Change Implementation Techniques for Forming Transitional Team, Creating Alignment, Maximizing Connectedness and Creativity

Technique 6.7 Your Record of Innovation

{product-noshow 32|name|cart|picture|link|border|menuid:206|pricedis3|pricetax1}

Some questions that will need to be answered about your record of innovation:

i) Which of your innovations were truly successful?

Yes No

ii) How many innovations did you create and develop yourselves?

Yes No

iii) Is our performance on innovation commensurate with objectives for innovations?

Yes No

iv) Is our performance on innovation commensurate with directions of the market?

Yes No

v) Is your performance on innovation commensurate with your market standing on innovations? Yes No

vi) Is your performance on innovation commensurate with research spending on innovation? Yes No

vii) Are your greatest innovations in the areas of greatest growth and opportunity?

Yes No

viii) How many of the truly important innovation opportunities did your organisation?

Why did you miss the opportunities?

a) Because you did not see them? Yes No

b) Or because you saw them and dismissed them? Yes No

c) Or because you botched them? Yes No

ix) How well do you convert any innovation into a commercial product?

This exercise will raise more questions than it will answer

There are 3 conditions that need to be met for innovation to be successful. All 3 conditions are obvious but often disregarded.

i. innovation is work.

This is in addition to knowledge and great ingenuity. Usually, innovators focus in one discipline. Thus

"...Innovation becomes hard, focused and purposeful work making very great demands on diligence, on persistence, and on commitment. If these are lacking, no amount of talent, ingenuity, or knowledge will avail..."

Peter Drucker, 2001

ii. to succeed, innovators must build on their strengths.

Successful innovators look for opportunities everywhere. But then they ask

"...which of these opportunities fits me, fits this company, puts to work what we (or I) are good at and have shown capacity for performance?..."

Peter Drucker, 2001

Drucker stresses the need for innovation to build on one's strengths to handle the risk of innovation and the resulting premium on knowledge and performance capability. Furthermore, the innovation must fit the organisation; the innovators need to be temperamentally attuned to the innovative opportunity, ie it makes sense to them to be involved

iii. innovation is in the economy and society

Innovation needs to be close to the market, focused on the market and indeed market-driven. Do not confuse innovation with concepts such as "entrepreneurial personality" and/or "propensity for risk-taking". Innovators are not risk-takers. Innovators define the risks they have to take and endeavour to minimize their impact, ie confine them

"...successful innovators are conservative.......They are not risk focused: they are opportunity focused..."

Peter Drucker, 2001