INDEX1 - What is innovation ?

2 - Understand the Art of Innovation .

3 - Why You Should Shift to Open Innovation .

4 - Innovation Quote Creative Corporate culture .

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What is innovation ?

What is Innovation ? : A Short Guide

When someone asks you “what is innovation?”

what should you say? I think that you should have

an answer that inspires whoever is asking. Why?

Because, innovation is a storytelling driver for

change and continuous improvement. It’s the

reason that inspires people to work in companies

where creativity and innovation can happen.

Whatever you say as an employee, team leader or a

CEO, innovation should be explained like a

corporate culture dogma. So if you’re asked about

innovation be ready to give a clear answer related to

the way your organization innovation management

works.

Innovation is the creation of a sustainable new

offering. But it isn’t that easy

Through the overuse, the misapplication and the

enthusiasm people have for innovation, this word is

losing his meaning. People often confuse the

outcome and the process. In his book the 10 types

of Innovation Larry Keeley says that “ Innovating

requires identifying the problems that matter and

moving through them systematically to deliver

elegant solutions”.

To be fair, not all organization are innovative and for

most of them it’s abstract and can’t be grasped right

away. As an innovation consultant, I think that the

most important thing to remember, is that

innovation is a process. It’s a step by step

management process to bring your ideas to the

market. You can’t tell people that some concrete

thing or packaged service is your answer to ‘what is

innovation’. But, creating new things isn’t the result

of a single “Eureka!” moment; it’s the fruit of an

arduous but exciting process that could be divided

in 3 steps: Analysis, Selection and Implementation.

What is innovation

Innovation is not invention

Innovation may involve invention but it involves

many other things like your customer’s needs or

understanding the forms of interactions your

organization is having with your stakeholders.

Essentially, innovation is applying improved

solutions to problems and issues. The innovation

isn’t the solution but actually the process involved

in formulating and implementing the answers. Since

it can be said that, generally, there are really no new

ideas anymore, we can say that putting thoughts

and ideas that are already present to create a new

solution is a big part of the innovation process.

What is innovation for business?

In the business context, innovation may mean new

products, services, processes, partnerships, pricing

models, customer experiences, knowledge

management or even changing the way things are

built or produced. Your customers may be getting

the same product but the way you’re making them

could be cheaper or faster. The situation in Silicon

Valley can show that technology and advanced

communication techniques are catalysts for

innovation. These tools help enterprises develop

new ways for doing old things.

What is innovation for managers?

Labyrinth, Lösungsweg, Ausweg

Managers aren’t the people necessarily innovating;

they’re actually the ones who enable their teams to

create something new. They should use innovation

management techniques that promote creativity, co-

creation, communication, collaboration and creative

thinking. In some cases, a change of business

model can become the tool for letting employees

come up with great ideas.

What makes up innovation?

I think it’s a testament to how broad the topic is that

there are so many perspectives on the elements of

innovation. Some view it as a response to a

business development need using appropriate

processes, assets, technology and an adequate

amount of resources. But this doesn’t cover the

human factors like mistakes, failures,

communication, collaboration and all the other

wonderful birthing pains that are inspiring the

creative process.

How important is innovation to the workplace?

People often forget that organizational culture is an

important factor when running a company.

Innovation is simply one of the by-products of a

better office culture. Participatory models of

management like holacracy and democratic

organizational culture not only motivate your staff

but also produce great results.

Some companies often rely on the whole innovation

process to sustain them. Startup communities need

the fresh ideas and the passion that innovation

comes with to keep their businesses going. Without

their close collaborations for products and services

that work with one another, the tech business would

be nowhere.

What is innovation without the right organizational

culture?

Technically, the two cannot exist without each other.

Even if a company has something new to offer, the

way they came about this advancement needs to be

a product of a genuine innovation process. If it’s

come out of a R&D lab where technicians work into

the ground until they get a break, then that’s just a

lot of man hours eliminating possibilities.

Innovation can also come out when a transversal

business unit group of people that share and

collaborate to put ideas together to solve a problem.

Even then the solution can only fail but that’s simply

part of the process.

The question of “What is innovation?” isn’t easy to

answer today as it was before the tech boom, but at

least people know how to enable teams to bring it

about.

Take-aways

Managers believe in innovation, but often don’t

know how to explain and use it.

Innovation management must create value for the

stakeholders, the company or the customers.

Embedding innovation in your organization is a

thoughtful effort that cannot be incorporated

quickly.

Innovation follows certain codes: it needs a

receptive organization culture, it’s step by step a

transversal approach, communication is crucial,

knowledge management matters and everything

must happen in a systemic context.

In conclusion, I would like to say that innovation is

more than generating ideas; it’s also managing

change, stakeholder’s adoption and knowledge. It’s

a systemic strategy to develop and define

opportunities for value creation. It’s an ability to

drive change and sell your ideas to the market.

FOL

24/9/14

http://www.creativecorporateculture.com/

understanding-the-art-of-innovation/

Understanding the Art of

Innovation

When I meet people active in the sector of the art of

innovation, I always find that innovation in itself is

hard to understand because of the multiple working

approaches that are coexisting. Being in this

business myself, I often wonder why, how and what

I’m doing. What is innovation or creativity? How can

you describe creativity without lapsing into

psychobabble or semantics? How do you explain

people how to make a breakthrough or get an

awesome idea? How to perform inception?

In order to clarify this way of working, I think it’s

best to start to define the common patterns, that

make up the art of innovation breakthrough.

According to me, the basics are observation,

ideation and prototyping. These three steps are the

pillars of any innovation or creative process. Let’s

take a more refined, concise look at these three so

you can fine tune your own innovation process:

Three big words on innovation

1. Observation

Woman making finger frame around her face

When you start an innovation process always

immerse yourself in your subject and observe it

carefully. You can for example meet your users in

order to collect insights and see their world as

you’ve never seen it before. This sort of observation

is a great source of inspiration that you can bring

into your innovation process. Here are some tips to

follow for an effective observation:

Observe without judging

Try to understand people. How they live, what they

feel, taste, listen…

Divide your customer journey in small

step/moments in order to understand them. Before,

during and after their customer experience.

Keeping your eye open and be curious. Use your

five senses.

Don’t focus on the goal or the problem you are

working on because it’s not part of this step.

Invite/meet new people. Don’t let your team become

a closed system. Meet new people, colleagues and

topic experts. Invite them in your workshops to

collect their insights.

Use technology to discover new experiences and

trends.

2. Ideation

child heads with symbols

It’s simple to describe. After all, ideation it’s just a

group of people sitting together and throwing ideas

around. But it’s very hard to perform a good

brainstorming session and it’s often an uphill task.

It’s good to generate a lot of ideas, but what do you

do after that? How do you select them? How do you

inspire people when there are no ideas? What are

the tools to use to create a global picture? How do

you transform an idea into a concept? How do you

make people interact with each other? You see it’s

more complex that just throwing ideas around.

To make your ideation journey easier, here are some

great tips:

Focus on the task. It’s very easy to get distracted or

segued in a brainstorming session. The art of

innovation comes in when you can focus your

efforts on the problem at hand.

No idea is too wild. Although you’ve identified the

need or problem specifically, let your imagination

run wild when thinking of solutions. Funny

suggestions keep the rapport and energy within the

group high and possibly open more avenues for

ideas.

Set a benchmark. Call for an exact number ideas. It

gives a good structure to an otherwise free-for-all

imagination-fest. At least you can move on to

feasibility and importance much easier when the

number is reached.

Transition the discussions smoothly. To keep

everyone’s brain ticking, use a different ideation

approach at each phase but know how to make the

shift.

Warm-ups are not corny or overrated. Singing funny

songs, small mental exercises and icebreakers

really help especially if you’re working with a newly-

formed group. Never underestimate the power of a

warm-up session.

Use physical objects in aiding thinking. Building

blocks, draw your ideas on a paper, try to visualise

the ideas, use magazine, picture, boxes and other

3D materials that stimulate the brain .

Supply people with pertinent information. Share

information and insights for the observation phase.

Reward risk-takers and rule-breakers even if they

fail. The point of this tip is that you have to

encourage people to think beyond the traditional

boundaries.

3. Prototyping

Eine Idee haben

This is one of the most iterative part of an

innovation process. Some organizations might skip

this step but it’s important to master the art of

innovation. The point of the prototype is not to make

your concept work perfectly but to make the

innovation process go much faster.

How to do it?

Try a lot of prototypes, you will learn from the

failures and start all over again. You don’t need high

tech materials for your prototypes. I for example use

Lego’s, toys, paper, wood or even things I’ve taken

from the trash. A great place to build your products

is a fab lab.

What can you expect from prototyping?

Ideas. The objective of prototyping is to shape your

ideas in order to improve them.

Get direct feedback. When you use fast prototyping

it helps you to have a direct feedback from your

users. They will provide you new insights to

improve your products or services.

Taking chances. Second-guessing yourself doesn’t

work with a prototype. Implementing something out

of curiosity is perfectly acceptable.

Failing is part of the process. When the prototype

fails, you gain knowledge on what not to do. This is

a great leap in the creative process.

Inspiration occurs more when you work with your

hands. When your mind and body work together on

an idea, it’s easier to gain breakthroughs.

In the end, the art of innovation involves a lot of

practices that do not sit well with traditional

leadership and management paradigms. It’s up to

you to implement observation, ideation and

prototyping workshop attitudes in a way that’s both

beneficial for your team and your innovation

projects.

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FOL

Highway Signpost "Open Innovation"

Why You Should Shift to Open Innovation

Innovation is the buzz word of the business world,

but I think very few people understand what it really

is. It’s easy to say it’s about creating value,

generating ideas, gathering and interpreting data,

making decisions, implementing actions and getting

a burst of inspiration. When you look at it,

companies have been doing this sort of thing for

years now; that’s how they’ve gotten so big and

established their brands. They have brainstorming

sessions, they hold meetings, they research, they

have their Eureka or Caramba (same meaning as

serendipity) and the new product line is born.

Today things are changing and closed innovation is

shifting to a more collaborative open innovation

Since communication and access to information

wasn’t as good as it was many years ago, closed

innovation was the only way a company could get

ahead on the competition. You had to keep your

intellectual property safe from competitors, so

everyone signs their non-disclosure agreements

and goes on with their lives. Most, if not all the parts

of your product or service is developed in-house

too, so you have an established brand with its own

patents.

Now, big brands cannot afford to get fresher and

outside content. Why? Their competitors are going

to get a hand up on them. The pure cycle of in-

house research and deployment isn’t going to earn

them big money. Since talking about things

anywhere in the world is so easy with the internet,

things get old pretty fast. If you can’t bring out

something exciting or unique, people get bored and

move on to the next star of the moment. You need to

open up more ways for innovation if you want to

keep up with consumer demands. You might miss

something because you’re guarding your secrets.

So how is open innovation different?

Open innovation is not exactly the opposite of its

closed counterpart. In the latter, you keep the

money flowing through your researchers’ salaries

and keep the ideas to yourself. While the former

allows you to hire outside workers to complement

your team or source some work to the crowd, in

other word innovation crowd sourcing. What

matters to open innovation is that you give

opportunity for outside elements to influence your

business processes and insight.

Sounds scary and risky? It is, but the payoff is

something a closed model tries to replicate and

rarely succeeds.

How do you turn your company towards open

innovation?

Dompter sa créativité

The organization culture of your company should be

geared for continuous and regular innovation. You

should also have a solid strategy on how you’re

going to open up your system to new elements and

at the same time utilize all the new knowledge and

ideas.

Here are two major tasks to work on:

Define your organisation and innovation

management goals

Design the way your organisation will be structured

and managed to reach those goals. For furhter

information, here is an article on organisation

design.

Your business model strategy should also reflect

the kind of innovation you’re looking for. If your

company is into giving luxury products, make sure

that your innovation process reflects that. When you

take in new ideas and talent, these factors should

still be guided by your business model. I don’t think

it makes sense that a company that specializes in

luxury goods should go for an innovation that

features cheaper materials, right?

Aside from the processes, the way you gather and

deploy your resources for your research, needs also

to be effective to achieve your goals. Producing

your products purely from in-house knowledge and

talent keeps the resources in a cycle within your

organization. When you shift to open innovation,

you have to be ready to allocate your resources to

people who aren’t permanent fixtures in your

hierarchy. This may seem counter-productive, but

the key to open innovation practices is that you

have a diverse knowledge base that’s flexible and

always fresh. Getting new insight only when needed

is a great way to enact your shift.

Here are questions you should ask yourself to

define your resource allocation for an open

innovation project:

Why are you doing this (purpose & mission)?

How do you want to manage your projects

(management style and decision level)?

How do you want to distribute your assets to create

value (are resources accessible to any individual or

group)?

How do you select knowledge, insight and data?

Crowdsourcing, recruitment, consulting, design

thinking…

What are your performance indicators for value

creation?

I think the most important thing to remember about

open innovation is that shifting isn’t just a matter of

open doors and let new people in. You have to align

your business model, processes, resources and

goals as well.

………………………………

FOL

Innovation Quote Creative

Corporate culture

Tips for Leading a Team Full of Innovation

With every single company from startups to

established brands looking for creativity and

innovation I think it’s equally important to look for

leaders. Not just any leader, but someone who can

harness the inherent passion in creative people to

innovate things into concrete results and revenue.

It’s your job as manager to make sure that the whole

creative process of your team isn’t hampered by

drive for profit and at the same time keep the

creative people happy with the result. Talk about a

high-wire balancing act.

“There is no doubt that creativity is the most

important human resource of all. Without creativity,

there would be no progress, and we would be

forever repeating the same patterns.” — Edward de

Bono

So how do you perform this balancing act? Here are

some tips to get you started:

1. Expect to do a lot of conflict resolution, and do it

well.

Right off the bat, I have something that has a lot of

managers shying away. How you handle conflict

resolution can either make your team trust you or

disregard your authority. You need to be aware of

your team’s personalities. Figure out which

approach works with each member. One guy might

take one approach badly while another doesn’t

mind. Make sure that your team knows you are

dependable when resolving issues and differences.

Creativity and innovation thrive even in the worst

conflicts and it’s your job to make sure these two

are what emerges from the resolution.

2. Hire people on more than their resume.

I like to understand people beyond the surface level.

Even if you have an extensive, detailed resume in

your hands, you only know the person at face value.

You can’t know if someone is full of creativity just

from their CV. What’s more, the right mix of people

on your team is very important. Your current

members should become part of the hiring process,

since they’ll be the ones working closely with the

new team member. I also think that the hiring

process is something that happens over time. (Here

is an article on 10 profiles you should hire)

3. Set up a culture where creativity and innovation

can flourish.

Office environment plays a huge role in promoting

creativity and innovation. You need your workspace

to be conducive to individuality but at the same time

invite collaboration. This means that knowledge

sharing should be a big part of your team, but at the

same time a way for your members to be

recognized. Set up a room where they can ‘freestyle’

and bounce ideas off each other without judgment.

You want people to be original but at the same time

contribute to a team effort. How do you do this?

Give concrete rewards and acknowledgement to

people who deserve it. Share gifts with your team,

and give the best ones to people you know put in

extra effort.

4. Eat, sleep, live and breathe your high standards.

I don’t want to go around telling my team about my

high standards and the principles I adhere to

everyday. What I do want is for them to know what I

expect of them and let them see I expect the same

things of myself. Keep your expectations clear and

show your team you support them unconditionally.

Creativity and innovation aren’t confined to the

office; they’re part of your personality.

5. Your team should work with you and not for you.

Genuine leadership is about being the glue that

sticks your team together. You have the power to

say who is an expert on what and keep people

secure in their positions. You also have the power to

say when someone should ask help. Establish a

solid organizational structure that gives people clear

guidelines where they stand and that you are there

to guide them through their work. Creativity and

innovation happen when experts come together

under a common goal with the best guidance; and

that’s where you come in for creative empowerment.

In the end, if you are an authentic and effective

leader if you perform the balancing act of creating

and executing like a dance. You know who you’re

dancing with, you know when to step left or step

right, when to lead and when to just let go and let

the process unfold.