend enough time analyzing information and making a sound judgment. It’s as if the managers are walking around blind-folded since they have already created built-in perceptions of what they see. 

In my opinion, the only way Man changes, is through the emotions of Love or Fear. Love as passion, to desire, to achieve, to give,  and Fear as the feeling of failure, loss, negative judgment by others, and death. These two emotions are at the center of human motivations.

Without motivation, permanent change cannot occur.

Without change, nothing new can be innovated. 

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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”

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”

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”  

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”.

 

It is here again... "Innovation 2010 report by Boston Consulting Group" in partnership with BusinessWeek. As usual, this annual report is always very interesting; and at the same time, nothing new. To download the full report, please click here to our resources page.

Let me try to summarize highlights, to wet your appetite:

• Once again, "Innovation" is a top priority for most companies in the world (now we have to figure what they mean by Innovation!)
• Due to the tremendous economic pressure everywhere, most companies have much higher expectations form their innovation efforts then previously cited.
• Most executives are much more cautious as they are trying to accelerate out of the recession with new strategies and tactics.
• Survey shows that leaders of these companies consider a risk-averse corporate culture, lengthy product-development time, and inadequate measurement practices are key impediments to the future growth.

As you would expect, the emerging markets is where they are investing more so then ever before, China, India and Brazil, and feel most optimistic for the future ROI. At the same time, about 50% of the survey respondents believe that U.S. companies will remain the most innovative over the next five years.

One interesting insight I observed was the lack of attention to "Open Innovation" by these executives. It seems that they are still mostly focused on incremental innovation, and very little on breakthrough or discontinuous types of opportunities. This may be due to the market conditions, or the lack of education on the part of the leaders.  What do you think? Do your executives understand the value of innovation and the different "faces of innovation"? Do they understand how to use innovation to create a competitive edge?

-Jatin

  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.